"The Light of National Comics" "Heavenly Book Qitan" re-appeared on the big screen

Hunan Daily all-media reporter Deng Zhengke

The 4K commemorative edition of the domestic animation film "Tianshu Qitan" was released on November 5 and is unique in the November film list.

This 1983 animated feature film, produced by The Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio in China, is based on some chapters in Luo Guanzhong and Feng Menglong's magical novel The Legend of Ping You. In the past 38 years, it has accompanied generations and has become the memory of many post-80s and even post-90s generations.

Masters gathered and well-made

The story is not complicated. Yuan Gong in the Heavenly Palace stole the Book of Heaven, carved it in a stone cave, and instructed the child egg born from the swan egg into a human form to study and practice diligently and use the Book of Heaven for the benefit of the people. Later, the Heavenly Book Spell was stolen by three foxes, endangering the people. In the end, Egg Sheng and Yuan Gong together destroyed the fox demon, and Yuan Gong was captured and returned to the Heavenly Court for leaking the Heavenly Chance. The content is both witty and childlike, but also about the great righteousness of life.

Films are well made. Adhering to the principle of "Strange Fun beauty", "Heavenly Book Qitan" has a high degree of achievement in story, art, music and other aspects, and the main creators are all masters. Although 6 of the 12 creators listed on the latest movie poster have passed away, each name is a well-known figure in the history of Chinese animation.

Co-director Wang Shuchen's "Nezha Noisy Sea", almost every child has seen it, and is well-known; Qian Yunda's "The Adventures of the Dirty King" can still remind people of the classic children's song "Dirty King"; screenwriter Bao Lei is the pen pole of the animation industry, and his representative works "Golden Conch" and "Three Monks" are all classics of the times.

The art design Qin Yizhen, Ma Xuan and Huang Wei are "soul painters", and the representative works are "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "Nezha Noisy Sea", "Three Monks" and so on. Ke Ming, who is responsible for the styling design, also applies elements such as paper-cutting, door gods, and clay dolls to the film. The soundtrack Wu Yingju has composed music for "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "Mudi", "Deer Bells" and the world's first ink animation film "Little Tadpole Finds Mother". In "Tianshu Qitan", Wu Yingju integrates traditional ethnic instruments and Western instruments to innovate, setting off different characters such as fairy wind bones, naughty and funny, evil and cunning in the film.

Joining forces, this animation film not only does not lose the wind and bone of Chinese landscape painting, but also gives all living beings, landscapes and palaces considerable vitality and childlike fun. There is a famous bridge in the film, the little emperor shouted "I want to see the birds", the fox mother pulled out the fox girl's phoenix, conjured up a phoenix, and then "a hundred birds towards the phoenix" stepped on the clouds, which was breathtaking.

4K restoration, classic re-screening

38 years ago, the advent of "Heavenly Book" stunned the world. But the loss of film by time cannot be avoided. So, 4K repair technology came to the scene.

The degummed lens should be re-glued, the moldy spots on the film should be wiped clean with alcohol, and the full volume should be digitally scanned, repaired and colored by the computer, and become a high-definition animated movie that can be replayed on the big screen. In addition, the commemorative version of this re-release also retains the original dubbing and optimizes it into stereo surround sound. For the deceased voice actors Bi Ke and Shang Hua, it is a consolation. "I didn't expect it to be repaired so well, it looks like a new film." Qian Yunda, who co-directed this animated film with Wang Shuchen, is 93 years old and has a bright smile.

Qian Yunda introduced that in the 1980s, when animation technology was not yet developed, a 100-minute "Heavenly Book Qitan" had tens of thousands of drawings. The artist must first draw a pencil draft on the paper, draw it and then give it to the tracing line, draw the picture content on the Sai Luo (synthetic plastic) piece, and then color it by the coloring workshop according to the number, and then paste the Sai Luo piece and the background painted on the silk cloth together, shoot it with a camera, and finally become a dynamic video.

Although "Heavenly Book" is an animated film, its educational significance does not extend beyond young children. "When I grew up, I saw the last part where the master was captured, and I burst into tears. When I was a child, I would only watch the hilarity, and I understood that I was already middle-aged. As a netizen said, the story of "Tianshu Qitan" seems simple, but it implies the truth of life and the responsibility of people, which is worth people's careful tasting at different ages

[Editor-in-charge: Yao Xinyue]

[Source: Hunan Daily· New Hunan Client]