Cultivation director: Do you still have to read Nietzsche to shoot aliens?

Kong Dashan is a director who came out through college education and the film industry. From script, investment to filming and publicity, "Space Exploration Editorial Department" has more or less received support from the industry. Executive producer Wang Hongwei believes that this is a screening ability that a mature film industry system should have.

The news goes like this. A man named Li Kai in Binzhou, Shandong Province, said he had seen aliens. On the evening of early March 2013, he laid a power grid on the bank of the Yellow River to prepare for a few hares to drink, but he failed to electrify the rabbits, but electrocuted an alien.

It was a TV news, and in the news footage, you could see the white alien corpse (fake), lying in the freezer of Li Kai's house, and a printed expert certificate from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (also fake, of course).

The best thing is Li Kai's account of the whole thing (made up), he said: "There were five aliens standing on the shore, they looked at me, I looked at them, I took out my phone and took a picture of the aliens, and then my bike was sucked into the flying saucer." I picked up the stone and smashed it at the UFO, and the stone exploded when it fell on the UFO. As soon as the five aliens saw me smashing their flying saucers, they walked towards me together. Their steps were very firm, and they did not mean to slow down at all, as if they must catch me. In the process of escaping back, I did not forget to step over the power grid I had laid out, but the aliens who chased me behind did not see the power grid I laid down, and the one who started waded to my high-voltage power grid and was electrocuted. Seeing that there was no movement behind me, I led a dog to the scene of the incident, and my dog sniffed, licked, and began to bite the alien. I didn't move when I was bitten by a dog, and of course I was dead. ”

Space Exploration Newsroom was originally inspired by this TV news. Kong Dashan feels that this story is very suitable for making a movie, you know that Li Kai is deceptive, but his attitude is so sincere and serious, as if what he says is true, there is a contrast between truth and falsehood, and absurdity arises. Later, although this story is not the main body of the movie, you can still see it in the movie. It can be said that this news laid the most basic temperament of the movie, which is a serious nonsense.

Kong Dashan is 33 years old and is a young director. "Space Exploration Editorial Office" is his first feature film. In 2021, the film premiered at the Pingyao International Film Festival and won four awards including Fei Mu's honorary best film at that year's Pingyao Film Festival. At the premiere scene, the audience applauded and cheered several times, and netizens commented that it was "the pinnacle of the Chinese soft sci-fi genre". Before it was released, "Space Exploration Editorial Office" seemed to have become a phenomenal movie.

This is a feature film, but it is filmed in a documentary way. It is about Tang Zhijun, the editor of a science fiction magazine, who wades through mountains and rivers to find aliens. Unlike the large-scale production of "The Wandering Earth" that focuses on visual effects, "Space Exploration Editorial Office" does not shoot cosmic wonders, but shows the process of human beings' yearning and pursuit of cosmic wonders. This process cleverly mirrors the classic novel "Journey to the West", in which Tang Zhijun and his companions who find aliens correspond to the four masters and apprentices of "Journey to the West", and you can think that Tang Zhijun is "Tang Monk". This is the background color of the Chinese color of film. In addition to "Journey to the West", you can also see some other literary colors, such as poetry and some romantic imagery throughout the second half of the film. The emotional core of the film falls on the relationship between father and daughter, which can bring universal resonance and is a common emotional structure in genre films.

"Space Exploration Editorial Department" stills Kong Dashan's experience of making movies is no different from most people, and in the mixed film industry, his life is even a little dull. In high school, his grades were not good, and in order to go to university, he took the art test and was admitted to the radio and television directing major of Sichuan University of Communication. After graduating from university, he enrolled in a refresher class at the Beijing Film Academy, which is an option for many people who have not been admitted to the film school but want to study film. In Beijing, he met two nobles, one was Wang Hongwei, a teacher at the film school, and the other was director Guo Fan. They later supervised Kong Dashan's film together.

Wang Hongwei has served as the producer and literary planner of many films, and in 2022 he mainly participated in three projects, namely "Thousands of Miles Home", "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Space Exploration Editorial Department", which also reflects his two cooperation tendencies, one is to cooperate with mature directors on commercial blockbusters, and the other is to help young directors make his first feature film.

You can see his name in the works of many young directors, such as Xin Yukun, Ma Kai, Lu Qingyi, etc., Wang Hongwei said that there is a lot of fun working with young people, because everyone wants to shoot something very different, and he likes this freshness. In Wang Hongwei's view, he has industry experience, and the most important role is to grasp the direction for young directors, and technical guidance in creation is secondary. As for who to choose to cooperate with and who not to work with, it is also empirical, relying on chat, looking at his behavior, IQ and EQ, and then making judgments.

In 2015, Kong Dashan was admitted to Wang Hongwei's graduate school and officially entered the film school. Wang Hongwei feels that this child does not talk much, is very down-to-earth, and really likes this industry, after so many years, he feels that Kong Dashan has the ability to shoot feature films, and what is lacking is only a suitable script.

Kong Dashan and Guo Fan met due to a coincidence. In 2009, Kong Dashan watched an animated film called "The Adventures of Li Xianji", from the story, world view to skills and style, he was shocked, he felt that it was not made by his contemporaries, but like something that people came back to shoot fifty years later. In 2011, he adapted the cartoon and made a short film. He didn't know that Guo Fan also remade the cartoon. Later, Guo Fan took the initiative to contact him to meet, and the two began to work closely.

"Space Exploration Editorial Department" was originally Kong Dashan's graduate work, but when the epidemic broke out and filming was postponed, he had to graduate as the executive director of another film. At the script stage, Guo Fan began to participate in the film, helping Kong Dashan to invest, Wang Hongwei said, "In fact, using Guo Fan's industry credibility as collateral." ”

Because of the addition of Wang Hongwei and Guo Fan, this movie has a certain sample significance. Unlike those directors who are not from a professional background and get support by raising money on their own or participating in venture capital conferences, Kong Dashan is a director who came out through college education and the film industry. From scripts, investment to filming and publicity, they have more or less received support from the industry. Wang Hongwei believes that this is a mature film industry system should have the screening ability, and the Chinese film venture capital conference may be the sum of the world, which is a reflection of the imperfect mechanism and channels.

Of course, for directors, generating new creativity within a system is more a manifestation of personal will. Space Exploration Editorial Office looks new in the Chinese film market, and you can hardly find a movie to compare with. It's a test of the film market, and when the industry makes a new film, to what extent can the market accept it? We look forward to this answer.

The following is Kong Dashan's oral account.

figure

I basically filmed that news intact.

The reason why that news attracted me was completely out of personal bad taste, and I thought it was particularly funny. I wrote an outline based on that news, there were no characters, it was spread by events, and that outline was a failure. I realized that I needed to write a main character to run through these things.

In the second version, the entry of the character of Tang Zhijun determined the baseline of the film, and all the plots were extended by the personality of his character, and it can be said that he became the main driving force for the story.

There are many sources for Tang Zhijun. From the image point of view, from my last short film "Spring, the Teachers Are Gone", it was played by my father. The two of them looked exactly the same, wearing black cotton jackets, glasses, holding briefcases, riding broken electric cars, including the glasses worn by Tang Zhijun, and I asked the art to pick the kind my father wore.

As for the core of the characters, there are more. From a distance, he is a bit like Tang Monk or Don Quixote, and more recently, there is a Chinese independent documentary called "Bicycles and Old Electric Steel", in which the character Zhang Yisu is a musician, he is the Tang Zhijun of the music industry. I was very impressed by that character. There is also a cartoon "Rick and Morty", in which Grandpa Rick, that is Tang Zhijun of the United States. I think this personality has been present throughout the ages.

The biggest trait of such people is that they have a self-consistent worldview. Others may understand, may not understand, it doesn't matter. He will not feel that I am different from others, self-pity, self-pity, he is very consistent in his own set of world views.

In terms of play, such a character is dramatic, and he has a unique temperament, which can make the film highly recognizable.

Tang Zhijun (played by Yang Haoyu)

When I met actor Yang Haoyu (played by Tang Zhijun), I gave him some information, such as science and education books on UFOs, as well as reference films for documentaries and movies, so it seems that we are a professional crew. Because before I made movies, I asked classmates and amateurs to act, without these processes, when I arrived at the scene, I said you can act. But now that I'm making movies, it seems that some of the best stories in film history are that directors need to create some seemingly mysterious ways to communicate with actors. I thought for a long time, so I will give Mr. Yang Haoyu two books, one is Zhou Guoping's "Nietzsche: At the Turning Point of the Century", and the other is Shi Tiesheng's "Sick Broken Pen".

On the other hand, Nietzsche and Stetson are two people I feel are very close to the spiritual core of Tang Zhijun. Nietzsche, to put it bluntly, he is a patient, and you look at his text feels like reading the clinical report of a schizophrenic patient. He was full of rhapsody about mankind, full of contempt for the secular order, and wanted to break through the bondage of the flesh. I read "Nietzsche" on the recommendation of another screenwriter, Wang Yitong, and he said that this book had a particularly great influence on him, and after reading it, I seemed to have found a manual for Tang Zhijun's personality.

Shi Tiesheng is actually Tang Zhijun in the last five minutes of the movie, and Tang Zhijun who came to his senses after coming out of the cave. Although Shi Tiesheng is physically disabled, his soul and spirit are very sound, and he is the spiritual core of Tang Zhijun after the transformation.

Tang Zhijun in the cave

On the set, I generally talk about things with actors, how should this scene be performed? Who is he? Is it a real scientist, or a mental patient?

More often than not, we are talking about what he is not. For example, Tang Zhijun eats noodles, in Tang Zhijun's logic, his world does not have the word "noodles", a bowl of noodles is a mixture of carbohydrates and proteins, vitamins, he will not say, I eat bowl noodles, he will say, supplement the nutrients that maintain my life, he uses such a language system to describe the world. So this character has very little flexibility in improvisation in his performance, because he can't talk like a normal person, can't be particularly living, and he has an almost obsessive-compulsive way of looking at the world.

True and false

I was very clear from the beginning that I wanted to make a pseudo-documentary, and when I didn't even think about the story, I first decided on the form - pseudo-documentary, handheld, because this format can satisfy my bad taste for serious nonsense. And the story of finding aliens is a natural match with the style of pseudo-documentary, which is so appropriate that if I told another story, I probably wouldn't choose a pseudo-documentary.

The form of pseudo-recording places extremely high, if not the highest, requirements on film shooting. It trains the director to control all elements in all aspects, not only the performance, but also the logical basis of the photography, art, and the play including the lines, all of which are very deeply considered. Because you make another stylized film, the acting is fake or the art and the set are a little strange, you can use this is my style to quibble - I just want the actor not to speak, I want the actor to be expressionless, this is my style, but pseudo-record, you don't have any reason to quibble. Because everyone knows what real life is like, if you shoot a little bit like it, everyone will think that you are fake.

The difficulty is that I have not been able to find a movie that can be completely targeted, there really is none, anyway, in the database I can see, I can't find it. I can only find a certain part or element of this film that is very similar to what I conceived, and I can put together a bunch of reference films. Because pseudo-documentaries are rare, and most pseudo-documentary cameras appear as a character in the film, which is different from what I thought.

The form of this film is completely new and only exists in my mind. So I'm very tired, I have to establish a concept with each creator and actor from beginning to end, first talk about what pseudo-recording is, its similarities and differences with feature films, what is its image style, performance style, and why it is performed this way, why it can't be performed like that, and what is the underlying logic. I can't count how many times I have said it, sometimes the main creator changes, and I have to tell him again from the beginning, especially like the pre-job training of the enterprise, what is my corporate culture, what is my philosophy, vision...

The completion of the script is 90%, which is very high, and basically everything has been determined in the early stage and planned in detail. I'm not a director who enjoys improvising on set, which makes me very anxious, I must determine all the shooting plans in advance, and even predict what the risks will be, what should I do when I have a problem? I'll have to figure it all out.

On the shooting set, the camera also needs to perform, and when it encounters a sudden situation or arrives in a new environment, it instinctively captures its curious points and reacts with the actors. The camera has to perform a reaction like a person, it can't have a prejudgment, it can't know in advance who I'm going to give the shot to or where to shake it, but I quickly shake it when something happens here, it is always lagging, to have authenticity.

Shooting scene, Kong Dashan on the left

The crew started on October 25, 2020, finished on December 31, and filmed for 37 days. The biggest difficulty in shooting was rushing, we went from Chengdu to Yibin, then to Meigu County in Daliangshan, and then from there to Xingjing County in Ya'an, and finally back to Chengdu, we needed to keep transitioning, completing a lot of complex shooting in dynamic situations, and never breathed a sigh of relief. Our crew has a total of eighty or ninety people, and there are twenty or thirty people on the scene, which is the size of a small crew.

In fact, "Space Exploration Editorial Department" is not a pseudo-documentary in the standard sense, its plays and performances are conventional feature films, it is just a feature film with a pseudo-documentary style, there are pseudo-documentary forms, such as interviews, cross-view lenses, but its drama logic is still genre film.

interesting

For the style and sense of humor embodied in this movie, I can only say that the interesting point between me and the screenwriter Wang Yitong is this, so where does it come from? It may be a result of a series of things such as the family environment, growth background, and knowledge structure of childhood.

I was born in Qufu, a place full of Confucian traditional culture, which is very suitable for old age. In my freshman and sophomore year of high school, I was mostly playing in bands, and the style was Grunge plus silly punk. Write some saliva songs, play some covers, very amateur, and occasionally perform at a bar opening or a mobile phone titled rock night in a big box. I was wearing a Kurt Cobain T-shirt, and I wasn't allowed to perm my hair at that time, and if I did, it would be even more exaggerated. The guitarist was in charge of writing the songs, and I also worked as a guitarist, but I had no talent and didn't play it well. I'm a bassist.

I love Nirvana, Radiohead, Broken Pumpkin, The Gate, Sonic Youth. Looking back now, it was very naïve to want to be a rocker with my talent, but I quickly realized that I didn't have this talent, and I thought forget it, just be a hobbyist.

So the soundtrack quality of the film "Space Exploration Editorial Office" is absolutely OK, I am satisfied, and it can be said that it is the most confident part of me. The soundtrack of this film is mainly classical music, and according to the progress of the plot of the film, different versions of the waltz run through it.

Watching movies starts in junior high school. It was the end of the VCD era, and I used to rent discs and watch Hollywood and Hong Kong movies, not the kind of movie fan, but completely as an entertainment product. In high school, I didn't study well and could only go to college by majoring in art, and at that time I narrowly believed that film and television majors could be tested as long as they were good at writing. I was good at Chinese, and I thought I could get into college, so I began to consciously watch movies.

At that time, I watched two kinds of movies, one was a world masterpiece like the popular Douban TOP250; One is a movie that suits my own taste, all kinds of avant-garde experiments, strange powers.

For example, David Lynch's early short films, "Six Patients" and "Grandmother", until now, "Grandmother" is one of my nightmares, and after watching it, I think this thing is too disgusting, but it is too cool. Because I played in a band, I felt that temperament was very close to the temperament of the music I listened to at that time, it was all a system. The other is Shunji Iwai's "All About Lily Zhou", which was also one of my early enlightenments, and that movie is not outdated now, and its language is still very good.

David. Lynch's "Grandmother"

Like the great movies I saw, I wanted to make a great movie. The idea was the same as when I saw a great rock band and thought I was going to form a band too. It's just that playing a band, the distance between you and it (at least formally) is very short. At the time I thought the movie was similar, but then I found out that it was too difficult, too different.

When I went to college and learned some film techniques, my thinking changed. For example, I think Darren Aronofsky is a good director of that standard, how to say, he has a lot of respect for the film itself, and what I particularly like about him is that he can make both "Requiem for a Dream" and "Wrestling King" two very different styles of films. Zhang Yimou and Ning Hao are also such directors, Zhang Yimou can shoot both "Have Something to Say" and "Qiu Ju Fights Lawsuits", Ning Hao filmed "Incense" and "Crazy Stone". This kind of director is so cool, he can easily navigate different genres or different hypothetical works.

Darren Aronofsky, Requiem for a Dream

Literature also has a certain influence on my creation. When I was a child, my dad bought the magazine "Reader", and the first page after turning the coated paper advertising page of the magazine was "two jokes", which was my literary enlightenment. My grandfather liked to read ancient classics, historical notebook novels, and my father liked to read the little bourgeois-style Western romance novels, poetry and prose of the eighties and nineties, mostly gorgeous rhetoric, nothing in words, and most of the Western masterpieces. Anyway, my dad and my grandfather don't watch anything I watch.

The only thing that intersects with them is ancient poetry, which I do not reject, I think ancient poetry is beautiful, it has its own rules, it creates its beauty in existing rules, and it is actually very similar to movies.

I like Yu Hua, Wang Shuo, Wang Xiaobo and Zhu Wen, their style and values are antagonistic, and they want to challenge the established order. I'm not too interested in good old writers, except for Stetson.

Stetson is too honest and decent, and it stands to reason that I shouldn't like him. But I don't know why, I read it, I was touched by him, and even substituted for him. When Stetson died in 2010, I saw his death on the news, and I remember the headline "An era is gone." Later, I went to the Temple of Earth and imagined how he had come to this place with a wheelchair day after day, day after day, year after year. Here, what is he doing? What was he thinking? I was impressed. If the mind is used as a criterion for judging a person, Stetson is one of the few able-bodied people.

Movie view

In 2011, after graduating from my bachelor's degree, I went to Beijing to attend a training class in the directing department at the film school. Teacher Wang Hongwei is the director of the refresher class, which is the last year that Mr. Wang brings the advanced training class.

In the refresher class, Mr. Wang had a film appreciation class, he did not lecture in that class, only showed films, he played four films, I was particularly impressed, one is Tetsuya Nakajima's "The Life of the Disliked Matsuko", and the other is Aki. Kaurismäki's "Matchfactory Lady", one is the Spanish horror film "Death Video", and the other is the French literary film "Angels of the Poles".

After it was finished, he didn't say anything, but I thought, why did he put these films? What do these films have in common and different? I found that these films are all feature films, but the styles and styles they present are very different. I think if I, as a director, were going to make these four films, what would I do? Because the things that the directors of these four films have to consider and control are completely different. That was a starting point, the first time I thought about the shape of cinema.

That year had a great impact on me, and it was my first real film education in the sense. Because my previous school was television, I majored in television directing. During the refresher class, I wanted to shoot something, and at that time the micro-movie was very popular, and I felt that at least I could make a living from this, but no one looked for me. I had to continue my classes at film school, and in 2012 I basically did nothing.

Executive producer Wang Hongwei

I want to take the postgraduate examination of Mr. Wang, Mr. Wang said that it will be two years later, and I also think it is better to shoot things for two years first, and then go to graduate school. If you go from school to school, seamless connection, will it feel too closed, if you shoot things for two years and then come back to school, you know more about what to do. The idea of wanting to make a movie has always been there. In 2015, I was admitted to the graduate school of the film school, the graduate I took was called MFA, it was a working graduate student, more creative, the content of the exam that year was different from that of full-time graduate students, relatively easy, but the purpose of my graduate school entrance examination was mainly to study with Mr. Wang.

It can be said that Mr. Wang shaped my view of movies, after watching a movie, I can know what Mr. Wang probably likes or dislikes, and I can have a vague vague and vague standard of his judgment of movies.

I don't like those artist-like directors very much, that is, what he shoots you can't define it with the audiovisual language and playwriting skills of the film, you feel that it is the director's self-talk, it is a kind of film that requires a lot of self-explanation and off-site information to establish.

Teacher Wang has never taught such movies in class. He will analyze those films that are "said" at all levels, and disassemble the film in great detail, you learn film is a craft to learn, what elements are composed of this craft, he will explain each element very clearly, try not to mix personal subjective likes and dislikes. Some film school teachers can't help you to give you lyricism, and the content of the class is actually to express his love for a certain master to the students in an all-round way, and feel that he and the master's soul are highly bound. This kind of stuff is quite boring, and I hate that way of teaching. And that kind of film is not replicable, you can appreciate it as a work of art, taste it, but you don't try to analyze it with some methodology, it doesn't have to be analyzed. That is an artist's self-expression, which is not universal.

I don't know how to define a good movie in the general sense, I think a good film must first have a technique, to be able to see the director's control, and the second is to have expression, see what the director wants to say in the end.

luck

I was able to make this film mainly because of director Guo Fan. At this point, I'm luckier than 99% of directors.

The relationship between me and Teacher Wang plus Director Guo is especially like a family, Teacher Wang is the father of the family, Director Guo is the eldest brother, and I am the younger brother who is not a child. When "Space Exploration Editorial Department" first began to prepare, Director Guo and Mr. Wang discussed how to get his film out, especially like a family meeting, the father sat there, the eldest brother felt that the younger brother in the family was not a way to do this, he had to do something serious.

The first time I met director Guo Fan was in 2011, Guo Fan had just finished remaking the cartoon "The Adventures of Li Xianji", knowing that I also remade a short film of "The Adventures of Li Xianji", I guess I think I made it very fun, so let's get to know it. He sent me a private message through Weibo, when I was in a film school advanced class, that day he came to the film school to have some things, and when I got out of class, I sat for a while at the Shangdao coffee next to the peony garden, and when his wife got off work, they went home together.

That time, it was more about Director Guo sharing his process of filming "The Adventures of Li Xianji" and what he wanted to shoot in the future, and at that time he had a lot of reserves for sci-fi films. I'm completely like listening to the book of heaven, I have only filmed graduation assignments, I just came to Beijing, I don't understand anything, I don't know what the movie crew leader is like, I think it's very fun to listen to him.

Later, in the Spring Festival of 2013, he was preparing for "You at the Same Table", asked me what I was busy with recently, and said that there would be a new film in the year, and he could let me go over at that time, and I said no problem.

In 2013, I went to the crew of "You at the Same Table" as a director's assistant, and I was involved from April to November, from preparation to editing, from beginning to end. That experience taught me the whole process of filmmaking.

In fact, it was the only time I was with the group before filming "Space Exploration Editorial Office", so all my experience in filming came from that experience. Often when I was preparing, I was thinking about how Director Guo did it in "You at the Same Table", he did this, okay, then I will do it.

For example, the script is read, I don't know what the reading is for, what do I need to say after the actors read it or you continue to read, I don't know what the director is going to do, I desperately recall, oh, Director Guo seems to be chatting while showing the actors the scene map, before each reading a play, tell them what the environment in which this scene takes place, and what the scheduling of this scene is like, so that they have a more sense of substitution.

Executive producer Guo Fan

At the end of 2017, Director Guo just finished filming "The Wandering Earth", after the completion, he asked me to come to the company, at that time, I was a graduate student at the film school, about to graduate, he asked me what I planned after graduation, what I wanted to shoot, I told him a few things I wanted to make, I didn't have a story at that time, so I showed him the news, I said I wanted to make a pseudo-documentary movie. He thought it was good and asked me to write the script first.

After every draft of the synopsis, outline, and script, I would synchronize with him and Mr. Wang, and after the first draft of the synopsis was written, he and Mr. Wang were not satisfied, feeling that this was not very good, at that time Tang Zhijun had not yet appeared, it was a completely farcical story. After Tang Zhijun appeared, they both said in unison that they could just write it down according to this.

From the beginning, Guo Fan said that he could help produce my film, and he even said, I can bring in several major producers in your film (that is, those big companies appear in the opening now). I don't know where his confidence comes from, I don't have confidence in myself, he is so confident, when there is nothing, he thinks this film can be done.

I really admire it. I was full of faces? What? What I thought to myself was to make a small-budget independent film, go to a film festival, and maybe a one-day trip to the cinema would be over, and don't engage in such a big battle. But he already had a hunch that the film was now getting everyone's attention.

answer

Before making "Space Exploration Editorial Department", I knew very little about science fiction, and I only began to systematically read science fiction-related things when I was writing scripts, such as science fiction movies, documentaries, and books, including Carl. Sagan's Cosmos, Arthur. Clark, I've always felt that making a sci-fi film in the traditional sense is too far away for me.

It's not just a matter of large-scale production, it involves a lot of other expertise, you have to understand art, design, visual effects, all of which are very important. If you're going to make a sci-fi film, it's difficult if the director doesn't have these three abilities. Director Guo Fan can succeed because he already understands this. In addition to having the director's basic artistic accomplishment and ability, he also needs to have more professional technical level and even software level, the software used to make special effects is once mastered by Director Guo, and I don't even know what the software is called, so science fiction is a very complex field for me.

But the interest in aliens has been there since childhood, because when I was a child, I watched the top ten unsolved mysteries of the earth and was quite interested in this. Of course, some of the expertise in astronomy is learned when writing the script and then used in the script.

Since the movie is about finding aliens and UFOs, I naturally think of the UFO fever of the eighties and nineties, when there was a group of people who were obsessed with studying UFOs. I was in contact with this group when I wrote the script. I participated in an event called the "First Interstellar Civilization Exploration Forum" in Beijing, and a ticket cost more than 700 yuan, and the conference gathered the country's top UFO experts and enthusiasts. These people regard aliens as a transcendent being, like gods, aliens represent a more civilized world than us, and place a certain imagination on them. In the movie, Tang Zhijun searches for aliens in order to give his daughter an answer.

Before my first feature film, 90% of my work was photography, which didn't need to mobilize the creative part of my brain, I just had to worry about the picture and put in some manual work. Because whether it is directing for advertising or online dramas, it is too consuming, and I hope to save this creative ability for my own films, otherwise it will consume me all at once. I don't have any expenses, I make some money from photography to pay rent and living expenses, it's good, mainly worry-free, and I spend a lot of time by myself.

Kong Dashan

In 2018 and 2019, I was writing the script for the Space Exploration Editorial Office. In 2018, I occasionally went out to take some photography work, and in 2019 I completely went out of production. In Beijing, most of my state was to ponder, and when I couldn't figure it out, I played games, and my cooking skills improved by leaps and bounds at that stage, because cooking was a very self-comforting job that could not be written in an escape script. From buying vegetables, washing vegetables, choosing vegetables, cutting vegetables to making and eating, two or three hours have passed, if you order takeout, ten minutes to eat, and you have to face the anxiety of not being able to write a script.

Our other screenwriter Wang Yitong is in Chengdu, and I will also go to Chengdu for a while, and most of the time when writing a script, we collapse in the corner of the room, silently swipe our phones, and then provoke a conversation, I am very resistant and do not want to face it, want to escape, and he drags me back again. (Wang Yitong added: In July 2019, we revised the fifth draft of the script together, I have a studio, we and other friends eat and live together, there is an aunt who specializes in cooking for us, so we don't have to worry too much about eating, think about the script every day, play table tennis, Kong Dashan's playing style is turtle play, only defend and will not kill, rely on my offensive mistakes to win.) In the evening, we watch reference films together. That time was quite happy, and it was an ideal creative state in the heart of every creator. ）

Screenwriter Wang Yitong also played a role in the movie

Originally, I planned to start the film in early 2020, but then the epidemic broke out and I couldn't shoot it. Looking back, that was the lowest point in my filming process. In fact, it's not just because of making movies, I don't know where the future of this world will be. Looking at the fate of all mankind, I feel that the matter of whether I make a movie or not is not so important, or it is not so tragic, compared with the suffering of the people of Wuhan, what am I? So I quickly adjusted out of that state.

I think even if I can't make it, it's okay if I don't direct it in the future. The most important thing is to find a self-consistent, lifestyle that can consistently provide you with rewards, which is the most important thing. You can do anything on this basis. I'm not saying success or status in the external worldly sense, these things are too illusory.

Making a movie is too much of something I can control, it is especially like the carrot hanging in front of the donkey in the movie, it seems to be close at hand, but I can't ask for it. It's full of uncertainty and it's not something I can control alone. The reason why I was able to shoot it was completely and really because of Director Guo Fan and teacher Wang Hongwei. Some things are not something you can do with hard work, making movies is, luck is a big part.

If I don't make a movie, from a realistic level, I may be able to be a teacher immediately, and if I don't consider the reality factor, I especially want to be a giant panda keeper, which is a fantastic career.

In the movie, the question raised by Tang Zhijun, what is the meaning of our human existence in the universe? Some people gave the answer in a religious way, some people gave the answer in a literary or philosophical way, but in the final analysis, this is a question that all human beings are concerned about, and this film is the result of my thinking.   

Interview, written by: Li Chun

Editor: Jin Jin

Operations Editor: Wen Wen

After reading the story of Kong Dashan

What do you have to say

Share it with us in the message area