Yesterday was Earth Day, and Jacques Behan, who likes to photograph the earth and the world, is gone.
(Died on December 1, 2017, R.I.P.)
The six-year-old celebrity, who rose to prominence on the screen, reached the pinnacle of his career early on, and at the age of 25 he was crowned a Venetian film emperor with [half a man].
Unexpectedly, two years later, he became the producer of [Focus News].
Actor Jacques Behan gradually faded from view, while producer and director Jacques Behan hid behind the screen to continue his life of light and shadow.
In 1999, he set his sights on the vast and sacred nature and launched the video project of the "Heaven, Earth and Man" trilogy.
Whether it's the towering snow-capped mountains in the [Himalayas], the colorful insects in the [microscopic world], or the mighty flocks of migratory birds that travel through the sky in [migrating birds],
Jacques Behan always depicts the beauty and loftiness of nature with exquisite and gorgeous brushstrokes, making people feel pious and awe in the face of the many beings under the sky.
Later, in [Oceans], in Ocean Kingdom Season 1, he turned his lens to the blue territory that occupies three-quarters of the Earth's surface.
Through the creatures that soar to the bottom of the sea, Jacques Behan tries to answer the question of "what is the ocean" to the crowd.
Jacques Behan's documentaries always try to bring out the many faces of the natural world.
You can not only get a glimpse of the cold harshness of the law of the jungle, but also see the warm pulse of the animism.
On the occasion of the death of this master, let us revisit his legacy, look at what he thinks, thinks, and looks at those shocking, unparalleled documentaries.
See the beauty of the earth and its creatures.
Turn: Retreat behind the scenes in front of the stage
I left school at fourteen, so I didn't have any college diploma, and I originally chose to be an actor because I didn't need a diploma to enter the industry, and it didn't matter if I did well or not.
In fact, through the film, I thought I had learned everything I had learned in college.
Later, the actors did a good job, and I wondered if I could make a movie, and then I wanted to try it as a director, and it felt good.
In fact, acting is to integrate imagination and reality to interpret a different kind of life.
It's not 100% real, but the experience is wonderful, and when you cross the tipping point of your imagination and you think it's real, it's real.
Speaking of which, when you're an actor, it's always someone else who drives you to do something.
As a producer, the role is just reversed, and you drive others.
From the 1960s to the 1970s, I was involved in a total of ten films, involving several countries—
For example, around 1968, there were some political disputes in Spain, Portugal and South America, and these political themes taught me to look for creative elements in the real world.
Maybe it was my penchant for reality, and I did a lot of documentaries later.
Everybody thinks I've moved from political films to documentaries, and it seems like I've made a big span.
But from another point of view, the films about nature that are being made now are just another type of political film.
Nowadays, many of the controversies about the oceans have actually touched on sensitive topics in many countries, so it can be said that I touch politics through nature.
Leaning over: Listen to the voice of nature
I'm not advocating too much commentary in the documentary, it makes it feel like we're judging these animals.
I want to let the animals speak for themselves, and let them explain their own world.
If there is too much commentary, it will seem too subjective and prevent the audience from coming up with their own views and opinions.
Jacques Behan's documentaries are different from the ones we are familiar with them.
In contrast, the former's explanatory words can almost be described as "stingy", and [the microscopic world] is only a few poetic opening words -
"It's dawn, and somewhere on Earth, hidden under a prairie is a planet-like world.
The grass has become a forest, the small stones are like mountains, and the small water droplets are shaped like a vast ocean.
Time passes in different ways, an hour like a day, a day like a season, a season like a lifetime.
To explore the world, we must first remain silent and listen to this miracle", in addition to the fact that the whole film really remains "silent", and even the names of various insects are not marked.
However, the point-to-point commentary allows the audience to put aside the difficult theoretical constraints and experience the surprise of encountering nature head-on.
In [the ocean] too, the sounds that come from nature, they want to express themselves to humans, they want us to understand them.
In my documentary, the protagonists are all animals.
I don't want to see the animal world through a human perspective, but I want to treat ourselves as one of them, to get close to them, so that what we capture is more real.
Now everyone always says that we want to protect the environment, but how to protect it?
If I only stay on preaching, I think it is more empty.
Only when we get close to these animals can we understand them, fall in love with them, and then cherish them.
When you give affection, doesn't environmental protection become easy?
I don't think I'm making a film about animals, but about making movies that make people really appreciate the precious wealth that nature has given us.
Counting, my first documentary [Monkey Clan] took four years to complete;
The latter [microcosm] took three years, [bird migration] took four years;
And then it took almost five years [to the ocean], what does that mean?
I think this proves that we don't have to achieve anything in a hurry, but that we really use our hearts to experience the magic and beauty of nature.
Focus: Breathe with nature
We invite many scientists to participate in each of our documentaries.
They will outline for us in detail what that animal world really is like, without whom we would not know how to enter the animal world.
However, although these scientists know a lot, they may not have seen or experienced it themselves.
For example, scientists know the habits of birds very well, but what scientist has ever migrated tens of thousands of kilometers with those birds at an altitude of several thousand meters?
Or how many marine scientists have observed the way marine life lives at depths of four or five kilometers under the sea?
We, on the other hand, based on the results of existing science, enter the natural world in our own way to get close to those marine creatures, and be as close as we can be.
When we were filming [Microcosm], we got ridicule and sarcasm from all sides – investors and partners.
They say, what's there to shoot about these gadgets?
What can be filmed?
They don't understand me doing this movie in particular, and can even be described as scornful.
But look at the four- or five-year-olds, and look at the surprised expressions they have when they see those little insects.
I don't understand why we don't have the joy of a child when he sees insects.
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Dots of worms in [the microscopic world].
In order to restore the mysterious and colorful animal world as realistic as possible, we also used special means when shooting these documentaries.
Usually, when shooting documentaries, the camera is fixed and the target is brought closer by telephoto and zoom.
But I wanted to do it another way, and I let the camera slowly push the insects forward and watch them walk the 300 meters.
The wonders of the insect world are evident in Jacques Behan's lens, even with the slow squirming of insects.
Viewers who have seen [the microscopic world] will be impressed by the neat and uniform caterpillar dragons, which are like verdant vines slowly moving on the scorched yellow earth.
But just when everyone is already deeply immersed in this solemn atmosphere, a caterpillar who tries every means to plug it instantly makes the scene playful.
And the shell lang who pushed the booty home. not
No matter how the ball of dung rolled upside down, the shell lang always patiently pushed it toward the established route, like the tireless Sisyphus.
In addition, because the insect is only a little bit larger, even if the lens is pulled closer to 5 cm or 10 cm, shaking is inevitable.
The insects were small, and they stood out in that rainy scene.
Dense raindrops resemble flying meteorites in the insect world, and splashes of water can drown them entirely.
So for a stable effect, each camera weighs a ton, sometimes heavier for smaller insects.
All of these extraordinary means are just to show the audience a more real world.
When we feel like we're in it, we can discover their value.
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[Birds migrating] and the dream of flying
Flying like a bird has always been a dream of mankind.
But when the camera flew side by side with the birds, I felt that the dream of flying had actually come true.
We know that ducks and geese, when they hatch from their eggshells, they treat the creatures they see first as their parents.
So I found hundreds of students to stay with these eggs all day, and when the birds broke out of their shells, they naturally regarded these students as their parents.
Although we can't identify the carefully bred birds in the camera, the silent affection between people and birds is still reflected in the movie.
For example, the gray-tailed goose, which still had a net rope on its feet, returned to the little boy who saved it in the winter.
When the birds can fly, they follow the students' bicycles.
Then change to a motorcycle or even a car, and we will put the aircraft motor that we will use in the future shooting in the car to make them gradually get used to this sound.
When the shooting actually starts, the photographer will sit in the front seat of that small aircraft, and the pilot will sit behind him.
When they take off, because the birds are already familiar with the sound of the motor, they naturally follow behind.
At first it was only 100 meters high, and then it rose to 200 meters high, and when it flew to 300 meters, the photographer was scared because he was suspended.
However, the first time we flew 3,000 kilometers with the birds.
In fact, the success of this film depends on the organic combination of three factors, that is, the photographer, the pilot, and the bird.
We probably used more than 1,000 birds throughout the shoot.
When the birds flew around us, I felt like everyone had become a bird, and they seemed to forget who we were.
I thought there was no sound for birds other than chirping and flapping their wings.
But in the later stages, in addition to the above sounds, we can actually hear the breathing of birds.
It was the exhausted gasp of their long migration, a voice struggling to survive, and who could not be struck by it?
Imagine a bird weighing only 16 grams that would have to fly 5,000 kilometers in three weeks, or back and forth between the North and South Poles twice.
To be honest, when we flew 3,000 kilometers with these birds, we already had aesthetic fatigue, but when we thought that they would have to fly another one or two thousand kilometers, the entire film crew suddenly gathered up enough energy.
In fact, the seemingly monotonous long migration is also full of many dramatic factors in the movie.
You'll see a winged goose struggling into a flock of crabs waiting for an opportunity, and you'll see the grey cranes that once rejected the old woman finally accept her gift on the way home.
Therefore, this story of commitment reads like a magnificent epic, full of the fullness and sorrow of life.
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The right and wrong understanding of [the ocean].
In a way, the world of birds knows no borders, it can soar freely in the sky, and another world without borders is the ocean.
At that time, I chose to start filming [oceans] because the land has long been exploited by humans, and only the ocean is the territory of our planet that has not yet been fully exploited, and many things are not very clear to us.
So it took me almost five years to complete [Ocean], and the whole team added up to more than 400 people, shot in 60 different regions for four and a half years, and finally took more than a year to edit.
For the impression of the ocean, we tend to stay only on marine animals.
Therefore, I think that if you really want to photograph what the ocean is, you must photograph the animals in the ocean, such as whales and dolphins.
However, due to technical reasons, the dolphin lens alone spanned three years to complete.
The first year we only shot dolphins fishing on the surface of the sea.
The next year our technology was only enough to complete the scene of dolphins fishing in the sea.
It wasn't until the third year that our photography techniques finally kept up with the speed of dolphin fishing.
Of course, not only for technical reasons, but also to capture the real scene of the ocean, in order to get close to these seabed creatures, this in itself has to take a lot of time.
We'll start by camouflaging the camera so that the animals on the ocean floor don't find the thing strange and turn a blind eye to you, and then we can slowly get the camera closer to it.
It's a long process, it can take months, but when you capture something in the camera that's beyond what you could have imagined, you'll feel like the wait is worth it.
The silky sea surface in the movie, as well as the brilliant octopus and the golden jellyfish, are enough to make people "impressed" with the ocean.
In fact, in my experience, the underwater world is always beyond our imagination, and when you really get close to it, you will find that it has completely overturned the written script.
For example, we usually think of sharks as dangerous animals, but what is really dangerous is our perception of animals, not the animals themselves.
In fact, sharks mainly rely on sight and smell, and when the sea is very turbid, it will bite if it can't see clearly.
But when the water is clear, it can see your words clearly and will not bite you.
In the first case I wouldn't shoot, and in the second case, when the shark can see you, it won't feel like you're a threat.
Even after making eye contact with the shark, the shark is afraid of you.
So, this time you are close to it is not dangerous.
In all previous films about sharks, the cinematographers stayed in cages.
But in [the ocean] we can see divers swimming six or seven meters with sharks, and the harmony is incredible.
Nature is indispensable to us humans, just as we cannot leave the air, nor can we leave the forest or the sea.
There is a shot at the end of the film showing a group of sea elephants holding small walruses.
When you look at the sea elephant and pick up its child, there will naturally be a kind of warmth in your heart.
No matter what kind of animal they are, they are connected with human emotions, and even the posture of holding a child is the same, don't you marvel?
Therefore, I just want to show the creatures that are on the same earth with us in front of the world through the lens, so that people can understand the beauty of nature.
Perhaps the most moving scene in [the ocean] is that the shark whose fins have been cut off is thrown into the sea again.
But it was a simulated shark made by the film crew out of synthetic materials, and I didn't want brutal killings because of the movie.
This scene is seen by many as a turning point in the narrative of [the ocean].
Compared with the beauty of the first half, the second half is much more cruel.
Dolphins trapped in fishing nets make a mournful cry, and the seals, which are wandering among household garbage, appear helpless.
I always think how sad it would be if one day there were only solitary human beings left on earth and no other creatures to accompany us!
Reflection: 3D is difficult to imitate the truth
I'm often asked if I'm going to make 3D movies, and my answer is no.
Because 3D can only bring visual impact to people, but if you want to use it to express feelings, it is impossible to express the delicacy of emotions very well.
Moreover, the subjects of my photographs are not only people but also animals.
Like [Ocean], 3D equipment can't travel through the sea at the speed of dolphins, and it will take more than four and a half years to shoot.
I have a son who is also in the film industry.
But I never asked my son what to do, I don't think that was necessary.
In my own case, having been doing movies for so many years, I often feel that I am both professional and unprofessional.
Be an actor, don't act when you act, be a producer, don't do it when you do it, be a director, and don't direct when you direct.
I never do something step by step, but I do it when something moves me.
When my passion drives me to act or direct, why don't I do it?
So it's not about technology to make movies, and it's impossible to succeed in the film industry if you want to rely on technology.
I think it should be our passion, with passion we can get a steady stream of motivation and try to transcend our souls and climb to another realm.
So if you're in the film industry to make an overnight name, or just because movies are fun, or if they're going to get high returns, you're sorely mistaken.
Cinema is a means of expression, a weapon used to defend the truth.
But at the same time it is not preaching, it can arouse the purest emotions in your heart, so it is a soft weapon.
So film is a means of expression used to convey emotions.
When you value the emotion that a movie can give people more than the RETURN on investment,
You're going to be fully committed to the movie.
Your talent and your love of movies can only be reflected in movies.
All the way, R.I.P.