's "climbing the mountain" meme made "'s Secret Corner " popular, and also made Qin Hao the brother who overcomes all obstacles. Nowadays, many people will be shuddered when they hear this very "bare" invitation.
However, when I saw the two young ladies in "The Man Who Counts Movies" climbing the mountain with a bottle of white wine to the monument of Hu Jinquan , I couldn't help but burst into tears. At that moment, they became " Heroes ".
These two young ladies are digital scanners at the Taiwan Film Archives. At that time, Hu Jinquan's masterpiece of martial arts "Empty Mountain Spirit Rain".
"The Man Who Counts Movies" is a relatively short documentary , which records the daily life of staff in various positions in the film museum. There is no special editing and narrative technique, just like the daily life of these staff members.
Daily work also includes the entire process of film repair work: from collecting/collecting film, sorting/saving film, then repairing film, digital scanning, and picture repair. At the same time, color adjustment and sound modification, and then output after the sound and picture synthesis is performed.
And the reason why they and they are called "people who count movies" is because in the eyes of these staff, the unit of the movie is not a scene, a movie, nor a plot or a shot, but a "one pattern". One mat-repair, one mat-scan, one mat-show.
This documentary selects several representative events, such as the retired veterans looking for the "National Anthem" in their memory, the restoration of "Empty Mountain Spiritual Rain" directed by Hu Jinquan, and Lian Yanshi commissioned the restoration of "Twenty-Four Filial Piety of Ding Lan", and the introduction of daily work content of collection, preservation and restoration is interspersed in the middle.
1873 films can be stored for more than a hundred years under certain conditions, but often damage occurs, such as dirty spots, scratches, noise, mold spots, shaking, and flickering. So when the film orderer Qiu Jiyan got the film, his main job was to check and confirm the film damage, then perform physical repairs, and then clean. After the work of
is completed, it will be handed over to digital scanner Pan Xiuling. If nothing unexpected happens, you can scan three grids of film in one second, and a 90-minute 2K movie can be completed in three days.
But any mistakes are found in this, such as cracks in the physical repair location, and even some hairs are still there during cleaning, the scanning needs to be restarted.
This is just a process from film to digital. The most difficult thing is to repair it based on digital images, which is much more difficult than PS.
"Taking a photo for three minutes, editing a photo for three hours" selfies are completely incomparable in the repair of the movie. According to Pan Xiuling, during the repair of "Empty Mountain Spiritual Rain", the two staff members repaired it for up to 10 minutes per month, and this 120-minute movie takes at least a full year.
This is just one of the events, and the documentary also shows several restored works, such as "Love and Obligation" directed by Bu Wancang in 1931 and "Love and Obligation" starring Ruan Lingyu , "Honey's Secret" directed by Yue Feng in 1960, "The Story and Alley" directed by Li Xing in 1963, "The Streets and Alleys" directed by Li Xing in 1977, "I Am a Cloud" starring Lin Brigitte, etc.
When we see these works from fifty years ago or even nearly a hundred years ago have been renovated or restored to their original appearance, we may greet the creators who have carved time, but these craftsmen and knights who have repaired time are also worth our raising.
When displaying the inventory videos in the warehouse, there were several film titles that made me full of curiosity, such as " Guanyin and the Sea Dragon King ", "Sun Wukong vs. Flying Man Kingdom", etc., looking at the slogans on the poster "Colorful wide-screen costume magical monsters big stunt movies" and "Leimen Film Company magical super movies", I can't help but think of the costumes, magical and magical works in the online movie market today.
Bacon said that "reading history makes people wise". As a film practitioner, it will be of great benefit to understand the history of movies more. Perhaps you can know the way to come, and you can also know the way to go.
For example, this movie is known as "the first special-stunt monster disaster movie ever spent tens of millions of yuan in Chinese film industry" - "God of War". Another well-known name is " Guan Gong vs. Alien ".
Many people know that this work is because of Peng Haoxiang . He spent a lot of money to buy the only remaining copy in the world, and then spent more than one million yuan to repair the work in Thailand. Because this is a work that inspired him when he was a child.
director Chen Hongmin 1982 also participated in the editing of a movie called " Man Snake War ". I wonder if " Big Snake " directed by Lin Zhenzhao in 2018 was inspired by this movie.
The latter was released on Youku as an online movie, with a box office share of over 50 million in three months, becoming a benchmark work.
Speaking of this, a question arises, which kind of film of the film has been saved and repaired? Is it like the film "Twenty-Four Filial Piety of Ding Lan" commissioned by director Lian Yanshi in the documentary? He is to let future generations know that he is not just an old man, but also a director.
What about other videos? Could it be that only Peng Haoxiang, who has changed from a movie fan to a director, repaired "Guan Gong vs. Aliens" at his own expense? This question was also raised in "The Man Who Counts Movies".
sound repairer Cai Mengjun said in the film: doesn’t want to put too much feelings for the films here. It’s not that I don’t like them, but that when you think one movie is more important than another, it is unfair to other movies. It (film) leaves the film library (digitalization) is the only time it shows. What’s a bit sad is that every time you enter the film library, you will know that the pile of film in front of you is almost dead, and the only thing you can do now is how we keep its information before it dies.
This confusion I also heard when reading "History of Film: Theory and Practice":
The staff of the Film Archives therefore had to decide which film history evidence should be preserved and which will be abandoned forever through the meager allocation of funds for saving.
Should priority be given to those nitric acid tablets that are most at risk of spoilage?
Should
save videos of directors who have established their status, or should we try to fix works of directors who have been ignored by comments?
Can film historians benefit from the preservation of so-called "best" films of a certain period?
Should the staff of the archive rescue representative samples?
Obviously, every decision means some videos are going to be buried. In this way, some important works that may become historical evidence will be lost without any change.
There is a documentary director in Taiwan Yang Lizhou once made a documentary "That, Now" for the 50th anniversary of the Golden Horse Awards, integrating some movies from the past 50 years as subjects. In his eyes, "movies are not simply existences, but closely related to history, society, politics, economic contexts, and even pop music, popular clothing or food culture."
even so-called bad movies that were not valued or had no praise at that time became evidence or archives through the historical perspective.
Nowadays, many people are rewriting or rereading movie history. I believe that some of our books cannot fully cover the journey of movies.
For example, Chen Kaige's representative work "King of Children" was sold only three copies at that time and became famous in the history of film. How many viewers know about the box office champions of "Greater Shanghai 1937" and "Ranker Black Butterfly" in those years?
At this point, I thought of a passage quoted by Woolf in "Ordinary Readers", "It is a pleasure for me to be able to coincide with the opinions of ordinary readers; because, when deciding the right to honor of poetry, although elegant sensitivity and academic dogma also play a role, it should generally be based on the common sense of ordinary readers who are not tainted by literary prejudice."
ends with this and encourages you.
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