"Scott Westerfeld - Non-Disclosure Agreement" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

Non-Disclosure Agreement
Scott Westerfeld
Year: 2001
I went to Los Angeles to burn down a house.

It was a low-stress conflagration. Just a run-of-the-mill house-burning sequence for a television
miniseries. It was working-titled Tribulation Alley тАФ set in a post-Rapture world populated by a lot of
recently reformed agnostics and the odd Anti-Christ.

Because it was television, we wouldn't be filming the fire in any serious way.

You see, real flames don't look good on TV.

Most of the high-budget holocausts you see on video these days are computer generated. With a real
fire, it's too hard to get the continuity right, even with a multi-camera shoot. It actually takes about an
hour to burn a house down properly, so you have to jump cut too many times. But the vast rendering
farms employed by Falling Man FX (mostly located in Idaho, I think) can reduce a house to cinders in an
attention deficit disorder-friendly twenty seconds.

On top of the timing issues, the yellows in a really kick-ass blaze are too sallow for digital video. They
have a sort of jaundiced reticence, which we punch up to a hearty crimson glow. It's not reality, but it
looks better.

Despite the limitations of the physical world, Falling Man still burns down the odd house now and then.
We study the results carefully, just to keep ourselves honest. For reference, basically, and to get a few
fresh ideas. So out to LA I went, matches in hand.

The Tribulation crew had evidently used the house only in exterior shots. It was empty of furniture,
completely unfinished. It had a Potemkin-village flatness, the walls paper-thin and bereft of plumbing or
wiring. For the first day and some, I had the crew install paneling, to keep the walls from burning through
too fast, and spread some rolls of old carpet on the floor, to get the smoke right. Even though most of us
haven't seen a house burn down, we know instinctively what it should look like. And if we don't, our kids
will. That's our Golden Rule at Falling Man: every generation of movie-goers needs better and more
expensive special effects.

It's a philosophy that keeps the money rolling in.

About lunchtime on the second day, I was satisfied with the flammability of things, and we wrapped until
that night. This house-burning scene was in daylight, according to the script, but we always burn at night
for better contrast. Sunlight's one of the easiest things to add: full spectrum, parallel light. An idiot can
make the sun shine.

Besides, real sunlight doesn't look good on TV. Except for the golden hours of dusk and dawn, the sun is
a tacky, garish creation, which blows out what little contrast exists on digital video.

I should have gotten some sleep before the big burn. I was still on New York time; passing out would
have been easy. Maybe if I'd been better rested, I wouldn't have gotten myself killed that day.

But I was on the company dime, so as I was driven back to my hotel, I contemplated the tiny minibar
key that was attached by a tiny chain to the smartcard that admitted me to my room, the rooftop sauna,