After attending the premiere of "Captain America", Nanaya returned to New Zealand.
Originally, Nanaya had planned to spend a few days with Shion.
But now that our boss Washimine is being watched closely, Nanaya thinks it would be better for him not to join in the fun.
Starting from mid-November, Nanaya plunged into the post-production special effects production of "Madoka Magica".
In terms of the production process, there is no essential difference between "Madoka Magica" and the films Nanaya had made before.
The first thing Nanaya had to do when he returned to work was to select the shots he needed from hundreds of hours of video footage.
It was then cut into an initial version that served as the backbone of the entire film.
Afterwards, Nanaya worked hand in hand with the post-production special effects team.
Nanaya himself tried to cut the film down to under 2 and a half hours while keeping the story as authentic as possible.
The post-production team began to add relatively rough special effects to the already cut footage to see the lens effects.
When promoting the film in Europe and the United States, Nanaya called "Madoka Magica" a superhero movie, and this statement is not wrong.
But unlike previous superhero movies, the core of the story is what happens after the heroes gain their powers.
In the story of "Madoka Magica", all the conflicts revolve around the abilities of the magical girls themselves.
Whether it is the live-action movie version of Nanaya or the 2D animation version of Magica Quartet in the previous life.
No matter who created the story of "Madoka Magica", the core and focal point of the story will always be the magical girls.
If this is not done, this otherwise excellent story will fall apart.
Therefore, when editing, Nanaya will try to compress the appearance time of other characters as much as possible.
And in this way, the camera focuses on five magical girls with different personalities.
In order to make the stories of the five girls real and credible, in addition to the actors' acting skills and Nanaya's camera language, extremely outstanding special effects production is also a very crucial step.
After all, this is a prerequisite for attracting audiences to the cinema.
Therefore, Nanaya placed extremely high demands on the Washimine special effects team and Weta Studio who were responsible for the special effects production, and the special effects pictures they produced required them to modify them repeatedly.
Nanaya hopes that the magical girls on the screen will be vivid and lifelike, whether they are flying in the sky to fight, using gorgeous magic, or transforming into gods.
The witches who are the rivals of the magical girls must also add a sense of reality while ensuring their own characteristics.
After all, this is not an animation, but a live-action movie.
Even though the witch and special effects were added later, the actors really existed.
Therefore, when designing, the special effects team needs to take into account the consistency of reality and cannot be completely cartoon-like.
Nanaya hopes that the audience will exclaim "Ah, this is real" when seeing these shots.
According to Nanaya's requirements, post-production special effects artists need to use special modeling software to combine the two on the same screen and use it to construct the special effects screen.
Every time when adding special effects, Nanaya would examine the results of the special effects on the screen with the most stringent requirements.
The special effects teams were often sent back by Nanaya for redoing their work due to minor flaws.
For example, Tomoe's ribbon doesn't rotate naturally enough;
Or maybe there was something wrong with the trajectory of the missile when Homura Akemi fired the bazooka;
It could also be that the modeling of a certain witch looks unnatural, etc.
Even though the two parties have collaborated together quite a few times, the special effects department still regards Nanaya as the second least popular party A.
After all, there are too many requirements.
What? You ask why it's not number one?
James Cameron next door is the first. These two picky directors are simply nightmares for the special effects production team.
What's even more upsetting for Weta Workshop is that they are now taking on both No. 01 and No. 02 on the "least favorite list" at the same time.
But they couldn't possibly shirk this job.
This is not just because of company tasks or contract requirements.
The members of Weta Workshop have realized that they are now creating a new era of film.
From "Chicken Little" to "The Polar Express", to the recent IMAX 3D special edition of "Inferno".
Everyone in the film industry can feel that the 3D era is getting closer and closer.
What makes the Weta Workshop members happy is that they will be the witnesses and creators of this history.
For people who love special effects, this honor alone is worth everything they give.
So no matter how demanding Kiryu Nanaya and James Cameron were, the people at Weta Workshop had no choice but to endure it.
As for the two unscrupulous bosses, Nanaya and Cameron, who caused trouble for Weta Workshop, they were completely unaware of this.
They are trying their best to squeeze the potential of Weta Workshop to make the film's picture perfect.
At the same time, the two directors are also discussing with each other, trying to make their films more perfect.
When they reach the level of Cameron and Nanaya, they naturally won't hide their achievements like thieves for fear that their competitors will find out.
On the contrary, as pioneers of the times, they attach more importance to mutual exchanges among like-minded people.
On the contrary, the Fox representative from the "Avatar" crew was quite dissatisfied with the fact that Cameron chatted with Nanaya every day.
It's just that Cameron is the biggest boss in the "Avatar" crew, and no matter what he does, it's not enough in front of this bad-tempered truck driver.
In addition, Fox is now facing a number of setbacks, and the company's funds have long been overwhelmed.
Therefore, compared to Cameron's suspicion of collusion with the enemy, the people at Fox are more concerned about whether the other party can produce the finished product of "Avatar".
Well, the fact is that Avatar has been delayed again.
This time it jumped directly from the 2009 summer season to the Christmas season.
Nanaya remained very calm after hearing the news, after all, "Avatar" was originally scheduled to be released at the end of 2009.
On the contrary, he is still hesitating about the release date of his own "Madoka Magica".
It's not impossible for it to be released on the same day as "Avatar", but there is no need to do such a thing that harms others and does not benefit yourself.
Past experience has told all film companies that releasing two blockbuster movies on the same day will result in a lose-lose situation.
"Madoka Magica" is after all the hard work of Nanaya, and he does not want this movie to end up becoming a victim of his anger.
Fortunately, there is still a long time before the movie is released, so Nanaya can think about it slowly.
Although the filming of the Madoka Magica movie took a long time, it was because it was delayed for a long time due to "Purgatory".
To be honest, the filming time of "Madoka Magica" was not that long compared to other large-scale commercial films.
Even with the use of an IMAX 3D camera, it didn't take Nanaya too long.
But the scale of Madoka Magica's production process was huge.
Even though the crew has been disbanded, Nanaya still retained a filming team.
This group of people has only one task, which is to collect as many details as possible about the various actions of a certain pink-haired creature.
The purpose is to model QB and make it look more natural and realistic.
Therefore, Astolfo has become the only actor in the entire crew who is still in New Zealand.
Although the filming was completed and the post-production was progressing smoothly, Nanaya did not relax at all.
For a film as huge as "Madoka Magica", any negligence could have extremely serious consequences.
In the carefully edited clips, there are countless action scenes and lines that are deeply engraved in Nanaya's memory.
Of course, there are also visual effects one after another. Those high-speed slow-motion images that spin by so fast are almost breathtaking.
To some extent, whether it is editing or special effects production, it is never the work of a single person.
Even Nanaya and Cameron need a well-coordinated team to turn the images in their minds into finished products.
Currently, the entire "Madoka Magica" special effects production department uses 8 video workstations and 3 mass storage devices.
These devices are specifically used to store all lens images and corresponding preview effect sketches.
In order to ensure smooth communication between Weta Workshop and Washimine special effects team, Nanaya also built a dedicated network server within the crew.
It can be said that the production team of "Madoka Magica" is very large.
Nanaya hired eight editors alone.
Of course, these eight editors are all standard tools. How the shots should be edited is all decided by Nanaya, the big boss who has the final editing authority.
However, the professional qualities of these professional editors are still good.
After a period of adjustment, they were able to fully understand Nanaya's ideas.
The fast-paced fighting scenes, dazzling special effects, and the actors' emotional lines are all woven into gripping scenes.
In order to coordinate the work between various departments in post-production, Nanaya specially created a folder called "Sample Screening" in the shared area within the studio.
It contains all the video materials of the current progress of the entire movie "Madoka Magica".
All staff involved in post-production can browse freely, and if they find any problems or have suggestions for correction, they can report to Nanaya.
Of course, opinions can only be given on the special effects part.
The film's prophetic expression of shots is based entirely on Nanaya's requirements as the only standard for the film.
There is no way around it. As a form of artistic creation, movies are bound to contain strong subjective emotions.
If there is no one with the highest decision-making power in the team, the final presentation of the film will become very messy and disorganized.
In fact, not only film creation, but also games, novels, and comics have similar attributes.
In this field, there is no fixed formula or process for success.
No one can guarantee that a product with an investment of 100 yuan will be more successful than a product with an investment of 50 yuan before the results come out.
Of course, it is precisely because of the uncertainty of this cultural creation that human culture is so colorful and brilliant.
For cultural creators, the charm and sense of accomplishment of creating stories and sharing them with others also comes from this.