Unbounded Productions Completes The People’s Daily Viral Video Using Fusion Studio

Blackmagic Design today announced that “The New ‘A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains’” video, which immediately went viral on Chinese social media since posted, was produced by Xi’an, China based Unbounded Productions for The People’s Daily New Media using Fusion Studio visual effects (VFX) and motion graphics software.

Founded in 2018, Unbounded Productions is a creative company that started by producing CG animation and TV commercials and has since taken part in VFX work for many Chinese hit films and tv series as well as commercials.

Inspired by the ancient masterpiece of traditional Chinese painting “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains,” “The New ‘A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains’” is a four minute animated video that displays China’s milestones in economic growth and technological development, as well as touching moments in recent years.

After it was posted by The People’s Daily on social media on October 15, 2022, the video received more than 100,000 views in less than an hour and became one of the trending topics on major Chinese video apps including TikTok, Kuishou and Bilibili. As of October 25, 2022, it generated more than 200 million views on The People’s Daily’s own social media platforms.

“The biggest challenge was how to combine modern and ancient elements while preserving the aesthetics of the original painting,” said Li Jilong, technical director of Unbounded Productions. “We kept the structure of the rivers and mountains of the original painting and incorporated modern elements, including modern scenes and people into the new indigo world built with 3D models.”

“It would be inevitable to combine 2D and 3D, which Fusion handles quite well because its 3D workspace allows us to directly import 3D models. The built in fog effects were also very helpful in an expressive way. Most importantly, it helped us create the unique sense of space in Chinese landscape painting,” he continued.

According to Li, besides using Fusion Studio for VFX work on this project, DaVinci Resolve was also employed to help beautify the modern rendition of the ancient painting, trying to invoke Chinese people’s pride and confidence in their own culture with the Chinese aesthetic style of green mountains and waters. The efforts paid off, and the video was acclaimed by viewers saying that every frame of the video could be used as a beautiful landscape wallpaper.

In addition to the video, Zhang Yongqiang, director of the video and founder of Unbounded Productions, noted that Fusion Studio has been a reliable tool that’s helped them complete many critical projects, one after another, including the four screen sand table projection show at China’s 5A tourist attraction Tang Paradise and promotional video “Wan Zhong Ying Chun, Yi Qi Mei Hao” for China Resources Land.

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“Being easy to use and the clear, concise UI are the greatest characteristics of Fusion. Its node based design always comes in handy especially when replacing sequences, copying nodes and turning on and off effects. We have been using Fusion extensively on projects for the exhibition, culture and tourism industries, and I believe more and more artists will also adopt it as these industries thrive in China,” Zhang concluded.

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