In the afternoon, I read a sentence in foreign media reports and comments on "Gemini Killer": Too much realism is the natural enemy of illusion.-This sentence can be described as a sharp spike, pointing to the core of the problem, and it also evoked my discussion. Desire for this topic.
For thousands of years, Western painting has been an art that creates a three-dimensional illusion on a two-dimensional canvas. Naturalism and realism in the general sense are the traditions of Western painting. However, except for a small number of still life paintings using Trompe-l'œil techniques that seek to flirt the audience with fakes, most paintings do not pursue 100% reproduction of physical reality, they pursue psychological reality from the audience's perspective.
We say that Rembrandt's portraits are lifelike, and it really brings people to life. It doesn't mean that his paintings are exquisite, even every pore of the person in the painting seems to be breathing. In fact, he rarely uses such delicate techniques, he uses a lot of rough and thick brush strokes, and he can't see any pores at all. When the audience sees his works in a museum where exhibition arrangement and lighting are very professional, there is obviously a psychological reality that the person in the painting has to step off the canvas at any time. This climax of aesthetic experience is the audience. needs.
The creation of this kind of psychological reality is achieved through the ingenious adjustment of light and shadow colors, the dramatic and careful portrayal of the mood of the characters and the scene, rather than the pursuit of precise similarity between physical and reality. In fact, a painting that looks exactly the same as a photo can’t make it to Daya Hall. You just copied a photo with great skill. The photographic realism in Western contemporary art is not a re-enactment of photographs, it is precisely because it transcends the realism of photographs and derives a new aesthetic taste to be established. (Of course, some Chinese artists seek to paint like the real one, which can only be another matter.)
In a nutshell: it's not impossible, it's not. With the genius skills mastered by Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt, they can paint a portrait with 100% high fidelity, but they did not do so. Because of this, they are great artists, not mediocre. limner. They understand the true meaning of art and the secrets of pleasing the audience. This is probably the misunderstanding that Director Ang Lee has fallen into. He changed from the unremitting pursuit of psychological reality to the extreme pursuit of physical reality, and regarded it as a revolutionary innovation, blindly expecting the audience to adapt to this brand new The way of watching movies is not aware of the visual revolution that is out of psychological reality. Perhaps it is just seeking fish.
The visual presentation of "Gemini Killer" will be discussed in four specific points.
First, for the large number of non-action scenes in the film, the high level of physical reality presented by the lens is seriously lacking in psychological reality, and the feelings that those daily scenes bring to the audience are inconsistent with our daily feelings. For example, when we walk into a room, after a quick glance, our eyes will be attracted by a conspicuous object, which will automatically ignore other objects, instead of like in this film, because there are a large number of objects in the background that are clear Obviously, the audience’s attention is easily distracted (especially when there is no dialogue or for audiences with good English hearing), but in fact these items are not indicative of the language of the film; similarly, when we talk to a When people talk face-to-face, our main attention is the eyes and mouth of the other person, while the subtle movies make the audience notice the pores and even the number of eyelashes on the actor’s face in the close-up shots. These trivial details are similar to the movie. What does it matter? What is the significance of the audience grasping this information? This brings us back to the portrait of Rembrandt mentioned at the beginning. The audience enters the cinema to appreciate the performance of the actors, not to watch the breath of the pores. It is precisely because the psychological reality does not exist that the audience will not feel immersive when seeing such a highly physical reality scene, but feel that it is "too fake". This is the meaning of the sentence in the title. If physical reality can bring an immersive feeling, why do actors in ancient Greek theaters wear masks? Why do actors on film sets need extra powder to make-up? Realism in art cannot be directly equated with reality.
Second, for the motion scenes in the film, the problem is similar to the first one. Human eyes are inherently unable to see objects in high-speed movement. We have always been looking at the world in this way. So what is the point of making the audience see all the passengers on a high-speed train in the distance? Ineffective lens language can only be reduced to a clever tricky trick. There is also the motorcycle chase scene. I believe that many viewers have experienced the thrilling scenes in countless Hollywood blockbusters. The thrill of high-speed speeding is largely due to the motion blur in the visual effects. Created with various swooshing on the sound effects, in the "Gemini Killer", the audience saw a car chase with clear movement throughout the whole process. We saw the process clearly like a traffic police calling a slow-motion surveillance video. , It’s just a matter of identifying who is the perpetrator of the traffic accident, but how much thrilling is left? Although technological progress can lead the audience and lead the audience, the audience, as a creature with a specific physiological composition, is also destined to be human-oriented in technology. Otherwise, why not boldly and creatively shoot movies with invisible light that is invisible to the human eye? Or use the compound eye perspective of a bee to make a movie? It can be achieved technically, but what does this have to do with people?
Third, for the fighting scenes in the film, the high degree of physical reality presented by the lens does not necessarily have to conform to the psychological reality. After all, the audience understands that the action scenes are fake and are distant from the daily life experience (usually watching onlookers fighting, we watch Unclear every punch and every foot). Then it can be understood as a new artistic visual grammar (such as the 360-degree rotating scene that astounded the audience in The Matrix), but there is still a problem here: the audience must make every move in the action scene. Can you see it clearly? For example, Zhang Yimou played slow-moving martial arts action dismantling in "Hero", and wanted to convey the martial arts and philosophy of the characters in the film. So what is your intention, Director Ang Lee? The fighting scenes in this film are not very exciting in themselves. If you can see that each move does not add to the aesthetics and does not cause more neurons in the brain to excite, then it will once again become a freak. skillful. Conversely, it is true that there are a lot of shoddy action movies where the fighting scenes do confuse the audience, but there are still many excellent action movies that make the audience enjoyable under the condition of 24 frames. The most classic example is It belongs to "Seven Samurai", Kurosawa uses multi-camera photography and partial overlap of the lens time. If there is already a solution for 24 frames, why must it be replaced with 120 frames? Even if the number of frames really should increase with the times, why is OnePlus 120 frames? If the 24 frames of the year were an arbitrary choice constrained by conditions, have 120 frames been scientifically proven? What's more, the final product you take out does not have any shocking effects.
Fourth, there is an obvious shortcoming in the use of 120 frames at present, that is, the camera does not have a corresponding technical update. I think many viewers who have watched 120 frames should have noticed that the actor's every move often has an abnormally small feeling of lag, which is especially obvious in daily general actions. It is said that increasing the number of frames is used to solve the problem of stuttering, but it has caused new stuttering: this is because although the number of frames makes the actors' movements more coherent, the camera cannot guarantee the continuity of synchronization. When a photographer The controlled camera does not move accurately and uniformly in a certain direction, or any slight jitter occurs during the movement, which will cause the screen to freeze. In "Billy Lynn", due to the rich plot and bright colors of the pictures, I can ignore this kind of lag more, but in "Gemini Killer", the plot is boring and the pictures are dull and dull. This frequent stuttering aggravated my drama. Because it is "too fake".
The last thing I want to say is what I said after watching "Billy Lynn". I am by no means a technical conservative. On the contrary, I am very happy to see the new technology that will revolutionize the film. The crux of the problem is that the new technology that Director Ang Li has been obsessed with has not brought about any groundbreaking new revolutions. At least two answers were not satisfactory, and there were even many questions. In my opinion, he may have made a directional error. What the audience is after is not to see all the details clearly. Otherwise, I can also set up a flag and develop a new technology that not only allows the audience to see clearly the pores on the actor’s face, but also the mites in the pores, which is definitely a horizon closer to physical reality. But it is fading away from the audience's psychological reality. I hope Director Ang Lee will not go farther and farther on the lost path.
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