opensourceguinea t1_isypmdg wrote on October 19, 2022 at 5:52 PM

Amazing. There were so many Russian and central Asian names in the credits, were they the repeat extras with roles or just the background guys in the General MacArthur ship scenes.

Funny when you say all the eager guys appear several times in different roles, and why.

Which set at Hengdian studios was used in the battle against lake changjin?

JayCroghan OP t1_isyqqd3 wrote on October 19, 2022 at 5:59 PM

The guys who got the featured extra bits and repeated roles were mostly native English speakers (Western European, North American, South Africa etc) or if there was no speaking involved then Russian/Eastern European. Every single scene was shot like we were going to use the original audio and then they dubbed absolutely everything, even the actual Americans.

They tried some weird stuff with makeup and hair dye before the movie started to make the Central Asian guys look more Western but it was an atrocity. Giving them blonde hair and white-face.

Some of the biggest scenes had everybody on set and Chinese people looking the other way wearing US uniforms. A good chunk of guys probably never even went to set once.

We were at one of the studios at Hengdian all night a couple of nights but never shot just sat in our chairs all night upstairs, I don't remember the number but there weren't many anyway so it was < 10. We also did the "training" for the second movie in the free space between the studios in Hengdian with mattresses to fall on etc. But the majority of it, such as the video I attached, were all shot outside at a huge couple of scenes they created from scratch with blue screen all around and the artillery and US base built and covered in the fake plastic snow.

wanda5678 t1_it1ooad wrote on October 20, 2022 at 8:35 AM

I think it is common in China to dub over everyone, even the Mandarin speakers and main stars. It helps production not worry about sound while filming because they can edit in the sounds and voices they want later. It's weird but some Chinese actors and actresses have go-to voice actors and actresses when they film dramas / movies because they are so good at getting the pacing right and they 'sound right' for their face (lol).

Thanks for sharing, this was very interesting to read.

JayCroghan OP t1_it1rij5 wrote on October 20, 2022 at 9:18 AM

It’s weird we spent so much time doing what we thought was making the audio correct. We shot that one scene where I talk for half a day!