Made in Hollywood

The studio was dark, facing Duke, Leonardo DiCaprio turned his back to the lens of the main camera, seemed to be busy with something, and then the figure of Scarlett Johansson broke into the lens, She looked at Leonardo's back and walked over there.

"Are you going to enter the dreamland alone?" She asked proactively.

"No, no..." Leonardo turned around and immediately denied, "I was just doing some experiments, I didn't expect there were people here, so..."

"Oh, sorry,"

Scarlett first looked down at the gadget in her hand, and then pointed to Leonardo, "Actually, I'm playing with my totem."

"Show me." Leonardo picked up his pocket and walked over.

Scarlett put it away immediately, and Leonardo just smiled, "You learn quickly."

"This method of distinguishing between dreams and reality is very elegant." Scarlett nodded slightly, and said, "Is this your idea?"

"No, actually..." Leonardo walked closer, "It was actually Sally's idea."

Since the heroine was not French, Duke changed her name accordingly.

Leonardo took out a spinning top and put it in his palm so that Scarlett could see it more clearly, and explained, "The spinning top won't fall down when it spins in a dream."

He spun the top on the table next to him, "Just keep spinning like this."

"I heard from Arthur that he passed away?" Scarlett asked.

Leonardo changed the subject, "How is the design of the maze?"

Duke steps away from the camera and yells, "Cut!"

Both Scarlett and Leonardo looked at this side, and it was clear that the first line of booting hadn't happened, but this scene was not difficult. They don't understand what the problem is.

"Hannah, Kirk, John..." Duke called out the names of the three department heads of the crew in one breath, and then waved, "Come here."

This shot didn't pass and had nothing to do with Scarlett and Leonardo's performance. But there was a problem with the lighting. Since Zach Schneider left Duke's team and became a director, Kirk Lendier has been responsible for the lighting of his crew.

Movies can also be said to be a photochemical dream. The requirements for light are very complicated. Although a lot of light can be adjusted in post-production, the light used for shooting on site is also extremely important.

The so-called light distribution. In layman's terms, it is toning. There are two main reasons why movies need light matching: first, there are inevitably differences between shots shot at different times and under different light source conditions. Disharmony; second. The creators will also make the film screen present a certain style out of their own artistic pursuit.

The original English text of the word light distribution is Color Timing. From the literal meaning of English, many people may wonder what the relationship between this process and "time" is.

This goes back to the era of black and white movies. Since there was no color involved at that time, the light distribution only involved the control of the light and shade of the picture. Therefore, what the optician has to do is to debug and record the exposure time required by different lenses, and the word Timing comes from this. After the advent of color technology, the term Timing is still preserved, even in today's digital age.

Lighting works today. It is completely carried out in a digital environment, and the efficiency and freedom that the photometrician can obtain are extremely high. In recent years, the electronic light distribution technology has developed rapidly. Through the electronic circuit display of the electronic light distribution machine, the photometrician can directly preview the light distribution. As a result, work quickly.

Compared with traditional light distribution, this method is more efficient.

Duke's crew has always used the most advanced technology in the industry. He is not Christopher Nolan who is still in the independent film circle today, and he will not stick to those traditional and time-consuming and labor-intensive methods to shoot.

How to spend the least amount of money to achieve the best results at the fastest speed is what Duke wants. For this reason, he doesn't care whether the way of realization is to stick to tradition or use new technology.

The problem of light distribution was easily solved. In the next few days of shooting, Duke used both new technology and some more traditional methods.

The first shocking scene that appeared in the previous "Inception" was the first dream time travel caused by Leonardo DiCaprio's Dom Cobb being pushed into the bathtub. Bu’s feeling of water in the upper world was transmitted to the lower dream, producing a surreal effect—the entire Japanese palace was flooded by torrents of water.

This extremely sensory scene was actually filmed by Christopher Nolan in real location. His crew built a huge interior scene of the palace and stored a total of 5,000 gallons of water in 26 windows carefully arranged at each window of the scene. In the water tanks, these water tanks are opened in sequence under the drive of the mechanism, and the scene of "water flooding the golden mountain" is produced.

But such setting and shooting are extremely time-consuming and costly. Duke just thought about it briefly and gave up the idea of ​​real shooting.

When he shot, Leonardo just stood surrounded by green screens, and the scene where the palace was flooded with torrential water was shot using miniature models, and then the two were processed with CGI technology and composited together.

According to the calculations of professionals, this can save at least half of the preparation time and one-third of the shooting funds.

In the style of Duke, there is no reason not to choose this method of shooting.

In some respects, Duke also made extensive use of traditional techniques for shooting.

For example, the action scene of Arthur in the corridor was disturbed by the upper dream, and the phenomenon of gravity changes appeared several times in the second dream. In fact, they were all produced by real laws of physics when shooting.

During the filming, Joseph Gordon-Levitt flew over the walls of the hotel corridor, because the scenery of the entire corridor was built on a giant rotatable "Vientiane Ring" device.

When the entire corridor began to rotate and tilt, the actors hanging on the coercion only adjusted their balance naturally, and the fixed camera made it look like the direction of gravity was changing. In order to ensure the safety of the actors in the rotating set, many props including the walls are made of soft materials.

There are also many props used in dream shooting, which were also built by the crew.

The first is the Penrose ladder.

Anyone who has a little research on illusions should know the famous perspective paradox of "Penrose stairs". As a hypothetical infinite loop staircase, it can only be established in two dimensions. A self-contradictory structure.

The special effects team refers to the Penrose staircase described by the illusion master Escher, and actually built a closed staircase that looks like an infinite loop from a specific angle in the studio of the Warner Studios where the shooting was shot. Of course, from any other angle , the set would be broken in an instant, because it wasn't closed at all.

It is also by using this point that Arthur played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt can clearly explain the maze phenomenon in the dream like Adrian played by Scarlett and the audience.

Next is the memory elevator.

Dom Cobb created an elevator in his dream that could lead to the thirteenth floor to store his memories. This memory elevator is an independent set during filming, and they are all real props made by the crew.

For example, the elevator on the top beach, when Duke was filming, dug a big hole on Nancy Josephson's private beach and built it.

And the subconscious train.

The most exaggerated props prepared by the crew for filming is probably the train that appeared in the dream on the first floor. This train is indeed a real prop.

The inside of this big guy is driven by a truck and several trailers, and the outside is covered with a fiberglass train shell to make it look like the real thing. Finally, computer CGI is used to replace the car tires with train wheels. Everything is impeccable.

In Hollywood, almost all big-budget commercial films are shot with computer special effects and live-action shooting, and there are no blockbuster special effects movies with an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars that do not use CGI special effects lenses.

Not to mention that this version of Duke’s "Inception" uses more than 2,000 CGI special effects shots, just talk about the former Christopher Nolan. Many people have the impression that Nolan is a complete film fanatic and extremely digital technology. Resistance and even contempt are correct from a certain point of view, but this does not see the whole of the facts.

In fact, CGI special effects were widely and even critically used in the production of the previous "Inception".

The rewinding of Paris is one of the iconic shots of this film. Without going into details, it can be seen that this is a scene generated by CGI. In addition, more than 600 CGI shots are used in the entire movie!

Curly Paris is also one of Duke's signature images for this version of the film, and in his hands, it's a 100 percent digital effect.

As early as the preliminary preparations, the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic had already rushed to Paris, where they took a T-sized photo as the material, from the external structure of the building to the internal rooms, accurate to every detail.

These high-precision photos are finally pasted on the 3D model as "baked textures", the purpose is to make the entire virtual scene realistic and believable.

However, it is not enough to have real textures. The whole scene needs to consider the changes of many elements, including the light source-the whole scene takes place in daytime, and the simulation of skylight is very difficult-shadow projection, perspective, etc., also need to be considered How to hide penetrations between buildings.

Although Duke plans to cut into several shots for the city curl to appear in the movie, the special effects initially completed by Industrial Light and Magic are only a complete shot.

According to Duke's request, the special effects team could cheat by switching shots, but they faced up to the difficulties and handed him a beautiful answer that exceeded expectations-there were no repeated blocks, as small as street lights and curtains. details, even interior structures within buildings. (to be continued ~^~)

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