Chapter 241: Chapter 241 - Is it a Terrible Intuition or Natural Luck?
The funding gap for the production of Avatar wasn't really that big. Cameron threw out 300 million dollars just to test Lin Mingyang's determination and the attitude of the whole MGM, I did not expect things actually went so smoothly, even behind the back of the "instructed" him to find Lin Mingyang's that, also did not expect such a result.
Lin Mingyang's unexpected decisiveness made the expressions of the other two people in the reception room become extremely strange: MGM's president Eckles frowned, he was obviously still considering the pros and cons of the whole thing; Cameron fell into a kind of ecstasy, because of Lin Mingyang's promise, his world is now only good.
Lin Mingyang certainly did not have a hot head, on the contrary, he is now very clear-headed. He knew very well what kind of concept 300 million dollars was, but he also knew very well that the 300 million dollars bet on Avatar was not a loss at all. This Cameron spent four and a half years production, the total cost of nearly $ 500 million to create the movie not only opened up a new world of 3D technology, which brings people the audio-visual experience is also epoch-making. Such a movie, with "open Hollywood film a new era" to summarize is not too much, the status of its technical benchmark than Cameron's masterpiece of the year, "Titanic" has been no better.
The most important thing is that in Lin Mingyang's memory, the final box office of this movie is as high as 2.7 billion U.S. dollars, and the investment is about 500 million U.S. dollars or so. This is equivalent to a movie with an investment of $200 million ultimately reaped $1 billion at the box office, the same box office return, Hollywood box office broken $1 billion of the movie basically did this. The point is that the investment base of the entire movie is there, and the huge $500 million is enough for more than two other movies to be made.
The bigger the investment, the lower the box office return, this is a common sense problem in the movie investment world, a movie with an investment of $10 million to get $100 million at the box office, 10 times the box office return is not strange at this level, but a blockbuster movie with an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to get 5 times the box office return, that has been the same kind of work in the box office bomb, enough to let a director from then on to fame.
According to this ratio to calculate, 500 million U.S. dollars of investment in the end as long as you can get 1 billion U.S. dollars of box office return has been considered a qualified performance, and Cameron finally delivered the answer sheet can not be used to describe the simple excellent, which is so that Lin Mingyang without thinking to make up his mind the important reason.
Since Lin Mingyang has already made up his mind, Eckles naturally will not come out to oppose it again, after both sides reached a verbal cooperation intention, Lin Mingyang immediately urged to conclude a written contract, he reacted as if Cameron would back out.
Investment of this thorny issue can be resolved as soon as possible is of course Cameron is very happy to see, when he took the investment agreement signed with MGM Studios door to door to find when "pointing" their own to find Lin Mingyang's big man behind the scenes, the other heart immediately regretted, and even secretly blamed himself for a good money-making opportunities like this! The other party immediately regretted, and even secretly blamed himself for taking a good opportunity to make money and sharing it with others in such a "generous" way, and ultimately lifting a stone and smashing his own foot.
The mastermind behind the authorization of Cameron to find new investment partners is the main shareholder of News Corporation, Chairman and CEO Murdoch. In terms of stock market capitalization, News Corp. is the world's multinational media conglomerates in the world deserves to be the leader, under its banner, both the prestigious British newspaper "The Times", and the United States film industry's major film companies - 20th Century Fox.
Cameron burned through the 230 million dollars of investment given by Fox, but came up with a half-finished product, which once again triggered the company's internal dissatisfaction with the "king of money", many directors believe that Cameron's bad habit of overspending on filming in the aftermath of the "Titanic" not when not to correct, but to become more and more intense. He apparently also wants to repeat the "Titanic" of the old way, take the unfinished works to blackmail investors, and then get more investment.
Cameron's move has crossed the Fox shareholders can tolerate the bottom limit, the collective outbreak of resentment, even Murdoch himself can not be forced to suppress, and although he himself Cameron support, but the heart of the Cameron can once again create a miracle of misgivings. Finally he thought of a way to verify, is to let Cameron go to Lin Mingyang.
From his ownership of MGM to his recent acquisition of the Playboy Group, every step Lin Ming Yang took made the entire Hollywood look at him, and Murdoch had begun to pay attention to Lin Ming Yang a long time ago, and had even spent a great deal of effort to study Lin Ming Yang's ideas. Murdoch in just twenty years from the tabloid owner to become the international newspaper king, many dying newspaper to his hands can be brought back to life, his vision is naturally not bad. Lin Mingyang was the first young man who made him feel that he could not see through him. Although the two sides had never met, Lin Mingyang's dazzling "track record" of never failing to make Murdoch firmly believe that this young man had a kind of almost intuitively keen judgment on the success or failure of a movie. His intention was to use Lin Mingyang to test the good and bad of the movie Avatar.
In his opinion, even if Lin Mingyang is very appreciate "Avatar", willing to fund, in the MGM is ready to merge the "Playboy" group at the moment, Lin Mingyang hand should not be able to get Cameron needs this huge amount of money, hold up the sky also come up with 100 million U.S. dollars, by the time Cameron come back to find their own, Murdoch can be pushed into the water to persuade the other directors to additional investment.
Murdoch this arrangement can be said to be sophisticated, but unfortunately he ran into Lin Mingyang, all the planning has become an empty.
Of course, not only Murdoch depressed a person, MGM president Eckles heart is also very twisted, as MGM's "big housekeeper", he has to prepare for the merger and acquisition of the "Playboy" group of investment and financing plans, and at the same time have to tighten their pants from the company's pockets out of the 300 million U.S. dollars. While complaining, Eckles has been waiting for Lin Mingyang's explanation.
But Lin Ming Yang acted as if nothing was wrong, hiding into the cast of New Sherlock Holmes and refusing to show up, which made Ecks hold a bellyful of resentment in his heart, finally waiting for Lin Ming Yang's call, the other party did not explain the reason for this investment at all, but just invited him to visit the shooting of Avatar together.
Eckles is very like to hang up the phone, but after seeing Lin Mingyang several times "crazy", he knows that "crazy" can not be used to common sense to figure out, Lin Mingyang this sudden invitation may have other purposes. It was with this in mind that Eckles reluctantly agreed to go with Lin Ming Yang to the Avatar movie set.
The two didn't leave at the same time, they just arranged to meet at the set, Lin Mingyang arrived one step ahead of Eckles, and when Eckles arrived, the staff member in charge of the reception didn't immediately take him to visit the filming of the set, but led him to the screening hall.
Ecks asked in confusion, "What do you guys want to show me?"
"Some clips of the completed movie!" The staff member handed Ecks a pair of 3D eyes and explained with a smile, "Mr. Felix just left here, and he said that there is something in these clips that you are very interested in."
In the face of the ambiguous information left behind by Lin Ming Yang, Ecks vaguely felt that this movie might really be able to bring him something beyond his imagination, he put on his 3D eyes, and then accompanied by that staff member, he began to earnestly appreciate the tip of its iceberg of a movie.
These clip clips were edited by Cameron a long time ago, ready to be used to participate in next year's annual European film festival held in Amsterdam, 12 years ago, also in Amsterdam, Cameron first showed the world the 8-minute clip of "Titanic", a few months later, the sinking ship brought him 1.9 billion U.S. dollars in global box office and 11 Oscars, this place is considered by Cameron to be his own blessing! .
The first clip of this clip is the protagonist Jack woke up from the dormant warehouse of the ship, in a weightless state of the spaceship, the real effect of that immersive immediately revealed, in order to show Jack's levitation, at this time, the camera isotropic rolling, and the viewing effect is the focus of the screen is static, the result of this technical processing is the seat of the people - - Eckles feel like floating! -Eccles feels like he's floating!
As the clip unfolds, Eckles' heart is shaken over and over again. After Jack becomes an Avatar hybrid and enters the primeval forest of Pandora, the rich and varied herbaceous plants seem to be right under his nose, just out of his reach; the first time Jack sees an inverted umbrella of giant multilayered red flowers, Eckles feels those sunny stretching needles and flowers. When Jack first saw an inverted umbrella of giant multilayered red flowers, Eckles felt that the sunny petals of those sunny stretched needles almost covered the front of the screening room, and that he might be able to touch them if he stretched his neck. The most wonderful of all were the seeds of the "Tree of Souls" that flew in the sky, like snowflakes and transparent jellyfish in the ocean, surrounding the characters in the movie and Eckles in front of the screen, taking his breath away, dazzling him, and completely losing himself in the fantastical meandering world of Pandora's Star.
Take off the eyes of Ecks heart in addition to emotion or emotion, this kind of scenery caused by the beauty of the deep shock, he only saw the first blue crystal clear as the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef experienced, only in the experience of underwater coral reef forests colorful and reachable tropical fish sighed. The movie let Cameron to this point, his heart has been unable to think of the right words to describe his mood at this time. No wonder Cameron was able to spend the investment given by Fox, but also so justified to call out the additional investment of 300 million U.S. dollars, the investment MGM out of no loss.
Lin Mingyang borrowed Cameron's hand to give this answer has answered most of the doubts in the heart of Eckles, but the old problem solved, the new problem appeared again. Before investing in Lin Mingyang certainly did not see these clips, then what makes him think that this movie is worth investing in, is it still his terrible intuition that can not be said?
The same situation has appeared many times, every time Eckles asked about this matter, get the answer is ambiguous, again Eckles even think Lin Mingyang himself can not tell a reason, this kind of unfavorable judgment either because Lin Mingyang has a terrible intuition beyond the ordinary, or because he was born with good luck?
Eckles shook his head, trying to get rid of these irrelevant thoughts out of his brain. In any case, his investment in Lin Ming Yang back then could be said to be an unparalleled choice, with such a "master", although the process was frightening, the results were always satisfactory.
Cameron sent over to receive the staff of Eckles is an extremely "eyesight" guy, from Eckles removed glasses, he has been observing the expression of the investor in charge of the change. When he saw a hint of smile appearing on the corner of Eckles' mouth, this staff member began to introduce the filming of the movie without losing any time to introduce some specific situations.
In order to show 100% of Pandora's fantastic world, Cameron used three breakthrough technologies in this movie: virtual camera technology, expression capture, and joint digital stereo camera.
Virtual camera technology Eckles had heard of it before, but in his impression, this technology was still mainly used for 3D virtual world games, and this bit of his knowledge was also thanks to those 3D computer games that Lin Mingyang had installed in his office.
It was only then that Eckles realized that Lin Mingyang's "passion" for playing games obviously had other purposes. The use of virtual camera technology in the game is that the gamer can control their own artificial intelligence in the virtual world, the character behavioral information real-time two-way feedback, the character in the three-dimensional environment with its movements and position changes in real time.
In "Avatar", the actor wears numerous sensors for "action capture", the computer captures the data directly for processing, the virtual character on behalf of the prefabricated scale directly displayed on the monitor, so that the director can real-time observation of the virtual character and the virtual electronic Pandora world of interactive effects.
The technology of expression capture is a new word for Eckles, through the staff's explanation he realized that the so-called expression capture refers to the computer graphics technology that captures the actor's expression.
In order to use this technology, Cameron in Los Angeles, the establishment of a general performance capture studio than five times the size of the specialized stage, the installation of 120 fixed cameras, full-angle capture of all the information on the performance of the actors; playing the Na'vi actors wear a special hat, by a miniature camera detailed recording of its facial expression in the performance of all the changes. Cameron hopes to transmit 95% of the actor's performance and facial expressions to his or her digital avatar. The result is an incredibly realistic image that makes it impossible for the audience to distinguish between the interaction of a real person and an avatar.
As for the co-digital stereoscopic camera, it is a 3D stereoscopic camera system pioneered by director Cameron and cameraman Vince Page. Those technical features for Eckles such as "layman" is not too intuitive feeling, but he knows very well that without these three technological innovations there is no film that immersive Pandora experience, the audience can not experience that kind of mysterious, meandering, magnificent, can not feel the speed of riding a dragon bird soaring, can not understand They can't feel the speed of riding a dragon bird, can't appreciate the color of the forest at night, and can't perceive the breathing and murmuring of the tree of life.
And all of these feelings belong to the theater, the key to ensuring that the story is realistic and emotionally authentic. Eckles has a vague feeling that Cameron's film may be able to bring the cinema, which was once hard hit by home projection and Blu-ray HD DVD, back into the focus of fans' attention, and it may open a new era in film history.
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