"Short videos kill movies" was once a hot topic among movie fans. The core argument is that movie fans believe that short videos not only take away the attention of one thing for a long time, but also tell the movie in a few minutes. Turning the movie into a quick canned food detracts from the artistry of the movie. There were both support and opposition voices for this. After this controversy, gradually, everyone began to push short videos to the opposite side of movies.
However, a recently released documentary film "Fireworks World" used 887 short video clips to shoot a film of more than 80 minutes. It is the first vertical screen cinema to be created with documentary images shot by 509 ordinary people. Movie. Since its release, the film has received praise from film industry celebrities such as Jia Zhangke and Dai Jinhua, who have expressed their appreciation for this experimental form as commendable and courageous. However, many viewers believe that this is just a feature film that is a collection of short videos and cannot be counted as a movie. Faced with such polarized evaluations, Nandu reporters conducted an exclusive interview with Sun Hong, the film's director. She said that her work may seem like a simple collection, but behind it, countless people spent their efforts and contained a lot of invisible effort. At the same time, she also mentioned in her creative notes and interviews that she fell into "shame" in the process of watching short videos. What has actually happened?
Director Sun Hong said that he spent a lot of effort behind his work.
1
Short video is a kind of "self-writing"
Nandu Entertainment: When you originally planned to use short video to make a movie, were you ever questioned or encouraged?
Sun Hong: When we first made this movie, short videos were just emerging. As a documentary filmmaker, I especially wanted to record the changes and updates of this era. There are many ways to record. For example, you can shoot a few short videos of users and tell their stories using traditional documentary methods. It can also reflect the impact of social changes and technological updates on people. However, we considered the current situation. There is an essential difference in perspective between people using mobile phones to shoot their own images and us using traditional documentary methods to shoot their lives. Taking pictures of yourself is a kind of self-expression. It has initiative and subjectivity. This is very different from being observed, recorded and expressed by others. It has another dimension of reality. But such real images are likely to be buried in the vast ocean of short videos, so as documentarians, we need to salvage some of these images.
Poster of "One Day in the Life".
My own team mainly studies documentaries and film and television communication, so we all recognize that such images are very valuable and the significance of doing this kind of attempt, so none of us have doubted this choice internally. But there are concerns because no one has tried such an approach. We have previously referred to the documentary "One Day in the Life". The YouTube platform solicited images shot by users around the world on the same day to complete a crowd-created documentary. The difference between them and us is that they use images collected under the same theme design, so the formats of these images are not so different, and they are mainly horizontal screen. The video collection model makes it inevitable for "One Day" to avoid preset themes. But for us, we directly used existing short video images, so before creating the film, we first conducted a "cloud field survey" to investigate and understand the reality in the short video. But we don’t know if we can finally find a way to integrate these fragments into a feature film from the vast ocean of videos. So although we didn't question the meaning of doing this, we were afraid of the difficulty and didn't know if we could actually make a documentary film in the end. So we first cut a clip, which was only ten minutes long, and everyone watched it. After watching it, it can give people a different feeling, or a special sense of power. It was only then that we felt that maybe this matter was It was feasible, so I thought of a way to turn it into an 80-minute film.
Many people will think that this video is not a collection of short videos, and then feel that it does not contain the so-called artistic creation. But I think this is probably a misunderstanding caused by people not understanding the creative process, because there is a lot of artistic processing and effort behind the scenes to turn these short videos into an eighty-minute movie that can be watched. First of all, in terms of content, we need to condense it from millions of short videos to 80 minutes. The choice of every frame and every second contains the choice of the creator. Countless choices make up this movie. It can be said that our creation starts with choice. Secondly, we are also constantly creating in terms of form, whether it is multi-screen editing or the processing of film sound, music and images. Behind the natural and smooth viewing of the movie by the audience is the tortuous and artificial efforts of the creators.
Nandu Entertainment: According to data, after you browsed millions of short videos and downloaded more than 50,000 pieces of material, you ended up using 887 works from 509 creators. Has your mentality changed in the process of filtering from the first one to the millionth one?
Sun Hong: The change in is actually quite obvious. At the beginning, our material team was actually a team of about ten people. Everyone’s job was to first understand the reality in short videos. For traditional documentaries, we need to do field research, and we have to go to many places for in-depth investigation, maybe in some uninhabited places, and then observe life and people. What our group actually does is "Cloud Field", which is completed by watching short videos on mobile phones. The process of observing these fragmented realities and then refining a new understanding is actually a process of field investigation. When we first entered this short video community, first of all, it felt like a new world had been opened. You will find that many images are very novel to us. People in different videos are engaged in different things. Career, living a life completely different from ours. When we encounter a material that feels very fresh to us, we will click on the user's page and see his first video to the last video. Many times when you see this user’s emotions and growth process, you will have a deep reflection. It’s possible that we often see a landscaped and symbolic world in short videos, but we don’t go any further to understand every living person behind these symbols. Therefore, I feel a sense of shame about my "novelty". It turns out that the process of watching short videos may have just been a kind of symbolic consumption, but I did not really care about the lives and lives of the people behind the symbols. Joy, anger, sorrow and joy. So the purpose of our attempt to put these novel-looking images on the big screen is not because they are fresh, but to restore the subjects in the images to flesh-and-blood people. Let these people who are ignored by us in daily life now have a chance to be seen on the big screen, and put their daily life and labor in a position where they can be looked up to.
Nandu Entertainment: In 2016, an article "The Cruel Bottom Story: A Video Software in Rural China" was circulated on the Internet. Subsequently, this group of user groups was gradually "spectacled". You mentioned in your creative notes and in your answer just now that “we are deeply ashamed of this ‘spectacle’.” Can you expand on this feeling of shame?
Sun Hong: This kind of shame is shame for a habitual turning a blind eye in daily life. For example, we may pass by construction workers in the city every day, but in fact we don’t know what kind of life the construction workers in the city live every day. Like "Xiaowei who moves bricks", his muscles and figure are the source of Because they are exposed to wind and sun day after day; we would not know that there are a group of beautiful female tower crane drivers on the high-rise buildings under construction in the city. They may have to overcome their fear of heights and go to the top of the city to carry out high-altitude crane operations. Operation. Moreover, it was too strenuous for them to go up once, so they took three meals a day with them.But only from their short videos, you can see the most beautiful sea of clouds above the city that ordinary people cannot see. At this time, you will find that we have never seen the world from their perspective before, but the images they recorded of their lives give us an opportunity.
Maybe, these (short videos) have some spectacle scenes, and will be considered as a kind of interpretation in the context of consumption to gain more people's attention. But if you think about it, why do they want to attract attention? Most of the time they are ignored. We have always said that the development of technology makes everyone use different tools to write. In the beginning, people used fountain pens to write. Later, during the French New Wave, the camera became a new era of fountain pens. Now, the mobile phone may undoubtedly be the contemporary fountain pen. At the same time, this fountain pen breaks through the barriers of education - you do not need to be able to write to express yourself, and you have an opportunity to express yourself when you shoot with your mobile phone. Technology gives them an opportunity to actively express themselves, which is the greatest impact and significance this diverse era has brought to us.
Nandu Entertainment: Do you think these short video creators have completed a "self-writing" using their mobile phones? I noticed that some of the short videos I collected have heavy beauty filter effects. Have you ever worried about these creations? Does the reader's processing of reality affect authenticity?
Sun Hong: For them, these images contain how they want to be seen by others. This subjective reality is also their self-expression, not imposed by us. Although they shoot with their own filters, the emotions conveyed are real and without distance. External processing is an interesting element for them, but it does not hinder the emotional reality.
Nandu Entertainment: Is their "self-writing" audio-visual language just a kind of imitation or the use of ready-made templates. This kind of "self-writing" is not really "self"?
Sun Hong: is indeed a very profound issue. In fact, everyone, whether writing by themselves or others, lives in a structure. You have no way to eliminate the influence of the structure on you. This structure may be a kind of Social or political and economic structures, this influence will always exist and cannot be stripped away. In fact, we believe that there is no pure objective reality, no independent existence stripped of all subjectivity or the influence of all social structures. As long as the image contains human elements and human choices, it will be subjective to some extent. Therefore, there is no need for us to try hard to get close to an impersonal, very cold objective reality. This is impossible to achieve.
2
Refining reality in short videos
Nandu Entertainment: What are your preferences for salvaging these short video images?
Sun Hong: Most of the video users we use do not have many fans. Their motivation for making videos is more to record and share their lives. By sharing their lives and interacting with others in the short video community, they complete a kind of social interaction. , in fact, shooting these works has actually become a part of their lives.
In the process of collecting videos, we discovered that there are many images of truck drivers, and there is a lot of unity and warmth among truck lovers. Why are there so many images of truck drivers? I think the biggest reason is that they are the loneliest group of all workers. Their work often involves them and Ka's wife being on the road, so Ka's wife would take some videos of the truck driver's life. Because they lack contact with others, shooting videos, recording their lives, and socializing through this video community are important ways to gain connections between people. Therefore, among the images we salvage, most of them are actually images that record this kind of life. They regard making videos as part of their lives.
Nandu Entertainment: It can be seen from your creative notes that this film has a very clear creative concept - hoping to shorten the distance between people and eliminate prejudice. Have you ever been wary of falling into concept first when creating?
Sun Hong: I personally feel that the premise for forming the current chapter structure and concepts is that we first conducted observations and research on the short video community. We had some other ideas at the beginning, such as whether we could use a person's life to connect the entire video. However, after research, you will find that the richness of images in each age group in the short video community is different. As people get older, they will gradually establish privacy, or a sense of boundaries, and you will find that not all materials of all ages can support your creation. There are differences between short video communities and real life, or different short video communities have different characteristics. When we make traditional documentaries, we also need to observe life. In this film, we observe and understand the reality in the short video before creating and expressing it. In the end, if it can become a work, it will definitely have the creator's thinking about reality. I think from this point of view, we are not very different from traditional documentary shooting methods. We still follow the process of refining content from reality (presented in short videos).
Nandu Entertainment: The videos shot by short video shooters on mobile phones will eventually be displayed on the big screen. How do you solve the technical problems related to picture and sound?
Sun Hong: actually takes a lot of effort, and technical creation is also a very important part of the creation, because you have to meet some technical standards for the big screen. Many viewers did not experience some technical inconsistencies when watching this film. Behind this smooth experience lies the efforts of all our creators. For example, almost every original video of these short videos is accompanied by music, which will cover up the simultaneous sound of the video. It is impossible for us to directly put videos with different music together to make a collection, and it is impossible for people to watch it. Go down. Therefore, we removed all the sounds in the original video, and then used movie foley to design the sound for the short video to restore the sound of the scene at that time. This workload is huge, but this work is not done by someone who knows how to do it. The work of being seen. There are also some problems with images. We have two ways to solve them. The first is to find better materials to replace them. The second is to perform post-processing when we can’t find better materials. We are in the movie The library uses artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence to enhance the image quality of the pixels, and at the same time, it also cooperates with the color grading of the movie to make the image itself meet the viewing standards and experience of the big screen.
Nandu Entertainment: You once commented that the juxtaposition of different short videos in this movie is a "multi-screen montage". How did you come up with this concept?
Sun Hong: The movie is going to resolve the conflict between horizontal and vertical screens. The existing video recording method is a mobile phone, and its most convenient shooting method is vertical screen. But if we only keep one vertical screen on the big screen, it will be a big waste, because there will be no information in the space on the left and right sides of the screen, which is a loss of frame information. Later, we also learned from some art exhibitions. Many artists would use vertical screens to splice and interact with each other. This kind of creation gave us great inspiration. Of course, we have also tried splicing three screens, because if we want to make a horizontal screen, it may be three squares. But the reason why we used five vertical screens is that five vertical screens are the closest to everyone. Proportion captured by mobile phone. In order to restore the vertical screen ratio information taken by each user as much as possible without losing it, we still used five screens to stitch them together, just enough to form a banner picture. In the process of resolving this conflict, it does bring great challenges to the editor. The editor may have to deal with the relationship between several screens in the same time period, which may be equivalent to editing a movie, but it takes four to five years. times the time.But we gained some new inspiration in the process. For example, montage in the original movie refers to the relationship between the previous shot and the next shot, and "multi-screen montage" gave us new possibilities. Within the same shot, I can have five screens, representing five different times and spaces, and five different lives. There will actually be a new relationship between these five screens, thereby establishing a new meaning. For example, four of the five screens are little ducks running forward, and one screen in the middle is office workers. It reminds people that we at work are just like these little ducks, driven forward by life.
3
Short videos meet immediate needs
Movies are a deeper experience
Nandu Entertainment: How do you evaluate the voice of "short videos killing movies" that has emerged from movie fans in recent years?
Sun Hong: I think short videos and movies meet people’s different spiritual needs, so there is no text that attacks or erodes another text. Maybe for short videos, it can fill a lot of immediate needs in our fragmented time, but it still has unsatisfactory aspects for me. For example, I may watch a certain video and I am very moved. But after I brushed through it, this touch left me. There may be no way to really settle it down, or let me think deeply. This is why film is another medium that is in demand, which can make up for the lack of depth in short videos to a certain extent. On the one hand, it may allow us to understand the position of each fragment of real society in the whole. On the other hand, it can solidify this moment in an eighty-minute linear narrative text. In such a In the text of the movie, we can often get a deep experience, which may be a depth of thinking or a depth of emotion.
short video follows a push logic, which customizes and pushes content for you according to your needs, so in the end, what users see is still only the world they care about. But the logic of movies is the opposite. It does not mean pushing different movies for different people, but the same movie to find a resonance with all audiences. It may tap into a deeper commonality and need among people, rather than a need that is different for everyone. You will find that the final hope of the film is to convey more similarities between people. We are human beings with common material and emotional needs, and it frames the film. Cinemas will always exist. No matter whether the scale of cinemas becomes larger or smaller in the future, such a space is still a space for people to dream. Perhaps only in such an immersive black box can people calm down and experience the stories, emotions and deep thinking told in another time and space.
Nandu Entertainment: Have you invited short video creators to watch the movie? After they read it, did they give you any feedback?
Sun Hong: We told every creator that the film was going to be released and gave them movie tickets. I remember there was a boat girl named "Big Orange" in the movie. When I first started making this movie, she was still a young single girl. By the time she finished the movie, she was already married. During the premiere in Tsinghua University, I also invited her to watch the movie. At that time, she came with her two children. I remember she used to say that I would never marry a boat runner, but she ended up marrying a boat runner, and then the two of them ran boats together. It was not easy for her to come to Tsinghua that day. The baby was just over 11 months old and couldn't live without her mother. They had to dock the ship at the nearest port and then take public transportation from there to Beijing.
Also, we invited "Brother Rice Yang" to the premiere ceremony. His feeling after watching the movie was that this movie is the real life of our common people.Although the lives of these people do not occupy the mainstream in most narratives, these people are real and perceptible.
Nandu Entertainment: This film was created in 2018. It was screened at the Pingyao International Film Festival in 2020 and will be released on January 13 this year. After several years, the media ecology of short videos has also changed. Do you think the short video creation in recent years is different from when you were making movies?
Sun Hong: I think the creation of short videos seems to have a little convergence. Whatever is popular at a certain time, everyone will use it as a template to create something similar together. If we were to make a film like this again now, we might spend more time salvaging the documentary images we want. There were fewer purely documentary images back then, and there were more entertainment fictional creations. But there are still some people who are really recording their own lives, so it will take me longer to find and locate these images.
Written by: Nandu reporter Liu Yifan
Pictures: provided by the interviewee
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