Among them, perhaps the most uneven is a writer's Odyssey. Top production, top lineup, excellent script, less than 300 million box office in three days.
The total box office forecast given by Cat's Eye is even pessimistic to a little over 700 million.
From the production level, such a box office performance is a pity.
The Writer's Odyssey is adapted from the short story of the same name by Shuang. The film version has made a lot of adaptations in the details of the plot, but it retains the core of the original, which is the most interesting setting-two worlds.
In fact, Ning Guan, played by Lei Jiayin, has been looking for her daughter Xiao Orange, who disappeared six years ago. For this goal, it seems that she has been "crazy".
At the same time, Li Mu, a great entrepreneur in the real world, felt that his health was threatened by a novel, so he tried every means to stop the novel and ended in failure. Finally, he found Ning Guan.
He offered to let Ning Guan kill the novelist on the condition that he could help him find his daughter.
This involves another world, which exists in novels written by novelists.
In order to live well and avenge his sister, the young man decided to go to Huang Du to assassinate the red-haired ghost. He not only experienced all kinds of thrilling experiences along the way, but also learned the amazing truth at last. ...
The most wonderful setting of the film is a sentence by Ning Guan played by Lei Jiayin: "Can novels change reality?" The intertextuality between the real world and the different worlds in the novel is also the most attractive place of the film.
Director Yang Lu, four writers in the team spent two years adapting the story, starting with the first draft of 25,000-30,000 words, and then it took five years to put the story on the screen.
From two weeks to two to five years, obviously, outside the story, in order to ensure the best visual effects, the film is almost "crazy".
The creative team of The Writer's Odyssey was called "the best crew in the universe" by director Yang Lu. In addition to our familiar starring lineup, we are no strangers to the behind-the-scenes team.
A writer's odyssey visual effect guidance is Xu Jian, who worked in The Wandering Earth before, but this time, it is more difficult than The Wandering Earth.
The Wandering Earth's special effects production took nine months to complete, and a writer's Odyssey was even more tragic. After two and a half years of visual effects, the visual effects team has seven or eight hundred people.
When the film was filmed, Jason Wu, the director who came to visit the class, saw the virtual shooting scene of the film and learned the production details. He just let out a sigh:
"Wow!"
In addition, there are three special "actors" in the film who are also very arresting. They are the digital characters in the film-black armor, red armor and red hair ghost.
Because all emotional expressions can only be reflected in the eyes, they need to be polished more attentively. The movie is separated from the empty text to form the part where independent individuals participate in the battle, and motion capture technology is also used.
Although Lei Jiayin's Red Armored Warrior didn't always show his face, and there was a real Red Armor for reference, it was also CG-processed in the later period.
Otherwise, how can you show a wide shoulder and a thin waist in the film, plus the perfect proportion of nine bodies?
As the finale, the red-haired ghost is the most expensive actor in the movie, and the "appearance fee" of 1 minute is as high as 2 million yuan.
It has 400,000 hairs and 900,000 pores. The visual effects team spent two and a half years digging up the details, and also developed a unique pore algorithm for it, and finally realized the realistic effect that more than 900,000 pores in the whole body will change with facial expressions.
Compared with the essence of many special effects blockbusters, the special effects of a screenwriter's Odyssey in the film are at least dozens of times better than those in the trailer, and with the help of the "All-China Visual Effects Team".
No matter from the film type or visual expression, a writer's Odyssey is explaining one point: breakthrough.
Not only Lei Jiayin, Yang Mi, Dong Zijian and Yu Hewei were invited, but even Tong Liya was a walk-on. In fact, the film is more "inflated" outside the visual ceiling of China, and it also hides greater "ambition":
First, the film's construction of the "novelist universe".
China Film has been trying to make serial works, but so far, the most successful serial is detective chinatown.
In The Writer's Odyssey, Yang Lu also tried to create a "novelist universe". At the end of the film, the novelist is out of danger, which means that there will be more possibilities about his story.
Does this also tell us that in the near future, domestic films will have another "universe" besides "exploring the universe"?
Secondly, the film injected a shot in the arm for the establishment of China film and television industry.
There is no doubt that the special effects of A Writer's Odyssey are the "ceiling" level of domestic films, which represents the highest production level of China films at present. More importantly, all the visual effects were produced by China's team.
Exquisite technology is a very important part, but what is more worth mentioning in the film is the world view construction of "Chinese style elements".
There is no trace of western fantasy world in the construction of different worlds in the film, which is completely China-like.
From the beginning, director Yang Lu knew very well that the beautiful world they wanted to build with words "basically can't find many movies to refer to".
In the more than one year of pre-preparation for the film, the design team drew more than 2,000 conceptual design drawings; "Split shot" has been done for more than 4 months, with 2095 split shot storyboards; The whole scene took more than five months to build, and more than 20 studios were built, covering an area of 1.7 million square meters.
So there is this head city that looks like a river's lake but not like a river's lake, like an imperial city and not like an imperial city. Yang Lu also set his "troubled times" in a different world.
For example, the elements in the scene, such as dead trees, towers and scattered houses in the city, as well as shrines, waterwheels and stone carvings;
There is also an empty article when he entered the head city where the red-haired ghost is located. He saw the magical scene of ten thousand people bowing down to the red-haired master, and everyone's face was weird and excited.
When all the people in Candle dragon Square were preparing to attack Bai Han Square, they entertained the "soldiers" with Xiangyun floats and flying red fire dragons.
There are also beautiful dancers who beat drums and dance on floats;
Or a more intuitive sight, such as the scene of white being ravaged after the war, full of dead bodies, broken and desolate, like purgatory.
I have to say, these pictures are really imaginative, with Chinese imagination.
The reason why I am willing to spend so much time polishing, director Yang Lu also explained in the interview.
Because at the beginning of the creation, everyone has reached a consensus to tell "stories from their own history and culture that Hollywood can't tell and China feels".
It can be said that A Writer's Odyssey belongs to our own Chinese-style fantasy visual effect film, but from the perspective of the world it built, it can be called a new revolution in the domestic film industry.
Finally, I want to say a few words about the leading role in the film. Although the performance of such visual blockbusters can hardly affect the quality of the film, I still want to say that the actors in the film are all online.
Lei Jiayin finally sang the exclusive song of Little Orange with a choked voice, which made people cry. Dong Zijian can perform three states with his eyes only. Yang Mi didn't play much, but he really supported the role and his acting skills were amazing.
China's commercial films are making great efforts to develop. We don't want this "almost inflated" large-scale production to hurt the film itself and make it lose the opportunity to continue to develop because of the low input-output ratio.
We hope that the Spring Festival movies should not only have a big IP, but also need more IP, which will make China movies more colorful and give fans more choices.
Qingshi Film Editorial Department | Laomeng