The light gray clouds spread out in layers, the sparse sunlight faintly outlined golden lines between the clouds and the clouds, and the breeze revealed a unique tranquility and leisureliness of London, as if between the changes of storm and rainstorm, stealing a moment of peace, so he pulled the collar of his trench coat and put down his steps to enjoy a cup of coffee.

"Are you okay?" Lan Li was not polite and formal, holding the knife and fork in both hands, and enjoyed his breakfast in an orderly manner.

Although the true aristocracy still pays attention to food and sleep, and the rest between dishes is the time for conversation, which is why the meal time of French cuisine is so long, but after the times have changed, such constraints have become useless, and the real emphasis lies in manners.

For example, if you look closely, you can see that there is no sound between Lan Li's knife and fork and the porcelain plate, and everything is just right.

"Huh?" Alfonso was sorting out his thoughts, thinking about how to speak and how to cut into the topic, but he was caught off guard and didn't understand the meaning of Lan Li's question at all.

Lan Li had a smile in his eyes, "I mean, after Friday night, I didn't have a cold or any other physical discomfort, right?"

"No, I'm fine. Alfonso waved his hand, looking a little embarrassed, and repeated, "I'm fine! I'm sorry, I mean, thank you." Until now, I have not formally thanked you. ”

Lan Li swallowed the food slowly, then smiled in return, sending a friendly signal, "Why don't you talk about the film project in the pipeline?" ”

After just two meetings, it can be seen that Alfonso is not a social type. So, Lan Li simply and neatly abandoned all greetings and politeness, and went straight to the topic.

Hearing Lan Li say this, he could clearly feel that Alfonso breathed a sigh of relief, the burden on his shoulders seemed to be lifted in an instant, and his eyes and expression showed excitement, "That's right, I'm preparing a project." To be exact, I've been working on it for five years, and all the technical challenges have been solved.

Ideally, we'd need to go into space and shoot the whole film, and if we had the chance to do that, I wanted to capture the same level that our film could achieve. So, over the years, we've been trying to solve the problem of weightless shooting, and the problems of lighting, reflections, perspectives, and astronomical phenomena.

Now the traditional technology is green screen plus WIA, and finally assisted by post-computer special effects to simulate the situation in space, but the biggest disadvantage of this method is that it is not realistic enough. The weightlessness effects were too cheap and too fake, and the light simulated by the computer effects was far from the real thing.

We visited NASA, we simulated live conditions, we interviewed astronauts, we assembled an entire VFX team and for five years tried to be able to shoot real space scenes.

Now, we've solved most of the technical problems, and we've got some specific executions, which are all minor issues, but only if we need actors, really fit in, and test whether our vision can work and whether the results can be approved by NASA. So ......"

Talking, the real meaning of the conversation, a large number of special words fill the entire conversation paragraph, professional and profound, cumbersome and complex.

For the layman, it is estimated that he can listen to it in a fog, as if a liberal arts student is sitting in a bunch of physics doctors, no different from the book of heaven; for Lan Li, it is not that he can't understand it, physics, chemistry and biology are also the knowledge classifications that he usually dabbles into, but he can understand it, but it doesn't mean that he can participate in the discussion - just by understanding, this is already extremely rare.

To sum it up: Simulating weightlessness is difficult enough to just be weightless, but it's even more difficult to factor in the effects of light, the changing position of celestial bodies, and the relationship between the actor and outer space. Relying solely on computer special effects, wonderful is wonderful, but not real enough.

In film history, among the countless space works, only two works can be called classics with weightless effects.

One is "2001: A Space Odyssey", in 1968, Stanley Kubrick came up with a brilliant way to fix a camera in a circular room, and then let the actor run, and the camera recorded the image as if the actor was running along the roof.

This method, which was born in the sixties, has to admire Stanley's imagination. It's a pity that it solves very limited problems, can only express a few shots, and also doesn't solve the weightlessness effect of objects other than people.

One is "Apollo 13", directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks in 1995. Their solution was straightforward, paying directly for the filming in NASA's training facility "Vomit Comet", which could simulate the effect of weightlessness with complete realism.

So Lang extravagantly played six hundred and twelve weightless flights, where he shot for nearly four hours of footage. There is no doubt that this method solves the problem completely, but it does not make it possible to shoot weightless footage outside the capsule, and it is simply too expensive.

In addition to these two works, most of the other outer space works still use the combination of WIA and computer special effects to interpret the imaginary weightlessness effect.

Undoubtedly, in the 21st century, computer special effects are very realistic and wonderful, but the realistic effects of light, reflections and celestial motion are greatly reduced, and in the final analysis, the environment and effects of outer space cannot be realistically represented.

The content of all Alfonso's words just now is that it took them five years to solve the problem of weightless shooting in outer space.

If this is true, then it will be a technological breakthrough that will drive the film industry to the next level, comparable to motion capture technology and 3D effects. With Robert Zemeckis spending a decade researching motion capture technology and Alfonso Cuarón spending five years researching weightless filming, the world of tech otaku is filled with mysteries.

Perhaps, the specific situation can be referred to the TV series "The Big Bang Theory".

“…… Wait, I was stupid again, wasn't I?" Alfonso closed his eyes tightly and tilted his forehead in frustration, finally realizing his mistake:

The tirade just now was not only too professional, but also had no focus, no core, and not even a theme - he didn't mention the name and content of the work at all, and he said a lot of technical problems without thinking.

Lan Li didn't mind, and chuckled, "To sum up, this is a project that has been in preparation for five years, and before the official start of filming, the crew team has spent countless efforts to solve technical problems, and now, everyone is ready to start filming." Is that so?"

It's like James Cameron's "Avatar".

Alfonso raised his head slightly, the palm supporting his head still maintained the appearance of chicken feet, and looked at Lan Li with a surprised face, with an incredible look in his eyes, which made Lan Li bow his head slightly, "It seems that my understanding is not wrong." So, is there anything worth introducing about the project itself, such as the script, for example, the acting? Because for now, the project seems to have limited appeal to the actors. ”

"Of course!" Alfonso said anxiously, "The story tells the story of an American space station, a group of astronauts are walking in space, testing the space station, but suddenly, an abandoned satellite is destroyed, the debris scatters in the Earth's orbit at a speed of more than a bullet, and accidentally hits other satellites, causing a chain reaction, and the protagonist and his party also suffer a devastating blow, and finally only two astronauts are left in space, trying to survive. Well, that's all. ”

"Gravity", as expected, Alfonso found Lan Li with the famous "Gravity".

This is not unexpected. In 2006, after finishing the filming of "Children of Men", Alfonso focused all his energy on the shooting of "gravity", and after completing this work, until 2017, when Lan Li was reborn, Alfonso did not have another new work, because he exhausted all his energy and devoted himself to the shooting of another work.

So, when Alfonso approached Lan Li, the first and only guess was "gravity". Of course, there is also a small probability that Alfonso has been preparing, but there is no project that can come out in the previous life, but Alfonso's description of those technical otaku just now further confirms Lan Li's conjecture.

There is no doubt that "Gravity", released in 2013, is a successful work, with a comprehensive media evaluation of 96 points, a freshness index of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a netizen score of 7.8 points on IMDB.

After that, it captured $270 million in North America and $720 million at the global box office.

A real big win. This work has been hailed as the work that achieves the most perfect balance between business and art after "Avatar". At the subsequent Oscars, "Gravity" won the heavyweight Best Director Award, as well as six technical trophies, a total of seven statuettes, becoming the biggest winner of the night.

However, neither word-of-mouth nor box office, people really realized what made this work so good: technological innovation. A number of technical controllers, including James Cameron, George Lucas, and Christopher Nolan, are full of praise for Alfonso Cuarón's exploration and change, which has established Alfonso's strong reputation among industry insiders in one fell swoop.

With this "gravity" alone, Alfonso has already returned with a full load. In a way, among the three Mexican masters, his reputation in the industry is the best, even better than Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won the best director twice.

But, knowing that it was "gravity", why was Lan Li still indifferent last night?

Because in the previous life, the protagonist of "Gravity" was Sandra Bullock. Gender, female.