Millennium director

the next day.

On a busy street in the west city of Beijing, the crew of "Seventeen Years Old Bicycle" gathered here.

Wang Xiaoshuai's film crew is not a grassroots team. After all, he is a director who has won awards at foreign film festivals. He has been around in Europe and the United States and is quite famous!

If the crew of "Seventeen-Year-Old Bicycle" had a staff list, there would be more than thirty people including the actors!

These days, this is the size of a large crew.

However, not everyone who works on the crew will come to the scene to follow the filming of the film.

For example, the funding company Yoshimitsu Takarashima and the French capital, although they all sent producers and supervisors, these are big boss-level figures, and their names are really just names.

Just like Han Sanye, the former deputy director of Beijing Film Studio in the Mainland and now the deputy general manager of China Film Group. He also had the title of producer on the crew of "Seventeen Years Old Bicycle", but Wu Yuan never saw him This big man will be at the helm of the Chinese film industry for the next 15 years.

The people who are really busy on the set are mainly the workers who are engaged in photography, scenery, scene recording, sound recording, lighting, and props.

Plus the screenwriting, art design, costume design, editing, and soundtrack behind the scenes.

These are the real people on the crew.

"The planned shooting period for this drama is 15 days, which is plenty of time."

"If it weren't for the fact that you two leading actors are both newcomers, it would only take seven days to complete the filming."

Sitting in the director's chair, Wang Xiaoshuai stared at the set and prop layout of the "Feida Express Company" store, while chatting with Wu Yuan who was sitting next to him and curiously observing the monitor.

Movies in this era were shot very quickly. After all, they didn’t need any special effects or transitions across the country. An ordinary literary film could be shot in a week to half a month.

Some directors on Hong Kong Island can shoot a movie in three days!

After all, every extra day of shooting means extra money spent on film!

"Oh, you are really discerning. Seeing that Wu Yuan's eyes were always on the monitor in front of him, Wang Xiaoshuai pointed to the monitor with some pride and introduced: "You haven't seen it before, have you? "

"This is the latest IVS system, a high-end product. Nowadays, foreigners use this system for filming."

"In the past few years, all high-end domestic film crews have used this thing."

Wu Yuan curled his lips and did not answer.

How could he find it novel? He was just amazed to see such an ancient device!

What is the IVS system? To put it bluntly, it actually connects a beam splitter to the optical viewfinder of the film camera, then outputs a video signal, and then connects it to the director's monitor.

In this way, the director can see the scene in the camera and the actor's performance in real time.

Before this equipment was available, it was really troublesome for directors to shoot movies. At that time, the photographer was the only person who could see the picture during the shooting, and the picture could not be played back. Only the photographer could decide whether the filmed material was acceptable or not.

The director has to see the developed dailies the next day to know what effect was shot yesterday.

It wasn't until the birth of the IVS system, commonly known as the "monitor", that the director could finally see the shooting footage in real time.

However, this thing has been around for more than 20 years, and there has been little progress.

Even though Wang Xiaoshuai is using the latest model, the picture effect is not very good, and the output video signal resolution is only 480P.

It's enough to see a composition and a rough performance of the actors. No matter how detailed the light ratio, light effects, or colors are, you can't see it. You still have to wait for the samples to be developed to see the real picture effect.

However, with the development of technology now, directors can finally play back on the set at any time, and the monitor has a video recording function, which is quite convenient.

Wu Yuan remembers that it was not until 2009 that the "HD-IVS" that outputs three-channel 10-bit 1920x1080 digital signals was available. This thing was really easy to use.

In the age of digital photography, the director finally saw an almost perfectly restored picture on an on-site high-definition monitor.

And in digital photography, each lens is a separate file. Basically, you can look at it however you want, either forward or backward.

Some demanding directors can even ask editors to cut the film on location, and you can see the rough cut of a scene within half an hour of shooting.

When Wu Yuan became an executive director in his dream, he would often watch the editing on the set. The chief director would often say that he, as an executive, would have to stay up for three long nights!

Rich crews can even do on-site pre-color correction, and the director can directly see the effect of the first-level color correction on the monitor.

That is, with filters added!

At this point, directors finally no longer have to develop film, watch samples, and hold discussions after filming every day.

Wu Yuan, who has rich experience in the digital photography era, once returned to the Millennium film crew, it really made him feel unique.

Although "Seventeen-Year-Old Bicycle" was not shot smoothly, it is because this movie mainly tells a story around two separate lines of the two protagonists.

In the movie, the lines between Xiaojian and Xiaogui are parallel but intersect, and finally reach the climax and end in a "hot-blooded" teenage fight.

Therefore, when Wang Xiaoshuai was filming, he mainly shot Cui Lin and Zhou Xun as a group, and Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan as a group.

In the first few days, we mainly filmed scenes with Cui Lin and Zhou Xun.

One of the two is Xiao Jian, a courier who came to the capital from the countryside to work, and the other is Hong Qin, a rural girl who came to the city to work as a nanny for a wealthy family, but always secretly wore the owner's clothes and tried to disguise herself as a "city dweller."

Xiao Gui, played by Cui Lin, always lives in a dilapidated courtyard house, peeking through the wall at Hong Qin, who is dressed up in a "flowery" style through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the tall building next door.

The characters played by Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan are two urbanites who grew up in the capital.

Literary films are all about "imagery", "symbols" and values.

In "Seventeen-Year-Old Bicycle", the bicycle is a special symbol. Through the attitudes of Xiaojian and Xiaogui towards the bicycle, it reflects the difference between the lives of urban and rural people, and the integration of rural people into the city. difficulties, and differences between urban and rural areas.

The sixth-generation directors are just like this, as if they can't make movies if they don't take pictures of the difficult social reality, the tragic fate of small people in the big era, and satirize society and the times.

It’s not that Wu Yuan disdains or rejects this type of film, but after all, he was not born in the 1960s and 1970s. He experienced that complex and turbulent period of change and was brainwashed by a large number of European art films.

Especially after experiencing the dream for 20 years, his film concepts and values ​​have long been changed.

In his view of movies, he must either make commercial blockbusters that are loved by the public and can bring laughter and excitement, or he must make literary and artistic films that can touch people's hearts, arouse resonance, and explore more human nature and character stories.

He really can't make this kind of film that indulges in self-expression, explores the social system, and exports rebellious, cultural, and political concepts, and he has no interest in making it.

Anyway, there is already a generation of directors working hard in this field, so there is no need for a newcomer like him to dive into it.

Chinese movies need such a group of filmmakers to make this kind of movies, but they don’t need all filmmakers to delve into this field!

He should open up new paths, new styles, and new types for Chinese films!

Therefore, during the period when he joined the crew, although Wu Yuan had been following Wang Xiaoshuai, he eagerly learned the operating model and knowledge of film crews of this era.

However, the various film concepts and artistic ideas that he constantly instilled in Wang Xiaoshuai all came out of the left ear and out of the right ear, and he did not take them to heart at all.

Every night at the movie watching party, Wu Yuan mostly just sat quietly and listened to the heated arguments between the director and screenwriters, rarely expressing his opinions aloud.

His attitude made Wang Xiaoshuai feel that this boy was a talent who knew how to listen more, watch more and talk less!

Just when Wang Xiaoshuai's favorability for Wu Yuan was getting higher and higher, and he was about to succeed in his self-defeat, Cui Lin and Zhou Xun's scenes were almost finished filming, leaving only the rival scenes involving Wu Yuan that had not yet been filmed.

This also means that the filming of Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan's scenes will begin.

Compared to Cui Lin and Zhou Xun, the content that Wu Yuan and his team are going to shoot is more of a youth love story, that is, the ambiguous first love of two high school students.

Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan also got their shooting schedule.

However, when Wu Yuan saw the specific arrangements for the first scene, he immediately approached Wang Xiaoshuai.

"Brother, my first scene with Sister Yuanyuan is going to be a kissing scene?!"

Wu Yuan had heard before that many directors who make literary films like to shoot passionate scenes, emotional sublimation scenes, and kiss scenes first. The reason is that it can help the actors get into the scene faster and let the actors find the feeling faster.

He just didn't expect that this kind of thing would happen to him one day.

Pointing to the script in his hand - "Houhai, Xiaoshulin...", Wu Yuan was speechless.

"This is the most difficult scene between you two. Once you overcome this difficulty, it will become easier after that." Wang Xiaoshuai said righteously.

"Okay." Wu Yuan slapped his lips together and nodded helplessly in agreement.

Anyway, there is no French-style mouth-to-mouth kiss in this drama, the only one that can be called an intimate scene is this one.

However, after carefully reading the script, Wu Yuan frowned, a little confused, and asked: "Brother, you didn't write it clearly. Should I kiss her on the cheek in the end or not?"

No wonder Wu Yuan was confused, the script was written too vaguely, just one sentence: "Xiao Jian nervously and shyly approached Xiaoxiao's cheek, wanting to kiss her cheek, the ambiguous atmosphere of youthful first love lingered around the two of them..."

Then as soon as the scene changed, it became "Xiaogui took the opportunity to steal the bicycle..."

So is this a kiss or not?

Faced with Wu Yuan's doubts, Wang Xiaoshuai smiled slightly and slowly said two words: "Like a kiss."

"So did you kiss or not?"

"Like a kiss!"

"Did you get a real kiss?"

"It's like a kiss!"

Giving Wu Yuan a "you can figure it out yourself" look, Wang Xiaoshuai left with his hands behind his back.

"I'm so annoyed by these art film directors who love to play stream of consciousness! What nonsense are they talking about every day!" Wu Yuan looked at Wang Xiaoshuai's back and complained fiercely in his heart.