We have never been so careful about "expression", yet so divided.
Recently, there has been a discussion on the Internet about "whether Chinese is necessary to be rescued." Although writing is a tool, its destiny is to be used. But it is undeniable that when we have more tools to help us express, the "desire for expression" has become the most precious thing for adults.
is a carnival of hot memes on the Internet. The birth of every new word turns "expression" itself into a simple and antithetical one. On the other side is text aphasia. The Douban group "Mutual Aid Alliance for Text Aphasia" is full of contemporary young people's desire and inability to express themselves.
Douban group "Literally Aphasic Mutual Aid Alliance" related discussion
The expression of the text reflects the glory of self-presentation, fragmentation, and mutual confirmation, and also builds self-limiting barriers. But at the same moment, those "documentary images" from life reproduce and express the current in the massive information fragments in the form of reality, empathy , and the same frequency. In this radio program of
, we had an impromptu chat with DOC, media person Jun Wei, and documentary director Zhang Laoyong around hot voice , and talked about short films and short film festivals, as well as things about creation.
tells about
Jun Wei
film media person
former executive editor of "Midnight Movie"
founder of "Niche Pioneer"
Li Jinglin
video director of the new weekly "Outsiders"
has created the documentary feature "The Married Bride"
Popular Popular
New weekly "Hot Sound" film solicitation planning
Anchor Zhang labor
Production Zhang Xinwei
Text arrangement Pupu
Background music
Pan Fan "Concave and Concave Light Waves"
Half Root One "People" Prelude
Click the audio to listen to this book
feature film or short film?
Jun Wei:
Many young directors will use short films as a stepping stone. The industry can see the potential of directors through short films. But in fact, in essence, there is no distinction between short films and feature films. They are independent works of and .
There are some directors who specialize in making short films, such as Wen Muye or Wei Shujun . They all entered the field of feature films through early short films, but there are also directors like Hu Wei who have always insisted on making short films. And he made the short film to the ultimate state, and then participated in the Oscar for Best Short Film. It’s just that in China, the obsession is to have feature films enter theaters or go to film festivals to win awards.
The open-air screening of the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, reprinted from the blogger @黑光Jaejie
I think short films and feature films do not matter, they are all creations , and they are all a way of expression with the help of audio-visual language. It's just that there may be some differences in the size of your structure and the amount of information contained. For example, Yu Lei's "Creation" is nearly 50 minutes long, but it is a completely self-contained short film. Some short films including Geng Jun are quite long, not 10 or 20 minutes in length, but their expressions are also very sufficient.
So I think it’s better to talk about the thing you want to talk about, and it should be as long as it is. Some things can be explained clearly in one sentence, so use one sentence. Some things need to be long and grand. Let’s talk about it for a long time, it should be like this.
Li Jinglin:
Like the choice between a short film and a feature film, I think the length of the film should be determined in the most suitable way. However, sometimes, the creator may not only want to tell the story well, but also want to submit the film to some film festivals, and the length of the work will need to be weighed. At that time, my supervisor also suggested to me that if I wanted to submit the film to a film festival, I should reduce the overall length to less than 60 minutes.
So I think the reason why it is a feature is determined by its size, not because I want to make a feature.But in fact, there is a short film version of "The Foreign Bride". This film was selected for four international film festivals. In one of the film festivals, I submitted a 30-minute version, which just told a story about the protagonist.
Zhang labor:
I think you need to have a clear understanding of your goals. For example, my goal is to win some prizes. Maybe the game rules are ten minutes or thirty minutes, which is the standard length, so you can win. But if you think it doesn’t matter whether my film wins an award or not, as long as it has my own expression, that’s another thing. And the one who sticks to himself will win the award in the end.
When short films become the trend
photos of labor:
I previously held a forum at a short film festival in Chengdu and called the documentary short film image sketch . It does not have any fancy operations and must be able to impress the audience in the shortest time. This kind of sketch is a kind of line drawing, which will make the audience feel the emotion in the shortest time. So I think image sketching is also a style.
Of course there are some cross-border things. For example, I have a junior sister who specializes in visual presentation on the big screen for band performances. This is another kind of image. It may not have a strong narrative, but its medium is a big screen, at a performance site, and it has a fusion of sound, light and electricity. For example, I have done light and shadow shows before, which use images to create an immersive illusion. I think the future may be more than just projection, or more than just showing it in theaters. It may be shown outdoors or in an art museum. After the medium has changed, the viewing environment has also changed. The rhythm and creation of the short film must be different.
Immersive experience teamlab exhibitions are popular all over the world
Junwei:
html In 116 or 2017, Xiamen held an amphibious film festival, which was an exhibition of Tsai Ming-liang 's three short films. " without sleep ", "Journey to the West", and "Autumn". If I remember correctly, he opened the space directly at the Three Shadows Art Museum. Some of the three films were projected on the wall, and some were projected on the wall. It was cast on the wall of a residential building opposite the Three Shadows Art Museum, and it seemed to be cast in water. These creative ideas seemed to be under the control of Director Tsai Ming-liang himself. He also arranged the entire exhibition. The short film is very organically combined with the environment of the museum.When you watch these three short films, you will have a very different feeling when watching each film. For example, in "Sleepless", the image is on water, and you will see the scene through the water. They are soaking in a hot spring in the water. , some steam comes out, and it feels very wonderful.
makes money! Make money!
Zhang Lao:
Is it difficult to find investment for a movie or short film? For example, " Burst Drummer " we now think is very good and very cool, but its prequel is that after the script was written, the director couldn't find the money, so he found one of the chapters and made a short film, and then went to get it Sundance got the investment and spent $3 million to make "Crackling Drummer."
Li Jinglin:
I originally wanted to find some investment before filming "The Foreign Bride", but due to time constraints and the fact that I was not particularly good at producing at the time, I did it in a way that It was crowdfunded. This may also be the main method used by the classmates around me at the time. Everyone helped each other to show support.
But now I see that there are a lot of venture capital meetings in China, and there are also many institutions that can actually accept some international submissions, and you can find money in these institutions. It is still quite abundant now, and everyone can give it a try.
Zhang Lao:
Sometimes some venture capital firms are a bit formal. For example, those people come to evaluate you, but in the end they may give you some resources. For example, if I have an editor or my post-production computer room for you to use, I will give you a physical reward. The more money you get, the more difficult it becomes.
I suddenly remembered the example of Bi Gan . He finished filming "Roadside Picnic ". No matter how much the box office of "Roadside Picnic" was, he would be labeled as a theater director, and it would be relatively easy for him to find investment in the future. . So after he finished filming "Roadside Picnic", although the cost was very low, he won many awards before he made " The Last Night on Earth ".
What will the buzz of 2021
make us remember?
Popu:
Hot Sound is a short film collection activity launched by "The Outsider", a character documentary short video column of New Weekly. Last year was the first one. There were not too many restrictions. There was no limit on the subject matter, including the creation time, and the screening method. We hope to discover some outstanding youth works as much as possible. This collection lasted for more than two months and received submissions of 361 works, 70% of which were documentary short films, most of which were graduation works of college students.
In 2021, Hot Voice selected 10 shortlisted works and 5 shortlisted works. It also held an offline screening in Guangzhou. This year, it has also successively arranged some online screenings and exclusive interviews with the works.
We also made two discoveries from last year’s submissions. One is the younger generation of creators . Among the final shortlisted works, most of the creators were born in 1998, 99 or even after 2000. The expressions of those born after 2000 Desire and their creative style have gradually come to the fore, and their expressions are more personalized.
The second point is that excellent works are relatively scarce in . A platform for expression and dialogue , or an opportunity to get out of the circle. Many young creators may need some opportunities to talk to the outside world before transitioning to professional film festivals. In addition, the audience also I am eager to have more understanding and viewing channels for documentaries. There is relatively little dissemination and publicity in this area. I think documentaries can become as popular as other film and television works.
In general, what Hotsheng wants to do is such a simple thing. allows more good stories to be seen, and allows more people to read with good stories.
Junwei:
Among the films collected last year, I still like the ones that are social . My favorite one I chose at the time was "Unwed Mothers". It focused on the issues of single mothers and children born out of wedlock. It had a strong social aspect, and at the moment, it is a very marginalized group that few people know about. Pay attention to these people. I was very touched when I watched the film. It opened up a very small incision and perspective, and I saw that even the law has some protections in society, and it has paid attention to many various issues about women. , but some will still be ignored, and that film made me see a group that has been ignored.
I also like the film "Highway Prose" about cross-strait exchanges, and the film about ethnic minorities "Bama's Choice". When watching "Bama's Choice", the Tibetan child was actually deciding between going to work in a big city or returning to his hometown to do something in his hometown. I felt the same as myself at the time. It seemed that everyone was similar. Young people either go to big cities or stay in their hometowns, facing two different life situations and inner struggles.
photos of labor:
I think everyone was quite consistent when choosing films last year. My favorite movie "When You Get Old" last year was about a student who returned to Taiwan to film his grandparents. It was particularly interesting. The grandparents lived together for many years and finally got divorced, but they had their own lives. It was a kind of private life. presentation of images.
40 minutes, why impress you?
Pupu:
Maybe you are also curious about what Hot Sound pays attention to when selecting movies. Of course, each judge has his or her own aesthetic preferences. Our organizer’s film selection criteria can be summarized into three points.
The first one is theme . We hope to pay attention to young people's thinking about social public issues .
The second one is storytelling , because everyone likes to listen to stories and want to get a projection in a specific story, so we hope that the film will not stay on the surface of some grand narratives, but can go deep into the individual to dig out Come up with some specific stories.
The third one is expressing . We hope that the work can be a certain expression of the creator, and then this expression can be seen, understood and communicated through images.
Among the works received by Hot Sound last year, many of them were created around the life around me. We also hope that everyone can turn creation into a simple matter, just like this year's film competition theme is "Free Expression", which calls on everyone to pay attention to the life around them.
Junwei:
The two elements that I value more are sociality and rhythm .
For me, whether it is a long documentary or a short documentary, perhaps the most important point is that I want to see its social nature. It can see the big from the small, and it can enter into some follow-up situations in a very vivid way. We use ordinary characters to express a more popular topic through these characters. Like "Unwed Mothers" and "When You Get Old", they also show the social nature of family affection. I remember there was another movie about the blind date of the elderly, which also vividly showed the issues of marriage and love in the elderly.
The second thing is to pay attention to the director's rhythm, because after all, images and writing are the same thing, and now the so-called movies, plots, documentaries, or feature films and short films are actually becoming more and more dissipated and becoming more and more Blur, even in movie theaters and streaming media, is increasingly being eliminated, so it has become a creation in itself. A very important part of creation is style and rhythm. For a documentary short film, you will pay more attention to its narrative rhythm, how to explain the matter clearly, and use a very clever structure to tell the story.
photos:
I will share a documentary short film that impressed me the most. It was when I was selecting films for the FIRST Youth Film Festival in 2017. There was a film called "I Have a Melancholy, Little Problem", which he talked about There was a late body photographer named Ren Hang . The director used a lot of very pop methods to dissect the artist's heart.
I cried straight away after reading it, and I burst into tears. The reason is that I think the director made Ren Hang look like a pure boy. He treats this society with true feelings. He has his own hobbies and works hard to pursue them. Although each of us may not be in that field, we each have our own pursuits and hobbies, and I found resonance. So I think being able to make judges or ordinary viewers find resonance with is also a place where a film can win.
Everyone has the possibility of breaking the game
Li Jinglin:
"The Outsider" has a slogan called "Everyone has the possibility of breaking the game" . The special thing about "The Outsider" may be the word "break the game". We not only pay attention to the issue itself, we will further pay attention to the people who broke the dilemma, the methods they used to break the situation, and the way they solved the problem. While we show the protagonist's thinking on looking at and solving problems, we also incorporate the creator's thinking on this issue.
For example, last year we filmed a story about the Baoma Garment Factory in Huangpi, Wuhan, which involved women’s career issues—the plight of mothers in the workplace. But this clothing factory that only recruits mothers is based on the actual needs of mothers. They have also solved the problem of workplace difficulties very well, and at the same time, many companies have learned from it.
also has a story we filmed last year about the Beijing Xinmu Cinema, which allows visually impaired people to walk out of their homes and go to the cinema to watch movies. One of the words that impressed the director of this issue was that people with disabilities do not want to be treated differently. For example, when they watch the Olympics, they would rather watch the Olympics for normal people than the Paralympics.
What we are very happy about is that many people will send us private messages backstage to share their thoughts after watching the film. This is also a point where we feel a sense of accomplishment as creators and are very grateful to the audience.
2022 "Free Expression" Hot voice submissions are fully open
Scan the long picture QR code below to submit immediately
Looking forward to seeing life through your lens
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