movies, there has been no shortage of cinephile works. Classics such as " eight and a half ", "Singin' in the Rain", etc. In recent years, there have also been some exquisite cinephilia movies.
For example, "Don't Stop the Camera!" which incorporates zombie elements into movie shooting. "; "Inception" with every frame covered with Easter eggs; "One Second" in which Zhang Yimou looks back fondly on his boyhood; "The Novelist's Movie" in which Hong Sang-soo openly expressed his love for Kim Min-hee.
The "single 8" that I will introduce today has created a new track for . It mixes science fiction and meta-movies with youth films and has become a very popular dark horse work at this year's Beijing Film Festival.
This film is directed by Japanese tokusatsu tycoon Kazuya Konaka . He combined his love for movies as a boy and recruited a group of cute new actors to give tokusatsu movies (Japanese film and television dramas shot with tokusatsu technology The main feature of the tokusatsu film is that real actors perform in tight costumes or monster costumes, and use hand-made miniature models as scenes. Representative works include "Ultraman" and "Kamen Rider". A charming love letter.
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Kurita Hiroshi , a high school student who loves movies.
He is not a "genius" who can immediately become a blockbuster. He seriously made a horror film, but was regarded as a comedy by his friends.
But he still wants to make a movie like " Star Wars ", even if he only has a 7.5mm camera that cannot change the lens. The budget is insufficient and I can’t even tell the difference between automatic exposure and manual exposure.
If we seriously think about the meaning of talent, it often also means obsession, and the ubiquitous efforts that this obsession brings.
Guangzhi wanted to shoot the effect of a spaceship, but he couldn't make the spaceship model as huge as in the movie. So, over breakfast, he was excited to discover that a smooth, curved mirror could produce the effect of a wide-angle lens.
The big problem was solved. He also discovered that due to mirror reflection during shooting, the surrounding environment would be photographed together with the spacecraft model. Wouldn't this reveal the truth?
It doesn’t matter, then let’s work with my friend Ozawa to cover everything except the model with black film, so that only the spaceship is left in the lens.
After a college student who was selling equipment part-time taught Guangzhi how to expose manually, he casually asked what the story was. Guangzhi realized that he had always wanted to shoot spaceships, but he had never considered what the story should be like.
Seeing that his creation has reached a bottleneck, a cultural festival is about to be held in the school. Hiroshi takes this opportunity to express his idea of making a movie, and has secretly chosen the heroine in his heart - classmate Natsumi Yamashita.
Since there was no specific script, the class teacher suggested that Guangzhi write the script within a week and then decide whether to make a movie for the class's cultural festival.
At this time, classmate Sasaki also stepped forward and expressed that he would join the crew and help write scripts and make movies. Thus, a classic three-person crew in film history was formed. Let's call them youth group .
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As a tokusatsu enthusiast, Hiroshi actually had a vague concept of the script. The addition of Sasaki just balanced these two points and put the importance of the story on the agenda. When the
youth group was watching Hiroshi's previous films for inspiration, they suddenly discovered that Natsumi Yamashita's scenes in the short film were particularly prominent, revealing the young man's thoughts.
The heroine selection was confirmed by the youth group, but what about the core story? At this time, Guangzhi had an idea and remembered the technique of reversal photography that he had heard about before, so he decided to focus the story on the concept of "space invaders reversed the earth's time." The film was titled "Time Reversal."
The planning of the film-within-a-film has progressed to this point, and we will find that this is actually a story constructed based on technology, that is, reverse photography technology. If technology is the skeleton, then it takes stories, themes, and actors to give flesh and blood to the skeleton.
In the process of further conceiving the film, the director's exploration of technology and the revelation of his cinephilia began to radiate into the history of film. In addition to "Star Wars",
also involves classic science fiction and time-travel themed movies such as " The Girl Who Leapt Through Time " and " 2001: A Space Odyssey ". So what is the theme of "Time Reversal"? In the ongoing discussions in the youth group, the theme of "Criticism of Civilization" and is about to emerge.
The most interesting thing is that as the shooting of the youth group progresses, real life is also moving forward: in class, the teacher talked about the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, World War I, World War II...
This kind of human atrocities are still being performed to this day. , such as Israel and Palestine, history seems to be changing but never changing. The ignorant thoughts of the young man inadvertently hit the truth of the world.
After repeated discussions in the youth group, the script of the film was finally completed: the space invaders discovered that people on earth had committed many evil deeds in the name of civilization during the process of evolution, so they decided to reverse human evolution to realize another possibility. When the plan was implemented, an accident occurred due to the loneliness of artificial intelligence. Only the time and behavior of the hero and heroine were normal. Later, the originally indecisive male protagonist finally saved the earth. When everything returns to normal, no one except the hero himself remembers his heroic deeds.
The story has been decided, and the male protagonist will be played by Ozawa from the team. Hiroshi's mood also rippled when Yamashita Natsumi finally agreed to be the heroine, and the youth group gained another female member. In this way, the short film proceeds methodically in a naive and passionate mood.
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The title of the movie "Single 8" is the same as the "Super 8" produced by Spielberg and directed by J.J. Abrams. They are the names of photographic equipment, respectively Fuji single8 and Kodak super 8. . Since director Kazuya Konaka is a big fan of "Super Eight", he decided to name the movie after this title. In the
short film "Reverse Time", the loser protagonist saves the world in a daze. In addition to the short film, the youth group relied on jerky techniques to complete the filming of the work.
"Reverse Time" is not a profound movie, but it is just a bickering couple who are accidentally selected by aliens to escape the fate of evolutionary regression. The male protagonist did not achieve any growth or transformation in the end. He just threw the can into the trash can that he was planning to kick away.
But as viewers, we know that this immature short film incorporates the strong love and youth of several teenagers:
only ordered the cheapest curry rice to save money, and it was done so that the short film can have a better presentation effect. Repeated debugging is a lie made up in order to stay with the person you like for a while.
The youth group will use their imagination and wisdom to solve problems within a tight budget, allowing people to see their purest love for movies in the current image era.
"Single 8" is also the memory and nostalgia of youth by a 61-year-old director . Hiroshi carries the youthful nostalgia of director Kazuya Konaka.
When he was a high school student, Kazuya Konaka produced an 8mm film "Eternal Dream", which described the ballad of the same name sung by Sayuri Yoshinaga and Yukio Hashi. Starting from this short film, Kazuya Konaka's movie dream was unstoppable. . Now, having been on the road of special photography films for decades, he has created a large number of highly acclaimed works, such as the "Ultraman" series, "Automated Robot Astro Boy", etc., but small and medium-sized films Kazuya still maintains his pure passion for movies, and even that youthful frivolity still echoes in his works.
Under the influence of legendary filmmakers and legendary works in film history, Kazuya Konaka also created a cinephile temperament passed down from generation to generation in the form of meta-movies. But the emotions in "single8" are so cute and lively that one cannot feel the director's actual age.
That's because Kazuya Kozaka didn't use movies and knowledge to sublime his feelings.He just looked at his youthful self with a gentle gaze, letting his then self lead him towards his old age, returning to that time when everything seemed to have no purpose or meaning but was extremely pure and clear.
Only with this kind of emotion can we truly reach the ultimate question: Is human evolution really meaningful? Is history really moving forward?
On the one hand, there is the continuous development of modern technology, and on the other hand, there is the repeated history. Human beings’ endless exploration seems to be just to satisfy their own desires in the name of civilization. Only in young people, hope seems to really exist. Because they still have the vision that "species like humans can still make up for the mistakes they have made."
Thus, in a light creative gesture, Kazuya Konaka completed the writing of his love for movies, his nostalgia for youth, and his questioning of human beings and the world.
pillow cloud
editor Chai Yingrui
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