Introduction to movie special effects

In film and television, artificial illusions and illusions are called film and television special effects (also known as special effects). Filmmakers use them to avoid putting actors in dangerous situations, to reduce the cost of making films, or, more simply, to make films more gripping. Miniature models: Models of people, monsters, buildings, and vehicles are used to create special effects in movies. When models must be moved, we can move them in any of three ways: by hand, mechanically, or electrically. Moving them by hand takes a long time because the model needs to move at least 24 times per second on the screen. Edit this paragraph Overview of Film and Television Special Effects As one of the indispensable elements in the film industry, film and television special effects have made a huge contribution to the development of films. Why do special effects appear in film and television works? 1. Some of the content of film and television works and the creatures/scenes in the film are completely fictitious and do not exist in reality, such as monsters and specific planets. Since it does not exist, but needs to be presented in film and television, professionals in this field are needed to create and solve it. 2 Reality can exist, but it is impossible to achieve a certain effect, and special effects are also needed to solve it. For example, if someone jumps from a thirty-story building, it is impossible for an actor to do this in reality. This requires computer synthesis. In addition, it can be completely presented in reality, but because the cost is too high or the effect is not good, special effects must be used to solve it. For example, airplane explosions are common in war movies. How to achieve film and television special effects From the perspective of production methods, they can be roughly divided into two types: 1. Traditional special effects. Traditional special effects can be subdivided into: makeup, scenery, pyrotechnics special effects, early film special effects, etc. Before the advent of computers, all special effects relied on traditional special effects. Everyone is familiar with Journey to the West in the 1980s, in which all the monsters and monsters were created using traditional special effects makeup. Professionals make monster masks, and the actors put them on their heads for filming. The scenery is reflected in the scene of the Heavenly Palace. Build some buildings similar to the Heavenly Palace, and then put some smoke to create a scene of the Heavenly Palace shrouded in clouds and mist. The shot of Sun Wukong jumping into the sky was completed by film special effects, but after the advent of computers, this method has been eliminated. 2 CG special effects CG can be understood as computer creation. When traditional special effects methods cannot meet the requirements of the film, CG special effects are needed. CG special effects can achieve almost all effects that humans can imagine. Companies representing the world's top levels include: Industrial Light & Magic/Digital Domain/New Zealand Weta, etc. In the past two decades, most of the most shocking blockbusters were completed by these companies. Below is a brief introduction to these three companies. Industrial Light & Magic was founded by George Lucas in 1975. Its representative works include: Avatar, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, etc. The most classic works are the prehistoric dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the octopus face in Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. New Zealand Weta was founded by Peter Jackson. Its representative works include the Lord of the Rings series, Avatar (special effects blockbusters such as this are basically completed jointly by many special effects companies), King Kong, etc. Gollum and King Kong basically represent the highest level of CG creatures in the industry with both physical and spiritual features. Another very influential achievement is the development of the group animation tool MASSIVE, through which the epic melee of thousands of troops in The Lord of the Rings was created. This software has been studied domestically for several years, but due to cost and personnel constraints, few results have been achieved. Digital Domain was founded by Michael Bay, the director of Transformers. It is the second-largest film special effects company in the United States after Industrial Light and Magic. His main masterpieces include: Titanic 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Pirates of the Caribbean III, etc. Real feelings created by film and television special effects: Reality is the basic principle of artistic creation. "It is neither identical with life itself like the reality of life, nor can it be verified and restored like scientific reality." Movies make people dream, and good movies make audiences reluctant to wake up, but no one wants to dream about the people and scenes they are accustomed to. Film and television special effects make this dream more exciting. Through film and television special effects, the movie creates a dream that the audience has never seen or imagined.

As one of the means of film creation, the creation of film and television special effects also follows the basic law of artistic creation - reality. 1. People, scenery, sound, light, and color. Realistic people, scenery, sound, light, and color are the most important elements of the audio-visual language. They are the main components of the picture information. The principle of film and television special effects in processing these audio-visual elements is to restore their overall relationship with each other, regardless of Whether it is virtual generation or keying generation, it is necessary to combine the ambient light conditions of the scene, unify the tone, color, and restore the texture to achieve realistic effects. If this is not done well, the audience will notice what is the result of film and television special effects, resulting in a sense of gradual separation. 2. The viewpoint, movement and movement trajectory of the lens are reasonable. The viewpoint of the lens is the viewpoint of the audience. Its reasonable position must still follow the principle of real feelings. Its rationality is based on a certain expansion around people's visual habits. The movement of the lens also has its own rules. Traditional camera movement has very strict and mature regulations, which cannot be broken in digital special effects. If the camera is moved at will, the form will be divorced from the content. The motion trajectories of objects have long been formed in nature, and only by strictly restoring them can film and television special effects experience reality. If there is a slight deviation, it will immediately change the overall relationship between people's understanding of things and cause unreality. CG special effects are divided by function and can be roughly divided into three categories: 1. Three-dimensional special effects. Most characters and scenes with three-dimensional perspective changes are created by three-dimensional effects. Three-dimensional special effects are almost the most technically difficult part of the entire special effects, but also the most problem-solving part. For example, there are various realistic monsters in the film, the flood that submerged the whole city in 2012, the collapse of skyscrapers, etc. The general production process is: model-material lighting-binding-animation-rendering. Specific implementation software: The domestic MAYA platform is the main platform, supplemented by dozens of software such as MAX, realflow, huodini, C4D, XSI, and LIGHTWAVE. 2 Synthetic special effects. The most common manifestation of synthetic special effects is the heroes in costume films flying around in the sky using light skills. Specific implementation method: The actor's fight and the sky are shot separately. The actor's fight part is shot by the actor hanging a wire against a blue screen or green screen background. Then the blue screen and the wire are removed using post-processing software on the computer, leaving only the actor's part. Paste it in front of the real sky. This makes it look like the actors are fighting in the sky. Of course, the specific synthesis is much more complicated than this. Many post-production software can also produce partial effects of 3D effects, but only as an auxiliary and unlikely to replace 3D software. Commonly used software: nuke/fusion is the mainstream, and some companies use AE/COMBUSION/SHAKE/flame/smoke and other platforms. 3. Digital matte painting and concept design. Digital matte paintings and conceptual designs can be understood as paintings. Digital matte painting: For example, a panoramic view of an ancient city appears in a film, involving thousands of ancient houses or palaces, flowers, trees, bridges, flowing water, etc. If 3D software is required to create it, the cost will be very high, and it usually requires the cooperation of multiple people. Complete, but with Digital Painter, he can paint it all into one picture by himself. Concept design: Concept design is usually used as a reference for pre-production. For example, a monster is going to appear in the film, but what does the monster look like? The director says it in words, and the concept designer draws it in the form of pictures according to the director's requirements. After determining the image, it is handed over to three-dimensional special effects to create various lifelike monsters. Film and television special effects have changed the way of film production: In the current film production process, starting from the split-shot script, the idea of ??special effects has been reflected. Film and television special effects have changed the original traditional film production process and methods. When planning the script and arranging the narrative, film and television special effects allowed the creator to break out of the traditional linear thinking mode and completely break the concept of time and space. Therefore, some pictures that were limited to shooting technology could be realized, and the creator let go of his hands and feet. Give full play to your imagination. In addition to traditional scripts and shot-by-shot scripts, film and television special effects also need their own special effects scripts. In the early stage of shooting, in addition to on-site shooting, there are more and more shots such as scenery, blue screens, models, and digital skylight paintings.

In this environment, the application of film and television special effects basically has the following three situations: (1) The director is interested in film and television special effects and wants to try something. But the scale of the attempt was very small, and it was not part of the entire film production process, so it could not achieve very profound effects. (2) In films that do not consider returns, film and television special effects have been fully utilized. Such as: "The Flying Leopard" and "The Turbulent Waves". (3) The film creator hopes that film and television special effects will add some highlights and selling points to the film. In "Fatal Strike," some shots that were difficult or simply impossible to achieve were accomplished with computer assistance. All in all, film and television special effects have not yet formed a very standardized commercial operation. There are very few films with practical film and television special effects for commercial purposes, so the film and television special effects production industry has not been formed. The dilemma of lack of professionals also plagues this yet-to-be-formed industry. Few of the people engaged in film and television special effects production are from the film industry, and most of them are computer majors and art majors. My understanding of moving images is not enough, and my ability to tell stories using audio-visual language is not yet strong. However, with the progress of the times, the nature and role of film and television special effects have gradually been recognized and used by Chinese filmmakers. Edit this paragraph movie special effects production software 1. Houdini is a very powerful software for special effects. Many movie special effects are completed by it: the "magic fireworks" set off by "Gandalf" in The Lord of the Rings, the scene where the "water horse" destroys the "Nagul"... the tornado in The Day After Tomorrow... ..　2. Illusion Avid's Illusion is a compositing software that integrates film stunts, compositing, painting and deformation software. It is a non-compressed digital non-linear post-editing and special effects production system based on the full range of SGI platforms. It has a high-efficiency production environment, production quality and integrated functional modules. 3. Inferno* system The Inferno* system running on SGI super workstation is a multi-award-winning system recognized by the world as the best film and television special effects production system, from "Jurassic Park", "The Lost World", "Tornado" , "Independence Day", "Collision", "Starship Troopers", "Godzilla", "The Mummy" to the most successful film in film history "Titanic" 4. Alias ??| The predecessor of Wavefront software is Alias. This system was originally developed by Alias ??Company in Toronto, Canada. It mainly runs on various SGI graphics workstations and IBM R60000 series graphics workstations. The products of this system are divided into many levels, from low to high: Designer, Animator, Power Animator, Studio and Auto Studio. 5. Softimage In 1986, Daniel Langlois, one of the directors of the computer animation film "Tony de Peltrie", founded Softimage company in Montreal, Canada, and launched Softimage 3D animation software in 1988. The Softimage 3D system supports applications in many fields, such as film and television production, product and industrial design, architecture and scientific computing visualization, etc. 6. Digital Fusion/Maya Fusion: Professional synthesis software based on PC platform developed by Canadian Eyeon Company. This software is one of the best synthesis software currently available on the PC platform. And joining forces with Maya makes it even more powerful. It can work closely with 3D software such as Maya to modify the materials, textures, lighting and other properties of 3D objects in a 2D environment. Maya Fusion has no requirements for the resolution of materials. Users can work on images of any resolution and combine them together. He has undertaken compositing tasks in a large number of special effects films such as "Dr. Oolong", "Little Brother", "Storm of the Century", and "Deep Chill".

7. Edit/Effect/Paint is a series of software launched by Discreet Logic on the PC platform. Among them, Edit is a professional non-linear editing software, and Effect is a layer-based synthesis software. Users can set motion for each layer and compare them. Color, keying, tracking and other operations can also be performed, and lighting can also be set. One of the great advantages of Effect is that you can directly use the types of filters designed for Adobe After Effect, which greatly complements the functions of Effect.