Source: People's Daily
Pictured: The scene of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. The pictures were taken by Xinhua News Agency reporters Yang Lei and Li Ga: Zhao Kairu
Core reading
By telling the "story of a snowflake", the concept of "going to the future together" and "Chinese romance" are engraved in the history of the Olympic Games and written in the common memory of mankind. As a literary worker, I feel that this is the happiest moment of my life.
"Chinese romance" is simple and ethereal, but it is full of challenges to achieve. With the belief of victory, the whole team opened the way in every mountain, built bridges in water, overcome countless difficulties, and told the world a wonderful story of China in the new era.
Culture is the core, is the soul, eat through the culture, when the performance can be radiant, radiant. In order to tell the Chinese story accurately, we have conducted a lot of demonstrations and expert discussions on the Chinese elements involved in the opening and closing ceremonies, and regarded the creation of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics as a vivid presentation of Chinese culture in the world vision.
At the beginning of the Spring Festival, the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games stood on the global stage and used modern technology to carry out a new artistic expression of Chinese culture and olympic spirit. By telling the "story of a snowflake", the concept of "going to the future together" and "Chinese romance" are engraved in the history of the Olympic Games and written in the common memory of mankind. As the visual effects supervisor of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, as a literary and artistic worker, I feel that this is the happiest moment of my life.
Prior to that, I had participated in the "Beijing 8 Minutes" performance of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics with Zhang Yimou as the general director, the lighting and fireworks performance of the SCO Qingdao Summit, and the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Along the way, we have been exploring the use of digital technology to show the Chinese aesthetic spirit to the world and show the face of China in the new era. Achieving this goal requires overcoming numerous challenges, such as multi-departmental collaboration and the overall scheduling of actors, mechanics, choreographers, choreographers, etc., especially connecting cultural roots, presenting unique aesthetics, and perfectly landing polished ideas.
The opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics demonstrated the new style of China in the new era, and also allowed global audiences to witness the world-class strength and standard of China's digital technology art. In the nearly 5 years that I have been preparing the opening and closing ceremonies with Director Zhang Yimou and the whole team, I have the honor to participate in and witness the polishing process of this artistic masterpiece.
Digital technology and Chinese aesthetics are organically integrated
In the complex project of opening and closing ceremonies, digital technology shows great advantages. First of all, we use the "digital dynamic script", from the beginning of the creative stage to carry out equal-scale, all-element digital dynamic restoration of the opening and closing ceremonies. The creative design effects of the opening and closing ceremonies can be visually presented through the digital dynamic script, and this digital dynamic script is also a digital "sandbox" for accurate scheduling and rehearsal on the spot. The application of digital dynamic scripting technology has greatly improved the efficiency of creative design and command and dispatch, and greatly reduced the economic and time costs caused by repeated physical drills by real people. For example, the Olympic main torch "Big Snowflake" designed more than 1,000 drafts, because the opening and closing ceremony performances revolved around "a snowflake" to tell a story, so each version of the design was "a hair and the whole body", and the overall adjustment of the opening and closing ceremony design was needed. Without the help of digital dynamic scripting technology, this high-density, high-volume creative design is difficult to achieve.
In addition to being a "script", digital technology is also a "stage" and an "actor". For example, "the water of the Yellow River rises from the sky", the main torch "Big Snowflake" and the laser engraving "Ice and Snow Five Rings" are all masterpieces of digital technology.
The Olympic main torch "Big Snowflake" was finally formed after 3 years of design and polishing by director Zhang Yimou. The idea of "big snowflakes" comes from the poem "Yanshan snowflakes are as big as a seat". The more than 90 small snowflakes that make up the big snowflakes are Chinese knot shapes, and the lines are connected end to end and tightly interlocked. Each small snowflake represents a country or region, connected to form a whole, just like the Chinese knot and olive branch weave a big snowflake, implying the close unity of people all over the world. The transparent hollow of the "big snowflake" is controlled by 550,000 luminous points, and the "light" of the holy flame when igniting gradually spreads from the center to the outer edge, ethereal and romantic, and the concept of "going to the future together" for all mankind blooms in front of the world.
The opening ceremony session "The Water of the Yellow River Rises from Heaven", this poem that Chinese is familiar with, how to express it with images? The general director put forward an unprecedented problem: it is not enough to make the light like, only to reflect the texture and power of water, we must make every second of the waveform look like a Chinese painting. In order to achieve this goal, we studied day and night, overturned multiple schemes, and finally adopted algorithm programming to control the wavy lines according to the Chinese painting, so that the contour line of the wave shape every second was like the wave in the Chinese painting. The waterfall pours down, at first glance only feel the water of the Yellow River in the sky, a closer look will find that the Chinese painting landscape and physical waves are integrated, different, unique charm. This is the use of digital technology to achieve a balance between realism and freehand, and the spirit of Chinese aesthetics is embodied in visual symbols.
This was followed by the classic moment of laser engraving of the "Ice and Snow Five Rings", which was the most difficult project at the opening ceremony. The water of the Yellow River poured down, one side of the "water" slowly rose from the ice surface, into a crystal clear "ice cube", followed by 24 lasers hit the ice cube, began to carve the "light and shadow ink human form", and finally carved out the "ice and snow five rings". In just a few minutes, the show brings together a wealth of ideas, technology, equipment and scheduling. In order to show the charm of Chinese culture, we used a brush to draw thousands of paintings, made of three-dimensional light and shadow, when the human figure moves in the ice cube, but also to study how the human form is presented on 5 screens, in order to reflect the effect of the ice cube transparency; 24 lasers 100 meters away from the ice cube, to closely track the graphic motion trajectory, in order to achieve precise control, engineers have carried out complex programming. The "Five Rings of Ice and Snow" are both ice and snow, what kind of luster should it show? We have repeatedly discussed and believed that this five rings should have Chinese cultural characteristics and have the texture of ice jadeite.
Get a good run on the digital art track
In the 12 years of digital technology art, I have been looking for opportunities to tell the Chinese story and Chinese culture to more people through a larger stage. From the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and the SCO Qingdao Summit to the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China and the Beijing Winter Olympics, we seize every rare opportunity to paint a picture of light and shadow for the motherland with love and professionalism. After actual combat operations, trials and turns, and cooperative learning with artists such as Zhang Yimou, we young Chinese digital science and technology artists have faced difficulties again and again, pushed down and started again and again, overcome difficulties again and again, broadened our horizons, exercised our skills, and proved our strength.
Participating in the theatrical performances of these large-scale activities allowed me to witness the strength of the country and sublimate my emotions. I vividly remember the applause of the audience from all over the world at the end of the "Beijing 8 Minutes" of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and I am extremely proud to be a Chinese. I still remember that when celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China, a huge national flag was raised in Tiananmen Square, and we sang the national anthem with tears in our eyes and sincerely blessed the great motherland. At the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, when the Chinese team entered, I was extremely honored and excited to undertake the glorious mission. Every time you participate, you are self-motivated and growing fast. I feel like an athlete on the field, not only representing myself, but also representing our motherland, competing in skills and winning glory for the country in the international art arena.
In the creation of these national projects, especially the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, I also learned more forms and more complex scientific and technological means, and gained the ability to make creative expressions in large-scale space. For example, the digital screen resolution and frame rate of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics are extremely high, and the size and digital technology engineering volume are very large, which is unprecedented in the history of the Olympic Games. In the process of communicating with the technical team, we have mastered more creative capabilities and technical means. It is like drawing on A4 paper before, but now it is painting in front of the whole world, and the richness of thinking angles and the improvement of scientific and technological means are leapfrogging. In the "Ice and Snow Five Rings" link of snowflake design and laser engraving, we use multi-dimensional and multi-threaded synchronous programming to realize the synchronous coordination of different media and types of work such as actors, lasers, screens, etc., and realize the comprehensive innovation of cross-media art, using such a 10-meter-high, 22-meter-wide, 8-meter-thick giant naked-eye 3D light and shadow device.
Participating in the creation of these large-scale projects has made me more aware of Chinese culture and the importance of inheriting China's excellent traditional culture. What can be seen is technology, and what cannot be seen is culture. Culture is the core, is the soul, eat through the culture, when the performance can be radiant, radiant. The opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics is Lichun, and we express Chinese's understanding of time and spring through the 24 solar terms short film. Related to this, the main color of the opening ceremony is not only white and blue, which symbolizes the ice and snow blue sky, but also green, to express the meaning of endless life and hope. When the athletes entered, we put in the middle of the "China Gate" and the "China Window" into the great rivers and mountains, creating the artistic concept of "Great Beauty China". The designs of large snowflakes, water of the Yellow River, light and shadow ink human figures, tiger head hats, etc., all pay attention to aesthetic characteristics and are rich in cultural connotations. In order to tell the Chinese story accurately, we have conducted a lot of demonstrations and expert discussions on the Chinese elements involved in the opening and closing ceremonies, and regarded the creation of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics as a vivid presentation of Chinese culture in the world vision.
The opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics showed that China's digital technology art has stood at the forefront of the world. We have a large enough market and enough application scenarios, strong scientific and technological enterprises and high-level technical talents, and more than 5,000 years of long civilization and incomparably rich excellent culture to tap. We are fully qualified to find our own artistic language, realize original artistic creation with Chinese style, achieve good results on the new track of digital technology art, and tell the Chinese story of the new era.
(The author Wang Zhiou is the visual effects director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics)
People's Daily (07th edition, 05 April 2022)
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