The trend of looking forward in movies will not change
Text/bob
"Look ahead".
At the first China (Baisha) Film and Television Industry Film Week in 2019, Zhao Xiaoding won the honor of Best Cinematography of the Year with "Shadow". In the second edition, Zhao Xiaoding served as the chairman of the executive committee of China (Baisha) Film and Television Industry Film Week, encouraging grassroots workers behind the film, which in his view is an unshirkable thing.
The past three years have been three challenging years for the entire film industry. Whether it is the front-end movie shooting or the terminal theater screening, it has been very affected. Zoomed in to the time scale of the entire decade, since 2010, when the film market entered the era of tens of billions of box office, the film industry has been calling for the progress of industrialization. To some extent, the importance of honor and rights and interests of behind-the-scenes workers reflects the progress of the industrialization of the entire film industry.
"Looking forward" is a word repeatedly mentioned by Zhao Xiaoding, on the one hand, Zhao Xiaoding constantly explores new visual expressions; On the other hand, the film itself is an industry to promote development, in view of the current situation of domestic photographers, it is believed that young photographers should respect the industry and respect science and technology.
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- Cannot "go against the trend" of looking forward —
"They're the opposite of the whole forward-looking trend."
Cinematic sense has always been one of the criteria for the visual presentation of a movie. For film texture, it is often closely related to "film texture". From the perspective of the general development trend, today's film shooting has long ceased to be the film era, and the digital age is not just conventional shooting, virtual shooting and other cutting-edge technologies have now become an important part of global commercial blockbusters. However, in Zhao Xiaoding's view, photographers should not stay in the "past", but many young cinematographers in China have an incompletely correct understanding.
"I kindly remind young photographers to look forward and not look back. Some young photographers, they are keen on anamorphic lenses, or put the old lenses with obvious flaws and shortcomings on digital cameras with excellent performance, lock the material shot in the early stage (due to the flaws and imperfections of the lens directly lead to the quality of the original material image is limited), many technical means can easily achieve the various effects we want to present in the later stage, which is a problem of way of thinking. At present, many camera manufacturers, spend huge amounts of money every year to do scientific and technological research and development, improve image quality, optimize the key technical performance indicators of the camera, photographers can not in order to highlight the so-called personal style of creation, and take some of the above ways to reduce the level of image, which is contrary to our forward-looking concept and the development trend of the entire film industry. ”
In 2005, Zhao Xiaoding was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 77th Academy Awards for "Ambush on Ten Sides". Zhang Yimou's latest three films all feature Zhao Xiaoding, among which "Sniper" and "Above the Cliff" won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Cinematography for two consecutive times.
Zhang Yimou was originally a photographer, and as a "national teacher", his biggest mark lies in his extremely impactful vision. As far as recent works are concerned, although they are all realistic films, the visual style still maintains the level of "national teacher", and each one remains innovative in style.
The director's innovation will naturally continue to the production of films, especially "Above the Cliff" and "Sniper", both of which have a large number of "snow scenes", but the two films are very different in temperament.
In terms of lenses, "Above the Cliff" is snowing throughout the film, and the action scenes are fast and accurate, but "Sniper" is relatively more concise and pursues a sense of pattern and shape, so it also uses a lot of bipolar lenses. In terms of color, "Shadow" changed the strong impact of the big color of Zhang Yimou's costume films in the past, and gave people a bright feeling through the ink style of Chinese painting, while "Above the Cliff" uses white a lot.
As a photographer, it is the biggest responsibility to accurately present the director's ideas in the shot. And Zhang Yimou, who "seeks innovation", and Zhao Xiaoding, who "seeks change", coincide to some extent.
"Return" created the first film in China with a full 4K process; "The Great Wall" was the first to use ARRI 65 as a Sino-American co-production; "Shadow" Xiaoding Zhao was the first to try RED WEAPON, and "Manjiang Red" used Sony's flagship digital cinema camera CineAltaV 2.
"Every time a new machine comes out, I understand, test carefully, and know which camera is suitable for which subject, and some young photographers can't do that now. Movies have come to this day for more than a hundred years, and the driving force of movies is industry and technology. As a photographer, you need to have a grasp of anything new and be sensitive. ”
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—There is no big difference between filming and Hollywood, but the protection of the rights and interests of behind-the-scenes workers should continue to improve—
The protection of the rights and interests of behind-the-scenes workers is essentially a sense of progress.
In the past decade, due to the rapid development of the entire domestic film market, the domestic film industry has also been calling for industrialization. From the production of head films, industrialization has also made obvious progress. However, the "industrialization" of domestic films often focuses on the industrialization of technology rather than the industrialization of processes.
Zhang Yimou has always been known for his high production, which also means that Zhang Yimou has explored a relatively mature set of "industrial processes" to compress the entire shooting cycle. In the three years of the epidemic, the entire film shooting is actually facing very big challenges, in addition to the loss of funds, due to prevention and control measures and other reasons, many film productions have stopped filming, which seriously affects the progress of the film. However, Zhang Yimou has completed the closed loop of filming and production to release in three years, of which "Above the Cliff" is reported to take only 88 days to shoot the entire film, while "Manjiang Red" was officially announced in June last year and finally released in the Spring Festival file.
Such a shooting speed is actually very rare, and the film "Hero" that Zhao Xiaoding and Zhang Yimou first collaborated on was launched in Dunhuang, Gansu Province on August 11, 2001, and the AB group mode had been implemented at that time. And 2016's "The Great Wall" is another attempt by Chinese directors to standardize the industrial system in Hollywood.
Therefore, as one of the top cinematographers in China, Zhao Xiaoding has a relatively deeper understanding of the Chinese and American film industry throughout his career. From the perspective of shooting, Zhao Xiaoding believes that there is not much difference between China and Hollywood at present. However, if from the perspective of the industrial system, in fact, there are still many differences between China and the United States in the industrialization of film production.
In the years leading up to 2020, China's film industry reached a peak. From 2015 to 2019, a number of Sino-US co-productions appeared, and overseas filming of domestic films has also become an important choice. Behind the production of this batch of films, the entire industry has actually had a deeper experience of the Chinese and American film industry.
For example, when "Detective Chinatown 2" was filmed in the United States, he had a very detailed understanding of the filming system of the American union system. Filming in the United States, the most expensive is "time". U.S. film crews work five working days Monday to Friday, with overtime paid 1.5 times on Saturdays and twice as high as on Sundays. Moreover, no more than 12 working hours may disappear during the working day, and union films are registered separately according to the budget, and different grades correspond to different salary standards.
According to "Detective Chinatown 2" director of photography Du Jie said in an interview: "The union's requirement is to work within 8 hours, if someone's salary is $100 per hour, more than 8 hours, within 12 hours, is $150 per hour." If you double for more than 12 hours, it's $200 per hour, and if you exceed 13 hours, the salary will be doubled. If meal time is taken, the salaries of all staff members will need to be calculated separately. In addition, each staff member must have a 12-hour break after completing this period of work. ”
Compared with Hollywood, which has a mature system, there is still a long way to go to protect the rights and interests of behind-the-scenes workers in China. In the past, domestic film crews rarely had holidays and rest periods for shooting, and in the filming process, the longer the shooting cycle means the higher the production cost. Zhao Xiaoding has also discussed with producers and directors before, believing that one day off a week and putting this one-day shooting task on the other six days can complete the overall progress. At present, many domestic crews can indeed take a day off for ten days to give behind-the-scenes workers a respite.
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—Being young does not necessarily mean innovation, and cannot be generalized—
In the digital age, photographers have actually ushered in a fork in the road.
Three-time Oscar winner for Best Cinematography, Vittorio Stellaro was Stellaro's first digital film when he collaborated with Woody Allen on "Coffee Commune". Prior to this, Stellaro had made 58 film films and Woody Allen had made 47 film films. But after a detailed test, Stellaro said to Woody Allen, "Woody, you always use film. I still use film. But I think we should change, we should move from film to digital, because development is unstoppable. We can accelerate or delay development, but we cannot stop it. We've fallen behind, film and photochemical processes, and someday they'll disappear. ”
Since the development of film, it is actually no longer a discussion of film and digital, and the more cutting-edge shooting technology is actually pushing photographers to innovate themselves.
Last year, "Avatar 2" was released worldwide and has now exceeded $2.3 billion at the box office. Behind this movie, it is actually a big step forward in film technology again. And for such a super blockbuster at the forefront of technology, there are actually unprecedented challenges in shooting, but this challenge is not just today.
Previously, Zhao Xiaoding mentioned that Hollywood photographers are actually divided into two extremes, one is the old school of photographers, who are resistant to new technology, and the other is a photographer who is completely adapted to new technology. But in fact, the old school of photographers is also divided into two categories, one is subjective resistance to new technologies, and it is difficult to find its own space after the film disappears, and the other is accepted but cannot be digested, it is passive. So come up with something new, you have to accumulate and absorb. ”
For the Hollywood commercial film system, which relies more on visual effects, Zhao Xiaoding gave an example: "Now they all talk about post-pre-positioning, which actually makes photographers more important than the traditional era in the past." If a traditional photographer knows nothing about post, the work of actually shooting in the studio is limited. And as soon as the director and VFX supervisor talk, you may be marginalized. ”
For current commercial blockbusters, visual effects pre-loading has become the norm, and the proportion of visual effects shots is also increasing, which is a major trend in global commercial film shooting. It is precisely based on this that Zhao Xiaoding does not appreciate the pursuit of "retro" by young domestic photographers in the early shooting.
"There is a theory that I think cannot be generalized, not that youth represents innovation. As long as the old comrade constantly accepts new things, his aesthetics online and his experience are also wealthy. Spielberg was over 70 when he filmed "Ready Player One", James Cameron was also nearly 70, just finished filming "Avatar 2", and Zhang Yimou is also 73 this year. The movies they make, young people still have to learn from them, can you say they are old? ”