From July 1, the film "1921", which celebrates the centenary of the founding of the Party in 2021, was officially released, focusing on the pioneering work of 13 young people with an average age of 28 years in Shanghai in 1921, telling the story of the first batch of Chinese Communists who took on the heavy responsibility of saving the chinese people and making Chinese society look new in the storm. The film was released for 4 days and has broken 300 million at the box office.
What is less known is that in order to restore historical details, the director team and art team of "1921" spent nearly 4 years conducting historical research. Before the set, the production team and the director team discussed the "sense of the times" and "sense of atmosphere" of the film many times, from the style and surrounding environment of the building of the first conference site, to the color shade of a brick, and the font of the venue record. At the Silver Star Light Film Salon held at the Crowne Plaza Silver Star Today, Wu Jiakui, art director of Shanghai Film Group, shared the story behind the shooting of "1921".
"In the whole film, in addition to the understanding of the big history, there is also a grasp of small details." Wu Jiakui was straight to the point. He said that before the film began, the crew consulted many materials and consulted many party history experts in an effort to restore the true history. In terms of details, the crew is also meticulous.
"In order to restore the building at the site of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China, we went to the field to conduct mapping, and then accurately restored the building according to the ratio of length, width and height to one to one." Wu Jiakui said that the crew also consulted a large number of written materials to understand the surrounding environment at that time. "In the early years, there were almost no video materials about the surrounding environment of the building of the first congress of the Communist Party of China, but there were many written descriptions, so we tried to restore the environment in which the building was located according to the written materials and build the house."
Xu Pengle, vice president of the original Shanghai Film Group, told the process of the incubation and germination of Chinese red films
The house is built, but how should the new building take on the "historical sense" of 1921? The crew thought of many "old" methods, using red bricks or green bricks, and the color shade of each brick was considered one by one, and tried to achieve a "reproduction" of the site of the first congress of the Communist Party of China.
Another problem that tested the crew on the set was that the existing site of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China was more of a commemorative exhibition, and there were fewer living arrangements. In real history, the venue for this meeting was provided by Li Hanjun, one of the 13 delegates, and was the residence of Li Hanjun's brother's family at that time. Since it is a residence, how is the setting and lighting during the meeting different from usual? The crew also constantly adjusted: "The lights are brighter in meetings, but there is no need for so many lights in life scenes." ”
In addition, many props that flash in the eyes of the audience have been carefully examined and polished.
For example, the red vase on the table when the CPC held a major meeting was a national-level cultural relic, which is now in a major memorial hall of the CPC and cannot be copied. The crew mobilized all the resources to search for the whole network, and finally found a vase with very similar colors and shapes in the prop library of the Shanghai Film Studio, which solved this problem;
The vase in the picture above is a photo taken in the memorial hall of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China
The vase that appears in "1921" is similar in color and form to the original vase
For example, at a conference, Mao Zedong was responsible for taking minutes of the meeting. At that time, Mao Zedong was still very young, was there a difference between the words he wrote and the "Mao body" commonly seen in middle-aged and elderly people? The crew specifically consulted a letter written by Mao Zedong to a friend when he was young, and restored the text of the meeting he was doing according to the handwriting of this letter. Although the minutes of the meeting in the film do not give close-up shots, the crew still strives to withstand scrutiny in detail;
At the same time, the "New Youth" magazine, "Shanghai Russian Life Daily", and the license plates of cars that shuttled on the street at that time were all restored after verification according to real historical image data, and the crew could be called "detail control". "We must be serious in doing things, pay attention to details and truth, which is the education and inheritance given to us by our predecessors." Wu Jiakui summed it up like this.
The three license plate styles that appear in the film correspond to the different areas of the public concession, the French concession and the Chinese concession that were in use at that time
Shanghai is the birthplace of the party and the place where the original intention originated, and the red gene is deeply integrated into the blood of the city. Xu Pengle, vice president of the former Shangying Group, said that 1921 was the year of the founding of the Communist Party and a year of breakthrough development of Chinese films. Film is an important force in the propaganda, ideological and cultural front, and a large number of literary artists full of family and country feelings have set up a "party film group" to guide and lead Chinese films to "turn to the left", implant red genes, implant social missions, and implant historical responsibilities, so that filmmakers can find the right direction. As a result, left-wing films such as "Goddess", which exposed social reality, appeared in Shanghai as early as the 1930s, becoming the source of red films.
Since then, the national defense film "The Blood of Wolf Mountain", which calls for the whole people to resist Japan, and the anti-war film that shows national integrity, have all appeared in Shanghai. After the founding of New China, Shanghai became a fertile ground for the prosperity and development of red films. "Knowing where we're from, we know where we're going. Filmmaking is inseparable from its origins, that is, it must be people-centered. This was the law of history, and it was also the direction chosen by the Communists at that time. ”
Column Editor-in-Chief: Li Baohua Text Editor: Li Baohua
Source: Author: Li Baohua