What kind of film is a crowd-creation film "co-starring" 509 ordinary people?
Recently, the vertical screen documentary film "Fireworks World" released a finalized poster, which predicts that it will be released in theaters nationwide on January 13, 2024. The
poster takes "A Slice of Time" as its theme. As shown in the picture, a "Road Homeward" extends in a spiral shape. A middle-aged traveler is walking on the way home carrying his luggage and carrying a huge brown bear doll. In the colorful images, vehicles such as trucks, vans, and fishing boats shuttle between different slices, connecting different times and spaces. Ordinary people from different professions and fields, such as truck drivers, fishermen, and construction workers, are scattered on the road. Together they constitute this exciting and steamy era, unveiling the veil of this documentary film bit by bit.
The film presents a portrait of contemporary Chinese people who have left their homes and worked hard on the front line of social production: they are experiencing the heat and cold of life in the fields, in factories, during transportation, and among reinforced concrete. Although the regions and occupations vary widely, their common expectation is to return home and reunite: only the joys and sorrows are worth year after year.
The "adventure" innovation of alternative vertical screen movies
More than 800 life images were selected from 50,000 materials
Let 509 ordinary people be the "directors of their own lives"
What kind of movie is "The World of Fireworks"? ? Why is it presented in vertical screen format? According to reports, this film breaks through the original form of most crowd-created films and abandons the image collection process. Instead, it chooses to salvage existing documentary images from the massive UGC video library, and then edits it into an "alternative" vertical film. Screen movies are also a very risky attempt for the creative team. The
video creation process lasted for one year. From more than 50,000 pieces of material on the Kuaishou platform, more than 800 fresh and vivid life images of ordinary people were selected from more than 50,000 pieces of material on the Kuaishou platform. These images were produced by 509 "amateurs" and are simple and novel, joyful and Tears and tears together constitute a true portrayal of thousands of contemporary Chinese people, presenting various aspects of life and contemporary China that have never been seen on the big screen.
director Sun Hong said: "These user images that 'record themselves' are different from traditional documentary images and have a power that is more real than reality."
The China Documentary Academy Award highly affirmed the reality in the film The power of the film, calling it "ordinary people jointly wrote a vivid and vivid civilian epic", and praised the film's audio-visual innovation: "breaks the rules and constraints of traditional audio-visual, and provides a platform for the development of documentary images in the mobile Internet era." Production and dissemination provide extremely valuable innovative concepts."
Founder of Pingyao International Film Festival and famous director Jia Zhangke also affirmed the film's pioneering significance: "The first time I saw "Fireworks World", it caught my attention Its 'contemporary' nature, the film itself is very contemporary and experimental, it represents a new way of expression and way of life."
Warm New Year's greetings
Seeing the steaming real China
Although "Fireworks in the World" tells It's a story about ordinary people, but with a bright background and a warm tone. Herdsmen compete with their own sheep for food; rice farmers jokingly say "This is my country" when looking at the abundant rice fields; fishermen try to feed fish larger than eaglets into the mouths of ospreys; " In "Kayouquan", the truck driver who is famous for his cooking skills boils eggs in the engine, the construction worker performs the "gymnastics horizontal bar" on the construction site to show off his skills, the excavator driver controls the machine and controls the buttons on the mobile phone... similar vivid characters and funny scenes , everywhere in the film, the real and pyrotechnic humor brings surprises one after another.
The boat runner spends 365 days a year on the cargo ship, saying that he is so happy to be able to cook while enjoying the scenery on the river; the construction worker practices calligraphy on the cement floor, writing "God rewards those who work hard" stroke by stroke; the truck driver does not Traveling thousands of miles away, driving the car of a stranger who was killed in a truck back to his hometown; an elderly grandma used a washbasin to "confiscate" the mobile phones of the younger generation one by one at the reunion dinner... Various tender moments in ordinary life moved the audience to tears. It fits the New Year atmosphere at the end of the year and the beginning of the year.
"Everyone must face the sufferings in life. The real heroes still remain courageous in the suffering and do not forget the beauty of life." In the view of director Sun Hong, the protagonists of "Fireworks World" are A group of "civilian heroes" can even be said to be the co-directors of this film.
Sun Hong said that "Fireworks in the World" uses all living beings in their original ecology to form a rare visual memorandum. They are the "little people" who are often ignored by the big screen. They are the majority in number but the minority in attention. These extremely simple but vital faces are more concrete, vivid and touching images that are rare on the big screen. They present more possibilities of life and allow us to see the various aspects of Chinese people’s lives and thus re-examine ourselves. Life has more power to start over.
"Writing an epic of civilians"
conveys the power of loving life to the audience
"As documentaries, we present an aspect of real China and pay attention to how each person living in it settles down and lives in the rapidly changing times. It is our creation The original intention." Speaking of the original intention of the creative team, the director said.
It is also one of the original intentions of the creative team of "Fireworks World" to bring the real lives of ordinary people to the big screen, let ordinary people become the protagonists of the movie, and let the world see their light. Audiences who have watched the movie early gave a positive response to the creator: "Using the first-person perspective of ordinary people to record the bits and pieces of Chinese people's lives that they have always been around but never really understood is more real than staged images, and also It’s even more touching.”
“I really want to live a good life after watching it.” “I really cried after watching it. I felt everyone’s love for life, so I also want to love life.” “We may feel that we are ordinary and dim, but in the eyes of people far away , you are a ray of light." "Watching "Fireworks in the World" is like watching your own story, watching how little people like you and me treat laughter and tears, and how to speak seriously"... When these ordinary stories are put on the big screen, It also moved many viewers, who showed their true feelings and applauded the film.
Because of its innovative attempts in the form of "vertical screen movies" and its content that allowed 509 ordinary people to appear on the big screen as "starring actors", the film won the "Best Innovation" award at the 10th China Documentary Academy Award Documentary Award", and has appeared as the opening film of the 4th Pingyao International Film Festival and the closing film of the 18th Guangzhou International Documentary Festival Golden Red Cotton Film Festival.
Written by: Nandu reporter Wu Fengsi
