Chapter 231: Grand Scene and Finale
The next day, Liu Zhou arrived at the set early again.
At this point, the base and most of the indoor scenes have been completed, and the scene has shifted to the beach.
The scenes on the beach battlefield are mostly action scenes, so filming will be more complicated.
Before Liu Zhou moved on, the crew's assistant director had already led people to set up the beach shooting scene in advance.
The 30000-square-meter beach is surrounded by a huge green screen, completely isolated from the outside world, and high platforms are built on three sides.
The preparation work for shooting action scenes is quite cumbersome, and since this is a science fiction film, the action needs to be done with special effects.
While the other crew members were busy, Liu Zhou was also slowly looking at the fragmented renderings and storyboard scripts.
Because Liu Zhou was on the phone with Zhang Zhao for more than an hour last night, it was almost two o'clock and he still hadn't finished his research.
This action scene is not a simple fight between a few people. Even the most professional action actors would not be able to shoot it smoothly.
Most of the shots are only a second or two long!
Just dividing the script is time-consuming and laborious.
But as long as the script is divided up ahead of time, the actors are fully prepared, and there is no chaos during filming, it is not difficult to shoot.
Like Alfonso Cuarón's classic science fiction film "Gravity", this is a very difficult movie.
The script of "Gravity" is very simple, but the difficulty of shooting it is much higher than 90% of science fiction movies.
The film begins with a 13-minute long shot, a continuous shot from long shot, close-up, to close-up, until the camera passes through the protagonist and transforms into the first-person perspective, and the audience changes from "onlookers" to the protagonist.
The thirteen-minute long shot makes my scalp tingle just thinking about it.
Not only are extremely high requirements placed on the actors, but the control over the director, photographer, and lighting technician is also quite high. If a second- or third-rate crew were to take over, the result would be a bunch of garbage.
After nearly two hours of preparation, all departments were ready.
The scene being filmed today is the landing scene, and support from the Pentagon has already been in place.
Except for the warships, tanks, armored vehicles, armed helicopters and fighter jets are all in place.
The armored vehicles and tanks all have the most domineering appearance, and they have also been slightly modified in appearance, making them look a little more advanced than this era.
Not only that, Tatum also brought in a military expert to rearrange the ground, plowing it with explosives to make it look more like a battlefield.
In order to demonstrate his professionalism, Liu Zhou also asked him to help guide the action steps of the army, aircraft and armored vehicles.
Liu Zhou had made sufficient preparations for this climax scene.
"Action!"
Liu Zhou stared intently at the screen on the monitor.
Dozens of actors wearing exoskeleton armor appeared in front of the camera and ran forward in big strides. Although they looked clumsy, their speed was not slow at all.
At this time, tanks and armored vehicles slowly appeared in the camera, and several Black Hawk attack helicopters also slowly flew over.
There were continuous shells flying into the distance with long flames.
This is a classic tactic of the Americans. Generally, they will cover the front positions with saturated firepower before sending troops into battle.
Then one of the soldiers landed safely. He raised his hands excitedly and shouted:
"We succeeded, we landed successfully! Go ahead."
"Okay, passed!"
This shot had been rehearsed many times before and there were no problems.
In fact, what is really presented on the screen is that the first soldier to land is only handsome for three seconds.
As soon as he finished shouting, he turned around and saw a large transport plane that had been hit coming towards him.
The flying sand directly buried Nicolas Cage.
Here, Liu Zhou added one more shot compared to the original film.
After this soldier was crushed to death, an armored vehicle next to him, after resisting the aftermath, immediately launched four missiles in succession into the distance.
Liu Zhou also gave a close-up of the four missiles from the front, which, under the light, exuded the terror of death.
call out!call out!call out!call out!
Almost within one second, four shells were fired one after another, and the camera in the air behind accurately captured its trajectory.
There is also a camera in the air in front and on the side, waiting to capture the moment.
Explosives specially used for filming had been buried at the target location and were detonated at that moment.
……
At six o'clock in the afternoon, it was already getting a little dark.
Seeing that it was no longer suitable for filming, Liu Zhou also announced that he would call time on filming.
Compared to the frequent night shoots before, the crew has finished work earlier in the past half month as the film has now moved to the beach battlefield.
Sometimes when it’s cloudy, we’ll finish work before five o’clock.
There was no other way because these scenes were all taken during the day and the shooting couldn’t be messy.
The main thing about fragmented lenses is that they should not be messy.
These days, although we finished work early, the filming went quite smoothly.
Some of the filmed scenes have been sent to Weta Digital for post-production, with special effects being done while filming.
Special effects take a lot of time, and Edge of Tomorrow is set to be released in April next year, so time is still a bit tight.
Fortunately, "Edge of Tomorrow" was all shot live, and only the alien monsters needed CG, and their total appearance time was less than ten minutes.
The special effects for movies like Transformers are really time-consuming.
The most time-consuming scene took 288 hours, nearly 12 days, to render one frame.
There are generally 24 frames in one second, which means that it would take up to 298 days to finish one second of footage. It would take one computer 298 days to finish one second of footage, and nearly 300 computers would take one day to finish one second of footage.
Moreover, Transformers takes more than 20 hours of rendering time every day, which is equivalent to completing 24 years of rendering time in 22.8 hours.
Therefore, every second of the cool movie scenes of "Transformers" was produced by burning bundles of US dollars.
Now the first film in this box office hit series should have been completed and is in post-production.
It was already the end of October, the beach battlefield scenes had come to an end, and nearly 80 percent of the entire film had been completed.
Now there are only a few big scenes left to be shot.
What Liu Zhou didn't expect was that when he was busy filming, Cheng Long actually came to visit the set.
"Brother Long, why are you here?"
Liu Zhou had been in the United States for more than two months, always staying with a group of Westerners. It was a pleasant surprise for him to suddenly see a Chinese person.
What's more, Jackie Chan came over specially to visit the set.
"Boss Liu, don't you welcome me over?"
"Of course not, I just didn't expect it."
"I was also filming in Hollywood before, and I just finished shooting Rush Hour 3. I knew you were filming here, so I came to see you." "Then our two movies won't collide next year, right?"
"It's possible. When is your film scheduled to be released?"
"Next April."
"That's not bad. Rush Hour 3 is scheduled for August next year, at the end of the summer season."
Hearing this, Liu Zhou smiled and said:
"Brother Long, you are so powerful. My movie doesn't even dare to go to the summer season."
In the United States, the summer season is their most important time period.
From mid-to-late May to early August, for three months, a blockbuster movie was released almost every week.
The seven best-selling Hollywood series of films are usually released during the summer vacation.
Therefore, if you don’t have some strength and confidence, you really don’t dare to try to get into the summer season, otherwise you will most likely become cannon fodder.
Although Liu Zhou has confidence in "Edge of Tomorrow", he doesn't dare to get involved.
The special effects of this movie are only average compared to Hollywood movies. Its only advantage is that the plot is quite attractive.
So to be on the safe side, Liu Zhou and Lionsgate agreed to avoid the summer season and choose to release the film in April.
This time, no one can take advantage of anyone's popularity, and both sides hope that the film will meet the audience as soon as possible.
Although "Rush Hour 3" was released at the end of the summer season, it is enough to demonstrate the strength of this movie.
This film series is relatively well-known in Hollywood, but the box office of the third film was average compared to the first two.
After "Rush Hour 3", Jackie Chan completely bid farewell to the mainstream Hollywood film industry and shifted his focus to the domestic market.
Cheng Long seemed to be quite pleased with Liu Zhou's praise, his eyes almost became slits due to his smile, but he still said modestly:
"No, I just benefited from the movie series. I believe that it won't be long before you will also join the battle of the summer movie season."
At this time, the assistant director of the crew came over to inform that everything was ready and they could start shooting.
Liu Zhou stood up and said to Cheng Long with a smile:
"Brother Long, come on, I'll show you a big battle that you can't see in the country right now."
This scene is about launching a general attack on the monsters in different shapes.
The battle in the original film was still a bit small, and it didn't look like a general offensive at all. It was at most a local battle.
So this time Liu Zhou also made the scene much bigger.
More than fifty fighter planes of various types, dozens of auxiliary aircraft, and a total of eight warships including destroyers.
Originally, there were also aircraft carriers, but due to insufficient funds, we could only purchase the video copyrights of some aircraft carriers and add them in later.
The aircraft carrier that appeared in "Wolf Warrior 2" was cut out and added from other video materials.
Cheng Long followed him to the set and was shocked and stunned when he saw such a grand scene.
"Are these planes and warships real?"
“It’s partly real and partly a model.”
"That's awesome. Will the United States allow a Chinese like you to take pictures of these equipment?" Cheng Long asked in a low voice.
"I'm not going to look inside those equipment, and there are people from the Pentagon filming the whole process."
"Okay, but I think you'd better be careful. The people of the United States have no bottom line. If they directly detain you on the grounds of some weapons secrets, you will have no way to deal with it."
Liu Zhou was also shocked when he heard Cheng Long's words.
These foreigners are totally capable of doing such a thing.
At first, I was a little complacent about being able to borrow so many weapons to make a movie, but this also seemed to be handing a handle or an excuse to others.
Although there should be no benefit for Liu Zhou to make others do this now, but what if?
The authorities may not do this. If competitors come to lobby, they may just do it as a side job.
Fortunately, Liu Zhou is not a person with major interests in Hollywood yet, so no one should go after him this time.
But this also reminded Liu Zhou that in the future when making movies in Hollywood, he should avoid getting involved with powerful departments in the United States.
In response to Cheng Long's reminder, Liu Zhou said solemnly:
"Thank you, Brother Long. I'll treat you to a meal when we get back home."
Cheng Long saw that Liu Zhou had listened carefully and replied with a smile:
"no problem."
Liu Zhou then put these thoughts aside and concentrated on the next filming.
At this time, six helicopters for aerial photography began to take off. In addition to aerial photography, eight photographers were also deployed to take close-ups of various locations.
Thousands of extras and nearly a hundred real soldiers are ready. The decks of each transport ship are already filled with soldiers wearing exoskeleton armors, lined up in neat rows.
The exoskeletons worn by these people are just for show and only look similar in appearance because they were only photographed from a distance and there are no close-ups.
Seeing that everything was ready, Liu Zhou sat in front of the monitor and shouted loudly: "Start!"
Suddenly, various warships set sail and sounded their horns. Large transport planes in the sky carried teams of mecha soldiers to the other side, and more than 50 fighter jets roared past in battle formation.
The coastal defense forces and warships fired missiles at the opposite side one after another.
The cruise missiles and machine guns carried by the bombers also plowed the earth.
Such a large-scale scene requires full preparation for the crew, but for the army, it is just a simple exercise.
The first scene took more than two hours to shoot, and the entire landing scene was completed on the same day.
Cheng Long has also been a director. Seeing Liu Zhou shooting so happily, he also felt itchy.
But he also knew that he might hardly have the chance to shoot such scenes himself in the future, and could only watch Liu Zhou filming with envy.
After work, Liu Zhou also introduced Cheng Long to the crew.
In fact, there is no need for introduction, most people in the crew know Cheng Long.
As a Hollywood kung fu superstar, he has been in Hollywood for many years. Although he is not a household name, at least there are few people in the circle who don't know Jackie Chan.
Cheng Long didn't stay here for long. After Liu Zhou treated him to a simple meal in the evening, he left.
Another week passed, and the second big scene.
An abandoned town was built here, and after filming the emotional scenes between the male and female protagonists, only two exterior scenes were left.
It took another three days to shoot the two exterior scenes of the dam, and the crew completed the last scene in the built Pentagon command center.
After more than two months of filming, "Edge of Tomorrow" officially wrapped up today.
After handing over the follow-up affairs of the crew to Tatum, Liu Zhou and Anne Hathaway flew directly back to Los Angeles.
This may be the most tiring movie Liu Zhou has ever shot. Although there are still many things waiting for him in China, Liu Zhou still plans to have a good rest for a few days.
Anne and Hathaway also knew that Liu Zhou might be returning to China, so they put down their work and spent a few days with Liu Zhou.
On November 10, Liu Zhou, feeling refreshed and free of fatigue, said goodbye to Anne Hathaway and boarded a flight to Beijing.
(End of this chapter)