On the night of the Chinese New Year on February 1, the curtain of the Spring Festival Gala of each station fell, and the aftertaste was still there. Among them, the Beijing Spring Festival Gala, as always, is full of emotions and word of mouth, with its own exquisite design and broad perspective, under the good wishes of "starting from spring", from the stories of the people and the Stories of the Winter Olympics to the stories of the country and the world, the people's emotions, the expression of the times, and the new creativity are placed under the grand background of the times, showing the humanistic care of the capital and the pattern of home and country. Under the unanimous praise of the audience, the 2022 Beijing Tv Spring Festival Gala set a record for nine consecutive years to win the CSM35 City Provincial Satellite TV Ratings Champion, with a rating of 4.46% and a market share of 15.11%; the total number of Weibo topics read exceeded 20 billion, ranking first in the local Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala.
Among them, the song and dance program "Our Spring", performed by the China Disabled People's Art Troupe and the Beijing School for the Blind, through the dance interpretation of deaf actors and blind children, and the presentation of the "spring impression" in the minds of blind children by teachers and students of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, called on more people to pay attention to the Winter Paralympic Games, care for the disabled, and triggered a wide range of social discussions. The Beijing News reporter exclusively interviewed Li Wenqian, dance teacher of the China Disabled Arts Troupe, xiong Xinjun and Zhang Xi, tutors of the digital three-dimensional animation studio of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, to reveal the story behind the "breaking of the circle" of "Our Spring".
"Our Spring" is a combination of deaf dancers and blind children.
The blind are the ears of the deaf, and the deaf are the eyes of the blind
Under the gentle and melodious piano sound played by blind children, 16 deaf dancers from the China Disabled Arts Troupe, as well as another blind child, slowly took the stage in the vibrant spring scene. The dancers wear long flowing white dresses, like lively elves in spring. The blind child jumped and caught the "butterfly", was surrounded by the "elves" in an instant, and transformed into a beautiful little butterfly, soaring freely in the beautiful spring...
Li Wenqian introduced that the China Disabled People's Art Troupe has participated in many large-scale literary and artistic performances and has rich experience. What is different from "Our Spring" this time is that deaf dancers and two blind children need to transform into various intentions of spring through dance movements, sometimes kittens, sometimes butterflies. Therefore, during the rehearsal process, dance teachers and directors need to strengthen the guidance of visual presentation and help children with disabilities to visualize the scene in their minds.
"We'll start by telling the kids what the show is about to say; what is this action for now." There are also props to cooperate when performing, which is somewhat difficult. Li Wenqian said. However, for the deaf dancers to lead the blind children and cooperate with the scene to show the spring scene, Li Wenqian frankly said that in the usual group, whether it is life or performance, it is the deaf actors and blind actors who help each other and cooperate to complete. The blind are the ears of the deaf, and the deaf are the eyes of the blind. This also contributed to the tacit interaction between "elves" and "angels" on the stage of "Our Spring", which was flexible and natural.
According to Li Wenqian, more than 20 actors in the troupe were finally selected for 16 on stage, 1 candidate, plus two children from the blind school, and the whole team spent more than 20 days rehearsing. In the meantime, the Chinese Disabled People's Art Troupe also has to prepare for the Winter Paralympic Games, so it can only practice day and night. But when "Our Spring" was rehearsed for the first time, all the staff on the scene were in tears. "The spring in the blind man's 'eyes' is completely different from the one in the eyes of ordinary people, and such humanistic care has greatly shocked us." Li Wenqian sighed.
Break through the conventional color and element design, reflecting the surrealist aesthetic
In late November 2021, when the director of Beijing Station contacted the Central Academy of Fine Arts to create the creative design of the video "Our Spring", Xiong Xinjun did not know how to design the picture of "Spring in the Eyes of Blind Children". The spring festival gala director team has gone to the China Disabled People's Art Troupe and the School for Blind Children three times to communicate with the children, and has obtained their most original impression of spring, recording the beautiful spring that the children yearn for. These children, who have hardly seen spring, have diverse and rich imaginations, fantastic and magnificent scenes and plots, all of which make Xiong Xinjun refreshing. Some children say that in the spring there should be elephants with particularly large ears, cats with round ears, and some children say that dogs in spring have no tails. One of the children, he "smelled" the lilacs, a bit like apples, very sweet.
"The spring depicted by the blind child may be fragmented and incomplete. But from an aesthetic point of view, it has very different elements, which constitutes the 'surrealism' in visual aesthetics. We reconstructed the spring depicted by the disabled with 'surrealism', and the audience can have a more shocking visual experience from the fantasy picture. ”
Therefore, Xiong Xinjun believes that "Our Spring" must be better, more beautiful and more interesting than the regular spring. Only in this way can we show the disabled people's stronger yearning for a better life. Xiong Xinjun led a team of ten people to draw more than a dozen versions of the manuscript, and finally retained the elements originally described by the blind children, and took its essence, and designed and produced it for a month and a half before forming the main visual picture in the current program.
Paintings on the original ten-inch screen were placed in a physical space more than ten meters high.
In the picture, every line is very rhythmic, and the image elements are vivid and lively, with a cat with round ears, an elephant taller than a building, a lilac tree full of apples, a fish flying in the sky, a butterfly with four eyes... The colors are equally brilliant and bold. Qin Zheng, the general director of the Beijing Spring Festival Gala, also said that "Our Spring" once again boldly broke through the bright and festive tone of the past Beijing Taiwan Spring Festival Gala in the use of color. The sky is colored, the clouds are colorful; stars, mountains, plants, animals, etc., are all colorful, colorful, and fantastic. The only regular thing is that the "green" of spring is still widely used, "because we still hope that the spring of blind children is also full of hope for green life." Xiong Xinjun said.
Immersive new media art exhibition, the production difficulty is far beyond imagination
After the picture of "Spring" is ready, another difficulty is multimedia presentation. How to move the drawn "spring in the eyes of a blind child" to the big screen and the separate screens on the scene?
Zhang Xi said frankly that although the total area of the Spring Festival Gala Studio in Beijing this year is not large, under the blessing of advanced technology, in addition to the main screen, there are various side screens, standing screens, hanging screens, ground screens and ice screens on the scene; what content is placed on each screen? What is the spatial relationship between the screens? How is the screen view balanced with the viewing relationship between the audience and the camera perspective in various locations? The sheer number of screens and the complexity of the design far exceed the multimedia projects the team has previously worked on at the Great Hall of the People and the Bird's Nest.
In actual operation, Through the cutting and reconstruction of the main screen and the targeted design in the special screen, Zhang Xi's team has the most suitable picture for each split screen, and finally constitutes an overall harmonious and rhythmic "Spring Horizon".
At the scene of the performance, the cooperation between the various screens made the production team painstaking.
Not only does it have to be presented in multiple dimensions, but the director team also hopes to inject more vitality into the static picture, so that the rabbits and elephants on the screen can come to life. Therefore, "Our Spring" is also a bold breakthrough in new media for traditional evenings. Zhang Xi's team divided the flowers, grasses, trees, woods, nearly ten kinds of animals, clouds, water flows, etc. in the original paintings of the four scenes into hundreds of layers, and then bound the bone points to each plant individually, and made dynamics or animations. All dynamic elements need to conform to the visual logic of this "special world". In terms of specific dynamic design, each creature in the picture must not only conform to the undulating changes of the music and dance passages, reflecting vitality and vitality; on the other hand, the amplitude and rhythm cannot be too strong and noisy.
The unsatisfactory hardware conditions, the details that need to be constantly polished, the high 8K resolution specifications, and the tight production cycle all made the design process not smooth. It wasn't until the afternoon of the recording day that Zhang Xi's team completed all the rendering and compositing work, totaling 23 dynamic screens and more than 400 G of data.
Before the official recording, many of the music segments cut points, the position of the interactive critters, and the full playback effect of the video did not have time to be tested on the spot. As long as there is a problem with more than 20 videos in one place, it takes dozens of hours to re-render and export, and the recording opportunity is only once.
"The mood at the time was still very nervous." Zhang Xi said frankly. But when the paintings on the original ten-inch screen are placed into the physical space of more than ten meters high, it seems that the "sketch" has suddenly become a panoramic, multi-level digital dynamic "mural". Some tiny brush stroke details have been enriched and expanded, and the tension of colors and lines has been magnified several times, giving people a strong visual shock. "It's an immersive exhibition of new media art." Zhang Xi sighed.
The show is like an immersive exhibition of new media art.
Pay attention to the Winter Paralympic Games and care for people with disabilities
In the past, most of the Spring Festival galas were based on festive and peaceful atmosphere, allowing the audience to spend the New Year in a lively atmosphere. This year's Beijing Spring Festival Gala also hopes to pay tribute to and care for every ordinary person who loves life with warm and sincere expression in the post-epidemic era; with the intention of "Spring in the Eyes of Blind Children" in "Our Spring", it calls on more people to pay attention to the Winter Paralympic Games and care for people with disabilities. "We don't care if there is traffic for the people who come, the Spring Festival Gala program should show the humanistic care of Beijing." Qin Zheng once said.
In Xiong Xinjun's view, the epidemic has made changes in everyone's life to varying degrees, but when the audience sees the spring in the "eyes" of blind people, when the disabled people have the opportunity to express their yearning for spring, this is more of a reflection for ordinary people: Have we forgotten the original beauty of life? "Under the epidemic, we should also pay attention to life, love life, and love nature." When the live music sounds, the raindrops, the flowers bloom, the deaf people dance under the special spring, every movement makes me particularly moved. ”
Li Wenqian believes that the world and emotions felt by people with disabilities are actually the same as ordinary people. In life, they are equally confident, sunny, happy, and hopeful. Li Wenqian hopes that through "Our Spring", she will call on the public to look at the disabled groups equally, "They need social equality, inclusion, and common participation opportunities, and also hope that more platforms can be like Beijing Tv, giving stages to actors with special talents, so that they can shine and show their charm and talent." ”
It is worth mentioning that all the personnel at the Scene of the Spring Festival Gala in Beijing are wearing a red scarf. The scarf is designed with the round-eared kitten in the "Our Spring" scene. This tiger-like cat, at the end of the show, jumped into the sky, transformed into a golden spot of light, disappeared in the sky, and brought all the blind children's yearning for spring to the scarf, which not only has the beauty of lilacs, the peace and security of apples, but also the power of cat and tiger integration. In the song "Light" after "Our Spring", these ordinary people wearing scarves take to the streets and alleys, using scarves as a link to send the warmth of spring to the streets and alleys, which is also the warmest love in 2022 sent by Beijing Radio and Television Station, the China Disabled People's Art Troupe and the Beijing School for the Blind.
Zhang He, a senior reporter of the Beijing News
Senior Editor Tong Na Proofreader Wu Xingfa