The scale is crazy, and 4 episodes were urgently stopped! This 200+ billion domestic traffic is going to be over?

"Under the Stranger" resumed, and fans waited for a month.

Too many questions to know.

Not long ago, @毒眸编辑部's friends chatted with Xu Hongyu, the director of "Under the Stranger".

In Sir's impression, the themes that Director Xu is good at are young, enthusiastic, and imaginative.

"Like You" and "Home at One Point" can be seen.

This time in "Under the Inhumans", how did he turn the hot-blooded comics into real people?

After reading this article you will understand.

This is the dividing line between poisonous eyes that has not been seen for a long time

After "Under the Inhumans" was broadcast again, Xu Hongyu sent more than a dozen Weibo messages in succession, "I'm curious, do you know, under us under the Inhumans."

Replayed! ”

Some time ago, Xu Hongyu introduced a new member of the "Hot-Blooded Animal Alliance" on Weibo, a kitten named 14. The comment section was packed with viewers waiting to replay, and he replied to everyone one by one. "Hard work, but hold on, wait for us."

The appearance of "Under the Different Man" is both accidental, but also like Xu Hongyu has experienced thinking, turning, and entering the intersection of life path and career after certain life practices.

After deciding to film this drama, he established a company, and the label was named "Hot-Blooded Animals", which means "a like-minded and warm companion getaway". This label gathers a group of creators who share his love for the theme of youth and blood, vowing to "measure countless universes".

Before measuring these new universes, what Xu Hongyu did was to search.

Before the Spring Festival in 2020, Xu Hongyu returned to Hong Kong and lived at home for several months. This is the first time he has lived in Hong Kong for so long since leaving home after graduating from university.

The world is changing rapidly, and people are forced to quiet. During that time, Xu Hongyu began to look inward and think: "What to shoot next?" ”

For Xu Hongyu, this is not a new problem. Every time he finishes a play, this question comes to his mind.

In 2017, after the release of "Like You", Xu Hongyu went from an unknown editor to a high-profile emerging director. Many projects came to him, and he described himself as like "a child walking into a candy house", not knowing which one to choose.

During that time, Xu Hongyu made several short films in succession, most of which were about inner exploration and self-confirmation. After filming "Crossfire", he spent another 30 days filming "Home at One Point", which tells the story of a wandering person who returns to his hometown and finds himself.

Talking to oneself and finding new expressions from it is a habit that Xu Hongyu has developed over many years of being alone. After ten years of editing, he was often in a small dark room, not going out for a few days, not talking to anyone, only facing the computer, although lonely, but also activated the channel he explored inward.

Every time you think like this, new directions of expression are unlocked, the last time it was "Crossfire", this time it was the drama version of "Under the Inhumans".

Xu Hongyu loves to talk about "different" people: two people who fall in love in different worlds, entrepreneurs who are incompatible with the countryside, people and groups who feel the blood and youth with games, "different people"... And this may be Xu Hongyu's current footnote.

Who said that lonely outliers are not "hot-blooded animals" in another sense?

01

Break into the "Inhuman" world

Peng Yuchang is a loyal promoter of "Under One", and when filming "Home at One Point", he repeatedly talked to Xu Hongyu and recommended that he definitely watch it. In addition, Lu Han also recommended him, and his curiosity about this story was planted in Xu Hongyu's heart.

One day when the filming came to an end, Xu Hongyu came out of the editing room, pulled his colleagues together, and opened the first episode. After seeing it in the middle of the night, he made a decision in his heart: just shoot this.

It was a long-lost excitement of encountering a good story.

The cultural foundation of "Under One Man" and the presentation of traditional Chinese culture in a modern context gave him the urge to "study". "It uses a very fresh way to present traditional culture, which I think is very powerful, something is something."

The flip side of excitement is predictable difficulty and stress. The original book has a significant number of loyal readers who are expectant and afraid to see their favorite stories brought to the screen. After the viewing meeting of the drama version of "Under the Inhumans", some fans of the original book joked, "At that time, I was not very happy to see that the drama version was going to be released. Xu Hongyu immediately responded, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." ”

For people who like "Under One", subconscious "opposition" is a kind of protection, "they are protecting the world," Xu Hongyu knows this well, "When I want to cut in from another angle, can I be worthy of them?" ”

He wanted to read why they liked Under One.

In the early stage of script creation, he and the screenwriting team contacted many UP owners who liked "Under One" at Station B, and held an exchange meeting to listen to them share their interpretation and feelings about the original work.

Even putting aside the project itself, Xu still considers that day to be a "very important moment in his life" for him.

Sitting with a group of post-90s and post-00s generations and feeling their pure enthusiasm, fresh ideas and vigorous creativity, Xu Hongyu directly saw for the first time "a possibility given to young people by the times".

For criticism and doubts, Xu Hongyu is also willing to accept, "I want to say that we did not ignore them (original fans), maybe this time it is still a little worse, and next time it will do better." But it wasn't enough to make him give up, and if he met a little resistance, he would stop, "Who dares to make a comic?" ”

"Maybe not everyone likes to read comics, but I hope that such a good story can be seen by more people," Xu Hongyu explained, "and let more people know that our national comics really have a lot of good stories." ”

"So I don't think it's called comic reform," Xu Hongyu paused for a moment, correcting this familiar expression of the public, "'Comic adapt' seems to mean that I took the comics that everyone cherished to change, but in fact, it is not, it is to tell this story in the context of real people." ”

After the broadcast of "Under the Stranger", many viewers, including original fans, expressed their recognition of the direction of series adaptation on social platforms. Perhaps a more accurate word than "comic adaptation" should be "organic reduction": both innovative and retaining the spiritual core of the original work.

After deciding to start this project, Xu Hongyu kept asking himself, "Do you understand, what is this talking about?" What is its 'soul'? For him, if this answer is wrong, then even if he reproduces the famous scene and restores the shape, it is still not a success.

THE ORIGINAL NAME OF "UNDER ONE" WAS "ALIEN", "THE OUTCAST", WHICH ORIGINALLY MEANS "THE EXCLUDED". This is the "soul" that Xu Hongyu read: "Everyone has a different path, can we find our own experience, how should we use and do when we get this ability." ”

This is somewhat similar to the feelings that the Taoist elders gave him when filming in Dragon Tiger Mountain. A master told him: "It's not that I have the ability to condition people's bodies, it's just that God has given me this ability." ”

Dragon Tiger Mountain is one of the main locations where the original book of "Under One" takes place, and it is important for Xu Hongyu and his team to be filmed there and accepted by its dojo.

"You guys filming this scene, you are doing a good job, then I will also help you." The master told him.

The English name of "Under the Inhuman" is "I am nobody", which to some extent also implicitly matches his understanding.

Looking back on those days, there seems to be a wonderful sense of power that always surrounds them, everything goes smoothly and the atmosphere is "very different". Although filmed for months and only slept a few hours a day, "everyone was in a warm state".

On the first day of the drama version, Xu Hongyu rarely updated his circle of friends, "Thank you Heavenly Master, thank Heaven and Earth, and thank Dragon Tiger Mountain." ”

Encountering such an opportunity, Xu Hongyu felt that he was very lucky, but at the same time, he also worked hard, "What I have to do is to shoot good works, and the so-called 'good' may take a lifetime to find and work hard." ”

02

look for

Before looking for "good works", Xu Hongyu spent some time to understand the meaning of the film.

In Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical film "The House of Dreamers", the 6-year-old Fabelman completed his "first experience of watching movies" in the cinema. Everyone perceives the starting point of the movie differently, which makes Xu Hongyu begin to recall his "starting point".

Until entering university, Xu Hongyu did not think that he would become a director. He was a science student, and in middle school, like most high school boys, he played in bands, joined the swim team, learned boring math, and calculated trapezoidal and triangular areas. "Who needs to calculate the area of a triangle in their daily life now?"

After being admitted to City University of Hong Kong, he chose the School of Creative Media on the recommendation of his senior sister. Starting from the plane, we enter the world of images.

Most of the art students who choose this direction are art students, and in the first class, the topic of breaking the ice is "Which director do you like the most?" Xu Hongyu looked out of place, "I don't know what directors there are, some people say they like Hitchcock the most, I don't know who it is." ”

In "The House of Dreams", Faberman's father, Bert, explains the concept of cinema to his son like this:

“...... Like a giant flashlight shining brightly, these photos flash in front of the light and run extremely fast, twenty-four photos per second! In your head, each photo stays for a fifteenth of a second. ”

△ Source: The movie "Dream House"

Xu Hongyu's understanding of movies also starts with those 24 photos per second. Many moments cannot be captured by the naked eye alone, and must be captured with the help of machines.

"It's like a horse running, and if it hadn't become a single frame, we might not have seen it leave the ground on all four legs for a moment."

Looking back now, the process of approaching these moments constitutes the starting point of Xu Hongyu's perception of film. The moving images that are exposed afterwards amplify this perception.

When taking a photo, click and the picture freezes there, completing a momentary recording. And when the camera moves, the picture suddenly "comes alive", and everything is given a sense of life. "We call it moving image, which is a moving image, which is just an image, but there can be countless variations in it."

Later, he was introduced by a friend to the crew directed by Chen Desen. After entering the film industry, this perception is amplified again. Previously, modern art education in college blocked the existence of "people". The media that carries all this is the protagonist, and in the canvas or camera, there is no difference between a person and a flower or a tree, they are all "photographed subjects".

After working in the film industry, Xu Hongyu found that he "cared more about human beings".

In "Under the Different Man", the Taishi said to Wang Ye: "There are causes and effects, but not all causes are in your consciousness, and everything in the world is a cause." And this is also the biggest attraction of images to Xu Hongyu.

"How did human encounters come about? Why do two people fall in love inexplicably? In his eyes, why the protagonist of a play chooses to enter a certain challenge, and how he will collide with the world, these are not the stories written in the script, but the cause and effect of fate. Exploring the origin of this cause and effect is one of the motifs of Xu Hongyu's images.

It's easy to acquire knowledge, AI is now capable of solving most problems, but having subtle feelings is hard.

Xu Hongyu is not looking for these answers from the perspective of directors, editors or entrepreneurs, but "human". "In what capacity do I use to make movies? In terms of human identity, if there is anything irreplaceable for our species, it may be emotion. ”

03

"Little Black House"

The lives of public figures in the eyes of the public are non-linear. The more familiar stories will always be put in front of the stage, stretched for a long time, and the part before becoming famous is condensed into Baidu Encyclopedia and becomes a "synopsis".

After graduating from university, Xu Hongyu, who was dedicated to "making movies", was introduced by a friend and joined the team of director Chen Desen. Although he is a life assistant, he is a movie-related job. "No matter, I thought to myself, let's go first."

Mr. Chan's company is in Tsim Sha Tsui, where parking spaces are hard to find, and in his first few months as an assistant, Mr. Xu's main job was to help him park and follow him to attend meetings large and small.

The workflow that seems routine now is fresh in Xu Hongyu's eyes at that time. "It feels like entering another world, it turns out that they understand images this way, to talk about a person's background, personality, to write a short biography of characters, to talk about scenes and stories."

In 2006, Xu Hongyu left Hong Kong for the mainland to work as an assistant director in a Sino-US co-production. Although he is an assistant director, he does almost everything in the crew, from lighting and recording, to photography and production, because Mandarin is still very non-standard, sometimes he speaks loudly and no one pays attention to him.

The most important turning point in Xu Hongyu's career was his acquaintance with Chen Kexin.

He joined the crew of "Cast Name", at first as a documentary filmmaker, and later because there was too much material, he was called by the editing team to help. Chen Kexin watched a scene cut by Xu Hongyu and decided to let him join the editing team of "Cast Name".

△ "Cast Name" drama group photo

This is the first feature film cut by Xu Hongyu. From here, Xu Hongyu entered a new world that made him happy.

The years in the editing room were deep and intense for Xu Hongyu. Editing is not standard team work and most of the time there is no need to communicate with other people. "A lot of times I didn't talk to anyone for days, just in front of the computer."

The day's work does not start from the moment you sit in front of the computer, but from the moment you open your eyes.

"It's like I'm going to cut a Jet Li play today, from the time I get up to the time I get on the bus, it's actually been cut. When sitting in front of the computer, all you have to do is put out what you have in your head. ”

The editing room feels like a "little black room".

Ten years in a small black room, Xu Hongyu's feeling is lonely. However, the state of thinking only about one thing has made Xu Hongyu feel precious to this day.

For a few moments, Xu Hongyu felt as if he could do magic and take effect for a limited time in the editing room. "The editing room is a more magical place than the set, in reality, we are passive and coherent, but on the editing table, everything can be reselected."

Xu Hongyu has always believed that a good editor is also a good creator, and everything can be broken and reorganized to give birth to new stories. "It's like we're sitting here talking right now, but who is the first shot going to? Who spoke first? Or do we just sit like this and don't speak for a long time? ”

This choice has no standards strictly speaking, and cannot be learned from any textbook, and can only rely on the editor's feelings about the story and the picture. "Start with the panorama, cut to the close-up, and then move here," Xu Hongyu said while gesturing, "What's the point?" Routine clips are lifeless. ”

This may be some of Xu Hongyu's talent. Chen Kexin will use "genius" when referring to his royal editor on many occasions. Talent and hard work are not antonyms, and the nights of lonely work in the editing room helped him unlock this talent step by step.

△ Source: NetEase Entertainment

This lonely and long darkroom period temporarily ended with the transformation of identity. Now Xu Hongyu still does some editing work, but his main identity in participating in the image has changed from editor to director.

When he first entered the industry, a staff member told him, "You can't be a director, your ideas are not wild enough." ”

For more than a decade, he hid in the "little black room" while trying to prove this idea wrong. "Why not? A lot of things are in my head, but I don't have the ability and opportunity to present them yet. ”

Time to 2017, director Xu Hongyu's first film "Like You" was released.

Before its official release, "Like You" was screened to the public for the first time at the University Student Film Festival, in a screening hall that can accommodate several thousand people. Halfway through the movie, Xu Hongyu sneaks in through the back door to observe the audience's reaction.

"Maybe some very cliché plot, but everyone laughed a lot," he doesn't remember what the episode was, but he always remembered how he felt at that moment, "I stood on the side, and tears flowed." ”

"It's not that I feel that my hard work is confirmed, I just think it's too charming." That was Xu Hongyu's favorite moment. After the screening of "Under the Stranger", he expressed this point of view, "Seeing everyone's sense of devotion to watching the film is the eternal motivation as a director. ”

04

"It's not filmed to win awards, it's filmed for the audience."

The importance attached to the audience's feelings determines to some extent what path a director will take.

Xu Hongyu's choice seems to have been biased towards marketization, although his first impression of film began with art films. Even in college, "anti-Hollywood" was the mainstream of his world, "Everyone thinks Hollywood movies are bad, movies shouldn't be like that." ”

Marketization or self-expression? This soul torture for most directors is not the most difficult question for Xu Hongyu. For him, the first difficulty in choosing to become a director is to "get out of that dark room" first. Of course, the process of coming out is also the process of solving this problem.

When doing editing, no more than three people need to communicate in a week. Being a director means being fully responsible for the work, talking to many people every day, dealing with all the big and small things in the crew, answering all kinds of different questions, and making all decisions.

Xu Hongyu is confident in his image expression, but he is not sure whether he can become a "leader" of the crew. At that stage, Chen Kexin became his "imitation object".

△ Xu Hongyu on the set

On the set of "Like You", Xu Hongyu will observe Chen Kexin to see how he communicates with people and accurately expresses his ideas. "Like a child learning to speak to his parents." So much so that after filming "Like You", many people around him told Xu Hongyu that he sometimes spoke "a bit like Director Chen".

What he learned from Chen Kexin is not simple "communication skills", but also the way the film industry works: only by accurately passing his ideas to everyone who can help him can a good work be born. Therefore, Xu Yuezhen, another producer of "Like You", feels that it is not the two of them who train Xu Hongyu to become a director, but the film industry.

"Film is art, but it's not exactly art, unless you're a genius," in Xu Yuezhen's view, only people who make art films are geniuses, once they enter the film industry, they need to persuade so many people and lead hundreds of people to complete one thing, "Geniuses don't want to communicate so much with others, I don't quite believe that there are geniuses in the film industry." ”

Many experiences before becoming a director helped Xu Hongyu quickly integrate into the film industry. Xu Yuezhen commented that he is the kind of director who "understands the audience's expectations", because he has a high degree of "service awareness" from documentary shooting and film editing, which makes him a person with a "clearer goal".

When the finalists were announced at the 53rd Golden Horse Awards, "July and Ansheng" received a total of 7 nominations. At that time, Xu Hongyu and Chen Kexin were in the crew of "Like You", and Chen Kexin said to him, "Don't think about it. Every play is different, your play is more of a commercial film, not filmed to win awards, but filmed for the audience. ”

These words may have planted seeds in Xu Hongyu's heart early and helped him complete a certain "self-consistency". After shooting two movies, Xu Hongyu began to shoot online dramas.

CrossFire is an attempt. Unlike the movie, in Xu Hongyu's view, the life of the people in the play will be stretched longer, and the audience's participation will be higher.

Instead of walking into a movie theater and sitting down to watch an entire story, viewers of an episode have some sort of choice, skipping, fast-forwarding, or repeating, or just watching the story that interests them. "I just give them my creations, and they have the right to choose whether to watch only Wu Lei or only Lu Han."

△ "Crossfire" celebration banquet (Source: Weibo Entertainment)

However, considering the needs of the audience does not mean that Xu Hongyu is far from self-expression. Instead, he spends more time thinking about himself. In addition to filming, he is further searching for "who I am", and this stage of the search is different from the short film period, he seems to be entering another dimension.

Most of the time, he chooses to follow his own inspiration, and for him, the director is like an "interface", connecting the god of cinema and time, and finding its soul for a work. But when faced with the choice of the next story, he will choose to match the self-inspiration with many stories and get the "optimal solution".

"Many things are not extreme, but if you keep swaying, you can't see your position," at this time, he hopes that he can calm down and look at himself first, "Many times our value is defined by the outside, parents, teachers and bosses set standards for us, but if you just pursue these, can you take into account self-worth?" Impossible, right. ”

Of course, between "shooting for the audience" and "self-expression", Xu Hongyu is still looking for it. And put many directors at the same stage in the film industry, this search is not an outlier, but the norm.

05

Heterogeneous

Xu Hongyu is always photographing outliers, and so is his perception of himself.

Xu Hongyu's favorite movie recently is "Listening Girl", which won last year's Oscar for Best Picture.

When he saw it for the first time, Xu Hongyu cried. Some time ago, he found out the movie again and watched it again.

What moved him was the "different crowd". "There are groups in society who are classified as 'outliers' simply because they lack a certain ability or are different from others."

When Xu Hongyu was very young, his voice was relatively thin and his speech was soft, and the male classmates would make fun of him, "like a girl".

△ Interview source: Douyin number @poison eyes · not cold field

At that time, he was very lonely, he had been in a boys' school for more than ten years, and now he remembers a clear picture in his mind: "On an overpass, a few boys walked in front with their shoulders on their shoulders, leaving me alone behind." ”

"Maybe he didn't really want to hurt you, maybe his father told him what a boy should look like, and he naturally thought so," Xu recalled, "but that feeling was very bad, anyway, I cried when I said it." ”

The world of children is full of rules set by adults, such as what a good student should be like and what a boy should be.

And now Xu Hongyu has established his own rules.

△ Xu Hongyu in middle school (right)

"As I grew up, I felt that maybe I was a little more emotional in some things lately, and I was very proud to embrace this power and release this energy." Xu Hongyu wore a pink T-shirt with a round gold earring hanging from his left ear, and leaned loosely on the back of the chair.

This memory from his youth may constitute a kind of subconscious, and it also affects Xu Hongyu's preference for stories.

When he first finished watching "Under One", what impressed him the most was "alien". After the episode started, Lu Han forwarded Xu Hongyu's Weibo, and Xu Hongyu replied, "You know what? Xiao Feng is the first alien I photographed. ”

Even in a love story like "Like You", you can see the shadow.

At the end of the film, Lu Jin chased to the vegetable market, and the scene where he confessed to Gu Shengnan was Xu Hongyu's favorite clip. "This world belongs to Gu Shengnan, and Lu Jin took the initiative to enter his world because he loved her."

△ The movie "Like You"

This courage to break into another person's life is "surreal" for people who self-perceive as alien and accustomed to loneliness.

But this loneliness is also relative. Lu Jin believes that "eating is a private matter" because he has not found anyone to eat with. Similarly, Xu Hongyu, who is not ashamed to confess loneliness, is difficult to say whether he likes loneliness or just "happens to be lonely".

△ "Meditation and self-cultivation", source: Douyin number @ poisonous eyes · not cold field

Most of his former best friends have married and become fathers, and their lives follow the social clock to the next stage, and every time he returns to Hong Kong, he inevitably starts thinking about it. "Actually, I envy them, but I have chosen to save more time for myself."

Fortunately, it seems right for a creator to enjoy solitude.

Rare tranquility, Xu Hongyu's way of being alone, sometimes with himself, sometimes letting himself go.

Going to sea, diving, climbing, hiking... Empty your mind and store something new.

After the epidemic ended, the first thing he did was to find a sea and plunge headlong into it.

Diving in the deep sea is like losing gravity, going into space, stepping into the moon. The bottom of the sea is a completely different world, "we humans are all working hard, but the sea creatures are living their lives in peace." ”

Observing marine life is one of Xu Hongyu's pleasures. The turtle's home is usually in a cave on the edge of a cliff, surrounded by many small fish that cannot be named, and once he dived to a place where the current was very fast, and hundreds of sharks passed in front of him. And moments like these are precious to him.

Xu Hongyu used puffer fish to mark himself on social platforms. When angry or excited, the puffer fish will bulge into a ball of fried thorns, releasing poison. In the deep sea, most fish come in groups, but puffer fish go it alone.

"In this way, it is also an outlier in the sea."

A few years ago, he described himself as a big boy in a personal promotional video, saying "I won't grow up", but the gears of fate have been turning, and time does not seem to give him a choice, although there are more choices behind this choice, one dimension and another.

After chatting with Xu Hongyu for a few hours, he asked himself a question:

"It's like a drop of water thrown into the sea, are you still that drop? Or did you become this sea? ”

The picture of this article comes from the Internet

Poison Eye Editor: Zhang Jiaqi