On April 19, the Chinese premiere of "Desperate Ambulance" by well-known Hollywood action film director Michael Bay was held in Beijing.

Premiere scene

Affected by the epidemic, before the movie was shown, the main creative team from far across the ocean greeted the Chinese audience through video as usual. Different from the domestic film premieres in recent years, which often gather a group of industry peers to watch the film and speak out, this "Desperate Ambulance" can be described as ingenious in film promotion.

Director Michael Bay video appeared in China premiere.

The two leading actors said hello to the Chinese audience.

"Desperate Ambulance" is based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name: Veteran Will Sharp (actor Yahya Abdul-Madin) desperately needs to raise medical bills for his seriously ill son, and has no choice but to ask his adoptive parents' home His brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal) asks for help. The latter is a "suit thug" who gives the desperate Sharpe a trick to "make a big vote" together - carrying out the largest bank robbery in Los Angeles history. When the robbers successfully robbed an ambulance and escaped, they found a female paramedic Cam (played by Aisha Gonzalez) and a critically ill patient in the car. This has gotten out of hand...

Director Michael Bay and the three leading actors were on set.

Corresponding to the unexpected plot reversal in the movie, the Chinese premiere of "Desperate Ambulance" was actually hosted by a domestic car media person? ! Street graffiti artist Xu Kaimeng, Beijing Jishuitan Hospital Emergency Physician Liu Geng, and China's first-line aerial photographers gathered at the scene at a high rate. The four folk experts talked about the structure of special vehicles, the iconic graffiti in Los Angeles, how to rescue patients in ambulances, and the large number of aerial shots that appeared in the film.

Premiere scene

Graffiti culture corresponds to the development of the plot
Director Michael Bay, born in 1965, is a leading figure in Hollywood's "Mesozoic" commercial film directors. The familiarity of mainland Chinese movie fans originates from the era of "blockbuster introduction" that began in the 1990s. The films directed by him such as "Jedi Men", "Brave the Dead Island", "Doomsday" and "Pearl Harbor" have almost shaped At that time, the audience's conceptual cognition of Hollywood blockbusters. In the past ten years, his name has been firmly bound to the "Transformers" series of movies, and he enjoys the nickname of "Bang Bei" among the movie fans.
"Desperate Ambulance" is a project that Michael Bay took over in 2020. Compared with his past large sums of hundreds of millions, the investment in this film is said to be only 40 million US dollars. Looking at the plot introduction, many viewers will think of the 1994 movie "Speed of Life" and "Jedi Men" directed by him in 1995. Not long after the opening, the two patrolmen in the film came up with a line when they chatted, "The loser always says he did his best, and the winner can make out with the Queen of Spades." Nally's lines, obviously with the taste of the director's compliments.

Yahya Abdul-Madin as Veteran Sharp

Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny "The Suit Thug"

In the opinion of graffiti artist Xu Kaimeng, this time the director was quite ingenious in order to show the multiculturalism of Los Angeles, where the story took place. "Graffiti art is originally from the street gang culture in the United States, and it is actually the use of symbols to divide the site. The big bank robbery at the beginning of the movie took place in the upper city, where you can't see a large area of graffiti, but in a small public space. , you can still see the graffiti symbols. The ambulance drives into the midtown area, and the audience will see a large area of graffiti murals appearing on the cityscape, but it still looks a bit 'regular'. At the end of the film, the graffiti can be seen in the slums in the slump in the downtown area. On the most authentic side, the word Pop everywhere expresses the chaos and danger here. It can be said that this time only through the identification of graffiti, it can correspond to the beginning and end of the plot.”
Since the title of the film is "Desperate Ambulance", the first aid scene in the ambulance is naturally what it should be. Liu Geng, the chief physician of the emergency department, said that in general, only one emergency medical staff and one patient are on board in an ambulance. "The purpose of this is to put in as much rescue equipment as possible."

"Desperate Ambulance" stills

In his opinion, the function of ambulances in the movie must be exaggerated, but it does not violate medical principles. "There are two very important principles in the ambulance system commonly used in the world: first, it is beneficial to patients, In the film, because the ambulance was hijacked by gangsters and could not stop, the medical staff in the car had to treat him in real time, and this was related to the development of the plot step by step; the other is the principle of no harm, this point Aisha Gonzalez Camm, played by St. John's, is very professional. A qualified rescuer must not only have professional skills, but also the ability to empathize and care. The audience will see that she is not a 'vase', but a relationship with the other two male protagonists. There is a very strong balance of checks and balances.”

Aisha Gonzalez as Cam.

Traveling machine defines the "new grammar" of video narrative
Aerial photographers have participated in the aerial photography of domestic blockbusters such as "Evil Does Not Overpower" and "Wandering Earth" at a high rate. He said that nowadays aerial photography has become a more and more conventional means of photography, "Aerial photography is generally divided into three forms: helicopter, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV in English), and FPV Drone in English. In the past, when we watched a movie, there was a sudden aerial shot of a helicopter, which immediately brought a different spatial experience to the audience. It was like looking down from the 'God's perspective', and you would feel that this is what a blockbuster should look like. . During the filming of "Desperate Ambulance", all three aerial photography methods appeared."
Helicopter aerial photography operation is not easy, the cabin door needs to be removed in advance, and the photographer must hang up the safety rope and operate the photographic equipment to shoot from high altitude. When the helicopter is flying in the air, the fuselage is shaking at a high frequency all the time. In order to get a stable and clear image, a military-grade gyroscope must be installed to obtain a stable viewing angle. Such labor and teachers are naturally expensive. In the high rate view, it is the sudden arrival of the era of drones, which quickly started the "civilization" of aerial photography.
"The drone itself is a 'flying camera'. Thanks to the advancement of wireless remote control technology and the iteration of imaging equipment, the large and cumbersome cameras in the past can now be integrated into a very small body and can still shoot 4K, 8K, and even higher-resolution images.” Gao Yi said that, unlike helicopters that take aerial photography at high altitudes, drone aerial photography can complement the former. “The height of drone aerial photography , is actually in an aerial position that is closer to the ground. In the past, to shoot such a high looking down angle, it was usually achieved through a rocker arm and a ropeway. With drones, we can easily find this commanding heights.”
The biggest visual highlight of "Desperate Ambulance" this time is the large number of interventions in the shooting through the machine. Similar to the "what you see is what you get" of playing a first-person perspective game, the first perspective provided by the traverse machine can capture more unique angles and shots. It is understood that during the shooting, Michael Bay even paid a lot of money to invite Alex Vanover, a 19-year-old genius boy and world champion of the Drone Racing League, to serve as the first-person perspective flight pilot on the set.
"The speed of the crossover machine can reach 100 to 200 kilometers per hour, which is very fast, so it can do more actions in the spatial dimension. And its shooting environment can be large or small, it can climb at high speed outdoors, and then dive down, Shoot the visual effects scene of rushing into the sky and then descending vertically along the building. At the same time, it can also complete the movement in a small space, such as indoors, swipe, get under the table, and quickly pass through the door, etc. ." Gao rate said.
In order to obtain an impactful picture in 1 second or even less than 1 second, the pilot even had to put the crossover plane at the limit of "suicide", "It is precisely because the scene scheduling is extremely complicated that Michael Bay asked the photographer on the set. It is extremely high. At the moment when all the pictures are in the same frame, the action with zero error must be completed.” In the opinion of high rate, this time Michael Bay has created a new era of FPV first-view camera shooting, “Falling from high altitude, passing through the basement , drilling bridges and holes, etc., are presented from an incredible perspective. The audience may wish to pay attention when watching the movie - once there is a crossing machine, there will often be major events in the plot at this time. This is almost a whole movie. A symbol of the film, and a new syntax for directors to include action visual effects in the film’s narrative.”