Special effects of storytelling： Walking into the visual effects team behind One Step Away

Special feature of 1905 film network In an office building in Dongcheng District, Jan Heinze, executive producer of PIXOMONDO, opened his eyes wide in front of the camera: "China is an exciting market. We have only been here for five years and have witnessed its tremendous changes, which are unbelievable. "

Just last week, Jiang Wen’s highly anticipated new work "One Step Away" was officially released. After a series of twists and turns, such as censorship, dubbing, and the cancellation of the premiere, One Step Away confidently entered the cinema and left the heated discussion to the fans. As of December 23rd, the cumulative box office of One Step Away has reached 380 million yuan. The magnificent colors and dreamy style of the film must still stay in your mind, and it is the German "Oscar-level" special effects company PIXOMONDO that helped Jiang Wen create this "magic realism" masterpiece. Recently, 1905 Film Network visited PIXOMONDO Beijing Branch exclusively to reveal the special effects industry hidden behind the film.

"Boutique-style" operation: resource sharing for 8 branches in the global market.

Maybe you haven’t heard of PIXOMONDO at all, but its works can list a must-see list for fans: Hugo, iron man 2, The Hunger Games, Snow White and the Hunter, Fast and Furious 5, Farewell Atlantis, Star Trek: Dark Boundless … … PIXOMONDO won the Best Visual Effects Award (Hugo) at the 84th Academy Awards in 2012 and the Best Special Effects Award (Game of Thrones) at the 63rd Emmy Awards. How did this mysterious behind-the-scenes team work, and how did they get together with director Jiang Wen?

Ten years ago, many films had almost no special effects, but now it is different. Even a small-budget love movie will have several special effects shots. "If you look at last year’s box office data, you will find that the top ten are special effects blockbusters. For filmmakers, special effects are tools that can shoot things that are impossible in reality, help explain the stories in movies, and create a whole new world. " Jan believes that special effects can actually be divided into two categories. Due to technical reasons, some special effects are easily visible to the audience, while others are more reflected in the imagination, which helps to increase the richness of the story.

Christoph Zollinger (hereinafter referred to as Chris), the visual effects producer of One Step Away, added: "Special effects make the visual elements and story statements of a movie more complete. For sci-fi films, which are particularly dazzling, artistic drive and technical means are indispensable. Fortunately, now is the digital age, and we can easily make many pictures that we can’t shoot in reality. Special effects producers are also storytellers and filmmakers to explore and realize those unknown things. "

Pixomondo was founded in Germany in 2001, with 8 studios in the United States, Canada, Germany and China. Unlike those big companies with 500 or 600 employees, PIXOMONDO’s eight studios are not large in scale, and the most special thing is that they have a clear division of labor and cooperation with each other. "We are more like a boutique. We focus on a variety of markets around the world, and Hollywood is just one of them. " Jan shrugged his shoulders, as if he was helpless about people’s prejudice against special effects. Every studio in PIXOMONDO will share talents, resources, film projects and so on, and sometimes eight studios will start work at the same time for a film. "We started five when we were doing One Step away."

To do special effects, you should also be able to "tell stories": "One step away" takes a year and a half to set the picture style.

It is said that Jiang Wencai found PIXOMONDO on the recommendation of martin scorsese. Perhaps it is the dazzling colors of European movies in Hugo that attracted him, or the same retro storyline is more likely to resonate. PIXOMONDO visual artists began to get involved in the film project one and a half years before the filming of One Step Away. Chris stressed: "Compared with previous film projects, this one is very different. PIXOMONDO Beijing Studio played a leading role for the first time. "

In people’s impression, special effects seem to be just a processing link on the film production line, such as ornaments on the Christmas tree, which are responsible for creating a glamorous appearance. Jan corrected in the interview: "Nowadays, special effects companies will not define themselves by what kind of technological means. Post-production is just a means. We should think about how to combine technology with storytelling and become a director or screenwriter ourselves." Hundreds of people participated in the production of One Step Away, and PIXOMONDO was involved in the pre-planning from the beginning to help determine the overall visual style of the film.