At the just-concluded 18th FIRST Youth Film Festival, "Upstream" directed by Fu Zongsheng won the "One Standpoint" honor. The jury's recommendation is: "New creators, in the new era, use new shooting methods to tell new experiences and respond to new questions. Behind the seeming

At the just-concluded 18th First Youth Film Exhibition, "Upstream" directed by Fu Zongsheng won the "One Standpoint" honor. The jury's recommendation is: "New creators, in the new era, use new shooting methods to tell new experiences and respond to new questions. Behind the seemingly chaotic words written in writing is a clear creative consciousness. , uncompromising creative character, and a strong desire to dialogue with the present."

Even before the festival began, this more than four-hour film was called a "violent and strange film" by the preliminary judges. During the film festival, "Upstream" also became one of the most talked-about films of First this year, and was called "First's first hit" by movie fans. From the media field to the premiere, every screening of "Upstream" triggered applause and screams from the audience. The complementary image language of documentary and online video uniquely blended into a kind of civilian epic of the current information age.

"Upstream" poster

Fu Zongsheng is 36 years old. Before filming "Upstream", he was a well-known photographer on station B. As the director of the "Photography Addiction Research Institute", he has published reviews and usage experiences of various photography equipment over the years, and has also selflessly popularized various photography and post-production techniques to netizens. This identity background precisely explains the origin of the film’s unique perspective and its skillful use of audio-visual language. But for those who pursue this dream, everything does not come naturally. During the film festival, Fu Zongsheng cried several times on and off the stage. When he walked up to the podium, he sighed: "It took me four years to walk up the four steps of the podium."

Fu Zongsheng received the award in the first

Four hours: Realism "Mandarin Duck Pot"

Before going to the first , Fu Zongsheng was uneasy. He described his directorial debut as a "big boring movie", four hours long, without the dazzling fighting and special effects in traditional commercial movies, and it does not conform to traditional genre narratives. But the fact is that such a movie is not boring at all. The pseudo-documentary style lens language leads the audience into the real life situation of the characters. With the ups and downs of the Internet situation, it leads to both funny and heart-breaking absurdity and madness.

"Upstream" tells a story: Chen Ziyi, a small town girl, came to Shanghai to study makeup. By chance, she was brought into the self-media industry by an up owner whom she admired. What made Chen Ziyi famous overnight was a "hammer" video. After bravely "exposing" the plagiarism of financial celebrities, she was spotted by the idol of the popular arts and science celebrity V who runs the MCN organization, and transformed into a millionaire. Red "Sister Hammer". Running wildly on the road to pursue traffic, "Sister Chui" behaves more and more crazily, and conflicts with other up owners are about to break out. And when the "original intention" awakened, "Sister Hammer" blasted her own boss. The "Sister Hammer" who thought she could become the master of traffic, and the big V whose "personality collapsed" had no choice but to "go home and inherit the family business" finally discovered that the gift of fate had already been secretly marked with a price.

"Upstream" first film exhibition introduction

In the film, in addition to the protagonist, there are branch characters of different birth classes in the Internet celebrity ecosystem, ranging from rural "factory girls", small town youths, urban middle class, wealthy second generation, etc. The Internet briefly intersects in the same time and space, seemingly doing the same thing, and fluctuating with traffic, but what determines the ups and downs is never simple attribution on the table. In the more than four hours of

's narration, real-life encounters and cyberspace form a peculiar intertext and mirror image: on the one hand, the director uses long lenses, natural light, and a narrative that is close to the flow of time in reality to create a deliberately calm and simple story. On the other hand, the creation of online videos, as an integral part of the daily life of the film's protagonist, has directly become an important carrier of film narrative. In the film, different online elements such as barrages, live broadcasts, and vlogs are added to the film's narrative. The juggling-style montage, the visual packaging with a sense of variety show, and the line drawing of the current popular image ecology have all become the basis for the Internet generation. The creator's "crazy exploration" of the boundaries of the film.

Fu Zongsheng is good at using precise images to match the narrative he needs.Even, as the master of the digital area, he carefully arranged the iteration of shooting equipment and the upgrade of editing techniques in each "Hammer Video". From the camera hidden in the plush doll to the wide-angle deformation GoPro, the addition of long-range lenses hidden in hidden corners, and even the barrage is embodied as an attack weapon that can knock off the "blood bar" of the subject, rich online videos Elements have entered the narrative about the real life of the Z generation group and have solidly become a component of the real texture.

Stills from "Upstream", online videos have become an important part of the narrative

Fu Zongsheng revealed that in the entire movie, "99% of the barrages are real on the Internet and come from real videos. I found similar videos and put them Remove their barrages one by one. In fact, you will find that it is not inconsistent at all to put these real barrages in the movie. "

Stills of "The Upstream"

Although the whole film is full of various fancy collages, Fu Zongsheng. But I firmly believe that what I shot is a realistic film. "The realist genre of movies that we originally recognized is realistic and is achieved through means such as long shots, natural light, no soundtrack, and simultaneous sound. But many documentary contents on the Internet today are also logically Towards reality, recording reality and creating reality, they take completely different paths, sometimes forming a completely opposite force. "

Stills of "Upstream", follow-up shots showing the characters' daily life

The movie is like a mandarin duck. Hot pot, one side has the original soup and the other side is hot and piping hot. This "Mandarin Duck Pot" style collage is Fu Zongsheng's new narrative attempt. "In recent years, I have discovered that some realist authors always like to add dramatic conflicts into the pot of realism. If they are not handled well, the flavor will change, just like adding some spicy oil to a pot of clear soup. What will happen to the taste? That’s not right. I just want to try and see if I can cut it in the middle. "

Four steps: polish yourself into a "tool"

From a vocational school student who can barely graduate with a computer major, to an unemployed self-taught animation software at home. game house, then picked up a camera and became a well-known up host, and then devoted himself to the dream of movies - when receiving the trophy at the first film festival, Fu Zongsheng said that he had taken "four steps" to get on stage, and his own growth experience was also a A unique advancement path that is different from traditional film directors.

The filming scene of "Upstream"

Director Fu is not a filmmaker with a professional background, but he is therefore not bound by the fixed paradigms taught in school. "Most people will be solidified by knowledge." Director Fu explained.

After graduation, Fu Zongsheng also tried some nine-to-five jobs, but he didn't like them, so he stayed at home for many years, making simple animations from 2D to 3D. In the process of making animation, he met a talented screenwriter friend and became interested in content creation. On the other hand, animation production is really time-consuming and labor-intensive for non-professional individuals. Compared with animation, shooting videos has lower production costs and more room for trial and error, so he teamed up with a screenwriter friend. Get ready to make a movie together.

After winning the award, Fu Zongsheng posted a screenshot of his budding dream in 2013 on station b.

The Internet became Fu Zongsheng's film enlightenment teacher. When recalling this film learning process, he said: "If you want to learn about movies, you have to watch good movies, because the entire crew showed the best images and expressions at that time in the film." In addition to a large number of ready-made theoretical foundations and online film sources Resources, on the other hand, the threshold for film production has gradually decreased with the popularization of photography equipment such as cameras and lights, which has also brought further convenience to "wild filmmakers". Even the increasingly high-definition cameras equipped with mobile phones are enough to convert current thoughts into a short short film with a certain degree of clarity. "This is a particularly good era for an independent filmmaker."

In 2016, Fu Zongsheng broke up with his first partner. This brought a big blow to Director Fu, and he even lost his sense of taste for a time.At that time, Fu's mother planned to open a restaurant, and he also thought about giving up movies and running a restaurant with his mother. But when he imagined himself cooking in a chef's hat, his first reaction was, "The life in front of me can become the material for a screenwriter. Serving film creation". At that moment, Fu Zongsheng realized that he was destined not to give up his love for movies: "This is an uncontrollable desire. I finally found the passion of my life."

After breaking up with his partner, Fu Zongsheng determined to learn photography to make up for it. Photography job vacancies. During the five years, there was almost no income, so the grandfather, who felt sorry for his grandson, gave Director Fu 10,000 yuan. Fu Zongsheng used the money to buy a set of Sony a6300 cameras - this is also the equipment Director Fu uses most often in his daily video shooting. Later, among the many videos he uploaded, "6300 Dafa is good" became the favorite comment content among fans.

As a very basic model, the pictures captured by the simple a6300 eventually entered Fu Zongsheng's feature film. Why do you love a6300 so much? On the one hand, Fu Zongsheng said that he is a nostalgic person, on the other hand, he hopes to complete the most sincere expression within a restricted "box". Unlike the legendary "three poor generations of photographers", Fu Zongsheng has tested a large number of state-of-the-art equipment over the years, but still loves his "basic models". He said: "It seems that I have a natural resistance to material desires."

Fu Zongsheng loves a6300

In the early days of learning photography, Director Fu tried to start by making documentaries. Most of the shots in documentaries are snapshots rather than staged shots, so the requirements for photographers are very high. Good pictures are fleeting, and the taste will be different if you reshoot again. This kind of difficult task laid a solid foundation for Director Fu's shooting, and he felt like a fish in water when making subsequent feature films.

Fu Zongsheng took photos on the handheld set of "Upstream"

Since 2017, Fu Zongsheng and his new partners have formed a team, aiming to shoot short films together and take on some commercial advertising tasks to make a living. The small team earned a good income from the shooting of commercial advertisements, but everyone wanted to leave some short films of their own.

In April 2018, Director Fu and others started operating the Bilibili account "Photography Research Institute" and uploaded their first video. The identity of the up owner allows Director Fu to not be ordered by "Party A". He can sort out the knowledge points of film shooting, try out different styles, and even learn new things that he has never known before, and thus make many new friends. "These are what I yearn for, which allows me to ensure that I can make progress every time I create a new program."

Fu Zongsheng's Bilibili account "Photography Addiction Research Institute"

In fact, because of the unpleasant experience of receiving awards as a child, Make him afraid of facing the camera. "I have always known myself as an independent filmmaker, and there will be many opportunities to go on stage to receive awards in the future," Fu Zongsheng joked. In order to overcome psychological barriers, "Becoming an up master is equivalent to forcing myself to Being in front of the stage is like a kind of desensitization therapy. "

Fu Zongsheng's Photography Science Popularization

As an online video producer, Fu Zongsheng has experienced "traffic anxiety" and has also been maliciously slandered. In recent years, Fu Zongsheng has deliberately reduced the frequency of updates on station B, from almost weekly updates at first to only three or four videos a year. On the one hand, he has high requirements for his channel that is almost "mesophobic". All photography equipment reviews are based on long-term and large-scale shooting to present the best results to the audience. However, he has been maliciously criticized by some fellow uploaders. Spreading rumors, claiming it is an advertising video. The experience of having his ideas plagiarized by his peers also chilled him. "No one would spend a year or two making a video to 'chat rice'. No one with any brain would do this. After one or two years, the hot spots have long since passed. I did this purely for myself. Exploration of interests. "

Fu Zongsheng

"From 2012 to now, I have been trying to build myself into a tool - a tool for making movies. I have been working hard in this direction, and it is not a waste. It was a waste, it took too much time to do this."As an Internet celebrity,

has not tried to turn the attention he received from the Internet to movies. "My fans or followers and the audience of my movies are completely different things and two groups of people. Fu Zongsheng analyzed, "People who follow me on the Internet come to see the equipment. Is this camera powerful? What kind of lights should I buy? Is it easy to use?" The movies I make are the opposite of this. My philosophy in making movies is how to use the cheapest things to produce the best effects. Low-cost production is what I have been pursuing for the past 10 years. "

Four years: With a sense of mission, making a movie "only I can make"

In the early summer of 2019, Fu Zongsheng uploaded a long video titled "All channels will end one day" on station b. In the video, he Sitting on the beach, he spent nearly an hour talking to the audience about how he started making videos, and about his love and yearning for movies. In the video, he talked about his plan to "focus on art films." Technological innovation has lowered the threshold for film production, making Fu Zongsheng realize that "amateur creators" like him may usher in the best era

Fu Zongsheng chatting with fans at the beach in 2019

The script of the film was completed in 2020. , the epidemic disrupted the original plan to start filming. It was not until the spring of the following year that Fu Zongsheng spent 30 days filming the entire film. There were too many parts of the film that could not keep up with the changes, such as the European style that was given an "important task" in the script. The Carrefour on Wuning Road on the outer wall of the street was demolished during the filming, which caught him off guard; for example, his friends who were movie-loving up-owners in the movie area who he had readily agreed to, were all missing when the camera was turned on; for example, those who had not raised the recording pole Fans who love movies came to be responsible for the recording, but the results were "various mistakes"; for example, a friend who did the post-production received money, but the results were still not available. After waiting for a year, he found that the sample he got was "unbelievable and completely unacceptable"...

Today, from the scrolling credits, we see that this director has almost all jobs. In addition to being a director, he is also a producer, photographer, editor, color corrector, and sound mix assistant... "Except for not being able to do it himself Acting, I did everything. "

The long post-production process lasted for three years. Fu Zongsheng described it as a process that was "as difficult as Foolish Old Man moving mountains." Huang Qinyuan, the screenwriter of the film, revealed in another interview that in order to do the post-production of the film, the director was stunned to complete the round process. The bench "sits in a hole."

Of course, the identity of the up owner also brings many unique parts to the film. For example, Fu Zongsheng revealed that 60% of the film's funding came from one of his online followers. Received support from up owners in other fields, such as the dressing area up owner Xiaozhi , as the film's costume designer, created a style design belonging to "Upstream" for the film; the ghost area up owner Xiao Keer composed many pieces of music for the film .

Fu Zongsheng cried with emotion after the first premiere

Fu Zongsheng believed that "Upstream" was a movie that only he could make. He still remembered that in 2020, after watching Station B's May 4th Youth Day planning "Houlang". , he discussed a topic with his good friends, there are so many inspirational up owners in the video, why is there no Jing Hanqing (self-media person)? Compared with the glamorous and grand narrative in the video, "Jing Hanqing can only be a subtitle." ', it cannot be taken as 'face'. Fu Zongsheng said that at that time he just felt, "There is a fire in my heart, I must speak it out, otherwise it will be very uncomfortable." ” He said, “I developed a sense of mission. Although I am an unknown filmmaker, I think that I am probably the only one who is making realist films among the up creators. Among the realist filmmakers and authors, there are only I am the host of Up. Even if Jia Zhangke were to shoot it, he might not be able to make a "Highest" movie. ”

The representation of the network traffic ecology in "Upstream" is truly in place.

The filming and production of the film took four years. Many fictional stories at the time of creation miraculously happened in reality in the subsequent time.In reality, many hot events such as tens of millions of fans being banned for fraud, top 100 Up host Asuka's cosplay overturning, a ghost celebrity becoming ill and raising funds for donations caused controversy, and counterattacking heroine executives looking down on "social animals" and many other hot events, after the script was written, they all happened in the real world. In "fulfillment". Since 2017, Fu Zongsheng has deliberately paid attention to the lives of up owners. He has interviewed more than thirty up owners and conducted extensive investigations on many Internet celebrities. "Almost all the stories in the movie are derived from my personal experience and are also reflections of reality."

"replicate" the "showdown" scene of the rich second-generation game up owner

Talking about these coincidences, Fu Zongsheng said, He is not a "prophet", "it just means that when we wrote the script, we grasped the greatest common denominator of human nature behind various hot Internet events."

Over the years, Fu Zongsheng felt as if he had some kind of "sense of mission" "Make this film. "People's memory will be blurred, and the memory of the Internet will be erased. Maybe after more than ten years, everyone will gradually forget this era. I don't want people to investigate this period in the future to examine the social status of the Internet during its rise. There is only the glossy "Back Wave". In my opinion, the Internet is like a hypocritical mask. Once you put it on, it is difficult to see the reality behind the mask. I want to make "Upstream" just so that people in the future can see it. The real social appearance behind the Internet. "

In the four-hour duration, different people interpret different messages and expressions in the movie. "If this film must bring out one thing that I want to express, it is about people's hypocrisy. I just use the group of up owners to express my own confusion."

"Upstream" stills

in In this era, people receive too much information. Fu Zongsheng said that he is often confused by not knowing the truth of the world. “Sometimes, when I watch the news and my own life are different, I can only choose what I want to believe. Something. I think that any director who wants to express something should be in line with the era he lives in. The theme of post-truth may be carried over to all the films in my second decade plan.”

"Upstream" won the first "One Attitude" Award

Fu Zongsheng, who regarded "Upstream" as an exercise, said frankly that he still has many regrets in this movie, and he also has more ambitious goals about making movies. of imagination. "I am confident that the next movie will be good enough that no one can refuse it!"