Generating a new image
Ang Lee’s film Gemini Man features a CGI rendering of Will Smith that marks a departure from old cinematographic methods, Zhang Kun and Xu Fan report.
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee introduced the most expensive “actor” in his new film, Gemini Man, which will be released in Chinese cinemas nationwide on Friday.
Gemini Man tells the story of a past-his-prime assassin, played by US actor Will Smith, who becomes the target of his younger clone.
Lee shot the film in 4K and 3D at 120 frames per second.
The greatest challenge was the computer-generated rendering of Junior, the 23-year-old clone of Smith’s 51-year-old character.
The 65-year-old Chinese American director says it took two years of hard work by hundreds of people to create the character, which “cost two or three times” more than Smith, the actual actor.
Lee is determined to use technology to push new boundaries in filmmaking.
His Oscar-winning film Life of Pi featured a CGI tiger, inspiring him to create a human CGI character, which is more complicated.
Smith has stayed in shape throughout his two-decade career. But people change in subtle ways over time, from how they walk to their facial muscles, Lee says.
Lee studied many photographs and videos of Smith. He blew up the images by 6,000 times to observe the minute details of his appearance.
Lee said at a news conference before the film’s Shanghai premiere on Monday that he may know Smith’s face “better than his birth mother”.
“People perceive human faces in strange ways,” Lee says.
“The lighting, the circumstances … lots of elements are involved. Sometimes, even the imagery from his early films wasn’t convincing enough.”
Shooting at a high frame rate also means more information is shown every second. That, in turn, means higher demand for creative ideas, strategies and performances.
“We live in a digital age, and young people today have sharp eyes,” he says.
“Even the video games they play are high frame-rated. You are not able to create convincing imagery with traditional 24-frames-per-second shooting or just makeup to look young.”
Smith says Lee was one of the directors on his “yes” list.
“I didn’t even know what the project was, and I said, ‘Yes!’” he says in Shanghai.
Smith says it was difficult to play two versions of himself.
“Once you get some experience, it is hard to not know, and create naivety and innocence,” he says.
Smith didn’t see his digital clone until eight months after shooting, he says.
“(It was) shocking and a little bit scary to see a shot of my younger self,” he recalls.
Lee has been a filmmaker for over three decades, but he says he still has much to learn.
He says making Gemini Man was like going back in time to study new cinematography as someone willing to do what it takes to develop filmmaking.
One limitation of the techniques used in the film is that only 30 screens installed with the Cinity system, developed by Chinese company Huaxia Film Distribution, can release the original 3D, 120-frame version. The number is scheduled to increase to nearly 50 by the end of October and around 100 by the end of 2019.
The current number may seem small compared with the 65,000 screens in urban China.
But it’s a leap from 2016, when only two cinemas — in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively — could show the 120-frame-per-second version of Lee’s first high-framerate film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Lee reveals he’s considering making a Chinese-language film and that scriptwriting has already started.
“Chinese culture makes me up. I can’t hide that, even when shooting Western stories,” Li said during the film’s Beijing premiere screening on Saturday.
“So, I have a complicated feeling — excited, yet a bit shy — to return to my hometown … I’m expecting Gemini Man will have a good performance in China.”