Interview with Mr. Bai, the director of photography, under the condition of understanding the shooting and later process planning of Flying Life.

20 19, the third film "Flying Life" directed by Han Han was released. Compared with the first two films, Flying Life shows a higher degree of completion. Up to now, the box office has exceeded 654.38+06 billion, which has not only become the highest box office in Korea, but also successfully achieved a double harvest of box office and word of mouth in the killing of the Spring Festival file.

Baiyuxia

Film and Television Industry Network: When did Flying Life begin its spectacular work? What did you do during your visit?

Bai: We started working in the scenic spot from April 38, 1965+March 2008. At that time, the script was not finished, but several masters already knew the story structure and context of the story. Because the needs of the story are clear, such as the rally with the car. So, the production director, art and I started the set work.

Because director Han Han is a professional rally driver, he is very demanding on the environment, such as the road environment. His request was to find a scene similar to a professional rally track, so we spent more time on the set. I went to Yunnan and Xinjiang at that time. Finally, considering comprehensively, we chose Bayinbuluke in Xinjiang. In the process of seeing the scenery, we will also keep in touch with the director, who is refining the script according to the specific scene.

Because Han Dao has high requirements on the authenticity of shooting, we also found a professional champion of rally drivers to shoot at real rally speed, requiring every shot of the car to run 2-3 kilometers, so the driving span of each shot is particularly long. So in the process of seeing the scenery, I did very detailed homework on the map route and road section, and also brought a drone to observe the whole road.

Film and Television Industry Network: How does Flying Life consider image creativity?

As for the part of Xinjiang Opera, because the first two-thirds of the films are rarely rehearsed, and most of the characters are performed in a narrow space, we should finally liberate the audience emotionally and visually. Therefore, after Zhang Chi's return to the game, we need a particularly magnificent space environment to contrast with the depressed life before, which is why we chose Xinjiang to shoot.

Film and Television Industry Network: How was the car play part of Flying Life filmed?

Bai: The biggest difficulty in making this film is the car scene. At the beginning of shooting, we made an estimate of the difficulty of shooting, but the difficulty of shooting in the end was much greater than our initial estimate, which was impossible for ordinary movies to bear. At first, we also thought about alternatives, such as shooting in Yunnan, but Xinjiang can bring us a very unique visual appreciation. We agreed with the director that the final rally climax of the film must be filmed here, so the production team also overcame many difficulties.

In Xinjiang, we initially prepared five areas for shooting and designed five different color competition scenes. The landforms in these areas are very different, including snow-capped mountains, Grand Canyon, Hongya Grand Canyon, lakes and grasslands. However, because the altitude in Xinjiang is too high, the vehicle damage rate is particularly high, which slows down the shooting progress, and we are attacked by floods, so we have to adjust the original shooting plan.

Then, because the roads in Xinjiang are all dirt roads and the roads are dangerous, we can't shoot the auto show in the conventional way.

The conventional way to shoot a car scene is to use my car, but the road in Xinjiang is very narrow, and cars can't be parallel. Then, because the car will bring a lot of dust when driving on the dirt road, it will affect the shooting effect, which leads us to follow the car. Therefore, we must adopt other methods to solve this problem. Finally, we use more car seats, refit the Russian arm to the trolley, and let the car shoot the car scene in the form of self-portrait. Then we also greatly increased the proportion of aerial photography.

Film and Television Industry Network: How was the editing team of Flying Life formed?

Bai: Because the post-production difficulty of Flying Life has increased a lot, then many changes have taken place in Xinjiang. Too much work and not enough energy. So we later found the editor Tan Yukun to join us, and then our special place is that the special effects director also joined the editing team. Because Qiao Le (special effects director) knows editing very well, and then our work cycle also determines that the special effects part can't wait until the editing is fixed to finish the work, so this composition method will reduce the communication obstacles of information. Then we later spent a short time in DI. In order to save time, we put the editor in DI Company, and adopted the working mode of cutting and adjusting.

Film and television industry network: how to choose shooting equipment?

Bai: As for shooting, because I like cameras very much, we use Alexa camera. In order to shoot the auto show, we also prepared two or three sets of ARRI AlexaMini. When shooting car scenes, we will use the ARRI camera as much as possible.

We shot a deformed widescreen, which can make the most effective use of the area of CCD sensor. Its image field gives people a very fresh feeling, which is both novel and natural, so we decided to use MA to deform widescreen very early. I used to use Cook's lens, but Cook's lens is more humane and more suitable for making more stylish films. Our films have a large amount of special effects, and industrial production needs a unified texture, so MA system is the best choice for morphing widescreen image quality. It retains the good part of the deformed widescreen and eliminates the technical defects.

Then some shots are too dangerous, or the angles are too sharp, and many small sports cameras are used. The plan made by me and the director is that the picture quality and action should take precedence over the action. So we used Gopro6 and Sony RX0, put the camera under the car or in the tire, and mixed the camera materials.

Film and television industry network: how to solve the later process of Feitian's life?

Bai: Because the cycle is short, the biggest consideration in all our processes is communication and flexibility. The technical process of the whole film is in the hands of a special person, because the technical team comes from their own company and has run-in several times. He has been very skilled in pre-process planning, resource library arrangement and material distribution. We built our own nas disk array system. Different editors call the same material, so it doesn't take time to copy, and the efficiency will be greatly improved.

In the specific process, it is mainly divided into how to save and how to use. Storage is mainly how to classify and name. The naming of materials must be systematic and unique. As long as it is named strictly according to the classification of folders, it is very intuitive to find information. In naming, we basically include the name, angle, parking space and road section information of each plane in the name of the material file. In addition, we use the editing software Final X, which can set labels and keywords for the material and has the function of multi-camera material management, so the material management problem is not big.

Maybe Final X is not as rigorous as AVID, and there will be some minor problems in use, such as running frames and running points, but if you are proficient in this software, these bugs can actually be avoided, so we have arranged other methods to remedy them. Then because of the auto show, we used a lot of stepless speed change, which is a unique function of Final and will give editors more free space. Final will cause some trouble when matching materials with DI, but because our DI company specially helps us to cooperate, we have spent a lot of energy matching some variable-speed materials frame by frame, and we can complete the whole work, which is why we adopt Final X. ..

You can get the transcoded material the next day after editing. Our process is as follows: DIT will transcode overnight after shooting, and the audio track file and video file will be merged during transcoding. We use ProRes 422 LT 1920 resolution to edit proxy files. After transcoding, it will be handed over to the audit team for technical responsibility and archiving, and the audit team will allocate all video files in the final resource library as events according to time. Every day of shooting, a folder of that day will be built, and all the materials of that day will be stored in it. Each material will use the annotation function of Final X to play the field number, mirror number, machine A and machine B.. All the original data will be sorted into the final cut document, and the list of resource libraries for the final day will be generated after sorting. Because the materials all contain metadata, the editing project can be synchronized at will. As long as others get the engineering documents, all the materials will be seamlessly connected, which is very convenient for the later special effects finishing.

Film and television industry network: I heard that "Flying Life" was shot with LED screen. How do you use it?

Bai: We made a plan for the auto show a long time ago. All the auto shows were shot in the Shanghai carport. But we don't use the green button, we just use the LED screen as the background.

In this part, we have developed an operable hydraulic vibration platform, which can adjust the actors' props according to the material on the screen and simulate the angle of the real racing car. In this way, the actors can react with reference to the real road conditions during the performance, so that the actors can be on the scene and avoid the safety hazards of the actors driving the vehicles. The material of LED screen was shot by our team, and the special effects department managed and played LED screen shooting with us. In fact, in this part, we are talking more about what platform actors should use for picture playback when performing in the shed, which is a very important decision for LED shooting. It is very important to solve the problem of perspective angle calculation when shooting LED. If the perspective is not good, the picture will appear uncoordinated, so when we play, we often need to adjust the position of the picture in a small range, even in the distortion and brightness of the picture.

At present, the most commonly used method of using LED screen in China is to broadcast the system platform, but this is to increase the participation of the third party team. Many operations of the TV system are relatively rigid, which will increase the communication cost of the whole team and reduce the flexibility. So we don't want to join the third team. Therefore, every LED screen will be directly connected to a workstation when it is put on the spot, and the monitored picture will be directly projected to the screen in Final on the workstation, so all the screen positions are adjusted in Final X of the workstation in real time. This way of adjustment makes our work very casual. And we can change the speed of the material and shoot some slow-motion shots. In fact, this operation is strictly informal, but because the whole workflow pays attention to flexibility and communication, this method is adopted.

Film and Television Industry Network: You have worked as both a editing director and a photography director. What convenience does this bring to movies and your work?

End of full text