In 2018, Ningxia Shizuishan, playing the group performance of the little macaque monkey of Huaguoshan, was at rest. (Sun Minyan/Photo)
Hengdian group performance, the number of registered people exceeded 100,000.
In early July 2021, a topic appeared on Weibo's hot search list. According to data from the Hengdian Film and Television City Actors Association, as of June this year, the cumulative number of registered actors in Hengdian exceeded 100,000, and more than 8,000 people have lived in Hengdian for a long time. From thousands in 2010, to more than 20,000 in 2015, to more than 100,000 in 2021. The film and television circle, which has been silent for a long time after the cold winter, seems to prove with numbers that the spotlight is still full of great temptation and charm for ordinary people.
Born in 1971, photographer Sun Minyan has taken a group of documentary photographs for extras from all over the country. He was an employee of a state-owned enterprise in Beijing before quitting his job as a freelance photographer. Since 2012, Sun Minyan began to enter the film and television circle and became a stills artist. In the past ten years, he has stayed in more than 20 crews, including well-known film and television crews such as "Wolf Warrior 2", "Heart Blossom", "White Deer Plain", "Hot Mom Zheng biography", as well as "bad drama" crews with a Douban score of less than 5 points.
Outside of her job, Sun Minyan tried to focus the camera on the unseen extras and the ordinary crew. He named the series I Am Passerby A. In 2019, this photograph was exhibited at the Pingyao International Photography Exhibition and was shortlisted for the 7th Houdenke Documentary Photography Award along with his other work, "Center City".
The set is difficult, and there are only two things that can make Sun Minyan relax - shooting passers-by and watching kindles. He believes that he is "two or three levels higher" than passers-by on the set. "In any industry, stars are always a very small minority. In life, each of us is a passerby. Recording them is also recording my own life. ”
He sees the photos as a kind of look at the industry. In a speech, Sun Minyan said: "I just hope that in the future, while grabbing profits, capital can treat ordinary workers like us as people, not just tools and machines." ”
The following is Sun Minyan's self-statement.
In 2018, Yinchuan, Ningxia, during the filming of the movie "Big Canopy", the "Second Master Brother" took photos for the "Master Brother". (Sun Minyan/Photo)
<h3>"Very few people come from the class"</h3>
In October 2012, I was asked if I could stills. I said yes. They also felt that I didn't look up to me, as if they had insulted me. It's like a director who makes a literary film and suddenly wants to make a particularly shameless commercial film, but they don't think I really need it.
I can't remember the name of the first scene I made now, but it had a big impact on me at the time. Later, when I came to the crew, I saw that the mess was incomparable. The work is rampage, you can see that the orderly scene is actually very rare, once the big director shouts to change the scene, the departments are like a pot of porridge. Most of the employees in this industry, there are very few people from the class. I rarely meet my alumni on the crew. Many of the crew's lights are all Henan, Henan has a "light village", and one by one in the countryside comes out.
After the Spring Festival in 2013, I went to see Zhu Jiong, a teacher at the Beijing Film Academy, who later became my curator. I said I was working as a stills artist, and he suggested that I shoot the crew and the extras. Because everyone is watching bright stars, I don't know what the status of other people is. In 2018, we won the prize at the Pingyao International Photography Exhibition without going anywhere. From the perspective of people in the industry, it may also be because there has never been a similar theme before, and it will look at the film and television circle from this perspective.
In fact, in the first two years of filming "I Am a Passerby", I did not find the feeling. Because stills are a commercial aesthetic – all you have to think about is how to make this actor beautiful, and it really can't be cut.
This was the case until 2015. At that time, it was filming the TV series "White Deer Plain", which was a big production. We are in Lantian, Shaanxi, and many of the extras are local fellows, and when they put on their costumes, that feeling is there, and you will find that the photos keep coming out. They put on the clothes of the Republic of China period 100 years ago, I don't think it's a jumping drama, I think they are people 100 years ago, you can't see too much modern civilization. This is a very sad thing. If you look for 100 Beijingers, or 100 Shanghainese to wear this dress, the atmosphere will definitely be different.
From the moment of the play, the photos I wanted began to come out in batches. In 2016, I made "Breaking Bad Defender Division", which was a military drama. In the morning, he wore the clothes of the Red Army for the group performance, and in the afternoon he wore the uniforms of the enemy army. They don't feel like soldiers in their clothes, such as a guerrilla, he should be a student, he is definitely not suitable to play, where there is such a strong guerrilla, but the crew does not care, as long as the number of people can be enough, anyway, the camera is difficult to bring.
In 2015, Lantian, Shaanxi, the actors of the TV series "White Deer Plain" were waiting. (Sun Minyan/Photo)
<h3>The bottom of the crew's food chain</h3>
The group performance is at the bottom of the crew's food chain. In Hengdian, because they have a trade union (Note: Founded in 2003, the Hengdian Film and Television City Actors Guild is the first organization in China to specialize in serving mass actors, and it is also the only public welfare organization that pays attention to the welfare and well-being of group performances. In 2018, the Actors Guild revised the charging standards for extras, standardized the salaries of extras, took the initiative to deal with and solve actor injuries and labor disputes, standardized the mass actor market, and protected the legitimate rights and interests of the crew and extras).
If it were not for Hengdian, the sources of group performances would be various. Usually the actor assistant director finds the group leader, and the group head is responsible for pulling people. Students make up a large proportion, and it is common to see batches of students being pulled in. They don't even have the slightest guarantee in Hengdian. I often went to the scene to change my clothes and waited for seven or eight hours. The director doesn't care about your time, anyway, I need to use it when there must be so many people.
To catch up with the crew for more than twenty hours, the group performances were spent there. Twenty hours or more, and you may end up with some extra money. Now it is often said that the Internet 996, but the crew of 797 really belongs to the conscience crew. Movies basically don't last more than 12 hours, and big TV series generally don't exceed 14 hours. If it is a network university, working 16 hours a day is the starting time. Because I needed to compress the shooting cycle, I should have finished shooting in 15 days, but if I could shoot in 12 days, I would save three days of money. Movies and TV series investment is relatively large, this money can afford to spend, but the network is a must-have.
In 2016, Fujian Changting, tired group performance. (Sun Minyan/Photo)
The crew and the group performances are very loose cooperation, and there is no contract. When we shoot "White Deer Plain" in Lantian, it is often a big scene, and it takes 1,000 extras. After four or five hours of sunbathing in the morning, the group performers did not want to shoot, and all went home, and there were six or seven hundred people left in the afternoon. The group performers are just trying to be fresh, come and see the stars. For the crew, group performances are also rows of tools in the back.
The work of the group actor is basically to follow the instructions of the actor's assistant director. "Heartburn" is a road movie that needs to be constantly transitioned. The requirements of the film of the big director may be more rigorous, and the subtleties presented in the end may not be carefully thought by the audience, but the texture of the film may depend on the accumulation of such details. They would go a week or two early to train the extras. Most crews, group performances are aimless running or walking. Usually the main actor is followed by a group performance, but a crew member. Because I am afraid of group performances being nervous, wandering is not good, and repeating several times, the stars should not be happy.
We met a director who didn't have a meal at 3 p.m. in June, and the meal was over. The staff had to stay up, and the group performances also stayed up. But group performances also have to depend on fate. We were filming "Heart Blossoms" in Dali, more than a hundred group performances, and 8 o'clock arrived. The director went to think that this scene was not right, did not shoot it, and took so much money like a group performance.
In 2016, Changting, Fujian, the set of "Desperate Defender Division". (Sun Minyan/Photo)
I used to joke that this picture (above) could be framed at home, and when I had a fight with my wife, I said, "Look how hard I work." In fact, this is a still, he is an actor, has acted in many scenes, and the subtitle at the end of the film will have his name. But why did I put it in "I Am a Passerby" because I think he's an actor you don't know. Ordinary actors are no different from us. His position in the food chain is certainly higher, but he's two different things from a star because he's not famous.
I once said in an interview that Er Dongsheng's "I Am a Passerby" was filmed too beautifully and could not happen in reality. If you want people to really realize what the problem is, you have to be cruel enough. For so many years, in the group performance, except for one Wang Baoqiang, who else do you know?
The one I had the deepest contact with the drifters was to shoot "Middle Evil". The director is a drift, very legendary. I think that's probably the best thing that people who have dreams in the industry but don't have the resources and no systems education can do. The director did not get into college, lied to his parents that he was admitted, and went to Hengdian to be a mass actor. At the beginning, I took on any job anyway, and I thought about my favorite movie while doing it. Later, he wrote a book himself, and when he had no money, he went to find his brother who practiced martial arts together when he was a child. Fool his brother said that shooting a thing on Youku or similar platforms can make money by clicking rates. The master brother gave him fifty thousand yuan, and he went to find some friends who drifted around and made this film together.
Because that film completely imitates the American genre film, much like Ning Hao's "Crazy Stone". In the end, a total of 70,000 yuan was spent to make a movie, sent to FIRST and won the award (Note: the 10th FIRST Youth Film Festival Best Art Exploration Award), after winning the award, several online platforms watched it, and finally Tencent won it. I remember the producer asked me at that time, Teacher Sun, is this the poorest first crew you have ever stayed in, and I said that it must be the crew with the fewest people anyway, just about twenty people, especially like film school homework. I chatted with the director between shooting, and I joked that Wang Baoqiang was a pit of countless people with star dreams, and if you succeeded, you had to pit a bunch of Hengdian directors.
The film ended up in Cannes, and I also watched the director and producers in Cannes. At that time, the poster was already out, and it was about to enter the theater. If they really enter the theater, the lives of these people may have changed completely, but it is probably two days before the release, and the file has been withdrawn. Just like climbing Mount Everest, you may have climbed to 8600, 8700, and suddenly the last 100 meters are stuck. Many of the other actors may have returned to Hengdian and restarted their past lives.
In 2015, Sanyuan, Shaanxi, played the extras of the Xi'an Girls' High School in the 1920s. (Sun Minyan/Photo)
<h3>"Today's stars simply can't tolerate a little bit of reality</h3>."
I later recalled that the reason why photographing passers-by had more fun with the photography itself was because of the truth. They're real in my shots, you give the star stills, it's the character, not himself. (When filming "I Am a Passerby"), my teacher also said that in order to catch more attention, can you take some photos of the director and star in their non-working state.
I said I really don't dare. One is the issue of portrait rights and copyright, and the other is that today's stars simply cannot tolerate a little truth. It's fine in the 1990s, but today's stars take themselves too seriously. To say that the non-working state, you are on the set, in addition to filming, you rarely see him, after filming people into the caravan. You may be able to take that kind of picture on some old actors, but the old actors don't catch their eyes either.
There is one thing that particularly impressed me. That year, when filming "The Legend of Hot Mom" in Shanghai, Pan Honglai sang three or four scenes. In the interval between the changes, there was a bag that should be taken by the props staff, and he said: "Teacher Pan, you give it to me." "Young actors must be particularly concerned, and if you pick up slower, you will be unhappy." Pan Hong said at that time, "No, I will take this to experience the role." "You find that they still have a clear understanding of the profession, including respect for the industry. The younger generation has been exalted too high by capital, and capital is happy to create a distance between them and the masses, which is a tacit conspiracy.
Today, even if it is stills, we have a great bias in our understanding of what is good and what is bad. When filming "The Legend of Hot Mom", by the third or fourth week, Sun Li wanted to see the stills. The requirements of her generation of actors were not the same as those of young actors today. A lot of stills she liked, she wanted the character, not herself. Some special compositions are also acceptable.
I think good stills have nothing to do with catching people's attention, it's about conforming to the plot and the relationship between the characters. But these propaganda for the new generation are not important. They want good-looking, popular tones for the actors. But I always believe that why do all art disciplines need to have a general education? Because we weren't educated in that, you see everything must be based on instinct. But why art is art, because it transcends human instincts.
By now, I have followed nearly twenty crews, from the top of the Chinese box office annual champion to the bottom of the despised chain, and none of the projects have made me feel honored because their quality is not good enough. For TV dramas, the biggest problem must be the screenwriter. Some screenwriters have been gunmen since they started film school and have not worked a day.
In 2017, I made an idol drama (stills) starring Zhang Tianai and Zhang Ruoyun. How bad is this play, I didn't read the script, just watching the scene felt full of loopholes. A graduate student without any background, graduated into a shoe company, particularly capable, became a supervisor in a year, at the company's high-level meeting, afraid of this department and that department. Zhang Ruoyun plays a dentist who has not been in the class for two years. Two people lived in a house so big in Beijing, suspended to no end.
In fact, to put it bluntly, the core of the problem is that capital feels that such things can make money, and reality tells capital again and again that this is the case. Some people say that there are no poor people in today's Chinese film and television dramas. Capital is not stupid, it must have been discovered after something, and what describes the poor does not make money. From the birth of capital, it is profit-seeking. If I can make a lot of money by doing something 60 points, why should I make 80 points? Not necessarily. Because it costs twice as much energy to make it 80 points, I only made a play when people do two dramas, and the audience may not necessarily buy it when it comes out.
How can we limit capital from grabbing profits so wildly? At the moment, I find it difficult. It seems to be a very glamorous circle, but in fact, the market size is very small. There is nothing to shout about at the box office of tens of billions a year.
Including passers-by, why are there so many people in Hengdian doing this job, because some kind of vanity in this industry is affecting them. Although the money earned is not much, but looking at the star every day and working with him, perhaps this invisible or unfamiliar aura will bring them some kind of psychological satisfaction.
Southern Weekend reporter Fu Ziyang