Special feature of 1905 film network The appearance of the beginning of the year made the audience generally feel the real arrival of the "first year of science fiction", and also had expectations for the next sci-fi movies in China.
For the industry, this is a beautiful vision that has been sung for many years. But unlike other types of movies, sci-fi movies have a long cycle, a large volume and a high investment. People who care about the industry are also very curious whether the emergence of The Wandering Earth will drive a new batch of sci-fi projects to open one after another.
Half a year after its release in The Wandering Earth, another sci-fi film developed in the same period was also released.
Unlike the former, Shanghai Fortress is a more traditional sci-fi movie against aliens, but the weakness of the story and the failure of localization made the word-of-mouth collapse immediately after the film was released.
In the bad review of Shanghai Fortress, there is a sentence: "The door that The Wandering Earth opened for China science fiction movies was closed again by Shanghai Fortress." Compared with the industry’s confidence in science fiction movies in recent years, this eye-catching comment seems a bit frivolous.
In fact, this happens to be a wonderful time node. Let’s look back at what impact a hot sci-fi movie brought to the whole industry, including project development and special effects production, six months ago, and whether the door of China sci-fi movies was closed.
Long-cycle projects are difficult to develop.
But the ceiling of science fiction movies is far from reaching.
"According to whether the genre label contains sci-fi, there are 39% movies with sci-fi genre labels in the first half of this year." Liu Peng, a market researcher, gave such a figure. He told us that the box office of movies with sci-fi labels is increasing year by year in recent years.
Liu Peng believes that in recent years, China films have never stopped exploring the elements of science fiction.
"2019 is the first year that the box office of Chinese movies with sci-fi labels surpassed that of Hollywood movies in China, so the domestic sci-fi box office accounted for about 61.6% this year, and most of them accounted for less than 10% in previous years. Basically, there are no China movies with sci-fi elements. Get a high box office."
Some industry practitioners believe that the rising box office of science fiction movies is the inevitable result of the development of the film market and industry. One of the reasons why director Huatao Teng filmed "Shanghai Fortress" is that after the rapid growth of box office, the audience is no longer satisfied with the small amount of romantic movies and comedies.
The Wandering Earth’s "Shanghai Fortress" is a project in the period of rapid growth of box office in China. In 2015, the box office of China film market exceeded 40 billion. In this year, China Film started these two projects respectively.
"A country as big as China always says that it is necessary to build a movie power, especially from a movie power to a movie power. Without science fiction films, it will definitely not work." La Peikang, chairman of China Film Co., said this.
In addition to these two movies that have already been released, China Film will also release a science fiction movie next. This film (formerly known as "Steel Sky: Ark") was developed at the same time as The Wandering Earth’s "Shanghai Fortress" and started in December 2017. It is still a story about the deterioration of the earth’s environment, the depletion of resources and the search for ways to save the earth.
"The content of the story is also that China people save the earth, but the way of presentation and story telling is very different from that of The Wandering Earth." La Peikang, who saw the demo, told the media that he felt that the market would welcome and recognize Hope Island.
Compared with the audience, the industry felt the change of this trend earlier, and after The Wandering Earth and other films started shooting, they searched for new sci-fi projects.
In July 2018, only two years after the original novel won the Hugo Award, Wanda, as the master, adapted Hao Jingfang’s "Beijing Folding" into a project.
Hao Jingfang revealed that the background city of "Folding City" will adopt aerial technique, keep the basic settings and add new roles. A person familiar with the matter told us that the film has now entered the preparatory stage.
Young director Li Xiaofeng also got the right to adapt the novel The Cold War and the Messenger by science fiction writer Han Song. In 2018, he contacted several screenwriter teams to find the possibility of adapting this novel. A person who has had deep contact with this project said that the producer found an investment of about 300 million yuan for Li Xiaofeng, hoping to make a commercial film, but because the director’s personal demands are contrary to the film volume, the project is now in a hovering state.
Many projects and difficult development are actually the status quo of many sci-fi movie projects after The Wandering Earth. Cold War and Messenger paused, while Folding City just started writing. Previously, the adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novel "Ball Lightning" also ended in vain.
What really wants to take advantage of the upsurge driven by The Wandering Earth is the film written by Liu Cixin. This project was made public during this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival, starring Nick Cheung and Hu Jun.
A screenwriter who has participated in two sci-fi movies said that from the beginning of shooting to the present, the sci-fi craze has been there, and for domestic movies, there has been no stop trying soft sci-fi. She appreciates the use of science fiction elements, making it the fundamental idea to solve logic in the whole story.
"China’s fantasy foundation is better, so XianXia class is more likely to explode. Hard science fiction can’t be done until now, and the problem of "believing" has not been solved. How to rationalize the story and convince the audience is the biggest breakthrough point of hard science fiction now. "
But for the problems mentioned, the screenwriter admits that in the process of his own adaptation, he is also very headache.
"Science fiction movies are too difficult to do. Incubation is slow and takes a long time. It is not a big company that simply has no patience to do something with such a long cycle. " A staff member involved in the production of The Wandering Earth told us. He revealed that director Frant Gwo has already started preparations for the sequel, but it still takes time: "Now it takes at least three years to shoot a science fiction movie."
In Liu Peng’s view, the time left for the development of sci-fi movies is precisely the time to cultivate domestic sci-fi movie audiences.
He used such a set of figures to illustrate that the ceiling of science fiction movies is still very high: in the past two years, there have been nine movies that can be defined as science fiction worldview. According to the people who bought two tickets on the same ticketing platform, this part is the core audience of science fiction, accounting for 2.1% of the total number of ticket buyers, about 10 million people watching movies. Compared with The Wandering Earth’s figure of 100 million movie-goers, there is still great room for growth.
The film type does not directly affect the special effects.
But the special effects industry is the breakthrough of film industrialization.
Compared with film project development, we were more curious about whether the upsurge of The Wandering Earth and sci-fi movies would have an impact on the special effects industry.
At the beginning of the interview, we made a simple presupposition: The Wandering Earth’s half-year digestion period should have a far-reaching impact on the special effects industry that complements the film. But after talking with several famous companies in the industry, this preset seems specious.
Tiangong Extraordinary is one of the largest post-production companies in China, and has been responsible for the special effects of many films. In the past, the company focused on the special effects production of "Shanghai Fortress", and completed the production of CG characters such as mecha predator and special effects shots such as Shanghai Lu Shen.
"The speed of improving the level of domestic special effects is optimistic. Recall that 10 years ago, many people were talking about’ five-hair special effects’, and now this voice is getting less and less. " Liu Song, the extraordinary visual effects director, said, "Now the domestic special effects team of science fiction movies has touched on it, so we are making progress both technically and aesthetically."
Liu Song told us that the budget for special effects is getting higher and higher: "In the past, the projects that cost more than 10 million yuan were relatively large, but now they are really increasing gradually. Investors, producers and new directors are willing to try special effects as long as they have confidence. "
Although the number of sci-fi projects has increased, Liu Song feels that film types will not directly affect the special effects industry. Sam Khorshid, another visual effects director with extraordinary talent, said that for the visual effects team, it is often lagging behind to perceive the change of the wind direction in the film market, which is slower than a few months after the film is released.
Liu Song said that for the later practitioners, it is often necessary to disassemble the films that need services, and consider whether they are CG characters or CG scenes, or large-scale fluid solution or special effects such as group animation. For visual effects companies, the more important thing is the difficulty of visual effects. For example, CG creatures and characters are more challenging types.
Making CG creatures has always been the strength of special effects company Pixomondo. However, in The Wandering Earth, Pixomondo is responsible for more than 200 special effects shots, including many frozen scenes in Shanghai. It is no small challenge to achieve the requirements of ice thickness, illumination and transparency, and the difficulty lies in the balance between physical reality and emotional expression.
From the beginning, Pixomondo participated in the post-production of many sci-fi movies, from The Wandering Earth to developing film and television works for Apple streaming media. Han Yang, chief operating officer of Pixomondo, doesn’t think that sci-fi movies are technically a particularly difficult film type. At present, for China filmmakers, only this genre is still relatively new in China, lacking pioneers and mature teams, which brings challenges.
Sam khorshid agrees with this view. He observed that many new directors really want to create visual effects that the audience has never experienced, but often because they don’t know enough about special effects, the final film effect is damaged.
In fact, it is not so much the film that changes the special effects industry as the special effects are helping to shape the industrialization standard of the film. Han Yang said that now the visual effects team often intervenes from the early stage of the film to help the film achieve a better effect with a suitable budget from the conceptual stage. From the early stage, visual preview was used to make the shooting smoother.
Han Yang said that in the early days of his arrival in Beijing, it was often after the film was completed that the visual effects department would follow suit and enter the later stage of the film. But now more and more producers begin to invite visual effects teams to participate in conceptual design and other production processes in the early stage, which makes him feel that the level of film industrialization in China is improving day by day.
"I can feel that (China’s film industrialization) is still moving in a good direction. For example, from the producer’s point of view, his ability to control the periodic budget is becoming more and more conscious and stronger, and even I can feel this control. " Liu Song also sees the progress of the industry.
A teacher who used to work in the visual effects company Base FX and is now engaged in the post-visual effects teaching said that due to high-quality projects such as The Wandering Earth’s White Snake, the level of the whole industry has also improved. So now the industry needs a large number of talents who can make high-quality films. Now the industry needs more people to be patient and accumulate deposits. Only when they reach a certain height can they be officially entered into this industry.
Liu Song has also seen the return of visual talents from Hollywood and other places. More than half of the employees in the extraordinary team have more than 10 years’ working experience. At present, the experienced special effects artists are still mainly post-80s, serving about 2 films with more than 1,000 special effects shots every year, and will also undertake other levels of post-movies. The Pixomondo Beijing team led by Hanyang has reached 100, and undertakes 3-4 large-scale movies every year.
Some people say that after a movie is released, it has its own "destiny". The quality of a movie cannot determine the next direction of a genre or even an industry.
At present, companies are still actively looking for projects to continue to develop domestic science fiction films, and the whole industry radiated from science fiction films is also actively developing well.
The comment on the opening and closing of science fiction movies is sensational, but it is just an eye-catching joke. When the door is opened, it has embarked on a long road of development, and the whole industry is also helping science fiction movies to make this road wider and wider.
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