Chapter 484: A Science Fiction Film with Chinese Characteristics
"Why has the industry changed so much?"
In a club in the capital, Li Qian, Wu Jing, Xu Zheng, Ning Hao, Wen Muye, Qi Yukun, and Su Lun gathered together to greet Guo Fan.
After having a good meal, Guo Fan was very emotional about today's film industry.
"I almost don't recognize him anymore. It's only been more than two years. If the movie "Boss" hadn't been released, I almost thought I had stayed abroad for five or six years."
He felt sentimental about Spring and Autumn just after eating and drinking, which made the others a little strange. Qi Yukun asked puzzledly, "Why has it changed? After staying in Mi Lijian for two years, you have become stupid?"
"The film industry has become a bit unfamiliar to me. What kind of movies are there now?" Guo Fan said.
"What's wrong with movies now?" Everyone was even more surprised.
Li Qian smiled, "Lao Guo is right. The past two years are a special year for the film industry. Although the top box office has not changed much, the entire industry has undergone earth-shaking changes.
Especially this year, films such as "Where Are We Going, Dad", "See You Again", "Tiny Times 3", "That Year in a Hurry", "Omen", "Beijing Love Story" and more than 400 million box office, these mainland movies
The backbone of the market, except for "Wolf Warrior" and "Beijing No. 81", are almost the same.
There are remakes of TV series and novels, and "Journey to the West: Havoc in Heaven", another movie that broke $1 billion, was also a remake, and it was surprisingly bad.
The emergence of these "new forces", coupled with the continuous attacks of Wu Yusen and Jiang Wen, especially Jiang Wen, who has high hopes from the industry and the audience, this time is beyond everyone's expectations. After all, the older generation
Almost all the great directors were wiped out.
The industry seems to have suddenly changed, and what has changed is these remakes, adaptations, and films directed by cross-industry directors, accounting for 80% of the backbone of the market."
this......
Hearing what Li Qian said, everyone was a little stunned.
They are in China and watch the changes in the industry every day, but they don't think anything about it.
It's like a child. If you look at him every day, you won't notice any obvious changes. But if you only see him every two years, when you see him again, you will sigh that this child has grown up too fast.
After thinking about it carefully, it seems that this is really the case. The industry has changed too much, especially the top ten domestic films at the annual box office. Most of them are remakes.
And all the familiar directors in the past have disappeared, and even the big-name actors appear less and less frequently in the top ten box office movies.
"We can't do what Director Li does and release one movie a year." Xu Zheng smiled bitterly.
This year, apart from Wu Jing, none of their films have been released.
The script for the sequel to "Embarrassed" has not been released yet, "Detective Chinatown" will be released during the Spring Festival, and I don't know if "Ghost Blowing the Lamp" will be released next summer vacation. The script for the sequel to "The Truman Show" by Stephen Chow has not been released yet.
It’s finished and hasn’t been done in post-production yet.
It takes two to three years or three or four years to make a movie. This is the normal frequency. Even this is considered fast. After all, you need a suitable script. If you don't have it, you can create it yourself. It takes time to get inspiration.
Li Qian shook his head, "It's not just that you didn't have a movie released, maybe you didn't realize it, it's that the creative team and the audience have changed.
There are more and more audiences, better economic conditions, and long-standing movie-watching habits. Movie-watching is just an ordinary entertainment activity. As long as there is a little entertainment, the audience is willing to spend money to go to the cinema. There is no high level of audience
Require.
Seeing that money is so easy to make, driven by profit, more and more unprofessional directors get involved. In order to make money, they must cater to the public's taste and shoot whatever the audience likes to see.
It's like a youth movie, it's a very simple thing, find a girl who feels like first love, find a boy who is a bit naughty, and then have a secret love, an open love, a love triangle, skipping classes, and fight arrangements, it's best to have some nostalgia.
For example, ice skating rinks and the like are euphemistically called youth, and both young and older audiences accept this trick.
After discovering that it is so easy for others to make money, more and more people will follow suit. Those films that have already been approved, such as the mini-series "Pancake Man" are being produced by Da Peng.
The sequels of "Slaying the Wolf" and "Omen Style" have been filmed,
Popular TV series such as "Why Are the Shengxiao Silent", "Let's Get Married" and "Up to the Sky" have been made into movie versions.
"Unexpectedly", a short play that is very popular on the Internet, has also been made into a movie, and it is about Journey to the West.
Even the variety show "Where Are We Going, Dad" is getting a sequel.
Let alone youth films, there will be a lot of them released next year. There will definitely be good films among these films, but 80% of them will be bad films, and they will be bad films that can make money.
If you just follow the trend and make a bad movie and you can make money, why bother to put in the effort to be original and make a good movie? After all, most of them are just for making money and there is no ideal."
Li Qian's words made everyone who was supposed to happily greet Guo Fan look a little serious.
Although they also want to make money, they basically have ideals.
Needless to say, Guo Fan gave up his good law major as soon as he graduated and went to do odd jobs in art for other people's production crews.
Qi Yukun was dedicated to making his own films that reflected realistic themes. He went to coal mines and rural areas to find materials and stayed there for more than a year. He never touched a commercial film again.
Su Lun dropped out of a key university in his freshman year in order to run errands for the crew. He re-took the Chinese Opera exam in Beidiao a few years ago. After filming "Cohabitation in Time and Space" and "Warm and Bright", he has been giving himself a vacation and rejected countless offers.
An invitation to a romance film.
The sequel to Wu Jing's "Wolf Warrior" will feature a Chinese superhero, with a more awesome protagonist than the first one, but some people on the Internet can't stand it.
Wen Muye was also idle. Without a good script, other film companies couldn't hire him no matter how high they offered him.
Ning Hao's family was quite wealthy. His father was a worker who gave up his job and went into business. He had a rich family fortune, was rich and loved to play. At that time, all the bar and roller skating rink owners in Taiyuan knew him.
When he was 20 years old, his father gave him 400,000 yuan and wanted him to open a store and start a business in Taiyuan, but Ning Hao came to the capital with only 2,000 yuan to pursue his dream.
He originally wanted to be a painter. He had studied painting for ten years, but when he took the Academy of Fine Arts exam, he was found to be weak in physical examination.
In desperation, I accompanied my friend to take the exam at Beijing Normal University, but I passed the exam myself. Then I made a living by filming MTV. It was just to make money, which was not ideal.
However, after his graduation film "Thursday, Wednesday" won the award, he began to feel that he could be a director, and this became a new ideal.
If he is not good as a director, he will go back and inherit his father's family property.
In the beginning, he was a director of literary films. The reason why he abandoned literary films was because when he was traveling around the world with these literary works at major film festivals, he became suspicious of the dozen blond foreigners sitting in the audience.
.
Do these people really understand Chinese art films, do they really understand what the director wants to express, and is it valuable to make their own films for these people to watch? That’s why they chose to make commercial films that most audiences can watch.
Xu Zheng also has ideals. Sometimes he feels that he is a literary young man. Sometimes he suspects that he is a literary youth pretending to follow the crowd. But sometimes he suspects that his suspicion is wrong. In fact, he is a literary young man.
The script of the sequel to "囧囧" has a literary flavor. Even the protagonist was an artistic young man when he was young. This can also be said to be his ideal. The original purpose of shooting what he wants to shoot is not just for money.
They are all directors with ideals, although not all of them are so high-minded, have no dedication to the industry, throw their lives and blood, and want to make money, but at least they sincerely make movies and treat them as a career, not a tool to make money.
At least that's it for now!
Directors who are serious about being a movie do not want to see the industry slowly turn into what Li Qian said, with top-grossing movies constantly breaking through the lower limit. After all, there are two directions.
However, more and more people come to "pick up money", and they are helpless.
"But what can we really do? We can't stop those people who come to make money." Ning Hao said.
"Boss, when "Tiny Times" was released last year, you also publicly said that no matter what movie you make, it must be of good quality, but no one listened, so you have to do whatever you want." Qi Yukun said with emotion.
"Isn't that right? People who just want to make money don't care so much." Xu Zheng continued, "As long as it tastes the sweetness, capital can do anything. The previous movie "Where Are We Going, Dad" was a box office hit, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang
Satellite TV is not only releasing a sequel, but is also preparing to release a movie called "Running Man", which has no bottom line at all."
Wen Muye pushed up his glasses and said seriously, "If you are not in the film industry, of course there will be no bottom line. These capitals don't care about the life or death of the industry."
After speaking, he looked at Li Qian and said, "Boss, what do you think?"
Others also looked at Li Qian.
Li Qian shook his head, "There is no way. The industry is now too big and entertainment is becoming more and more intense. It is impossible for us to control its direction.
However, the only thing we can do is, if you have the ability to make money standing up, don't bend down and kneel on the ground shamelessly.
Make some good movies so that the audience can still have good movies to watch, so that they will not be slowly lowered by the bad movies. As long as there are good movies to compare, the audience can at least distinguish the good from the bad."
Ning Hao sighed, "I kind of agree with what Ma Xiaogang said. There are more and more bad movies in China, which is caused by the audience's lower appreciation level."
"That makes sense."
"You can't say that, the audience is also a victim." Li Qian shook his head and disagreed with this idea of blaming the audience.
"In the final analysis, there are too many bad movies. If you watch too many bad movies, your acceptance will gradually decrease, and your appreciation level will be lowered by the bad movies. So we should make more good movies. If you watch more good movies, your taste will naturally decrease."
I picked it up, I can’t watch the bad movie.”
"It's not that simple. We won't be able to make a few movies." Xu Zheng was pessimistic. With just a few people, they might not be able to make a movie in two or three years, and they wouldn't be able to affect the entire market at all.
Li Qian smiled and said, "There are still many directors who have a bottom line. Don't be so pessimistic. Just be yourself and stick to your heart. Why don't you come and listen to Lao Guo's science fiction blockbuster. He went to Mi Li Jian for this film.
It’s been more than two years.”
I didn't continue this topic, just express my feelings occasionally. It would be pointless to talk too much.
They are just directors, at most like Guo Fan, and there are some in the second place who are focused on revitalizing domestic science fiction movies.
To end this somewhat heavy topic, let’s talk about Guo Fan’s masterpiece with great interest.
"Lao Guo, I heard from Director Li that you went to Hollywood to study to make real hard science fiction. What kind of subject is it?"
"I plan to adapt Liu's novel "The Wandering Earth". I thought about it before I went to Hollywood. In the past two years, in addition to studying on the crew and special effects company, I have also been conceiving scripts and drawing some concept drawings."
When talking about the film he had carefully prepared, Guo Fan was also very excited. He took out a thick stack of manuscript paper from his bag and gave some to each person.
"Take a look."
Everyone took over concept drawings of the movie from Guo Fan's hand, including suspended excavators, heavy-duty off-road carriers, huge planetary engines, abandoned Beijing International Trade Center frozen ice sculptures, missile launchers and sci-fi-like driving
cabin......
The concept drawing full of heavy industrial aesthetic style gave everyone a huge impact. Ning Hao couldn't help but sigh after taking two glances, "This is a science fiction movie!"
There is no serious science fiction in China, and movies like "Roboman" are not, and "Moon" is not a science fiction blockbuster. Everyone is a young director, and there is no one who doesn't like science fiction.
After a long time, I put down the manuscript and admired Guo Fan endlessly.
"I feel like this is a bit different from the style of Hollywood science fiction films, but this feeling has a stronger impact than many science fiction films." Wu Jing asked.
Li Qian was flipping through the script of "The Wandering Earth" and said, "This is the aesthetic style of Sulian Heavy Industries."
Wu Jing suddenly realized that it looked different from Hollywood science fiction films, and asked, "Sulian Heavy Industry Aesthetics? Didn't you go to Hollywood to study it? Why not use the Hollywood style?"
"Because I want to find the future path of Chinese science fiction films, I decided after thinking about it for a long time." Guo Fan explained.
"The future path of Chinese science fiction films?"
Such a heavy sentence made everyone couldn't help but think carefully. Guo Fan not only wanted to be a pioneer in Chinese science fiction, but also wanted to carve out his own path for Chinese science fiction.
Guo Fan went on to explain his thoughts, "If I want to find a suitable aesthetic, the only thing I can think of is things from Sulian, Sulian's heavy industry. This is related to us. We are very interested in this thing."
It is cognizant and feels familiar.
This is also the unity of Bolshevik aesthetics. At the beginning of the last century, Sulian wanted to create a new aesthetics to resist the harassing influence from the bourgeoisie and prevent it from corroding socialist art.
Among all the arts, architecture is the only lasting, huge, symbol displayed in public places. It can be said that architecture is the public expression of art.
After Stalin came to power in the late 1920s, architecture was increasingly called upon to reinforce Soviet rhetoric and collective identity across the board, with monuments, industrial motifs, and a close fusion of classicism and modernism becoming Soviet architecture
The core of the project.
These styles have been retained in China as the Soviet Union assisted in the construction of hundreds of construction projects in my country, and are still used in major cities today, and most of them are collective housing and new workers' villages.
In "The Wandering Earth", facing the extreme environment and the wandering plan that lasts for 100 generations, humans all over the world must unite. The underground cities are like new worker villages that cover an extremely large area and where tens of thousands of people live together.
We eat together, live together, go to school together, and celebrate the New Year together, forming a community of destiny. This also coincides with the selection of Sulian aesthetics as the basic setting.
Many places, including the loading truck, are in Soviet style. This planetary engine was also designed by me based on the abandoned Bulgarian Public Industry Headquarters..."
Seeing Guo Fan excitedly describing his thoughts and the profound meaning in it, I had just lamented the sci-fi feel of the concept map before, but after listening to his thoughts, I realized that there is so much profound meaning in it.