In the Volunteer Army Memorial Hall in Shanghai, Qi Yukun held his camera, pointed at a framed note on the table, and gently pressed the shutter button.
This is when cleaning the battlefield after the Battle of Changjin Lake, it was discovered that all 125 soldiers of a certain company had frozen to death. A note was found in the pocket of a soldier named Song Amao from the Demon City. This was his
’s final words.
It was an ordinary piece of paper with a few lines of crooked traditional Chinese characters written on it. Each character was of different sizes, probably similar to a child who had just learned to write.
However, no matter how ugly those words were, no one was laughing at them, I just felt heavy in my heart.
"I love my family and my motherland, and I love my honor even more. I am a glorious volunteer soldier.
Ice and snow! I will never give in to you, even if I freeze to death, I will stand proudly on my battlefield!"
After taking two photos, Li Qian held the note in both hands and returned it to the deputy director of the memorial hall.
"Thank you to the audience. Our crew may need to borrow it when filming."
"No problem, Director Li can contact us at any time if he needs to. The purpose of the memorial hall is not only to commemorate the martyrs, but also to let the masses remember that period of history."
The curator carefully took the note, handed it to the assistant next to him, put it back to the original place of the display, and asked Li Qian enthusiastically, "Director Li, this is the only memorial hall to resist the Japanese aggression and aid Korea in Shanghai.
There are many things worth taking pictures of, how about I take you to see them again?"
Li Qiangang wanted to refuse, but when he saw the eager and expectant expression on the curator's face, he smiled and nodded, "Then I'll trouble you, curator."
"Hey! No trouble, no trouble."
The curator nodded happily, walked in front, and took Li Qian and the others around the memorial hall.
In the memorial hall, the curator was very attentive and asked Li Qian to take more pictures. Before leaving, he repeatedly asked Li Qian to show something in the movie.
...
In the past month, Li Qian took Qi Yukun and Su Lun to many places, including memorial halls, martyrs' cemeteries, military regions, the hometowns of veterans who experienced the battles of Changjin Lake and Songgu Peak, and the descendants of those war reporters.
Xinhua News Agency.
I learned about the details of the two battles, various terrain maps, enemy and friendly equipment, number of people, tactical comparisons, etc.
I also stopped by other places along the way and met Director Yang Jie and Teacher Six. Director Yang Jie was not very willing to recreate the filming process of "Journey to the West", but Teacher Six was very happy and expressed his willingness to cooperate.
Other historical events that were previously determined have basically all passed this month.
Teacher Li Xuejian is willing to reprise his speech in the Gobi Desert of "Bring out mushroom bombs and stand up straight" in "The World" without giving it much thought.
Basically, the historical events involved can be determined. The next step is to see how to connect the love stories between the male and female protagonists.
After the preliminary preparations were completed, Li Qian planned to return to the capital.
However, before that, Li Qian also went to the crew of "The Pursuit of Happiness" to see what was going on in the theater.
When we arrived, they were filming a scene where the male protagonist and his son were sleeping in the subway restroom.
The toilet is built in the studio. If you actually go to the toilet to shoot, it will take a lot of time to run back and forth. It is just a toilet anyway, and the setting is no different from a real toilet.
"Ka! Rest for a quarter of an hour."
Just when this section was not passed, Wen Muye saw Li Qian and others coming, and also shouted to stop and let the script rest for a while.
He came from behind the monitor and said hello, "Boss, Lao Qi, Su Lun, why are you here?"
Li Qian patted Wen Muye's arm and said with a smile, "I'm looking for some information at the Demon City Volunteer Army Memorial Hall and stopped by to take a look. How is everything going well?"
"It's almost there. It should be finished in half a month." Wen Muye said with some excitement. After one year, his debut feature film is finally about to be completed.
"Then I will leave you the summer schedule in August. National Day, Double Eleven, Lunar New Year, and Spring Festival are all arranged." Li Qian nodded.
"No problem!" Wen Muye agreed confidently. For the first movie, he was more nervous than anyone else, so he had naturally studied the schedule.
At the beginning of August, there were no rivals. Huang Xiaoming and his wife worked on "A Romantic Affair", Fan Binbin's comedy romance "One Night Surprise", the action movie "Fighting", that is, at the end of the month there will be a Hollywood blockbuster "Jura"
Memorial Park", but it was more than half a month later.
"Take your time, don't rush to work, there is still time, don't rush." Li Qian warned.
"I understand." Wen Muye said.
"Let me tell you, Lao Wen, your story about sleeping in the subway station toilet is a bit too far-fetched. KFC is open 24 hours a day, so you can sleep inside. If that doesn't work, you can go to a bank ATM." Qi Yukun said to the side.
He reminded me of the scene he was filming.
Su Lun rolled his eyes, "I told you, Lao Qi, you're being a bit arrogant. You can sleep in KFC, ATMs, and toilets. The choice of where to go is just a matter of the characters in the movie. It's not like they can't sleep."
Qi Yukun explained, "That's not what I meant. After all, there is a lot of traffic on the subway at night, especially on popular lines. There must be people going to the toilet, so the choice of characters does not seem so reasonable."
"I know."
Wen Muye laughed and said, "I have also thought about this problem, so later I added another plot. The male protagonist and his children were at a bank ATM. As a result, they encountered someone coming in to withdraw money three times in a row.
The person was so frightened that he turned to the subway bathroom.
He thought about many places to spend the night, but encountered problems in all of them. The subway restroom was a last resort and one of the few last options. Therefore, even when someone knocked on the door or even kicked the door, he did not withdraw money from the bank.
Leave just like you did at the airport.
Instead, he held the bathroom door firmly with his feet, abandoning his dignity to maintain the last place that could shelter his father and son from the wind and rain, because he really had no place to go."
"Well, that makes more sense." Qi Yukun nodded, agreeing with Wen Muye's idea.
Li Qian shook his head, "There is nothing unreasonable about this. It is essentially an inspirational chicken soup movie. The most important thing is to make inspirational, chicken soup. The other details are to serve these two places.
No movie can be without flaws."
The word "reasonable" can be seen in the evaluation of many movies and TV series, but whether it is reasonable or not mainly depends on how well the movie is shot.
Once the movie is finished, the audience will ignore some unreasonable aspects, and only a few viewers who care about the details will discuss it.
If a movie is not made well, no matter how reasonable the plot is, it will be scolded.
Moreover, there is no standard for reasonableness. If we compare it to reality... reality itself is very absurd. Many things are unreasonable in normal people's perception, but they still happen.
After chatting for a while, Wen Muye continued shooting.
This scene is basically the most tearful scene in the movie.
When the filming officially started, the bathroom floor was covered with toilet paper. Deng Chao locked the door and sat near the door, with his five-year-old son sleeping in his arms.
Not long after, someone seemed to push the door outside. After it couldn't be pushed open, there were rapid knocks on the door.
The restroom was closed when he had to go to the restroom, which showed how he was feeling. Whenever these rough knocking sounds were heard, Deng Chao would hug his son tightly, fearing that he would be awakened.
At the same time, he carefully stretched out his feet to hold the door, and fearfully held his son in his arms who seemed to have woken up. He, who was always strong, silently shed a tear.
But soon, the tears disappeared in his clothes. At this time, he hugged his son tighter. As the knocking on the door became more intense and turned into slapping, Deng Chao tightly covered his son's chest.
He leaned against the wall with tears streaming down his face, his face shaking slightly in pain.
A silent scene, only the violent knocking sounds outside.
There was even louder knocking on the door at night. Even with his father's arms, the son couldn't fall asleep completely, but he didn't complain about anything.
In Deng Chao's arms, he seemed to be sleeping soundly. With his father who loved him, no matter where he was, he was home. When his father hugged him tightly, those noisy knocks on the door seemed to be
"Happiness" is knocking on the door.
...
After staying on the crew for a while, Li Qian flew back to the capital, asking Qi Yukun and Su Lun to go back and rest for two days. Li Qian himself also had to rest for two days. Then he began to organize the information collected during this period and then connected it together.
Start writing the script.
However, before that, Li Qian had to go see Han Sanping.
Strangely enough, in the past year or two, Han Sanping had to look for him whenever there was any slight disturbance.
Li Qian also knew why he was looking for him. It was just that several of his trips during this period were exposed, which led to speculation on the Internet that he was going to make a war movie about resisting the United States and aiding Korea.
For such a small matter, he still had to go out specially. Li Qian sat down on the sofa angrily and said, "Director Han, what orders do you have for me during this busy schedule?"
Han Sanping didn't pay attention to Li Qian's tone, and he was familiar with Li Qian's work style, so he asked directly, "Do you want to make a film about resisting the United States and aiding Korea?"
"No, didn't I talk about romance movies before?" Li Qian shrugged.
"Is that a war romance movie?"
"No, it's just a simple romance film."
Han Sanping stared at Li Qian and said, "Don't lie to me." "Then what are you doing collecting information about the Beibang War this month?"
"Director Han, last month, I told you to tell you the general content of the new film, but you didn't want to hear it, and now you doubt me." Li Qian smiled bitterly, almost sighing as if you were slandering Zhongliang.
Already.
Han Sanping ignored Li Qian's performance and said seriously, "This is no joke. Please tell me the general content."
Well, what else could be done? Li Qian told Han Sanping the general plot.
"That's it?" Han Sanping was stunned. He was also a director, so he could naturally tell the brilliance of Li Qian's idea. It was a story of New China's history mixed with unparalleled love.
However, I didn't expect that Li Qian had been working hard for a month, with great fanfare, just for the scene that took less than ten minutes in total.
"That's it. It's just two local battles. Although there aren't many scenes, I still have to be more careful." Li Qian said.
"Hey...you should have told me earlier." Han Sanping shook his head.
"...."
Li Qian was speechless. I told you so long ago that you didn't listen!
"That's no problem, but we still need to pay attention to one thing. The leadership has just changed this year. The superiors still hope to live in peace with Mi Lijian. Don't overly smear or belittle Mi Lijian's army." Han Sanping warned.
"understand."
Li Qian feels very boring. Sometimes it is clear that the leaders don't care about such things at all. It's just a movie. It doesn't blow up the White House, but can it affect the peace between the two countries?
It's the people below who think about nothing all day long and interfere when they are young.
After dealing with Han Sanping casually, Li Qian went home to rest and recharge his batteries to prepare the script.
.......
During this period, although the film market has been a bit dull, there are still many new films being released.
The popular "Ip Man: The Final Battle" stars Huang Qiusheng as the elderly Ip Man.
This film is boring and not liked by ordinary viewers. However, among some more literary and artistic audience groups, it has been well received and considered to be much better than the single version of Donnie Yen and Ip Man.
This is a real-life Ip Man, a flesh-and-blood Ip Man, with his ordinary life, the helplessness of a personal hero under the general situation, and the loneliness of the master.
Donnie Yen is the commercial version of Ip Man, Tony Leung is the literary version of Ip Man, and this is the biographical version of Ip Man.
However, the filming was so bland and completely abandoned the audience. As a result, the title of the film was called "The Ultimate Battle."
The typical one is unwilling to cater to the audience and wants to make money.
How can there be such a good thing in the world? It’s a beautiful thought!
The market will teach them how to behave, with 7 million in the first week, 2 million in the second week, and 500,000 in the third week.
Then Johnnie To's "Drug War" was released. His film style has always been unpopular with domestic audiences. It had a good reputation but failed to earn box office.
But this time the box office was good and the box office exceeded 100 million.
The best portrayal is the villain Koo Tim Lok, who is greedy for life and afraid of death, has no morals, but is calm and restrained, and always makes the most correct decisions.
The overall style is rough, violent, and fierce, and the ending is rare in that the protagonist is almost dead, in front of a group of elementary school students.
Coupled with the metaphor of the relationship between the Mainland and Hong Kong interpreted by many people, it can be regarded as a rare Mainland police and gangster film.
Immediately afterwards, the youth film "To Our Fading Youth" directed by Zhao Wei was released at the end of April and swept the mainland film market.
The biggest actor in this film is only Han Geng. All the actors are famous together and Zhao Weigao, who is not a director for the first time, sold 150 million in 3 days and nearly 500 million in 10 days. The total box office exceeded 700 million, making it into the top 10 movies.
Among the top five Chinese-language films in history!
The actor-turned-director's debut film, a niche youth-themed film, sold 700 million in sales. Although it was beaten by the 750 million "Iron Man 3" released at the same time, it still shocked the entire film industry.
Then in June, Guo Jinming, also a new director, who also switched from a writer to a director, made his debut film "Tiny Times", which was also a youth romance film, and once again became a box office hit.
This opening box office far exceeds even "To Youth" and is not much worse than "Journey to the West: Conquer the Demons".
Two new directors who came from different industries, two niche films, sold a large number of movies with famous directors, superstars, and big investment, which is a figure that cannot be achieved.
There are no famous directors, no superstars, no big investments, niche categories, two such subversive films, and high box office that exceeded everyone's expectations, making the entire film industry lose its voice.