Friday's words: "Hummingbird Project" is a commercial genre film with entrepreneurial inspirational themes, with a certain routine, the only difference is that it is anti-inspirational, so the play has the theme of "fast and slow confrontation". Fast is relative to entrepreneurship, and slow is relative to life. Obviously, the director is making a fuss about the contradiction between these two things. This is a clichéd theme setting, not worth mentioning. The problem is that the filmmaking methods that achieve this goal are worth learning from (if you analyze it carefully, you will find that almost all film language designs are making articles around the theme). This is actually the advantage of Western commercial genre films, if our screenwriters and directors do not realize this, it is bound to not even copy! This article will take a look at how the director uses those means to attract the audience into the theme confrontation.
(Note: 1, this article involves spoilers, reading before watching the film will seriously affect your viewing fun; 2, "Hummingbird Project" is being released in theaters nationwide;)
First, the opening top and head-up view open the prelude to the "fast and slow confrontation"
The film begins three minutes with a panoramic overhead shot, with the camera moving sideways and several cars traversing the picture like spots under the highway.
Immediately after, the camera shakes, and two people sitting on a horizontal chair appear in the picture, which is the entrepreneur and the investor talking about the cooperation project.
From a plot point of view, this is an ordinary entrepreneurial inspirational title. However, the director cleverly shows it in a visual contrasting way, which not only explains the plot, but also creates a dramatic tension in the theme. Where the tension is, let's look further:
"Panoramic overhead photograph of the motorcade driving on the highway" reflects the sense of space and speed, which belongs to the fast line of entrepreneurship, and "two bench talk" reflects the thinking of life, the slow line of entrepreneurial motivation and character. Obviously, from a visual point of view alone, the two pictures are full of contrasts, and it can be said that the director has opened the prelude to the "fast and slow confrontation" in the first three minutes, but this prologue is pure visual cinematization.
Unsurprisingly, the entire film has since revolved around confrontation scenes. Almost all the fixed shots are talking about life, about the motivation of entrepreneurship, and are refuting the urgency of entrepreneurship (that is, slow is giving quick repercussions).
Second, the blindfold played by professional terms, props, and numbers
To construct a conflict between the positive and negative sides, we must first clearly explain what the positive and negative characters do (that is, the entrepreneurial projects of the characters in the movie). The simple thing is that the two protagonists in the film build a thousand-foot fiber between Kansas and New Jersey.
Not only do we have to make things clear, but we must also make people believe that this is a reliable and true thing. How to achieve this, it depends on the "realism" of the movie. In this regard, once the movie enters the main topic, it is a wild explosion of professional terms and professional equipment: what pulses, neutrinos, hubs, what data lines, engineering drawings, stock indices, and then what excavators, measuring instruments and even speedboat helicopters...
Even the director has to add subtitles on the screen to indicate the specific coordinates of the progress of the project...
All of this visual and auditory is on the same page, and who can doubt that it's not a true story!
But please note that this movie is really just a "tortoise and rabbit race" old terrier. It's all about "realism" and "detail."
Third, the three magic weapons to help "fast"
There is only one realism that cannot meet the audience's demand for the drama of the story, so the director and screenwriter use the three major axes of tried and tested commercial films -
1. Set up roadblocks
This roadblock refers to the bumps in the entrepreneurial process. For example, the obstacle of forming a professional team, such as convincing the employer to allow the pipeline to pass through the underground of their own home, and then the 1 millisecond time difference that the technician has to overcome.
Almost every step forward on the road of the protagonist of the whole film has a corresponding "hurdle" in the way, and I have to say that this makes entrepreneurship look more exciting!
2. Set the anti-angle
There must also be a big anti-angle behind these barricades, which can make the confrontation look more intuitive and more like, while also balancing the male and female proportions of actors, enhancing vividness and comedy. So there was the appearance of the landlady Ava.
From the moment she came on, she laid down her image and story mission. Yes, she is the big antidote to the troublemakers of entrepreneurial projects.
3. Set up character motivations
This refers to the protagonist's motivation to start a business. This motivation is usually presented in both explicit and implicit terms. This film is expressed through the two entrepreneurial protagonists of Anton and Vincent.
Anton's motivation is more intuitive, and it is revealed at the beginning of the film: buying a house on the mountain.
Vincent's motivation was to be invisible and more abstract, which was later spoken out in a conversation with his partner: about success, about his father...
We don't care whether these motivations are explicit or implicit, whether they are making money or inspirational, in short, it makes the people who watch it more sympathetic to the role and more expect them to succeed in starting a business. I think that's one of the purposes of the director's character motivational scenes: to win over the audience.
These three axes are enough to capture the audience's psychology, but this is not enough to make the story more dramatic, so the film releases a big trick in the middle of the film, so as to make the time of the entrepreneurial project more urgent and the desire to succeed stronger. Let's keep looking at --
Fourth, "cancer" further enhances the sense of urgency of entrepreneurship
In the film, the male protagonist Vincent, the leader of the business, is diagnosed with cancer, and through the doctor emphasizes: there is little time left, and it is necessary to stop for treatment immediately.
This plot is equivalent to shelving a countdown stopwatch in the audience's mind, in order to strengthen the sense of urgency of time and consolidate the protagonist's attachment (or paranoia) to achieve the goal.
At the same time, this setting is also in opposition to the "fast" of entrepreneurship. Since then, the hidden "slowness of life" in the theme has gradually gained the upper hand.
The film arranges a "massage" scene when Vincent is too busy to be disturbed by trouble, which is a typical example of the confrontation between slow and fast.
It's just that this desire to "slow down and enjoy life" begins with the male protagonist's subconscious motivation. Or that the male protagonist's thinking began to change, and he began to doubt the correctness of entrepreneurship.
Fifth, the two protagonists hide the conflict between speed and slowness
We mentioned earlier the entrepreneurial motivations of the two protagonists: one explicitly intuitive and one implicitly abstract. In fact, under this difference, there is also a conflict in their motivations, let's look at some details -
Have you found out, but when talking about work, Anton is always "eating", in other words, Anton shows the side of life, and his behavior is incompatible with the speed of entrepreneurship, which is mutually exclusive.
Another episode of a plane ride better confirms this contradiction:
Anton's fear of flying forced the two to switch cars and slow down.
Obviously, rather than saying that the two protagonists represent two different motivations for entrepreneurship, we should say that they are two irreconcilable contradictory products designed around the theme of "fast and slow" in the movie. From a story point of view, this setting only strengthens the dramatic tension.
You know, all of this directors almost all use visual language and actor action performances to complete, rather than blunt preaching outside the language of the film, which is the gap.
Sixth, the upscale shot at the end makes the slow victory over the fast
In the end, slow triumphs over fast – the two protagonists are no longer obsessed with the success of the entrepreneurial project, but calm down to taste the meaning of life. So, how does visual language accomplish this theme ending?
This time it is more direct, and the lens is directly upgraded to do the upgrading process -
The film ends in these slow motions. Since then, the confrontation between fast and slow has been clear.
Text: Savage Five
Edit: Mr. Friday
Images: Web, video screenshots