Director Chen Xiaoyu
I want to make a movie to remember my hometown, remember my grandma, remember every tired soul looking for home on the road, remember their courage, and the relief we need. ——Chen Xiaoyu talks about the film creation of "Where is Home?" I couldn't answer for a time"
The movie "Leaving by Boat" was released on April 12. It tells the story of Zhou Jin, an old lady who lives alone in a village by a canal, who is suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor, and her children who are drifting away have to return to their hometown to take care of them. . The eldest daughter Su Nianzhen runs a study abroad consulting agency in Shanghai and is going through her second divorce. She insists on giving her mother the best treatment; the younger son Su Nianqing is a wandering tour guide who supports his mother to let go and accept impermanence. In the face of death, Zhou Jin is looking for a spiritual destination. While Su Nianzhen and Su Nianqing continue to discover their mother's secrets, they are losing their last connection with their hometown.
This is the first feature film written and directed by newcomer director Chen Xiaoyu. Once it was screened, the Douban score continued to increase to the current 8.3 points. The film was shortlisted for the main competition of the 17th First Film Festival and was also shortlisted for the domestic new film exhibition at the 2023 Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival. Chen Xiaoyu also won the Asian Newcomer Best Screenplay Award at the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival for this film.
Chen Xiaoyu, 30, graduated from the Film Production Department of the Toronto Film School. He began to engage in film creation in 2011 and has produced documentaries. On the eve of the film's release, director Chen Xiaoyu accepted an exclusive interview with the Beijing Youth Daily. Talking about the film's creation process, he said with emotion: "I don't care about the box office numbers, but I care more about the fact that this 'little boat' can meet the audience in the cinema."
I have never regarded "truth" as the primary purpose of this film to portray
Beiqing News: Many new directors will shoot stories related to their own life experiences in their first films. The inspiration for "Leaving on a Boat" came from yours. Some part of life experience?
Chen Xiaoyu: This story has a high degree of overlap with my own life. I used to make documentaries, so I have some conscious observations about real life. The first time I wanted to create was because I thought I had gained some very special life experiences. Of course, this kind of life experience lies in that sometimes we meet someone in life, sometimes it is a game we play, or sometimes it is an imagination we have after a dream. These all constitute a life experience that is unique enough that I cannot describe it in words, so I made a film to present it.
This is a cumulative life experience. For example, my grandfather passed away when I was in fourth grade. It was the first time that such a close relative left me, which had some impact on me. At the same time, my family also experienced ups and downs. I went from a "rich second generation" to a "Negative Second Generation". After that, many old people around me kept leaving. Later, I lived in the village and often attended funerals. It can be said that I saw "impermanence" very early. I will not ignore the fact that "all people are mortal". The "presence" of death has always been very strong for me, and I always think about how to face impermanence.
In fact, there is only a thin line between nihilism and existentialism. I wanted to put all my pursuit of meaning, my feelings for my family, my experience of love, and even my discussion of my hometown in this film. But it is not a 1:1 replica of life, but comes from real life. Feel.
Beiqing Daily: I just mentioned that you once made documentaries. Why didn’t you continue making documentaries later?
Chen Xiaoyu: Before making documentaries, I had made feature films and short films, and also written two novels. To me, both fiction and non-fiction are just ways of telling stories. The stories in documentaries are sometimes too dependent on a specific situation or a specific social background, so they are more suitable to be captured in a documentary format. But there are some stories that to me, it's a little bit abstract, a little bit symbolic. Although "Away in the Boat" is a movie that seems to be somewhat realistic, I have never regarded "reality" as the primary purpose of this movie. I think it embodies a symbolic and allegorical nature. style story.
For documentaries, when we record the story, it is possible that the incident has already happened, so sometimes the presentation on the image can only remain oral, because we cannot participate in the event every time In the continuous tense, its narrative tense is completely restricted by the real situation. Fictional stories are flexible. I can tell things in the past or the future. I have become more free in tense.
In addition, documentaries have always had their own moral dilemmas. When I shoot a character and his real life, other people's privacy will be involved. For example, even if he was willing to be photographed at that moment, he might not be willing to do so three or five years later. This kind of problem will make me slowly retreat, because in the process of telling a story, we must continue to penetrate into the heart of the character. In fictional scripts, I can analyze the characters' hearts. For example, in "Leaving on a Boat", the son Qing has to decide whether to respect his mother's unwillingness to receive treatment. When he sees his mother taking the initiative to pull down the oxygen mask, he At that moment, I struggled with whether to help my mother put the mask back on. I can delve deeply into the characters' emotions in a feature film, but in a documentary, if something like this happened and I recorded it, it would be cruel.
wants the audience to see these plots for themselves, rather than me telling the audience directly.
Beiqing News: In the film, the siblings are arguing in the stairwell of the hospital about whether their mother should continue to receive treatment. The shooting method of this section Similar to handheld photography, like a mockumentary, it looks real.
Chen Xiaoyu: We probably filmed seven or eight of this conversation. The way each piece is performed, as well as the order of the lines and the way it ends is completely different, like throwing dice. The actors also entered a state of "not knowing how to act" and then improvised. To this day, I still can't explain why I needed them to improvise in that section. Maybe it's because I think that conflict is an important "drama" in the film. I didn't want them to present it in a step-by-step way, which would lose the emotional truth.
So, I don’t want them to memorize lines, I want to give the actors freedom. When actors are given freedom, it becomes difficult to use a fixed camera position because we don’t know what their course of action is. I can only use the most flexible shooting method, which is handheld. Moreover, handheld photography has a sense of breathing, making it easier to perform some "jump cut" editing. Because each one was performed differently, I took some clips from each one and cut them into one piece during the final editing. So I need this sense of breathing to give me the cuts for the clip.
Beiqing Daily: I can feel that each character in the film has a very rich biography. The lines show what they have experienced, but they are only words and sketches. Why is it deliberately treated like this?
Chen Xiaoyu: When I write a script, I want the audience to see some of the plot, rather than telling the audience directly. For example, when I eat noodles in a noodle shop or listen to people talking in some public places, I hear a lot of information. It might just be a man and a woman chatting at the beginning, and I don’t know what their relationship is, but every line they speak will reveal something about whether they are classmates, lovers, friends, or siblings. I can tell through their few words. Piece together an understanding of them. This is more enjoyable for me.
In movies, we use a lot of panoramic shots, which actually follows the same logic. We wanted the audience to have some freedom in participating in the story. If I give the audience a lot of close-ups, I am always guiding the audience to see whose face and whose expression. But when I give a panoramic shot, the audience can decide for themselves whether they want to watch the sister talk, the uncle talk, or the brother talk.
Beiqing Daily: Many viewers praised the scene of "the mother paralyzed from the hospital bed to the ground, shouting for money" and thought this scene was very interesting.What you did was to first shoot from above the house, and then switch to a very low camera position, using the table legs to create a picture frame. How did you come up with such a picture?
Chen Xiaoyu: We first conceived the camera position and screen processing in 3D modeling software. First of all, I need to determine the distance. I want the distance to be far. I need to reflect the presence of the house and see them running up and down the house. So, it starts with an overhead shot where we can see what's going on in the upper and lower rooms at the same time. At the end of the process, everyone had finished running up and down, but I still wanted a panoramic view because I didn’t want to observe this hidden pain too closely. Then, I had to lower the camera position. I wanted to put the scene in an equal position with them as much as possible, so in terms of perspective selection, we were basically close to the ground. At that time, there happened to be this table and chairs in the patio. When I shot the panorama after touching the ground, the lens was naturally placed at the table legs. We took a look at it in the 3D software and found it quite interesting.
uses 3D modeling technology to preview in advance, sharpening the knife and chopping firewood
Beiqing Daily: "Going Away by Boat" also uses 3D modeling technology?
Chen Xiaoyu: We used 3D modeling to measure the approximate dimensions of the old house we photographed, including how many meters the windows in the southeast, northwest and how high the floors are. In this way, we can place the furniture in the software, including the color of the walls, to see the overall tone matching before actually setting the scene. We can also preview the desired composition and camera position in advance based on its spatial structure. This preview will save a lot of time on site, because the manpower is very limited. If I don’t think carefully, I may think that the bed should be placed there and the table should be placed here. After doing it, I find that it doesn’t look good and I have to change it again. . This is very costly for small productions. Doing 3D modeling in advance will give you the feeling of sharpening your skills before chopping wood.
Beiqing Daily: Is 3D modeling a commonly used technology among film crews today?
Chen Xiaoyu: It is quite common for the production of science fiction films, because there are many imaginary special effects synthesis scenes, so they will first make the model of such scenes in advance. In modern movies like family movies, few crews do 3D modeling work. The use of
technology also makes us very proud. We can use this modern technology to help us accomplish something that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.
Beiqing Daily: Are the old houses in the movie from your village?
Chen Xiaoyu: This is my grandma’s old house. Grandma built a new building in front of this old house. The old house has not been lived in for a long time. For a long time, it was rented to factory workers from other places as dormitories. They vacated the house early because we were filming. However, due to the lack of proper care and maintenance for a long time, it has actually become a very dilapidated state. We repaired and decorated it a month in advance to make it look like an inhabited place.
The entire film was shot in my hometown - Deqing, Zhejiang. The locations in the film are places where I usually go for a walk after eating.
During the production process, warm moments continued to occur.
Beiqing Daily: One of the labels you gave yourself was "Youth Returning Home." When did you go back?
Chen Xiaoyu: I returned to my hometown in about 2015, and then went to the Toronto Film Academy to study for a year and a half in 2016. Because at that time I felt that I had a big technical bottleneck, and I wanted to learn more completely about the film industrialization process and find out what I missed and fill in the gaps. But from 2015 to now, I mainly live at home in the village, but it is not the home filmed in the movie, it is in the village next door.
Beiqing Daily: So, there must be some neighbors who act as extras for you, right?
Chen Xiaoyu: Yes. The neighbors in the film are basically local villagers and fellow villagers. On March 31st, when I had my hometown premiere in Deqing, I invited them all over. I thought it was quite interesting.Even though I was very busy that day, I drove to the village by myself, picked them up in the county town to watch a movie, and then took them to have a meal together.
In this way, I feel like this matter has become more meaningful. This is not just about the feeling that I have made a movie and it is a commodity in the film market, but that during the production process, it constantly produces warm moments like this. And if it weren't for this movie, they would never have participated in the movie world. Through this fate, everyone became connected to the movie and had a chemical reaction.
Beiqing Daily: It will be their first time acting in a movie, so they will definitely be nervous.
Chen Xiaoyu: They will be very nervous, so on the one hand, they have to perform many times. When facing amateur actors, the number of scenes will definitely increase. They need a certain amount of time to adapt and practice; on the other hand, we will use the camera Zoom out as much as possible to make the camera less aggressive so they don't notice that we're filming. But there is still no way. After all, there are sound engineers and lights on site, all of which will let them know that this is a movie. Fortunately, after taking a few shots, they got used to this rhythm. Even when other fellow villagers came to join a new play, they would say after just two scenes, "It's not ready yet. I have to go back and cook." Those fellow villagers who had acted in the past would instead persuade them: "Let's do it." How can a movie be so simple? It takes a lot of filming, so just stay here."
persuaded many investors to withdraw, and finally found an investment of 1.9 million yuan.
Beiqing News: Producer Huang Fan mentioned this film. The film has raised a total of 1.9 million yuan in investment. Was it difficult to find investors?
Chen Xiaoyu: A very important point is that we don’t want other people’s money to be wasted, and we don’t want everyone to invest in this movie with unrealistic expectations. Therefore, the process of finding investment was not smooth. This was often caused by our own set of standards, and we discouraged many investors. They may not know much about the film and television industry at the beginning and have blind expectations. But if we don’t care about the consequences, we can directly get the investment and start filming. But in fact, we did a very careful market analysis and told them what the current market for literary films is like, listing movies about family stories in the past few years. , what are the box office results of new directors' films, and detailed budget composition and reimbursement methods are listed to inform them of the risks of this matter. Therefore, the 1.9 million yuan we finally found was invested by five investors in total.
I basically asked everyone who thought they could spend more than 100,000 yuan without affecting their lifestyle. However, everyone's investment in this movie is more based on their trust in each other over the years. This is the first point. Then, they do have feelings and want to make a movie like this.
When this film was shortlisted for the 2023 Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival Domestic New Film Exhibition, one of the investors happened to be in Xiamen. He said to me: "It's so cool! I want to show off to my wife. I invested in a movie and also He felt very satisfied after winning the Golden Rooster Award. I said, try to make back your money.
Beiqing Daily: After being shortlisted for the film festival, will seniors in the film industry give you some guidance?
Chen Xiaoyu: The opinions they gave were very specific. It's just that I am a person who collects a lot of opinions. After collecting opinions, I have to screen them in detail. This kind of large-scale collection is embodied in the fact that I will not send it to a certain teacher for review during the editing stage, because I may never get a reply, and they are also very busy. So I always took the edited film to Beijing and showed it to them in person, and then asked for feedback. Yet for every feedback, there is almost always another feedback that is exactly the opposite. Everyone has different opinions, and there are many conflicting opinions. So I was confused for a while, who was right and who was good. The good thing about
is that I am the editor myself, so I am not afraid of changes. I cut out many variations and then looked at them again. The final judgment still had to come back to my own intuition.Otherwise, if there is no one person who has unified intuition to control the entire film, the finished film will definitely be something completely different.
Beiqing Daily: Have a lot been deleted?
Chen Xiaoyu: About 50 minutes were deleted. Because I had the habit of writing novels before, novels are relatively free, without too many length restrictions, and I can fully develop each line. But when I'm making a movie, duration is the hardest thing for a director to control.
I initially thought that it would take 90 to 100 minutes to shoot all the scenes, but it turned out that it took 150 minutes after shooting, which is quite a long time. Keeping the audience engaged in the story for two and a half hours will definitely feel like a drag. I can only tighten it, just like pruning a potted plant, cutting off the side branches and leaving its main trunk.
I am more concerned about the "small boat" of "Leaving on a Boat", which can meet the audience in the cinema.
Beiqing Daily: I saw you posted a Weibo post in the past two days: "It is more important than ratings, awards, and box office." What matters is the two actions of making a movie and watching a movie." Why do you feel this way?
Chen Xiaoyu: Whether a work is good or bad at the box office and has good reviews depends on many factors including time, location, and people. The director's level, the production team he met, the resources he received, and his current vision all come together to form this film. When it faces this market, it will have different reactions. Because the market has its own ups and downs, sometimes the market for literary films is better, and sometimes it's worse. I also encounter different tastes when I go to film festivals, so I can't actually control these things. I can't control the outcome of this film. Whether it will be considered a good film or a bad film, I don't know. Know.
If my mind is full of these contents, at the moment when I was making this movie, I would not be able to simply enter into creative thinking, and my mind would become complicated. I think that when shooting, we should not think about any of these things, just try our best to make a good movie in the moment, and enjoy the process. When I finished shooting this movie and it really became a movie, I returned to the perspective of an audience and could watch a movie properly. At this moment, I don't think about anything.
Actually, my road show schedule is really busy these days. I constantly take the high-speed train to other cities every day, and I can't spare the time to watch other people's movies. However, I really want to watch " Snow Leopard " directed by Wanma Tseden. After we finished the road show in Wuxi a few days ago, we wanted to go to another movie theater to watch "Snow Leopard" and bought the 23:40 Tickets, it might be one or two in the morning after watching it. After finishing the road show, we found out that the movie studio doing the road show knew that we wanted to see it, so they arranged a temporary show of "Snow Leopard". Finally, we watched "Snow Leopard" in the same theater in the same theater.
This feeling is particularly unique and magical. I just finished the screening here as a director, and then as an audience, I sat in the auditorium to watch a movie. What’s even more special is that the director of this film is the teacher who gave me so much careful and critical guidance. At that moment, I won’t think about all these things. I will forget about everything. I will simply dive into the story as soon as the lights turn on, the screen turns on, and the lights turn off again, and enjoy it seriously. These two hours as an audience.
Therefore, I think making movies and watching movies are two very focused behaviors, very simple behaviors. As for awards, ratings, box office, and all those external things, they all revolve around things outside of the movie, and we can't chase them.
Beiqing Daily: There will be a lot of films hitting theaters in April. Do you have any expectations for the box office?
Chen Xiaoyu: We have received a lot of support. Many viewers spontaneously promoted us after watching the road show. As a literary film, it is also supported by the "National Art Film Screening Alliance" and has received many screenings. I originally had no pressure, but I didn’t want to let everyone down for their help.I just hope that this film can match everyone's enthusiastic support, and we are still working hard. Although our voices may be small, I keep yelling for everyone to watch this film.
What’s more, I hope to establish the simplest act of watching a movie in a cinema, and hope that “Leaving on a Boat” can meet more audiences in the cinema. For me, what I care about is not the box office numbers, but the fact that the "boat" of "Away" can meet the audience in the cinema, and what I care more about is the impact of the act of watching movies one after another. spiritual connection, and more concerned about what kind of emotions our movies can arouse in other people's hearts.
Text/Photo provided by our reporter Han Shirong/"Leaving by Boat"
(Beijing Youth Daily)
