"HERO" - Visual Effects

    

 I had seen this 'Hero" once before watching it in class, but it had been many years and so my memory needed reminding about how good this film was. Like many people subtitles can be a big put off, and I could see this when I was expelling the film to my room mates and insisting on them watching it. As soon as they heard the words, "sub titles"it seems like they almost instantly gave up and lost interest. I do however, encourage anyone to watch this film as it was very well written and directed.

     Hero is a film based on the story of the assassination of the King of Qin in 227bc. The film was directed by Zhang Yimou starring Jet Li as the protagonist. The plot evolved around the the wars of what is now called China, many years before they were formed as one country, they were split into many. The king of Qin had had many many assasination attempt on him throughout his rain especially by 3 specific assassins. With this, no one is allowed with 100paces of the King. When another assasin come to see the kign claiming to have killed these 3 legendry assassins, he is granted rewards along with being able to be within 10 paces of the king. A great honor. The king asks to hear the story of how this "nameless" assassin killed all 3. As the story goes on, it turns out the "nameless" assassins ideas aren't so much different from the other 3. 

     I wasn't too sure if i wanted to to go into too much detail about the story and finally decided that the film is so very well done that I didn't want to ruin it with my feeble attempt of explaining it. 

     When it comes to visual effects in films today, they are often an integral part of the film, which can often create a master piece or ruin a film in seconds. Hero, integrated both live fighting actions with post production adding all the special effects seen during the film. 

     Many hours must have been spent thinking about the ways in which to make the fight scenes different. It doesn't take you long to realize that the fight scenes couldn't ever happen in real life. I am not talking about the swordsmanship and martial art skills shown. What I am talking about is the ability to glide across water whilst fighting. Now that is something impressive if it ever were to happen and I am sure people would pay millions to see that. However, the style of fighting came across as a way of fighting in a magical time, where laws of gravity were not followed and that these particular assassins were a rare elite group of people capable of many magical things.

In the clip above, it shows the Kings amry about to fire thousands of arrow into a building where three of the Assassins are. Two decide to go out nd protect the people inside by deflecting the arrows away. The visual effects in this scene were amazing from the countless arrows flying in the air to how the assassins defend the building. I thought it was impressive how they used the red colour well throughout, from the paint to the clothes that they were wearing.

The scene below shows a clip of the "nameless" assassin fighting one of the other assassin. Only a few seconds in you are able to see thatmany creative element must have been used to perfect such a batle. I think they created a fighting scene that showed respect amongst both fighters and parties involved, which is not your average fight scene. I thought the man playing the music added to the magical side of it and was timed to match the fighting moves.

Overall, I am a big fan of thie film and would recomment it to many people. I was impressed with the quality of stars, martial arts choreographers, cinematographers, costume designers and musicians. They took a story based on fighting and an assassination attemp and make it abotu respect, loyalty, love and honor. 

p.s I also thought the fact that they didnt show much blood during the film, even though there were many deaths was a nice touch to it.