BMW launched branded films in collaboration with Universal Beijing Resort two weeks ago, instantly attracting millions of views. We talked to director Roni Shao and cinematographer Paul Morris to know what it took to bring the Jurassic World and Transformers, blockbuster projects to life. While the brief includes a major premium car brand and two Hollywood blockbuster franchise from Universal Studios, we quickly learned the scale of the production was not what we expected.
两周前，宝马与北京环球影城合作了品牌宣传片，影片一经发布就吸引了数百万的观看。我们采访了导演邵黎俊与摄影师Paul Morris，了解了他们是如何将《侏罗纪公园》和《变形金刚》这两部票房大片完美呈现给大家的。虽然项目简报中有一线高档汽车品牌和两个来自环球影城的好莱坞系列大片，但我们很快发现这部影片的制片规模远在我们的预期之外。
Transformers director’s version
Roni shares that when he received the brief, his first reaction was “WOW”, followed by surprise. For one thing, he’s never worked on such a big IP before and second, he had never shot a car commercial. But the agency TBWA didn’t want a traditional car commercial. Paul Morris, who has already collaborated with Roni on several projects before, echoes this sentiment:
One of the first things that Roni did was going beyond the goal of the brief.
而项目开展后，邵导做的第一件事就是确定最终影片要超越项目简报的预期。
“The original brief was 30-sec spot for both Jurassic World and Transformers. We made it into 2 minutes during PPM”, shares Roni. He thought the most exciting thing from the brief was that the car was meant to be a living character in the story. In Roni’s mind, that didn’t fit into short 30 seconds.
He continues: “If we approached the spot more like a film trailer, 30 seconds is definitely too short. Even one minute is too short. You need to give the audience enough room, enough time to get to the pace of a story. [This kind of change] is very rare in market, and I really appreciate that both the agency and the client trusted me a lot to create something, that I believe works better”.
“原本的项目简报要求我们为《侏罗纪公园》和《变形金刚》拍摄一部30秒的短片。而经过制作前会议的讨论，我们决定将时长延长到2分钟，”邵导分享到。他认为项目简报中最大的亮点是汽车在这部影片的剧情中会是活生生的角色，因此短短的30秒是不够的。他继续解释道：“如果我们以一种更类似于电影预告片的方式去拍这部电影的话，30秒绝对是不够的，就算一分钟都太短了。你得给观众留下足够的空间与时间，他们才能跟上剧情节奏。‘这种改动’在行业中很少见，我真的很感谢代理和客户对我的信任，让我能够以我认为更好的方式去创作。”
Jurassic World director’s version
The longer duration of the commercials, however, did not translate to prolonged shooting time. Two days production time for films like that is not much, according to Paul. Especially considering the travel time between locations in Beijing, Tianjing, and Shanghai. Roni and Paul brought it on themselves to rise to the challenge of emulating the look and feel of the two huge movies with a fraction of resources, in a fraction of time. Both know that Jurassic World and Transformers are undeniably impressive due to their visual and technical executions. But as it turns out, shooting both the two BMW commercials combined with logistics-induced constraints, also necessitated a considerable amount of technical execution to pull off correctly.
但加长的片长，并不意味着更长的拍摄时间。Paul告诉我们，2天的摄制时间对这类影片来说并不算长。特别是考虑到剧组需要穿梭于北京，天津和上海的拍摄地。邵导和Paul带着自己的挑战，在很短的时间内，用很少的资源，模仿了这两部大片的外观与感觉。他们明白《侏罗纪公园》和《变形金刚》在视觉效果和技术上都是无可质疑的行业顶尖。但事实证明，在物流限制的影响下，拍摄这两部宝马广告，也需要大量的技术才能圆满完成。
Both the stories in Jurassic World and Transformers had to take place at night time, but they were not both filmed that way. The night look in Jurassic World spot was added later in post. Paul says, they considered shooting at night with use of practical light, but doing a pre-light in a forest would’ve taken a day, which the schedule didn’t allow. “I’ve shot day-for-night a few times before and I really liked it. It has its own quality, something a bit unreal. I like that you can see into the distance. If you’re lighting a forest, or a big space at night, usually you don’t have that. Everything kind of feels like it’s coming from a light source. It’s not easy, there are tons of things which will catch you out, I was definitely nervous”, Paul shares.
《侏罗纪公园》和《变形金刚》的故事都是发生在夜间，但两拍摄却并非shi是完全在夜晚进行。《侏罗纪公园》的夜间效果就是后期添加的。Paul告诉我们，他们曾考虑过在夜间拍摄，使用真实光线，但在森林里拍摄，光预备照明就需要一天的时间，会严重影响摄制时间。“我以前也曾在白天拍摄过夜间的场景，我还真挺喜欢的，你可以看到远处，加上会创造有点“虚幻”的感觉。但如果在森林中，或某个大空间，用真实光照拍摄，通常我们看不到远处。会觉得所有东西都是来自于光源。但白天夜摄并非听起来那么轻松。你得考虑与太阳的关系，光与影。所以，我当然也会觉得紧张。但有的时候，该冒的险就得冒，”Paul分享到。
Meanwhile the Transformers spot needed to have a lot of car action shots, which was also a challenge within their limited resources. But Roni and Paul repeatedly give credit to the production house of both films for their support, expertise, and great locations. The Filmmateteam together with Roni and Paul balanced what was best for the commercial with the production realities of the project. Like including the scene in the old shipment factory for Transformers, which wasn’t accounted for, but added another dimension to the film, to the story.
另一方面，《变形金刚》的现场也需要大量的汽车动作镜头，这对资源有限的他们来说也是一个挑战。但邵导和Paul一再称赞这两部电影的制作公司，感谢他们的支持、专业技术的执导和提供的绝佳摄制地点。这个由邵导与Pual组成的Filmmate团队，齐心协力，完美平衡了什么是最好的广告与制片中的现实问题。例如，虽然没有要求，但他们在《变形金刚》中加入了一个老旧装船工厂的场景，为整部影片的剧情加深了维度。。
Both filmmakers admit, it would’ve been great to have more time and a budget that matched their ambitions. But both, are proud of the way they managed to turn the series of branded spots into movie trailers with BMW cars. Paul shares: “Once you step back and say, OK, we don’t have, say, Transformers [the movie] budget, what do we have? Then that gives you lots of opportunities to be creative”. Roni’s convinced:
Paul agrees, adding: “If we were given like 10 days for one film, and client wanted it to look like a Hollywood version of Transformers but in China— that’s something different. I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to do it. But it’s more fun to do things a little bit more “low-fi, a bit more “raw” .
两位电影人都坦言，如果有更多的时间，更多的预算去实现他们所有的想法当然更好。但能够排除万难，将这一系列品牌广告，拍成有宝马车的大片预告，他们感到很自豪。Paul分享说：“当你退一步思考，的确，我们没有《变形金刚》（电影）的预算，那么我们有什么？这就给人了很多发挥创意的机会。”而邵导坚信：
Paul表示同意，他进一步解释说：“如果我们能有十天的时间去拍一部片子，客户想要最后作品看起来像是好莱坞巨制《变形金刚》，但在中国，情况不一样。我不是说不愿意这么拍，而是能够采用更‘低保真’，更‘原生’一点，会更有意思。”
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