"The Documentary 'Sources of Nature' is a film that explores the relationship between man and nature, and invited the well-known British documentary filmmaker Phil Agraland to direct. Considering the difficulty of shooting, we and director Phil repeatedly deliberated and decided to focus on the Qinghai region that the director filmed many years ago, continue his good humanistic and natural style, and explore the harmonious coexistence between man and nature around the topic of "why every link in the biological chain is so important to ecology". ”
Look for story breaking points
Nature themes are the traditional category of documentaries, and there are also a large number of pearls and jades that have been presented to the extreme about China's vast and unique natural environment, and it is a great challenge for director Phil to cut into in order to break the form of traditional nature documentaries from which this documentary should be cut. The Tibetan Plateau is one of the most important and fragile ecological regions in the world. Climate change and human activities once affected the health of the ecosystem here, and miraculously returned to the ecological balance with the help of manpower, which is undoubtedly the biggest shining point of documentary storytelling. After repeated consideration, director Phil hopes to reveal the main theme of the program by focusing on human behavior on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and integrate the production and life of local people and even values into the program, so that the audience can more easily resonate.
The creative line became clear, and director Phil began to obsessed with discovering vivid and special character stories. He has been in constant contact with several authoritative ecological experts in China, closely monitoring their work and expressing the desire to film their work. When he learned that Dr. Wang Dajun of the School of Life Sciences of Peking University was going to carry out a snow leopard monitoring project, director Phil thought that this was a good clue to break the problem. Wang Dajun has long tracked wildlife in Qinghai Province, Sichuan Province, Qinling Mountains and other places, and has an optimistic personality. On this scientific expedition, he plans to lead the team to capture two snow leopards, wear satellite collars for them, and carry out a six-month snow leopard ground tracking survey to fully understand the life habits of snow leopards based on the positioning information transmitted back.
As an animal at the top of the biological chain, the snow leopard has always been the ideal subject in director Phil's mind. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What attracted director Phil was not only the uniqueness of the work and the possible pictorial tension, but also the role of humans in the survival of the snow leopard.
△ Measure the signs of an anesthetized snow leopard after photography
Break through the impossibility one by one
Director Phil decided to make the snow leopard capture and monitoring footage of Dr. Wang Dajun's team as the opening scene, and he envisioned a very attractive picture: in the icy and snowy Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the sedative snow leopard was gasping. Looking up close, it was stunningly beautiful as if it could smell its breath, and researchers had only a few minutes to tie a tracking collar to the animal before it awoke from its sedatives. A sense of awe arises in everyone's heart...
When director Phil was still conducting preliminary research in Britain, he repeatedly stressed to me that he must shoot these shots. We felt a rare opportunity and were excited about the upcoming shoots. The global ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic have made it more difficult for film crews to obtain film permits to come to China, and the time for the trip has been delayed again and again. Originally, we thought that inviting a foreign film crew to come to China was enough twists and turns, and then we learned that the location of Dr. Wang Dajun's scientific research project was a non-open area. We immediately asked the relevant departments to approve the foreigner's shooting permit, and the other party gladly agreed. However, just before the film crew was about to end the entry quarantine and go to Qinghai, the outbreak of the epidemic in Xining, all outsiders were banned from going to Ningbo, and the film crew had to continue to stay in Shanghai. We have a frustrating three weeks.
Three weeks later, Xining reopened and foreign film crews were allowed to enter the non-open zone. However, before we could get excited, we were clearly told that the "seven-day shooting period" was poured with cold water. Subtracting the two days back and forth, this is far from enough to meet the shooting cycle of wildlife documentaries in general, and the mood of the entire film crew is once again in a slump. After calming down, we reorganized the procedures for handling shooting permits, communicated with the relevant departments one by one, and ensured that the epidemic prevention requirements were complied with during the shooting process, and the activities were strictly in accordance with the clear work location, the established itinerary and the reporting time. After several tosses, it was finally approved, and the shooting period was extended to the original planned 30 days. In the process of formalities, due to the complexity of the process and the uncertainty of the road ahead, I had self-doubt and asked Phil to be "Plan B", but the director's persistence "rejected" me. His stubborn determination to shoot forced me to grope for possibilities and finally grasped a miracle.
Use love to store energy for shooting
The film crew who had obtained the permission to shoot was full of enthusiasm, and the preparations were already in place. On the eve of departure, bad news struck, the truck that delivered some materials for the film crew had a rollover accident, the driver's mobile phone had no signal, and in the middle of the night, Tibetan herders drove by before they rescued the driver and dialed out a distress call. Fortunately, there were no casualties, most of the damage was spare equipment and food, but the tent we were preparing to camp was also broken in the accident.
Everything was ready again, and the film crew finally arrived at the planned filming location. Dr. Wang Dajun's team to carry out scientific research projects in the remote location of the station, not only the signal is weak, the power supply is also very tight, all rely on the generator to burn oil power supply, minus twenty degrees Celsius temperature often makes the generator strike, so that the management and protection station into darkness. There is only one mobile phone operator's signal coverage here, the signal tower relies on solar power, the signal is not stable, generally after eight o'clock in the evening we will lose the signal, returning to the "quiet years" before the Internet era.
△ The management and protection station signal tower is powered by solar power, and the power supply relies on the generator, and the two strike from time to time, and from time to time fall into the dilemma of network shutdown and power outage
The harsh objective environment could not resist the high enthusiasm of the film crew. Director Phil once made a bold statement that he would stay in the field and sleep in a tent until he was photographed with a snow leopard, but a few days later he dismissed this unrealistic idea. No matter how many pieces of clothing I wore, as long as I stood in the backlit ravine for a few minutes, my body was frozen like ice cubes, and at the most exaggerated time, I had more than a dozen warm babies on me.
△ The window sill in the room was frozen
The feeling of moving is not much better. The oxygen in the highland environment is thin, many shots need to climb high to complete, each step requires deep breathing, big breathing, if there is an extra heavy object on the body will cause a huge physiological burden. Thanks to the power of technology, many characters follow the picture and the director finally completed it with a mobile phone, and only the fixed-point shooting of animals and landscapes will the director use a large camera.
△ The scientific research team set up a cage in the place where there were snow leopard tracks, and the director held a mobile phone and took the ice road to shoot
Although the director is 70 years old, as long as an animal enters the eye, he is instantly "resurrected with blood", and his spirit is more than that of young people. After catching the first snow leopard and putting it in a collar, Chinese scientists released the snow leopard back into the mountains and then used a signal tracker to track its trajectory. When filming this process, we can only crouch silently on the mountain opposite the ravine where the snow leopard is located, often staying in the mountain for a whole day, but we can't wait for the snow leopard to trace, and we can only photograph some sporadic wild animals, such as rock sheep, to chat for comfort.
△ Stationed in a ravine, tracking snow leopard tracks (body feeling -25 degrees), fruitless, filmed rock sheep pictures
Capture the sparks in the story
Admittedly, documentaries are the art of truly documenting events, and creators need to trade their time for satisfactory results. During the filming process, in addition to the conventional natural landscape shooting, I found that director Phil liked to consciously capture some dramatic tension.
△ Photographing Wang Dajun tracking snow leopards (4200 meters above sea level)
He was always on the lookout for vivid character stories. On the first day of shooting, he met local wildlife photographer Bao Yongqing through Wang Dajun, learned about his experience of shooting snow leopards, and invited him to walk with the filming team for a few days.
Later, we went into the mountains to photograph Dr. Wang Dajun's scientific research work. During this period, director Phil also invited Tashi Dorje, a Tibetan friend who had filmed before, into the mountains. Tashi Dorje is an old friend of Dr. Wang Dajun, who has been engaged in ecological protection work for a long time, has a cheerful personality and a jump in thinking, and director Phil is looking forward to the addition of Tashi Dorje to collide with Dr. Wang Dajun to have some chemical reactions. Compared with the filming of Dr. Wang Dajun's solo activities, director Phil preferred to shoot the scene of Dr. Wang Dajun working with colleagues. Although Mr. Bao and Tashi ultimately failed to bring some "changes" to Dr. Wang Dajun's work, director Phil went out of his way to invite "outsiders" to intervene, making the filming process rich and interesting.
△ Shoot the picture of Wang Dajun and his colleagues checking the infrared camera
Director Phil also did faceless interviews with Chinese scientists such as Wang Dajun, asking them to discuss the reasons for studying snow leopards, the importance of snow leopards, as well as the concept of symbiosis and the significance of biodiversity, which is also a conscious extension of the breadth and depth of the story of the program. Although Director Phil and Dr. Wang Dajun have been friends for many years and are very familiar with each other, some of Dr. Wang Dajun's answers are not the same as what Director Phil expected.
Compared with the grander answers that director Phil expected, such as "related to the future development of mankind" and "community of destiny", Dr. Wang Dajun and the local protection workers are more rational in their thinking and pay more attention to their personal needs and experiences. For example, Dr. Wang Dajun's important partner Daniu was attracted by the vast space of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the huge uncertainty of field research, while others agreed to the job because they just had the skills required for the job. Although there is a discrepancy with the answer envisioned by director Phil, this is not the real attitude of man and nature.
That's what I wrote about the filming experience of the documentary "Sources of Nature" this winter. Next spring and summer, director Phil will visit Places like Qilian Mountain and Coco Siri again for follow-up shooting, and extreme natural environments and other unknown challenges are waiting for us. I'm looking forward to that.
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Author: Choreographer of Interpretation of China Studio
Producer of Sources of Nature
Chen Huimin