Director Chen Xiaoqing
Producer Deng Jie
" Flavored Human " Season 4 was launched yesterday, and grain, carbohydrates, rice and flour were in-depth research. As mentioned in the first episode of the program: "Ceres are the basis of human food. With their broad power, people are united to cooperate with each other. Agriculture is born from grains. The food we eat will be what we are today."
Why should we aim the camera at grains?
"Flavoring the World" season 1 "Landing the Roots" once involved the topic of grains, and during the creation process the team decided to expand it into a series. Why aim the lens at the grain? Director Chen Xiaoqing introduced, "Because there are many starting points for grains. On the one hand, grains are a very important symbol of security for Chinese people. On the other hand, they want to explore the origins of the mutual influence between grains and humans."
After three years of careful preparation, the director team finally compiled the grain into six episodes: "Wheat surges for thousands of years", "Rice fragrance in the wilderness", and "Small and Millet" to expand the definition of "cereal", that is, in addition to the audience's familiar wheat, rice, and corn, it also includes taro, water chestnuts, water chestnuts, and other plants closely related to grains, or can provide humans with carbohydrates. They will appear one by one, telling the story of their mutual shaping with mankind over the long river of time.
"At the beginning we wanted to do it, it was simpler and harder, because our research found that each grain was very related to the lives of people in different places, and its history was very long. Like wheat, it represents the earliest agricultural birth dates back to 10,000 years ago, and potatoes are related to the civilization of the Andes Aboriginal people in South America. It has a history of at least seven or eight thousand years. We think every grain is worth respecting and is worth telling its story and history well." Director Chen Lei said.
"What we grow can only satisfy the shooting"
In terms of shooting and production, this season "Flavor World" organized a "combination of Chinese and Western" shooting teams around the world. In addition to the traditional shooting team completing the flavor journey in China, the records of foreign food are "relayed" by the local shooting team. Chen Lei introduced that some of the international teams are teams who do BBC natural documentaries. "We will write a good outline and communicate online with foreign teams through our teacher Deng, who is good at English. When they shoot, they will pass on the finished materials to us every night. It is like this through little communication that we strive to make every episode global content."
However, during the real shooting, the crew also discovered that crop planting was difficult. Producer Deng Jie said, "To shoot, we rented a piece of land in Chongming Island in Shanghai, built an greenhouse , and planted things in that greenhouse. Later, we found that some grains were not suitable for the climate there, so we moved part of the shooting base to Yunnan, but the failure rate was quite high."
In order to shoot, the crew also brought friends who were studying plants in the UK to "join", and found that the planting matters had to be learned from the farmers. "We used to think that if we plant seeds, we would just harvest them in a few months, but the actual process was particularly difficult... The things we planted in the end were definitely unqualified compared to those grown by farmers. Basically, the things we planted can only meet the shooting and are not qualified agricultural products at all." The story of
grain is also a human story. Deng Jie tells the story of Aunt Apricot Flower and Oatmeal in the first episode. "The story of "Youmai" is that we found such a character under a very accidental condition. At that time, we drove around the ancient Great Wall and looked for it all the time, and then saw a very small village. The geographical appearance of this village attracted us. But when we arrived at the village, we found that the people left behind were basically middle-aged and elderly people, who were guarding their land alone. In such a village, there were many aunts like Xinghua. We went there three times, and at first they didn't trust us very much, but after we spent a certain amount of time with them, they thought they were very cute.The aunt was on the kang. As long as we didn’t shoot, she would chat with me. After we finished shooting, she also sent us a message asking us when we would come again, ‘My buckwheat is about to be ripe’…” Deng Jie said that in the three years of the project, what touched her the most was that “we felt more and more that people and the grains that accompanied them were still persistent and tenacious in the barren land and harsh environment. "
Take more parts that are not related to food
In "Flavor World 4: Cereal Planet", the audience can still hear the iconic narration of Li Lihong . The story and food concept of the flavor series are also consistent. For example, at the end of the first episode "Wheat Floods", Italian square dumplings, Turkish dumplings and Chinese Mongolian lamb chop dumplings are held in the hands of the producers, highlighting the happiness brought to mankind by global food. In terms of shooting techniques, the iconic micro-photographies of the "Flavor" series, high-speed photography and even CG technology are presented one by one in "Cere Planet". The audience can see the wild growth of small wheat slurries in a humid environment, and can even see a seed magical explosion and burst. This through micro-through Photography, computer modeling and other methods, combined with special perspective shots completed by real shots and post-CG technology, will bring the audience a novel and intuitive feeling. In addition, all kinds of grains in the film are given distinctive personalized labels. Such as tough wheat, soft and gentle rice, lively and cute beans, etc., symbiotically live on the "Cere Planet", and the anthropomorphic expression further enhances the fun of the food documentary.
Chen Xiaoqing introduced that during the editing process, "Cere Planet" absorbed the feedback from the audience in the first three seasons. "Some netizens said in the third season that the time was too short and I didn't see enough, so we honestly recovered to 50 minutes; there is another saying that, "There are a little too many people's lives," so we took as many parts that are not very related to the characters and food as much as possible, and no longer showed the parts of people's lives alone. "Text/Reporter Zu Weiwei
Coordination/Liu Jianghua
