Made in Hollywood

"Dark style", literally, is a style that is dark and dark.

Although this term is relatively unfamiliar to the audience compared to the current mainstream movies, "dark movies" have been dormant in the film circle for a long time. B movies, goth movies, or noir movies.

Speaking of which, Duke is no stranger to this style, and The Matrix also has this style.

To talk about the origin of the "dark style", it is actually difficult to verify, because Goya's series of black paintings, Bruegel the Elder's "The Triumph of Death", Boccaccio's collection of stories "Ten Days", etc. Evidence of the "dark style" can be found in paintings and literature.

It's just that at the time, these contents were not called "Darkness".

In the movie, The Dark Knight, which Duke started post-production, is undoubtedly the representative. If you read the history of Hollywood in this style, it is not difficult to find that as early as "M is the Murderer", Carl Theodore Dreyer There are elements of the existence of "dark style" in the "Vampire" of F?W? Murnau's "Nosferatu".

Not to mention the kind of film noir that deliberately shows the mean streets, the sinister human nature, and the deliberate setting and story of the dark night.

In Duke's eyes, the dark style is the same as film noir, but it is just one of the branches that the film is forcibly separated from.

There is no doubt that the former Christopher Nolan was a key figure in the fact that dark style films could truly enter the mainstream film circle, and dark style has even become synonymous with high style.

This style is unique in superhero movies, and directly or indirectly brings two trends - first, in contrast to it, such as "Avengers", "Iron Man" and other mainstream commercial blockbusters style The film, which is more joyful and popcorn-like; second. After "The Dark Knight" brought depth and style to DC Comics and Warner Bros., so that the entire DC universe must follow a unified style and values, so "Superman: Man of Steel" was also forced to add to some extent. Not too appropriate "dark wind".

As for "Batman v Superman", the dark tone was determined at the beginning of the project.

To achieve this style, one is setting and shooting, and the other is post-production.

Actually. Whether it's Duke or the former Nolan, most of the time for "The Dark Knight" is during the day. To achieve the dark style of the picture, post-production is very important.

Although I have experienced films with a gothic style such as "The Matrix", this style is still relatively unfamiliar to Duke's post-production team. This also determines that the post-production speed will not be very fast, and Duke has to strictly control the production.

No one is born to be proficient in various styles of film, even Duke is no exception. Even if "War Hour" has allowed him and his team to accumulate a certain amount of experience, he still controls every link of post-production cautiously and meticulously. .

Want to get the post production team to follow this style. First of all, it is necessary to understand what the characteristics of the dark style are.

Darkness refers to the tones of these films that are artificially darkened, even those that take place during the day. Also dark and damp.

Of course, in these movies. Many episodes take place in the dark.

And black means that the theme of these films is black, and the stories are often related to words such as dark, morbid, weird, violent, bloody, mysterious, religious, alternative, etc. Although the main body of the story of many films is positive, punishing evil and promoting good . However, in the development process of the story, the above-mentioned elements are enlarged and exaggerated, thus producing a "black" effect.

However, even if it is a man-made concept, it needs to follow certain regulations and styles before it can be established. In Duke's view, there are roughly a few characteristics in the dark style movies.

First of all, the story is dark, and to a certain extent, there will be a certain morbid element.

Most of the protagonists—both positive and negative—have childhood shadows and traumas, such as Bruce Wayne.

The shadows and traumas that accompanied his maturity eventually became part of his values, and such traumas made him appear in another "sick" image, such as the scars and costumes of the clown.

More importantly, the villain's revenge is not for repayment or revenge, but a ritual involving violence and blood to awaken the public. To a large extent, their violence is not related to personal past and kindness. hatred, but is related to some kind of redemption and revelation.

Such a villain is like a clown, breaking through the "bad guy" in the general sense. He has the same speculative and philosophical colors as the positive characters, so that the positive characters are often caught in a dilemma. Such values The sway of the film and the reflection on justice and evil can be described as a kind of darkness in the aesthetics of the film.

Secondly, religiousness and the resulting sense of ritual, mystery, cult, incompleteness, and alternative are often the characteristics of the sensory and narrative elements in these films. In many paragraphs and plots, the protagonist will be mentioned by some masters. Points, or in some ceremonial gatherings, activities come out on top in order to enter the next stage.

This kind of setting is actually just a process of self-healing and ability upgrading, but driven by the dark wind, a bridge that could have been full of vitality will definitely become a plot of "climbing up from a mass grave" In the process of becoming a hero, a hero has to go through a series of events that wash away his own ideas, and then choose to maintain the status quo painfully.

No matter what they are, what their cognition of the world is, whether or not the world needs to be cleaned up and restarted, heroes will always follow the most universal values ​​and make the least bloody choices.

And in more movies, the dark style is the embodiment of a visual element—"300 Warriors," "The Matrix" and even "Batman: Hour of War"—not the dark values ​​of the film itself.

This dark style of visual effects, to a certain extent, implies the style elements of the MV, including the lens language and editing techniques of the MV, and fully reflects the "spectacle" effect in terms of set, color matching and overall production coordination. .

If you go back to the source, such visual effects come from painting, expressionism, gothic and many modern and contemporary oil paintings.

These elements that can be reflected in the shooting are more derived from the performances and lines of the actors. In post-production, if those brightly lit shots are successfully integrated into the dark style, it is a problem that the director Duke should consider. .

Of course, there is one more question he has to consider, and this is what Doug Walter was most worried about at the beginning - whether the audience can accept this style.

If it was at the beginning of the century when superhero movies were emerging, Duke could not confirm that, although Tim Burton's movies also had obvious dark styles, compared with "The Dark Knight", "Batman" and "Batman" The dark wind of "The Return of the Hero" can only be said to be trivial.

Everyone in Hollywood knows that movies are deeply affected by the social environment. Some successful movies in the future are likely to fail if they move forward a few years, so Duke has always been cautious when dealing with the Batman series, and he is also paying attention to it. Changes in the film market environment.

In fact, it is not difficult to find now that after the bombing of many superhero movies, the audience's sense of expectation for those comic movies that understate the plot and only focus on whether the CG is realistic has decreased to a certain extent, such as "Iron Man". A different kind of superhero was welcomed.

In the same way, this kind of superhero movie with serious movie characteristics and creative tendencies can be said to follow the trend.

Of course, in a movie dominated by such a dramatic plot, the direction of the characters is positioned in the dilemma of "alternation of good and evil", and a strong logic and speculativeness is placed for the villain, plus some spectacle displays. And the stories that happened in the dark night can bring a fresh excitement to the audience.

In this style of film, the villain is also key, and if the villain is just a masked character in a Marvel movie, the style will be out of balance.

Therefore, the villains are often similar to the decent ones. The masters and students use their own ideas to transform the society. For this purpose, they do not hesitate to use the shock therapy of "sudden death" to treat the society.

This naturally elevates the level of the villain or forces it.

Even how long the future superheroes can maintain their strong development, to a large extent, depends on the villains.

Tim Burton, who also added a certain dark style to the first Batman movie, is good at a kind of gothic expression.

This means of expression, under the revisionism of Hollywood, has nothing to do with the story itself, but about the character's costumes, sets, and make-up. The scenes he shot in "Batman" and "Batman Returns" are almost all in In the shrouded night, the story involves elements that are necessary for gothic and dark, such as death and paganism.

This surreal, futuristic, mash-up of Burton-esque features isn’t exactly what Duke wanted to achieve.

What Duke wants to achieve in post-production is that "The Dark Knight" can completely break away from the category of comic book movies and become an independent film.

If you consider it from the perspective of the movie, what Duke needs to do in editing is to try not to use the original comics as text, but only borrow the relationship between the characters in the comics, reshape the main line of the story, and tell the story in another way. , to create the final film of "The Dark Knight".

This is a bad thing, and if the quality of the movie is questionable, it is bound to be drowned in the drool of manga fans.

But this is also a good thing. The director can play more freely without the constraints of the style of the comics, making the dramatic climax under the contradictions and conflicts of the storyline, with more tension. (To be continued ~^~)

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