Birth of an actor

"So, is it your dream to receive an admission letter from a good university?" Leonardo DiCaprio was covered with sensors, and while making a few waving gestures towards the void, he was quite moved. Interesting to say to William.

"It's not a dream, it's just a goal...Hey, can you stay away from me."

"what happened?"

"You have too many sensors on your body, my trypophobia is about to attack."

The so-called sensors are actually small patches that can capture body movements by sticking them on the human body, and then use computer technology to create virtual characters. Dare to take a second look—but sensors are a must-have tool for capturing human motion when making digital characters, and William and Leonardo DiCaprio are doing just that right now.

"Titanic" has designed many magnificent scenes, such as thousands of passengers waving goodbye to family and friends at the pier when the Titanic set sail, and hundreds of people walking and walking their dogs on the three decks during the voyage. The gentlemen of the sun, and when disaster strikes, the hundreds of passengers who don't have time to escape in lifeboats slide down hundreds of feet as the hull snaps, hits buildings and falls into the sea, etc.

Given that the crew didn't have an actual passenger ship, there was no way for the extras to walk on a real deck or slide around hundreds of feet high, so the use of high-tech means in the filming process was extremely difficult. It is necessary, for example, to use computers to create some digital characters.

Actors wear dozens of sensors to simulate various actions in the digital room, such as talking and waving, running, swimming and even climbing and struggling. The sensors capture the movements of the actors and send them to the computer. Precise and subtle movements to create characters that meet the requirements of the film - it is possible to construct digital characters without the help of actors at all, but the characters produced out of thin air are rigid and rigid, and cannot complete many subtle and precise movements, so it is still Actors are needed to bring digital characters to life.

William and Leonardo DiCaprio worked with sensors for a few days, and the digital engineer could virtualize dozens of digital characters based on their various actions. Since the filming of "Titanic", the crew has almost every Every actor has to volunteer to help.

"No." Leonardo DiCaprio faced William and made a V with his right hand in front of his chin: "Am I handsome?"

"..." William suddenly took a big step towards Leonardo DiCaprio, almost face to face: "Not as handsome as me."

Seeing the face covered with more than a dozen Band-Aids and connected to the wires, all the hairs on Leonardo DiCaprio DiCaprio's body stood up all at once: "Let's go!" Go away, go away, go away!"

"Not at all."

A string of black lines popped out of Leonardo DiCaprio DiCaprio's forehead.

"Boys, your movements of climbing the deck are not standard." The digital engineer interrupted the conversation coldly: "Can you do it again?"

Both William and Leonardo DiCaprio froze for a moment, stopped talking immediately, and obediently continued to move towards the air—almost forgot that there was another person in the room!

There is no way to wear sensors all over your body, dancing in the air for hours or even days, and simulating struggle to escape is very boring, especially in this era when front-end technology has not been widely used in movies. Actors feel bored and embarrassed, no less than being asked to talk to the air for hours during an audition, so when two or more people work together, chatting becomes the best way to pass the time Work.

Not long after, the bored two couldn't help but started whispering.

"You're such a realist, Will. My dreams are far more idealistic."

"What is it?" William made a gesture of looking into the distance, and this gesture will eventually be used on a certain sailor.

Leonardo DiCaprio said in a prim tone: "I have a dream—"

"I dream that one day, this country will stand up and truly realize the true meaning of its creed... BY Martin Luther King." William continued very naturally.

"...Can you stop making trouble?"

"Go on."

"My dream is to be the cover girl who has slept with Playboy for twelve months."

"Cough, cough, cough!" William choked on his saliva, coughed a few times before asking, "A joke?"

"I'm not kidding."

"It's too sweet." William raised his eyebrows: "I thought you were in a relationship with Claire Danes?" At least when he left the crew of "Romeo and Juliet Modern Edition", William knew that the two of them were still hot.

Leonardo DiCaprio shrugs: "It's broken up."

William showed a regretful expression.Too many young and famous girls in Hollywood are party animals. Claire Danes is one of the rare representatives of the girl next door. Leonardo DiCaprio can't sustain a long-term relationship?

Leonardo DiCaprio looked at William very speechlessly: "You are slandering me, I can see it."

Even if his mental activities were exposed, William was very calm: "You snatched Juliet from me, but you didn't cherish her well, tsk."

"I'm going to snatch Ruth from you soon, are you jealous? Hahahaha."

William looked at him regretfully: "Then you will be frozen at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean forever, and you can't die any more."

Leonardo DiCaprio: "..." Totally at a loss as to what to do!

"Call me a debate expert."

"Mouth cannon!"

William reassured in time: "My premonition is generally very accurate. The dream you just mentioned will come true soon after "Titanic" is released."

Leonardo DiCaprio curls lip: "Is this movie going to turn me into a heartthrob?"

"more or less."

"Okay, man, if the dream comes true, I'll buy you a drink," Leonardo DiCaprio said briskly, with obvious disbelief. "And then I'll teach you some girl-picking lessons."

"Experience in picking up girls? Thanks, no need." William shrugged and said, "Since you will be popular all over the world in one year, and you will be fat like a balloon in ten years, I sincerely suggest that you set up a bigger ambition. Like? For example, the third-page girl who has slept with "The Sun". Enjoy while you are young."

"Hey, hey," protested Leonardo DiCaprio, "No such retaliation."

William laughed like a cat that stole cheese and blamed it on a mouse.

"I heard." Leonardo DiCapriola said slowly, "You're still a virgin."

If the tone has a shape, then the word "Virgin" must have been blackened and bolded with two slashes under it.

Leonardo DiCaprio's volume is not high, but it is very eye-catching in the empty room with only three people. At least the digital engineer sitting in front of the computer on the other side of the room, who has been acting as the background, can't stand it. He couldn't help turning around, and glanced at William a few times with extremely surprised eyes.

William swore he saw the digitalist's gaze linger on his lower body for a second.

"I'm not." William said angrily.

"I do not believe."

"really not."

"What about the evidence?" Leonardo DiCaprio smiled and showed his white teeth: "You are a person with a very regular life, Will, and you never spend the night out, either at home in Santa Monica or in a shared apartment. In the apartment, bringing girls home is not something you would do, and Toby said you never... well, I mean, no one who has ever prescribed meat can't be an ascetic again, You're like an ascetic now."

——Leonardo DiCaprio's truth is actually very tenable, but it is only for the average person, and the exception is someone's first time, which is really not a good experience.

"I hate Toby!" William raged, and started cursing someone who was the obvious culprit: "I'm going to eat up his fridge! Spill milk on his jeans! Spit in his coffee !"

"...that last one sounds disgusting," Leonardo DiCaprio said.

"And you!" William gave Leonardo DiCaprio a gloomy look, "And you!" The digital engineer shivered.

This is obviously the murderous look in Carl's eyes when he looked at Jack. ' Leonardo DiCaprio thought, before tossing back and forth between 'Will is cheating with acting' and 'Will really wanted to kill me to silence'.

"Please don't spread today's incident." William's tone suddenly became pitiful, and he tried to open his green eyes wide, pretending that he was a little deer, successfully defrauding people's sympathy: " You know that rumors are always going to change, and I don't want to be the protagonist of other people's gossip."

Leonardo DiCaprio & Digitalist who thought he was going to be silenced: "..."

"Stop flirting, boys. You're inefficient now, focus on your work, and get all the data collection done today."

The voice of James Cameron suddenly sounded out of nowhere in the room. William and Leonardo DiCaprio showed a look of hell together, turned their heads to look around, and finally found that the voice was hanging from their waists It's coming from the microphone.

——Almost forgot that James Cameron was operating some more high-tech machinery in the room next to them, and there were microphones connected between the two rooms!

And when William and the others were chatting secretly before, they obviously forgot to turn off the microphone!In other words, all their conversations were heard not only by the digital engineer in the room, but also by James Cameron in the next room, and the director team!

William and Leonardo DiCaprio feel that the world is too unkind to them, but the unkindness is still below, and it is not long before James Cameron's grunt, from which he is obviously not concerned It came out from the dropped microphone: "Sleep all over the cover girl of "Playboy"? Virgin? Wow, young people these days are really extreme."

William & Leonardo: "..."

It's over, their reputation on the set of Titanic.

……

Because American middle school graduates can apply to many universities at the same time, and can also get admission letters from several universities at the same time, there will always be a phenomenon that universities issue notifications but fail to recruit students every year. In order to ensure the source of students, "early decision" The project appears.

Graduates who participate in "Early Decision" may have a 50% higher probability of success in admission than students who apply normally, and they can also get a university admission letter two to three months earlier than others. Of course, there are conditions, that is, once graduates get Once you receive an "Early Decision" admission letter from one university, you cannot apply to other schools.

Ivy League schools have about 20 enrollment places each year. Students admitted through "early decision" generally account for about [-]% of the total enrollment, and the remaining [-]% to [-]% will go through normal application-admission/rejection program, and the [-] to [-] percent of the enrollment will be vying for more than [-] fresh graduates.

Therefore, it is not uncommon for the admission rate of Ivy League schools to hover below 10% all year round.

Among the top eight Ivy League schools, the admission rates of Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania occasionally reach 12%-15%, Brown University and Dartmouth University are around 10%, Princeton University and Columbia University hover around 7%, and Yale is a little lower , Harvard is a little lower.

In a word, American prestigious schools are really harsh and painstaking in selecting freshmen, but they also enjoy it, because the lower the admission rate, the higher the reputation and level of the school, and the more elite the students are. What's more important than that?

Interestingly, there are also class distinctions in these top prestigious schools: students rejected by Harvard, Princeton, and MIT may be admitted by Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, but students rejected by Cornell and Pennsylvania are basically Can't get admission letter from Harvard Yale.

Harvard's enrollment quota remains unchanged at 2000-2100 every year, but the number of applicants has increased year by year. This year, the number of applicants to Harvard once again exceeded 3, and the admission rate almost fell below 6%.

Robert is the head of the Harvard Admissions Office. He is a serious gentleman with gray temples.

There are 40 to 1200 admissions officers in the Harvard Admissions Office. At the beginning of the annual admissions season, Robert will gather them and divide them into two groups, the preliminary review group and the review group. Qualified conclusions, generally speaking, during the admissions season, each admissions officer has to read more than 1500 application materials every day. Before the final list is released, each person has read at least 80 to [-] materials. At this stage, the admissions officer will Eliminate at least [-]% of applicants.

After the final review list is released, seven or eight officials from the admissions review team will gather together. They will sit in a conference room covered with glass on three sides, research and discuss each applicant one by one, and then all will raise their hands and vote for who will be admitted. , who is not admitted, or who is on the pending list.In this final link, all admissions officers have an equal vote regardless of their titles or qualifications. This is to pursue the ultimate democracy and fairness in voting rights.

The freshman recruitment in 1996 was at the last moment. In the final review in the past half month, Robert and his colleagues have confirmed 1030 admitted students, rejected 2800 students, and put 900 students on the pending list.

Today, after drinking a cup of strong black coffee, the review team of the Harvard Admissions Office gathered in the conference room as usual. They sat on both sides of the huge walnut long table. people communicate at the same time.

Robert followed the order, took out a new information bag, and read the name on it: "William Bradley, from Santa Monica Middle School in Los Angeles."

"This student's application letter is really thick." A middle-aged male admissions officer who helped unpack the bag showed a painful expression: "I hate thick application letters, usually it means, one: we need to spend Long time to read it, two: the students who send out such thick application letters are generally nerds, walking bookcases, one of the most unpopular groups in middle school."

"You can't discriminate against nerds." An admissions officer who wore thick glasses and looked like he was called a "nerd" in high school protested: "Every year there is a Nobel Prize winner who used to be a nerd, maybe Of those kids that you read about, there's one in 20 years."

"I'm sorry." The person who said the wrong thing simply apologized.

Similar innocuous quarrels often occur in the admissions office, and no one cares about them or takes them seriously. Admissions officers are ordinary people with different rich experiences and backgrounds, and they also have different preferences for different types of students. In fact, it is a good thing, because the diversity of admissions officers also ensures the diversity of Harvard freshmen.Come to think of it, it would be boring if Harvard admitted the exact same type of students every year.

Robert took out the materials in the bag and passed them to the admissions officers on both sides.

The admissions officers assigned to the materials read them carefully for a while, and then read them aloud for others to know:

"Oh, Bradley's SAT1 has double perfect scores in math and English. Another perfect applicant."

Someone shrugged: "There are a total of 545 SAT1 double-score winners in the United States this year, and 365 of them applied to Harvard. How many have we rejected? At least half of them?"

"We rejected at least half of them. If they were admitted because of SAT1 double perfect scores, the Harvard campus would probably have been blown up."

"Then let's look at other aspects. The classwork is all A. Wow, there is a small h marked under the grade. This kid is in a good class, not a bad class where you can get an A just by doing homework."

"Taking AP exams with 4.5 points in English Literature, World History and Physics, and Art History."

"He also listened to Professor Xavier's class, saying that the "Macawber" class made him fascinated by drama."

"It seems that this kid has done enough homework before applying. Where is he from, Los Angeles? It's very sincere to come all the way to try out classes."

"A good student who works hard, his head is full of knowledge, maybe he is not very popular, I think I already have a preliminary impression of William Bradley. What is the topic of his graduation thesis? Which school is he in?" Have you published professional papers in journals?"

No one speaks.

"Did anyone get William Bradley's dissertation?" Robert asked. "Or did the kid never prepare for it?"

"Actually, he has a thesis." A ginger-haired admissions officer sitting on Robert's right said, "It's just that the form of the graduation thesis is very novel."

The ginger-haired admissions officer held up a videotape with a note taped to its case that read: "Thesis, William Bradley."

"I think we have to turn on the TV," said Robert, raising his eyebrows.