Recently, Tencent Video launched a film and television director competition reality show - "Director Please Advise".
The program team invited 16 directors to participate in one go, in addition to the well-known director Guan Jinpeng, there are also Wu Zhenyu, Han Xue, and Bao Bell, who acted and directed well, Liang Long, who transformed into a singer, Cai Kangyong, a host from Taiwan Province of China, bi Zhifei, a director who was full of negative reviews because he made the lowest score film on Douban, and newcomer directors Wu Zhongtian, Ning Yuanyuan, Wang Yichun, Wang Xuan, Degna, Chan Ning Huang, Zeng Zhi, and Wang Wenye.
Among the 16 "directors", such as Guan Jinpeng, who has won the Golden Horse, Golden Statue and other awards for best director, newcomers such as Wang Wenye, who has just graduated from school and only has graduation works on his resume, can be described as a huge span of industry experience. With such a group of directors getting together to compete on the same stage, how big can the gap between people be?
In addition to gathering 16 directors who are ready to go, the program team also invited four top producers in the industry and called on dozens of actors with superb acting skills to jointly produce film and television works. 16 directors competed for the best filming opportunities and competed for the most valuable director of the year.
At present, the program has been broadcast for 2 episodes, and 4 short films have been released, and judging from the atmosphere that is about to quarrel at the scene of the program and the reaction of the audience after the broadcast, both for the work and for the director himself, it has caused a more intense discussion.
A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets, and each viewer will have his own opinion of the work he or she sees.
In the second episode of the "Director Please Advise", the short film "Crazy Alien" directed by Second-hand Rose lead singer Liang Long met with everyone for the first time.
The short film is based on the movie "Crazy Alien" released in 2019, and is played by "Alien" by Pan Binlong, the overall champion of "I Am an Actor 3". The short film does not use the traditional theatrical presentation to tell the story, but uses alien parachutes, square dancing aunts, children sketching on the lawn, girls crying in the playground, men chanting poems alone in the theater... And so on, a few seemingly absurd fragments are spliced together, and there are almost no lines of performance, and there is almost no expression of strong emotions.
According to the program requirements, the full length of each short film is ten minutes. Although "Crazy Alien" was unanimously praised by professional film critics, it was tragically suspended by public reviews. The audience's evaluation of the short film was confused, and they did not understand what Liang Long was trying to express. On the contrary, the professional film critics on the scene praised it as "good". Provoking the audience to say that "some teachers' comments are a bit pretentious", which is equivalent to punching their faces in the face, film critics are not willing to be blamed, and then object to saying "We film critics are using our profession to guide you."
But can't the average audience tell if a film is good or bad? It is easy for a person to make a judgment about whether he likes or dislikes a thing, and this judgment is direct and true, and it is not even too late to wait for film critics to popularize it.
Of course, perhaps from the perspective of professional film practitioners, it is not excluded that the short film directed by Liang Long is really excellent, but it has not won the love of the general public, and it has not been understood by the general public, then at least it is not perfect. The artistry of the film takes time to deconstruct and analyze, but the commerciality of the film does not give the director too many trial and error opportunities.
There will never be a film in this world that everyone will like, but a film must have its own predetermined audience before shooting, and as long as these audiences like it, it can be said to be a qualified film.
Needless to say, every director "mixes" some of themselves into it when directing a work. Some directors will see the work as their own child, and some directors will see the work as another spiritual self.
Xiang Guoqiang's short film "Nezha Noisy Sea" was considered "incomplete" by several professional film critics. The short film is based on "Nezha", which tells the story of a modern chartered man's son who slapped the underworld boss in charge of demolition in order to fight unevenly, and apologized to the underworld boss for fear of retaliation.
Although "Nezha Noisy Sea" is related to Ne Jia, as the producer Fang Li commented, there is a problem in the "root" of this short film, at first the audience will mistakenly think that "Nezha's" behavior is based on love, after the director's explanation, it is understood that his behavior is based on "father-son love", but there is almost no foreshadowing about the father-son relationship.
Perhaps in the mind of director Xiang Guoqiang, this father-son relationship has been naturally established, and the short film has been clearly expressed, but the audience has not felt it. He insisted on what he wanted to stick to, and it did provoke some thinking, and from this point of view, his film is really intriguing.
Also with the theme of "Nezha", the short film "Nezha" directed by director Bao Bell unexpectedly won unanimous praise from most audiences and film critics.
The short film tells the story in two parallel lines, one years ago, about a mother who was clearly pregnant for ten months, but the fetal development level in the abdomen was only at the level of three months of normal fetus. This anomaly forced her to encounter difficulties such as forced divorce, forced abortion by her birth mother, and giving birth alone. The other is the story of "Nezha", who is in adolescence, rebellious, and untrimmed, who stands up after seeing the violence in the school, and then jumps off the building when all kinds of emotions reach the peak.
Among the four short films that have been broadcast, Bao Bell's "Na Da" story is the most complete, involving hot topics such as marriage and family, female fertility, school bullying, etc., coupled with the actor's excellent acting skills, the audience can easily enter the emotions of the characters and feel the focus of the director's expression at a very fast speed.
There are no too advanced metaphors in the short film, nor are there many fancy tricks, not only the producer can understand, but also the ordinary audience can easily understand. When it came to the judging stage, the audience and film critics did not produce the same fierce bipolar evaluations as Liang Long and Xiang Guoqiang, perhaps this is just like one live audience member said, the better the work, the less controversial it is.
In the end, Bao Bell won 89% of the public attendance and 84% of the professional attendance, and the success of this short film also allowed more audiences to see Bao Bell's talent.
People who often follow film and television news must have heard the name Bi Zhifei, and the movie he directed, "Pure Heart, Dream Showbiz", is one of the lowest rated films on Douban, and it has also been rated as the worst Chinese film in the past decade.
In the past few years, the negative reviews about director Bi Zhifei have not been broken, and he has not launched a new movie. This time, he was able to agree to participate in "Director's Advice" to surprise many people, after all, it is not difficult to think that with that bad work in front, he will definitely face countless criticisms as soon as he appears.
Surprisingly, his short film adaptation this time, "Spring in a New Town", scored a lot on the spot! However, although the results were good, when Bi Zhifei answered the questions of the on-site producers and film critics, he was more violently attacked.
Film critic Wang Xudong said that his "Spring in a New Town" is a "mesmerizing" work. Li Chengru, who has always been known for his sharp comments, is even more ruthless, directly not acknowledging that this is Bi Zhifei's work, saying that he is "depicted", only knowing it but not knowing why it is so, reading books is stupid!
After a review, Bi Zhifei was said to be crying.
Even if the criticism on the spot was louder than the praise, Bi Zhifei still obtained a good result of 76% of the public attendance, 80% of the professional attendance, and a total of 192 votes.
But he still didn't get the likes of the big four producers, and no one even wanted to work with him, and eventually suffered another bye.
In the show, Bi Zhifei said that he also wanted to be a good director, and I believe that many viewers felt that he said this from the heart. But if he doesn't come up with good works for a day to prove that he can indeed be a good director, he can't reduce these criticisms from others.
Next, there are 12 short films that will meet with you, I don't know if there will be works that more film critics and audiences like unanimously, and I sincerely hope that this show can dig out excellent directors.
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