Poster of The Amazing Dad.
Released in China on June 18, the "Gift" Father's Day film "The Great Father" is the first mainland film to focus on marathon elements about teenager Xiao Erdong (Zhang Youhao) suffering from congenital diseases but always having the dream of "marathon", and the father who drives a taxi, Xiao Daming (Wang Yanhui), does not approve of his son's dream, and the father and son of a single-parent family gradually understand each other in the "confrontation".
"The Great Dad" had a three-day screening event during the past Dragon Boat Festival holiday, and some viewers bluntly said that this was the best family movie of the year, and received a super high score of 9.3 on demand. The film is directed by Malaysian director Zhou Qingyuan, starring Wang Yanhui, Zhang Youhao, Gong Beiyuan, since the preparation in 2016, the crew has been interviewed for a long time, inquired and solicited the opinions of many runners, with the help and deliberation of many sports and health consultants, and strive to achieve precision and extreme every step of the "Dad" drama and outside the play. In Zhou Qingyuan's view, the sport of running is extremely similar to life, "just like our life, you insist on running forward, and you have family and companionship along the way." ”
Marathons have become the carrier of "father-son love"
- "Tell a new story"
Director Chow Thanh Yuen is a mainstay of Malaysian Chinese films, having directed many highly humanistic films in his career of more than 20 years, and his film "All the Way with You" (released in 2014) set a record for the highest box office in Malaysia. He is very good at shooting sports-themed works, and his football theme "Brilliant Years" (released in 2016) has represented Malaysia in the dream of the Oscar for best foreign language film, and has also come to China to shoot the drama series "Extreme 17 Slippery Souls" (released in 2019) of a niche sport such as skateboarding. In 2016, Zhou Qingyuan originally held the idea that "sports-themed movies should stop", but in a chance encountered the script of "The Great Father", he was immediately moved by the emotions between father and son in the script, a father with his various clumsy but warm ways, selflessly pay for his children, and this theme will be reflected in sports stories, for Zhou Qingyuan, who is familiar with sports themes, it is both a temptation and a challenge, and he really wants to try again. Zhou Qingyuan began to polish the script continuously, and successively ran to all parts of the country to collect wind.
Director Zhou Qingyuan has directed many films with great humanistic color.
There are many film and television works that tell the love of father and son, among which there are always routine plots that father and son experience misunderstanding and gradually understand, for the old-fashioned, Zhou Qingyuan resolutely said "no": "For a long time, we have been thinking about how to tell the old story that the audience thinks is new, and then finally found a point, many times, not what the story is, but the method and carrier of storytelling." We aimed at the sport of marathon, which is a sport that is rarely involved in movies, with its uniqueness; in addition, the father pretends to be a nurse, and there is also a dislocation of role communication, which makes the interaction between the father and son interesting, in fact, sometimes we need to break through the veil of understanding with the father, and both can release their love for each other. ”
Life is like a marathon
- "Movement and emotion complement each other"
Zhou Qingyuan did not know much about the sport of marathon at first. He loves football and often plays football, because highly competitive sports are easy to get irritation, but what is marathon after? He couldn't even understand why anyone would want to go for a long run every day. With these questions, he began to understand marathons, collecting a lot of information, consulting experts, constantly communicating with runners, and even trying to run himself. Gradually, he realized the sport's pursuit of physical and psychological breakthroughs, as well as its insistence on self-discipline, and he was in awe of runners. At the same time, he gradually discovered that the sport was very similar to life. "Standing at the starting point, we can't see the end, you never know what the next step will be, just like when we first entered the society, we were full of confidence, and we wanted to rush forward, just like the start, and after rushing, we found that the road was not as smooth as we thought." Coupled with the special setting of the marathon to accompany the run, the visually impaired people have to set up (front runner) tow rope to help, which is too similar to the situation of parents and children. The love of parents is a kind of emotional bondage, and in the end they let go and let you run on your own, and the movement and emotions complement each other too much. ”
Wang Yanhui plays the father of the "front runner".
In fact, when polishing the plot of "The Great Father", some people also proposed why Wang Yanhui was not trained from an obese taxi driver to a thin, tall and strong father, which would make the picture more convincing and increase the plot contrast. But in Zhou Qingyuan's creative concept, there really aren't so many superheroes in real life. "He accompanied his child to practice running, just for three months, even if he fought hard for his son, he could run as far as he could, and even he didn't know what he could run. This is particularly true, and it is what touched me. It's not that this dad is going to become a superman, but his persistence in his son will be more impressive. Just like our life, you insist on running forward, there are family companions along the way, parents who accompany you, and friends. He said that once he tried a marathon himself, halfway through, even if the people on the road did not know you, they would encourage you to cheer up and not give up, as if in life, even if there is not much intersection, it will give you a very influential encouragement.
Various consultants make the image real and believable
- "It's the result of sincerity"
"Everyone, including myself, may think that running is simple at the beginning, you can run with two legs, but it is not the case, every time we shoot a scene, there will be more than ten consultants around, including medical consultants, marathon consultants, running coaches, after shooting each shot of exercise, they will ask them if this is right, whether it is real enough." 」 Zhou Qingyuan admits that the sports imaging is full of challenges, especially the special running project of the marathon, what is your speed, what state will be in the professional course training for more than 10 days, how tired will be after running 20 kilometers, breathing, sweating, exhaustion, every small detail should also be carefully presented. In addition to normal running, there is also Xiao Erdong in the film is a patient with multiple sclerosis, and the performance of this condition also needs to be flawlessly examined, not only to chat with patients with similar diseases, but also to try to run blindfolded blind. Zhou Qingyuan said: "Every step of the decision we make will be based on not being confused, including the photos of the B super in the movie, the photos of the mrivision after blindness, really not a random one, but to find a lot of real samples to do structural adjustment, and find a lot of doctors to identify, many people feel redundant, but we feel that this is sincere." ”
There are a lot of "pain and joy" running scenes in the film.
For each of the main creators in the "Great Dad" crew, training and running is a necessary condition for participating in the performance, everyone practices each other before entering the group, everyone has their own amount of training and unique ways to complete, Zhang Youhao, who is responsible for the main running shots, Wang Yanhui who runs with his son, and then to the director, producer, and photographer, the whole crew is "starting" at any time, Zhou Qingyuan describes this experience with "pain and happiness": "Once we shoot the running scene, we will run, and the largest amount of exercise is probably the rainy scene. From the (Chongqing) mountain to the bottom of the mountain, it has been running non-stop, and it may have been a dozen or twenty shots back and forth, and everyone is too tired to speak. In our crew, often you will see the picture of all the people running, the photographer, the radio, the director, the makeup artist, because it is difficult to remotely monitor the running scene, and everyone is running differently, and the actor can think that everyone is working together. If we just sit in front of the monitor and watch them run, it's completely different, and it's hard to capture the real feeling. Asked how far the crew can run after a long period of shooting, Zhou Qingyuan smiled and said: "This has not really been verified, but there must be someone who can become a first-class player and run out of results." ”
Choosing Zhang Youhao was attracted by his stubbornness
- "He speaks in a manner similar to that of Sholdong"
"The Amazing Dad" is realistic. Fathers do not allow their sons to run marathons because their sons suffer from genetic diseases derived from their mother's genes and are more likely to go blind as adults. The father expects his son to learn the art of playing the piano blindly, even if he is not hungry after a hundred years, but the son wants to run a marathon, the father and son in the movie, in fact, are two contradictory individuals with completely different attitudes about fate. Zhou Qingyuan remembers that when he first met Zhang Youhao, he was attracted by his appearance that fit with the character and the stubbornness in his eyes, "His demeanor of speech is similar to Xiao Erdong's stubbornness and arrogance in disobedience to fate, and more importantly, he can't understand why his father will arrange a future for his children, if he understands, this is right." Zhou Qingyuan said that children with such diseases, they grew up under a kind of psychological pressure, you may get sick at any time, you will sigh about why it is yourself, the initial incomprehension, to the later identification, the compromise of fate or resistance to fate, the father and son who do not understand each other, the implicit Oriental father-son relationship, these themes are inseparable from the movie.
There are many touching scenes of father-son interaction in the film.
"I have such a dangerous genetic disease, but I want to do it again, I am so young, why would I choose?" He also knows all the love his father gave him, but he needs to have an outlet, an object to vent, and in the end he can only vent on the person closest to him, in the film Xiao Daming disguised as a caretaker to accompany his son to achieve the dream of long-distance running, and then in the end, Xiao Erdong also recognized this caretaker by his side, he was touched by his father's love. As for Wang Yanhui and Zhang Youhao, both inside and outside the play have become a pair of fathers and sons, but the tacit understanding established between them stems from the filming method of the film: "It just so happens that the order in which we shoot first began according to the relative estrangement between the two fathers and sons, arranged in this order, at the beginning the two will have a sense of strangeness of the first cooperation, just reflecting some of the mutual incomprehension of the father and son at the beginning, and then later when they are familiar with it, they are catered to, they grow up with the film." ”
【Trivia】
In addition to practicing running, Zhang Youhao also practiced the piano
Faced with a role with a lot of movement and a lot of skills that need to be trained in a short period of time, it also takes enough courage to take on this play, and the young actor Zhang Youhao has never hesitated in the face of this multiple choice question, and he knows what he can get from this shooting process. Zhou Qingyuan recalled that before the start of filming, Zhang Youhao desperately practiced the physical strength required for the film: "We found a very professional marathon coach to accompany him to practice every day, the intensity of time and exercise is very large, the most important thing is that he has to practice running posture and train the muscle lines." Although he is not a professional athlete in the film, he loves running after all, and he wants to show that reality. In fact, in addition to practicing running, adapting to visually impaired life and blind running, Zhang Youhao also needs to practice the piano, Zhou Qingyuan said: "The part of the piano I envisioned was that there was a shot that was directly shaken up, so he desperately practiced a piece, and after practicing, he had to play blindly with his eyes closed, so he only remembered a few keys and played this song." ”
The crew encountered snow that had been waiting for a long time.
Thank you for the "god-given" snow
Filming "The Great Father", the most grateful moment for Zhou Qingyuan was that the crew encountered an almost unlikely snowfall. "We checked the weather forecast, and we looked forward to the two days when it might snow, and we had been waiting for the snow, but there was no follow-up, and even filmed another set of plans for not snowing." I didn't expect that the last night finally snowed, the next morning I went up the mountain, I was particularly touched to see the fog frost, so I called all the actors to re-shoot it, this is a long wait for the heavenly snow, let me feel very grateful, a lot of things seem to happen at the right time. ”
Beijing News reporter Zhou Huixiaowan
Edited by Huang Jialing Proofreader Chen Diyan