Hitchcock was a stylistic and far-reaching director who had been following him since the 1950s and 1960s, when French New Wave directors, including Godard and Truffaut, paid close attention to him. Hong Kong New Wave director Tsui Ke was also heavily influenced by Hitchcock. From Xu Ke's previous works, it can also be seen that there is a hidden connection between him and Hitchcock: both directors are well versed in the production logic of the film industry, and both are created for the public, but they maintain a complete authorship in the film.
At the academic dialogue event of the 5th Pingyao International Film Festival, Xu Ke shared his insights on Hitchcock films. Xu Ke believes that Hitchcock's films are both ideological and popular, and also in line with the temperament of the Pingyao Film Festival: "I think the Pingyao Film Festival is a very young film exhibition, and it may be easier to talk about Hitchcock, because he is a director who likes to joke and tease people, and always feels that his thriller is not a thriller, it is a comedy." ”
In Xu Ke's view, one of the most crucial techniques of Hitchcock's films is to set up suspense points with tension for the plot, and the tension of suspense is maintained by the portrayal of "dangerous details". Tsui uses "Telephone Murder" as a clue to detail Hitchcock's film style.
The film Murder by Telephone was filmed in 1954 and is based on the stage play of the same name. This film, which was not in Hitchcock's shooting plan but became a classic, was constrained by the original stage play in terms of plot and suspenseful thriller elements. But it is precisely the changes in the formed framework that can show Hitchcock's emphasis on the technique and lens language: for example, paying attention to the camera scheduling and weakening the dialogue, relying heavily on montage techniques, presenting the relationship between the characters through color transposition, and showing the psychological state of the characters with close-ups of the hands.
The academic dialogue activity of "Xu Ke on Hitchcock" hosted by Xu Ke, the "opening speaker" of the 5th Pingyao International Film Festival and the founder of the Pingyao Film Festival, was held on October 13 at the Pingyao Film Palace Platform Amphitheater. The following is the dialogue content, and the interface entertainment has been deleted.
<h4>"Film history is important"</h4>
Jia Zhangke: The Pingyao Film Festival welcomed director Xu Ke, and every year we ask a director to talk about their film concepts and their understanding of films. Xu Dao said that he wanted to talk about Hitchcock and wanted to talk about his "Telephone Murder". This (choice) is unexpected and reasonable, we can see the secret connection between these two (directors) from Xu Director's past works, both of them work in the film industry, and at the same time they are created for the public, and they maintain a complete authorship in the film, and academic induction is "the author in the genre".
In recent years, in the books and various rankings of European and American film history, Hitchcock's works have always been among the best. Such a director has received a lot of attention since the film, especially since the 50s and 60s, he is a director who has been highly concerned by French New Wave directors, including Godard and Truffaut. What kind of nutrients did they draw from Hitchcock? Director Xu has also been following Hitchcock since the Hong Kong New Wave filming, and there are interesting internal relationships in it. First of all, I would like to ask director Xu Ke to talk about why hitchcock was chosen, and why hitchcock's "Telephone Murder" was chosen?
Xu Ke: In fact, there are many directors who have affected the current film, and if you pick one to talk about, it should be best to talk about Hitchcock, because he has a lot of works. He has made more than 50 movies in the 60 years of his work, and more than 50 movies can be seen, because it is a very market-oriented movie, and everyone should have a certain sense of familiarity with him. If we mention other directors, maybe his work may not be visible, and I think Hitchcock is the best choice. And it's interesting to say Hitchcock's words. I think the Pingyao Film Festival is a very young film exhibition, and it may be easier to talk about Hitchcock, because he is a director who likes to joke and tease people, and he always feels that his thriller is not a thriller, it is a comedy. He kept joking with the audience about how to deal with a murder, how to scare the audience, and he felt that this was the same effect as a roller coaster ride in the playground.
I remember when I was in college to study film, there was a course that I thought was worth mentioning, because a teacher told me that in fact, to study film, you must know what film history is, and if you don't know the history of film, you don't know what this movie is like, and the audience's reaction to him at that time is like this. You may only look at the movie itself, and maybe you don't know much about the whole era of the movie itself, [and] its impact on the future. So film history is important.
When we talk about Hitchcock, we have to talk about what his background is like, he was born in 1899, some say 1889, but I think he should have been born in 1899, because he started in 1919, he was 20 years old, working as a subtitle designer in England. Because he liked movies very much, he later went to Germany as an assistant director, and at that time, there was a very strong style in Germany called the Expressionist style, which affected many other filmmakers. So he went to Germany and became an assistant director, and then returned to England to make his first film, and the first film and the second film had a very strong and strong German expressionist color.
What is German Expressionism? I don't know if you know german expressionism, you should have learned it. It is also a relatively simple statement, because Germany at that time was not very good in terms of economy, so their currency also depreciated, and the reason for making movies was that in the industry, they could do the work, and making movies was the best way, so they made a lot of movies. And to be low-cost, the visual effects are very strong, so there is expressionism. Expressionism is not only in movies, but also in art, music, literature. The most obvious thing about German Expressionism is that it has a strong contrast, and pays great attention to the contrast between the dark side and the bright side, so many times we look at Expressionism is a lot of shadows, and see a person walking down the stairs who is a black shadow, a very strong visual effect. There are also characters and stories that mostly describe a story with a more distorted personality in society from the psychological aspect, so it will appear as a character with some criminal intentions, and then it will develop into a vampire, a villain scientist, and do something very strange. Expressionism continued to extend, and later some well-known films were influenced by Expressionism, similar to the later "Metropolis", which is a work with a strong expressionist style.
Hitchcock came to Germany in the 1920s, returned to England as a co-director, and brought this set back, and his work extended the very special state of his style. So the first two of his films are related to the thriller effect. All the way down, after Hitchcock made his first film in the 20s, in Europe, in the Uk itself, the market was not so good at that time, so later in three years he came to the United States and began to make American Hollywood movies. In 1939, just after World War II, before he entered the industry, World War I opened up completely new film themes, and the psychological state between intelligence officers, spies, and characters related to international wars appeared in his films.
Later, after 1945, there was the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the regulation of Hollywood industry. It wasn't until the '60s that regulation slowly opened, and that was the end of Hitchcock's creativity. In his whole creative process, what developed before the 60s, to the end of the film into another world state, his film also entered the end.
<h4>Hitchcock "didn't believe in surprises</h4>."
When we talk about Hitchcock, we also say that he is a master, he has his views, and our current perspective also has our views. Why, for example, would I talk about Hitchcock? Because a lot of his films themselves affect my impression of the picture behind me. Children don't like to watch Hitchcock movies, because they are more adult, similar to the depiction of women and men, and some of us who are not adults may not understand where its original meaning is. In fact, its original meaning often includes the life produced by people to keep personal secrets for some people, and all his suspense and tension come from the very shocking plot produced by the characters to hide their secrets.
He had a lot of different stages in the process, but I think it's important to go back to why he chose Murder on The Phone. "Telephone Murder" was filmed in 1954, and the film came out of nowhere for two very special reasons, because he was working on "Rear Window", but "Rear Window" did not start immediately, so he added a production of "Telephone Murder". I can't imagine that "Telephone Murder", which he does not particularly emphasize, is a very important position in his work, and the result (but) becomes a classic. For example, if you have seen Truffaut, Truffaut visited Hitchcock about "Telephone Murder", he directly said that I have nothing to talk about, because there are two very important factors in this movie, one factor is that it has been adapted into a movie after the stage play, so many plots and thriller factors are limited by the stage play, so in the filming process, it is not too able to follow his standards, put into his usual methods, not enough as a Hitchcock movie.
There is another reason he has always been very opposed, such as using dialogue to explain the plot, but because it is the form of a play, it must use dialogue to explain the plot, for Hitchcock, this is a very contrary to his principles. He didn't talk much about the play, but I think it was for such a special reason that I learned what Hitchcock's technique and language were. Another thing is, why did this work go beyond his imagination to become a classic? How is this film different from his other Hitchcock works in the past?
Let's talk about Murder by Telephone. I didn't start watching this show until I was about sixteen or seventeen years old, because it was a movie from 1954, and I didn't watch it right away. Because I didn't immediately feel excited about Hitchcock's adult stuff, I thought thrillers were scaring you. Later, when I went to see it again, I realized that it was not just a thriller, because Hitchcock's thriller is different from the thriller we know, its approach is such as storyline and layout, the second is suspense, the third is tension, and then the climax. How to divide these things? In terms of his so-called horror effect, he never believed in surprises, and if the thriller effect was made of something unexpected and sudden, he felt that it was a waste of many possibilities. For example, there is a plot layout, this plot layout he often uses is the hidden secret of people, that is, we tell a so-called story layout, he always says that we give the audience a message, similar to the principle of a bomb we talked about. For example, we're sitting here now and there's a bomb behind the screen, and the people in our story don't know, but the audience knows, because the audience sees that the person put the bomb over there, and the bomb explodes in 30 seconds, and the two of us are talking here. He thinks that this message will tell the audience that the result of this thing happening is that this stage will all explode and the two of us will be finished, which is a possibility.
Therefore, from the bomb to the process of our speech, the audience is very nervous, why did not find this bomb, if this bomb exploded what the two of us would become, this is the so-called suspense. However, if there are 30 seconds or 30 minutes in this suspense, the suspense can continue to support the process of suspense, and he believes that there needs to be tension in this suspense, and this tension is this dangerous detail. Let's say we used to have a bomb in the back of the conversation, and maybe a cleaning guy saw something in the back and took it out, thought it was garbage, and cleaned it up. It turned out that we could solve our crisis, but the clean-up worker inside still did not get the bomb back, and the bomb was put back in its place and left, for many reasons. For example, if he thinks that if he takes this thing away, his boss may not agree, so he puts it back, and the two of us are still in danger. There are a lot of so-called "arrangements" in this detail to allow the suspense to last the time it takes.
There is this thing in "Telephone Murder", at the beginning there is a so-called wife herself who has an affair, she has a secret, this secret she wants to hide and can not tell her husband, but she has always wanted to tell his husband that she is going to be separated from him. She also found that her husband had suddenly turned better, so she regretted it, how to face her lover, and hid a secret. What is the reason for the seriousness of this secret in the end? She lost the love letter written to her by her lover, and after the loss, someone actually wrote to tell her that she had picked up the letter, and if the letter was to be redeemed, she needed to give him 50 pounds, so she sent 50 pounds, and found that the address sent in the past was not this person, and no one received 50 pounds, so the love letter never came back. This is the so-called secret of the heroine, and if it is also a thriller element of a screenwriter like Hitchcock, then this is already in line with the beginning of the layout.
Because of this plot, this secret, triggered her husband, in fact, it was her husband who took the letter, and it was her husband who found out that she had a love letter. After taking it, he pretended to blackmail her to see how she reacted, and it turned out that she had a reaction, so her husband had a very dissatisfied mood and wanted to plan a murder, which was a bit strange, but since it was a thriller, the characters had character reasons. The planned murder is equivalent to the fact that we know that the climax of the first crisis in the layout of the so-called storyline is whether the female number one will be killed by him.
The plot of "Telephone Murder" is divided into four stages, the first stage is a murder plan, from the beginning of the plan to the completion of the plan. After the second stage of the plan failed, her husband continued to create traps to frame his wife, and as a result, his wife was arrested by the police and sentenced. The third stage is to save his wife, not the villain to save, but her lover to save his wife, and the result is not successful. The fourth stage is to solve the case, and finally a very clever detective officer solves the case. In terms of these four stages, in fact, in the whole play, in such a small living room, all four stages have been done. From a cinematic point of view, it is actually very difficult, I don't know how big the living room is, I remember the actor walked seven steps to the end, that is, seven or eight meters, at most ten meters wide of a living room, the whole movie is performed over there, and it is very nervous. When you watch it, you feel breathless, because the plot is linked one link at a time, and the actor is related to every link of his play.
<h4>"Telling Stories with Colors"</h4>
Tsui: What is the relationship between "Telephone Murder" and Hitchcock? I think he had something to add to the original stage play. The first is that the stage play cannot have an exterior, so the part of the film that is adapted from the stage play must be added, but the location is added very casually. The opening scene is a policeman standing outside the house, and the camera moves to the inside of the house to see the villain and the female number one appear. Soon, there was no dialogue, because Hitchcock was very opposed to the method of telling stories by dialogue, he said never tell the audience, you have to show the audience what happened, instead of using dialogue to explain the plot, he felt very old-fashioned, don't use the cliché to make a movie, this movie must have the language of the movie, what is the language of the movie? It is the editing method of the shot, how to make the actor appear in the design of the shot in the arrangement of the shot.
The reason I brought it out is also to explain how much of "Telephone Murder" is Hitchcock's method except for the play itself.
Hitchcock agreed with the principles of Soviet editing, which was when two shots combined to produce new effects, and he always believed in this kind of thing, and he used a lot of this editing method to tell stories. The first picture shows a husband kissing his wife, and soon no more than six shots later another man kisses the wife. So there is no dialogue in this scene, but he will let you know about this extramarital affair, and the woman has an extramarital affair in which she still maintains a relationship with her husband, she opens the newspaper and sees that the cruise ship has arrived, that is, her lover has arrived, and after five shots, the lover kisses her, and then begins to tell the story. This passage is not in the original script, it must be Hitchcock's. Because I feel that the opening scene of this drama is the lover talking to a woman, and then the husband returns, and the two scenes are handed over, and the complex relationship is quickly introduced in the plot.
The third picture shows the figures of two people on the door, followed by her husband opening the door and entering. If you have seen this movie, you will find that the two figures are separated when they are on the door, they start together, and then they hear the shadow of the door opening and the two people separate, and then the door opens and it is her husband. If it were a play, it would be her husband's first appearance, but in Hitchcock's scene, his husband appeared in the scene. The way this picture appears is that Hitchcock has been very careful to design the story told by the picture, the two shadows are separated, and the husband's door is open, representing the husband in a state of deception. We see that this husband does not know what the facts are like, and the three of them put on a play.
The fourth picture, because 1954 'Telephone Murder' was a color film, but previous Hitchcock's films were all black and white. He planned to make a color movie called "Rear Window", but "Rear Window" did not start filming, and began to make "Telephone Murder", so it was in color. He had made a color movie called "Soul Reaper" before, and he was also shooting a whole movie in an enclosed space, and he was very ambitious, telling all the stories in one shot in 90 minutes, and that movie was unsuccessful at that time, because the movie was a shot down and was very affected by the sense of rhythm. However, in "Telephone Murder", I turned back to shooting color films again, and there was a lot of attention to color. For example, when we see the fourth picture, we see that there are three people wearing gray clothes, one person wearing dark blue clothes, this person wearing dark blue clothes is her lover, three people wearing gray clothes are husbands and wives, inspectors, only one person wearing dark blue clothes is very abrupt and awkward, the whole play does not know what kind of state, but there is no way to insert into this so-called family, so it is obvious that the color is out of tune.
Later, when it reappeared, in the fifth picture, we saw that their clothes were the same, and the lover's clothes were the same as her husband's clothes. So in other words, he has a closer relationship with the matter, he is not in this state of looking at things from the outside. On the contrary, the inspector is very prominent, so it becomes that the lover and the husband are on the same side, and the inspector is on the same side. This is the case with color, which is also Hitchcock's favorite way to use, and many of his films have seen him often use color to tell stories.
The sixth picture and the seventh picture, the eighth picture, the angle of the lens, this angle is used many times, and when you use this angle in the shooting, you find that he is very dangerous, or has a trap effect, tell him that this is a layout, it may be a trap. For example, in the sixth picture, the husband tells the killer how to frame and murder his wife, and the camera is on it, which is a bit like peeking into their secret state.
The seventh picture is of deliberately placing the teacup on the table, and he set up this conspiracy to frame his wife, so that he could see that it was at an angle above. When you take the script, as a director, you may not shoot it with an angle, you may shoot it in another way. But Hitchcock used this method to shoot in fact, there is a very special method of Hitchcock, many times we pay tribute to Hitchcock with his lens method, shooting this thing out, there are very strange Hitchcock characteristics.
In the eighth picture, his wife came out to answer the phone, and then her husband finally opened the door after digging out his secret for the inspector, and he was surrounded, and it felt like it was also a trap, and the police put this trap to trap him. You can try it, and if you have a movie student, you can try this method to see if the effect is the same effect as I said.
<h4>"Close-ups carry a very special power"</h4>
Xu Ke: The ninth picture is very interesting, because Hitchcock likes to take close-ups, and he feels that close-ups have a very special power and mystery, and it will have a lot of unimaginable effects on the story. For example, on the phone, you will not emphasize the telephone carousel when you call, but he emphasizes the turntable very much, and the turntable is actually not able to shoot so close to the camera at that time, so you must put the phone very large. Look at the tenth picture to know how big the phone is, he deliberately zoomed in on the phone, so that the camera to take a close-up of the circle, and whether that finger is a real finger or a prop finger, I think it is a prop finger, for that shot to spend so much time, may be a very special shot in the whole movie. For example, if we watch other movies, there is a movie called "Beauty Plan", he put a lamp inside the milk in order to emphasize the cup of milk, so when the character takes the milk upstairs, the milk cup in the staircase light is shiny, the light is not outside the light, it is the inside that comes out, so that the audience feels that there is a problem with the milk, there is a very dangerous feeling, and Hitchcock likes to use this method on the props. Other films that watch something else will also find that he has a lot of this technique in this regard.
Eleventh, he likes to push from a very far place to a very close-up place, this effect is not what we say pushed to an actor's face or how, is to push to a particularly similar picture that should be the key. That shot is the inspector going to get the key, turning the camera to push on the key, feeling that you feel the importance of the key, he condenses the drama of the whole picture into that close-up, that is to say, he tells you that the importance of the plot is the picture information that you show you. For example, her husband came in from the outside is also a big panorama, and then he came in and looked for it for half a day and couldn't find it, and finally found the key from inside this staircase, the camera pushed to the inside of the key, and the drama of the scene was condensed in that key, which is equivalent to having a picture on it, the husband took a plate of teacups and put it on the table, the camera all slowly moved to the camera, the stockings are the same, he uses such a shot, put the so-called cohesion of the whole plot there, everything is voice-over, The inspector found that it was all voiceover, so he did not use the camera to introduce a person who spoke about the discovery of stockings.
And what effect is pulling open? If you pull away from a picture into the distance, you are leaving the scene of the incident. As a matter of fact, it is over, or you don't know what the situation is going on below, so you don't know. Both of these propulsion and approaching have special effects.
The thirteenth drawing is interesting, and from a photographic point of view we don't like this composition, so put the characters on both sides. We often say that this is a "tug-of-war" lens, that is, there are people on both sides in the middle, and the "tug-of-war" lens is a lens that is very disliked in photography, but it has been used many times in Hitchcock. What effect is built in this composition? The two characters have a very strong opposite, it does not necessarily need to have a lot of shots with expressions, if you put this shot, it means that the two characters have a lot of dissatisfaction with each other in their hearts. The picture below is also a large empty piece on both sides of the composition of the balanced and opposing two characters, and his intention is here. In his composition, there are also in other works, and there is time to talk about them one by one.
Fourteenth, when we shoot the character scene, we often say that this is a counter-fight, but Hitchcock's foreground and after-scene have a special relationship, and it is always the foreground and the after-scenes that are not coordinated. The front emotions and the back emotions are not coordinated, so you see the tension of the so-called plot, you find that the front people and the back people talk to the back of the psychological things are not the same, or you find that the front people cause some pressure to the back people, saying that although the emotions of the front people are very subtle expressions, you know that the mutual relationship is to some extent with the relationship between the drama good and bad about the relationship between the characters. Sometimes it's a sense of crisis, for example, when I find some shots where there's a scene of a person in front of you, someone comes in in the back, and the person who comes in creates pressure on the person standing in front. However, this method is actually used by many people now, that is, the crisis is behind, and the prospect is the victim.
The fifteenth, low-angle shooting of "Telephone Murder" in which the whole scene is improved, the machine shoots at a low angle. We have no problem now, the machine can be very low, but the machine at that time was very large, the reduction could not be lowered much, and this movie is 3D, it is stereoscopic, at that time the 3D movie was few, all the machines were very large. The first color movie projector was already huge, plus the 3D color film machine I couldn't find what it looked like, I was always curious about what it looked like, so it was difficult to swing the machine at a low angle. Now the swing machine can be placed on the ground, even if it is placed on the ground at that time, there must be a height, so the whole scene is raised, and the angle is about one meter, but his machine can be angled from a low angle. What are the characteristics of a low-angle perspective? Everything in that scene suppresses the character, and that scene is like an obstacle object to give the character a psychological pressure, and there is such an effect. There is also a very important effect, all of us shoot a person to the desktop to get a book, then we must shake it down, if the low angle does not have to shake down, a lens can see the overall desktop relationship with people can be established. One of the advantages of this is that when the murderer wants to kill his wife, when he presses the finger on the table to grab the scissors, the angle is just right to see the hand, the scissors and the murderer. In fact, in "Chosin Lake", there is a similar scene where Duan Yihong is pressed on the table by the US military and he goes to get a fork, we have to shake it to shake it. But in "Telephone Murder", a low angle allows no cutting of the camera, no need to shake the camera, and one shot can integrate everything that needs to be said.
Sixteenth, Hitchcock's favorite close-up, close-up of feet, eyes, hands, now talks about close-ups of hands. The close-up of the hand represents the expression of all the characters and his play, how the hand moves and how to put it, representing what the character's psychological state is, and he likes to use this technique to express the inner world of the character. This is Hitchcock's favorite use of cinematic language, and presenting this thing in it I think can be circled, because it is a special thing attached to the stage play. But how do we see this drama as a very comprehensive Hitchcock thing? We chose this play itself because it is not the same as Hitchcockbe's work, the first is that his expression is very limited in the limited stage space. Where is this drama and Hitchcockbe's work? I think it's important that the original author wrote the play "Telephone Murder" for the BBC stage play, which was bought by the company and transferred to Hitchcock, who took it and made a movie. So the whole story structure is very similar to the original book, if you have seen them later when they perform this play on the stage, it is actually mostly the same as Hitchcock's plot.
But where is this show and Hitchcock's other films? If Hitchcock used the secret of man as an element of a suspense film or a thriller, there are two secrets, one is the secret that the wife cheated and wanted to save their marriage. Every time she tries to save or change an unsolvable triangle, there is some crisis that exposes her secrets, which is an element of suspense, and the husband's plan to kill his wife is also an element of suspense. This double secret element is more of a special design than the stories created by other Hitchcocks.
There is also a secret element that is the killer, and her husband digs out the killer's secret in order to threaten the killer. I didn't just say that there are four stages in the play, the first stage is the murder plan, and these three secrets are the very strong plot in the first stage, so that the audience chases after the plot to know what the result is. When the murderer fails, the plot shifts to another interesting design. In Hitchcock movies there may be very clever villains, and there may be very clever cops. In this story, there are four (if you count the killers) very shrewd "jianghu masters", all of which are very powerful. So in the whole process is douzhi, these four people are fighting wit, if the killer dies early, the douzhi of three people, you can't find the place where they call flaws, open the story of solving the case under the three people's fighting wit, which is not in all Hitchcock movies. So in this area, I think the reason why "Telephone Murder" has become a classic is that it is regarded as a very important work in Hitchcock's work.
The film also goes beyond Hitchcock's usual conventional theory of cinema with him, and it also has Hitchcock's role in it. I don't know if the author was influenced by him or if he was influenced by the author, who later wrote three thriller plays, which were also very "Hitchcock". So that's why we're talking about Hitchcock's film today.
<h4>Authoring requires a "special state"</h4>
Jia Zhangke: Thank you Director Xu, I remember that when I communicated with Director Xu in the early stages, he particularly emphasized that this film did not even attach great importance to Hitchcock himself, it was shot in a relaxed state under special circumstances, because it was adapted from a stage play, and the whole space was concentrated in one room. This kind of film method also reminds me of Mr. Fei Mu's filming of "Spring in a Small Town", and Mr. Fei Mu's filming of "Spring in a Small Town" was also outside his plan, and he originally wanted to shoot another work, because his investor Mr. Wu Shengzhi's studio was originally used by other directors, and the director did not shoot it. At that time, it was a great waste of months that this studio was not used by anyone, and it just so happened that they had a script called "Spring in a Small Town", which was handed over to Fei Mu, who said that in order not to idle to shoot this film in order to make the studio, it was also in a very limited space, the large space was an ancient city, but it was very simple, there were very few locations, mainly in a garden and a story that happened in the southern mansion, it was also about private feelings, and it was also a relationship between the heroine and the new visitor.
I think it is true that as director Xu Ke said, sometimes the creative state may be at the most relaxed time, and it may stimulate the innovation and innovation of the film language when the burden is not so large. This film is also shot in 3D, when we studied film, we watched the usual movie, there was no 3D method at that time, I want director Xu Ke to talk about what kind of response and feelings such a creative state has in his creative career. The one who is relaxed is more able to stimulate his creativity.
Xu Ke: I didn't see it either, because the 3D screening time was very short at that time, because the technology was not very successful or too troublesome, and I thought it was too troublesome to shorten the 3D screening period and put 2D.
I think the unintentional realm is very difficult to get, because you said unintentional, I have talked to a lot of director friends, and many friends said that in order to completely let go, there is no predetermined idea to shoot, I feel that there is a special state. For example, some directors do not divide the scene, and he only does the division when he goes to the scene. But there are some directors who don't have a script, are you?
Jia Zhangke: I have a script.
Xu Ke: Du Qifeng deliberately did not have a script, and went to the scene to write the script. The problem is that he's going to find something he doesn't have, but I really don't know if it's a good way to find it, or if it's a very keen sense during the filming process that something can be used to be related to that scene, even if it has nothing to do with the scene, maybe that suddenly gives you a very strong spark and lets you open another door, and that door may be a very special help or a feature of your movie. I always wanted me to have, I sometimes sit next to the machine, watching the light shake around, I told the photographer not to turn on the lights, OK, this is very good, the photographer finally complained about me, "you are OK if you have not played well." I think that light is beautiful, in a certain situation the actor or in that atmosphere is very good, we industries often have a hard time doing this thing, what is included in it? Including sometimes he still doesn't let you know what the situation is, he did a big round after you asked how, "Director you don't care, I will tell you when I do it." But this has a big conflict with what we do in movies. Because everything in the creative process is related to us, we will go back and feel the stimulation of that thing, because the text and the script are very different from going to the scene, and there will be a greater difference in having actors on the scene. Because what you see is something in words, what you imagine is something that you fantasize about in your head, and when you go to reality, the possibilities that you can't imagine will appear in front of you. So I'm also in favor of going to the scene, and the atmosphere on the scene makes you think more.
But a lot of times, like when you're facing the living room, like Murder on the Phone, do you still have to go to the scene to find inspiration?
Jia Zhangke: That won't.
Xu Ke: Because you can see that the living room is so big, maybe it's like this, so how do you go with a space to make a movie, I think I really want to try it, maybe no one invests, maybe because it's too dangerous, the story is not watched.