VISUAL EFFECTS IN CHINA

In 2019, China has notched its second-highest-grossing film ever, the Sci-Fi epic “The Wandering Earth” ($691 million at the local box office), and released “Nezha,” which hit Chinese theaters July 26 and became the country’s biggest-ever animated film ($685 million and counting).

It is reported that "Wandering Earth" has a total number of 2003 special effects shots, of which the Chinese team completed 75%. Two Chinese VFX studios Orange Vision and MoreVFX have completed nearly half of the shots, Pixomondo and BaseFX participated in the production as well.

While "Wandering Earth" is considered to be the top level of current Chinese film in terms of special effects, the VFX industry in China is still lagging behind Hollywood. What is the actual level of VFX in China? Compared with Hollywood, what are the short boards of Chinese special effects? What is its current state of art?

Early years: Special Effects in Chinese Movies Far behind Hollywood's

Before 2015, Special effects in Chinese movies was far behind Hollywood's. Chinese audiences mock about the tacky VFX by calling it "5 cents VFX". In 2010 for instance, unlike the top 10 Hollywood box office films, the top 10 Chinese box office hits include only one movie featuring special effects.

Creating special effects requires huge investments of money, time and professionals. A major reason for weak special effects in China is limited resources. However, some filmmakers have begun to realize how important special effects are. The special effect scenes, produced by a Korean studio, greatly impressed the audiences. 

The Rise of Domestic VFX Companies in China

In 2015, the Chinese box office reached $6.5 billion, among which 61.9% are domestic films. The overall outbreak of domestic movies is inseparable from the rise of visual effects films such as "Monster Hunt", "Monkey King: Hero is Back", "Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe" etc. Special effects technology became a driving force of Chinese film industry.

The film special effects industry has not been in China for many years. Before that, everyone used only computers to wipe Weiya and tinker with it. In the past five or six years, producers and directors paid attention to special effects.

At the same time, many film and television special effects production companies were born. Most of China's special effects companies were established after 2014. On the one hand, it is derived from the support of the policy. Since 2012, the National Film Industry Development has successively issued subsidy policies around “Domestic High-Tech Films”. On the other hand, the success of films such as “Operation Red Sea” in 2015 gained VFX industry more attention, further stimulating the development of related industrie and companies.

"At present, we are struggling to survive", talking about the status of domestic special effects companies, the founder of Orange Vision Ding Yanlai believes that the future will get better and better, but at present most VFX companies are barely surviving.

Story, VFX and Technology in China

Even though Hollywood’s blockbuster formula of using mega budget, outstanding digital visual effects, and superstars has been more or less adopted by Chinese film industry, In its immaturity, Richard Chuang sees an opportunity for China. Rather than focus on catching up with the West, the country should be embracing and exploring new forms of media production. He says the studio model, with big teams and long turnaround times, is in decline. “The film industry is a very old process,” he says. “I think China has the opportunity to turn it upside down… It's time to reinvent the whole entertainment process, so we can create a lot more content, more quickly for this hungry new audience.”

Meanwhile, communication with and integration of western expertise has been stunted and remains problematic for the most part, fed by enduring notions of mismatching budgets and insurmountable language and cultural barriers.

As for China’s leading art house directors, Zhang Yimou is the first to embrace visual effects in a big way for the newly released The Great Wall. Few others working since the late seventies are accustomed to modern visual technology. Perhaps the most important consideration as they make the transition will be protecting the sanctity of story. Generally, for China’s film financiers, the tangible value of their investment is in technology, while creativity is ephemeral. The danger is that, as Digital Domain co-founder Scott Ross puts it, the “tail starts to wag the dog,” -- technology driving projects rather than story.

Not only is the production level increasing in China, but so too is the desire to tell more local stories, including with fantastical elements as seen in Shadow. “Unlike previous Hollywood movies that I worked on,” Visual Effects Supervisor Samson Sing Wun Wong says, “the director wanted to create a Chinese Shakespeare-type drama by developing a Chinese inky look more than creating a hyper-realistic world.

“The goal was to create a believable real world but in a very mono palette,” continues Wong. “Choices of colors were extremely limited. VFX focused on generating and exaggerating the depth and layering. It was also about cheating the perspective with stacks of mountains layering to achieve a Chinese painting look.”

To complete the film’s visual effects, Wong enlisted several studios from around the world, including Pixomondo, Digital Domain, Visual Impact and Time Axis.

“The need for high-end quality production in China is rapidly growing,” observes Wong.

“You can see there are lot of great professional talents in China. Of course, by comparison, the scale of production is still smaller than Hollywood A-movie production, but the level of skills is dramatically improving, especially from a technological perspective.” Wong continued.

Rference:

• https://www.huxiu.com/article/286204.html
• https://www.china.org.cn/arts/2010-01/11/content_19215541.htm
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2059436418805538
• https://vfxvoice.com/visual-effects-in-china-a-vfx-supervisors-experience/