"You can go to the United States without worry. Follow Director Gilbert closely and learn as much as you can. You don't need to worry about the company's affairs over here."
Liu Ji said this to Guo Fan on the way to the airport, seeing him off.
"There won't be any problems on Boss Wang's side, right?" Guo Fan asked.
Boss Wang was their investor as well as their partner. The company had been established together with Boss Wang. Without his financial support, Guo Fan would never have been given the opportunity to direct at such a young age.
"There won't be much of a problem. Boss Wang fully supports you going to Hollywood to study. Back then, we used the Hollywood label to fool him, and now he firmly believes in it."
Liu Ji continued, "This trip, you need to come back with real skills. Let's do something big together."
Guo Fan smiled and said, "Alright, let's do something big together."
This was Guo Fan's second time going to Hollywood, but unlike before, this time he was going alone, heading directly to Gilbert's film crew as an assistant director.
After Guo Fan arrived in Los Angeles, a staff member from Melon Studio received him.
Guo Fan's English was fairly decent—at the very least, communication wasn't an issue. After all, he had trained himself before.
So he asked the staff member, "May I know what project we're currently working on?"
"The Dark Knight, a Batman film, a major production with a two-hundred-million-dollar investment," the staff member replied casually.
"Hiss—" Guo Fan sucked in a sharp breath. A two-hundred-million-dollar production—when would he ever get the chance to direct something of this scale?
After reporting to Melon Studio, Guo Fan was quickly assigned to The Dark Knight crew and placed in the director's team as an assistant director.
"For a major production, from pre-production to filming and then post-production, every step is indispensable."
Gilbert also imparted some knowledge about Hollywood's industrialized film system to Guo Fan. He led Guo Fan around, and in practice, they were inspecting the prop-making process.
"In Hollywood, every director has a different style," Gilbert said. "Nowadays, green-screen technology is becoming more and more advanced. Many things don't actually need to be built—you can achieve very good results in a green-screen studio.
"But I prefer making real props. It's not just to make things look real, but to create a real world.
"Have you seen the Batmobile and the Batpod?"
"I have."
"What do you think?"
"They're extremely cool and impressive, but unfortunately, with the current level of industrial capability in the Chinese-language film industry, we simply can't build something like this," Guo Fan said.
Gilbert nodded slightly. "We didn't build them ourselves either. We contacted automobile manufacturers and had them produced by the factories."
"In short, you still have a lot to learn."
And just like that, Guo Fan smoothly joined The Dark Knight crew. Starting from the very beginning of pre-production, he systematically experienced Hollywood's industrial, assembly-line-style filmmaking process.
Guo Fan also made daily notes of everything he learned, repeatedly reviewing and summarizing it to train himself.
He even encountered IMAX cameras—equipment that was currently completely unnecessary in the domestic industry. Whenever they conducted test shoots with these massive machines, he was present.
"Chinese guy, this camera is extremely heavy, and each unit costs several million dollars. If you damage it, you won't be able to afford the compensation."
Seeing Guo Fan curiously circling around the IMAX camera, cinematographer John Schwartzman kindly reminded him.
Guo Fan said, "I've never seen something like this before. John, could you tell me what advantages this camera has?"
"Advantages? Of course, there are many," John Schwartzman explained. "This is a 70mm IMAX camera. It offers a larger image area and higher brightness, delivering superior visual quality.
"Director Gilbert has decided that all action scenes will be shot using IMAX cameras. That places extremely high demands on our cinematography."
"Can I try it?" What Guo Fan meant was whether he could touch the IMAX camera.
However, John Schwartzman misunderstood, thinking Guo Fan wanted to test-shoot a segment with the IMAX camera.
"You want to try it? Do you know how to operate it?"
Guo Fan was momentarily stunned. I just want to touch it—what operation is there?
Still, he nodded. "No, but I can learn."
John Schwartzman complained, "You don't know how, yet you're nodding? Come on, I'll teach you. First, see that red button? Power it on…"
Thus, under circumstances where neither side fully understood the other's meaning, Guo Fan completed his first hands-on experience with an IMAX camera. He was completely stunned—he had already used an IMAX camera just like that?
"John, doesn't this violate regulations? And this kind of shooting must be expensive, right?" Guo Fan asked, a bit worried.
John Schwartzman replied, "No. Test shooting is originally part of the cinematography team's pre-production process. We need to become familiar with the equipment's performance so that we can use it properly during actual filming."
Hearing this, Guo Fan felt relieved and, under John Schwartzman's guidance, carried out several more test shoots.
After summarizing the experience, the conclusion was that he was constantly on edge—because the IMAX camera was simply too precious and far too heavy. Guo Fan was not as strong as John Schwartzman, the big, heavyset man, and after using it just a few times, his arms were already sore.
However, being in a foreign country, he could not embarrass the Chinese, so Guo Fan endured it.
There was now an extra hardworking Chinese learner on the set of The Dark Knight. He ran everywhere, helping wherever help was needed. At the same time, he was never ashamed to ask questions, and he made sure to fully understand anything he didn't know.
At first, many people were actually quite impatient, but Guo Fan's sincere attitude moved them, so many didn't mind giving him a few pointers.
In this way, Guo Fan made rapid progress, and his learning results increased significantly.
By the time the second batch of young directors sent to Hollywood for study arrived in October, Guo Fan had already been learning on The Dark Knight set for half a month.
A group of more than a dozen people arrived at The Dark Knight location. When they saw the dazzling Batmobile, the Batpod, and all kinds of exquisite equipment, they were completely stunned.
This batch of people was different from the previous one. They had been carefully selected by the Big Scissors to come and study.
After the last incident involving fake trainees nearly caused a diplomatic incident, Minister Tian had specifically instructed that the list must be handled with extreme caution. Even if they were going to sneak people in, at the very least they couldn't make it obvious, right?
Stuffing in a few useless people—once the other side discovered it—they'd end up losing face again.
And after what happened last time, no one dared to do that anymore. So this time, the people sent to study were indeed fairly capable.
However, the study period this time was very short—just one week—unlike the much longer duration last time.
Many of these trainees from China were visiting Los Angeles for the first time and were amazed by Hollywood's advanced industrialization.
They visited the headquarters of major companies like Paramount, Universal, and Disney, and also toured top-tier visual effects studios such as Industrial Light & Magic and Digital Domain.
They even saw James Cameron's Avatar in production, along with all those strange pieces of equipment and the motion-capture stage.
Of course, at that time, they didn't yet know that what James Cameron was making was Avatar.
In fact, motion-capture stages were nothing new. As early as when The Lord of the Rings series was being filmed in China, Gilbert had set up a motion-capture stage.
At that time, the motion-capture equipment was left behind in China under the pretext of being damaged, and for a period, it became the only motion-capture stage in China and even in all of Asia.
However, the production model of Chinese-language films determined that this motion-capture stage would rarely be used. Over the years, only two directors—Chen "Dove" and Tsui Hark—used it twice. The rest of the time, it was left idle and eventually repurposed for scientific research.
But judging from Digital Domain's motion-capture stage, the one in China had long since fallen behind Hollywood.
..
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