On the evening of October 1, Tiananmen Square, the grand National Day celebration kicked off.
"Fluttering five-star red flag", "majestic Great Wall", "fluttering kite", "peace dove spreading its wings", "rotating 'Belt and Road' global village"... A huge picture composed of light and shadow screens, with wonderful and beautiful changes, and a strong visual impact, which makes the audience breathtaking.
This is undoubtedly an amazing miracle!
The entire performance lasted 5352 seconds, perfectly presenting 133,800 frames and 17608080 brilliant changes of light points; more than 3,000 rhythm points, and the number of all choreography points reached 2921520!
Every frame of exquisite pictures, every rapid picture conversion, behind the hard work of 3290 armed police soldiers participating in the exercise. After four chapters of training, each officer and soldier participating in the exercise must record more than 1,000 points and master more than 30 music beats; in just 5 minutes of a song, they have to squat and jump more than 50 times... In 5 months, 150 days and nights, the total team members walked about 7.4 million kilometers, which is equivalent to 185 circles around the earth.
This, both amazing and touching.
Data chart Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhai Jianlan
Unique "workbook"
"There is no sword and light sword shadow here, but it is a different kind of jingo iron horse."
——Point 3263 warrior Jiang Dongsheng
On the morning of May 7, the theme performance of the 70th anniversary of the National Day celebration was held at the Changping Rehearsal Base. A certain unit of the Armed Police Force was tasked with performing at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games, and there are still 30 people who have experienced it.
This force has begun a new journey.
Zhang Yimou, the general director of the gala, said in introducing the "digital light and shadow" technology used in the performance that this can be said to be the most difficult kind of motion graphic performance in the world, because all the activities are constantly changing and all are completed in the flow. More than 3,000 actors were armed with unique light and shadow screens, and none of the movements were repetitive.
At the time of the initial design, the director team felt that this might be an "unfinished task" because "the difficulty is simply too great".
How difficult is it? The answer lies in the "homework book" that gives Huo Chengfei a headache.
Huo Chengfei, 22, was numbered 3157 in the drill team, which was the "point" in the 31st row and 57 columns. When he first started practicing 400 points a day, he still felt quite fresh. "It doesn't seem too difficult, it's like finding a point along each road and outlining the corresponding graphics." But soon, he couldn't laugh.
Among his points are the "dream" word of the first chapter group of words "Chinese Dream", then the one on the far right of the 7 pigeons, and then the "new" word of "New Era". He has to constantly move and change, often need to run long distances in a short period of time, for example, when he performs "Ode to the Red Flag" in the "Preface", he has to run from the far right to the center of the field, 100 meters, only 20 seconds of time, and accurately find his own point.
Each actor has a unique "workbook" in his hand, which contains his own running point route.
3290 actors, 3290 "homework books". Each person's point is spread on different positions of the pattern. The director of the director group listed the keyframes, and about 900 keyframes were sorted out in the 4 chapters, which means that each person had to memorize at least 900 points. In this way, a permutation manual was formed, and each of the 3290 actors had a unique manual that must be familiar with it.
"14 empty 66 empty, to 15 empty 65 empty, to 16 empty 65 empty, to 1866, to 2066 ... Finally to 47 empty 60 empty. Wang Gang, who was in the 1961 point, did not say much, but now that he has memorized the point at that time, he can still be accurate. This large section of "through the mouth" carries the "flight" route of the fourth white pigeon from the lower right corner to the upper right corner in the "Navigating the New Era" chapter, a total of 21 steps.
Those involved in the performance need to run quickly according to the changes in the picture, moving almost every frame and every second.
Running at long distance points, every actor has encountered. Some people not only run long, but also practice a lot.
"Whatever you practice, you have me." Zhang Jiaming, 19, threw out his tongue. He just joined the army last year, and this year he caught up with the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the National Day, "It's so lucky." But what he didn't expect was that he also caught up with a different 3055 point.
"Mountains, clouds, swallows, as well as the road, the rainbow, the streamers, because they all pass right next to me, so I have to cooperate with the training every time I train." For example, when practicing the fourth chapter, he was the only one in the block who had to run to the pigeon in front. So every time he trains, he has to go out alone to practice alone. Moreover, this fourth pigeon is the most difficult, only it is going backwards, from the front to the back, the whole journey is seventy or eighty points. This is not the end, the pigeon has finished changing the earth, and he has to run from the far right to the far left in more than ten seconds. A few actions down, Zhang Jiaming is running back and forth left and right all over the field.
According to the requirements of "Moving Up", the tasks of each chapter of the theme performance are very complex and challenging, especially the chapter of "Navigating a New Era". According to the rehearsal plan, every 15 days a chapter is rehearsed to complete.
There is no sword and light sword shadow here, but it is a different jingo iron horse.
The formation plan and point position are constantly adjusted, and the more than 300 pages of training manuals have been changed batch after batch, but for the soldiers, for the wonderful bloom of the "Eleventh" day, everyone is like a rivet to stick to the point - only charge, can not wait, can only succeed, can not fail, can only shine, can not make mistakes!
"Literary and Artistic Youth" who have worked hard
"We were busy looking around for points and memorizing the point line, and each training was like a battle, and in order to complete the battle, we had to practice; to ensure the victory of the battle, we had to put on our headphones and listen to the microphone and keep counting beats." ——Point 2739 warrior Huo Xiaoqiang
Beijing this summer, surprisingly hot. Nearly 4,000 fighters braved the wind and rain and the scorching sun to devote themselves to training.
The training task is not simple. For this unit, which has repeatedly undertaken major activity tasks, the National Day gala performance task is a new challenge, because the performance task pays attention to flexibility and flexibility, which is completely different from the rigid and standardized style of the armed police force, and there was no similar training basis before.
Everything starts from scratch.
Xu Haohan finally wiped away his tears with "shame". As a platoon leader and a teacher of the block, Xu Haohan, who has a strong personality, did not expect that he thought he was still a qualified "literary and artistic youth", but he could not listen to the beat accurately.
Queues vary in a complex way, and they must be accompanied by music and movements. In that training, when he changed the pigeon shape, he made mistakes 3 times in a row, so angry that he ran to the side holding the prop board that replaced the light and shadow screen, and "did not argue" and shed tears.
Action and music must cooperate with each other, tightly sewn, and flow through the clouds in order to achieve the overall smooth effect. These are no small test for the warriors. At first, some fighters had a weak sense of music, slow reaction, and increasing pressure.
Xu Haohan was also a little confused when he first listened to the symphony. At the event, the Symphony Orchestra of 1000 performed variations. Everyone was so confused that they couldn't find a beat. In order to cultivate a sense of musicality, the rehearsal base opened a radio. Xu Haohan took a stool rack on the machine every morning and began to play music, so that everyone could listen to it over and over again. For a time, rehearsal music such as "Ode to the Red Flag" and "We Walk on the Road" were constantly playing in the dormitory building and canteen, quickly improving the accuracy of everyone's grasp of the beat.
You can't stop for a moment, you can't make a mistake in a step, you can't afford to miss a day.
When they first received the assignment, the director team asked to complete the rehearsal of four chapters of performance actions by the end of June, which is equivalent to only 15 days for each chapter. Time is tight, the task is heavy, and every day needs to be practiced from morning to night.
The warriors were carrying a satchel with raincoats and a large water jug with a one-liter capacity. It is a sweltering heat, high temperature exposure, sweat like rain, hot sun, some warriors have to drink 6 pots of water a day. The 26-year-old Zhou Qi remembers very clearly that the rain poured down on the day of the rehearsal, but everyone immediately put on the raincoat and continued to practice, rain or shine.
"You can't be wrong, one person's mistake is all smashed." As the class leader, Zhou Qi was serious and serious.
Since the outdoor open-air training in early May, everyone has to hold an iron shelf of about 10 pounds as a substitute prop every day. Grasping and controlling props every day, completing different angle changes, in less than a month, the hands were ground out of the cocoon, tanned skin. To this end, the operation and maintenance support team of the Gala Command also purchased gloves and sunscreen hand sleeves for each soldier.
Every day, holding nearly 10 pounds of training props in his hand, he constantly lifted, retracted, squatted, stood up, and walked. Hundreds of squatting exercises, Huo Chengfei could hear the "clicking" sound emitted by the knee joints when everyone squatted. But when everyone raises the sign again, they can immediately find the perfect "20 degrees" in a neat and uniform manner.
20 degrees is the best angle for the director team to present the national flag and other patterns after repeated adjustments. Especially when the national flag is displayed, with the crouching of the actors, the whole red flag shows the effect of flying in the wind.
Grasp the plate up, two thumbs gently press down, the arms are sandwiched on both sides of the ear, and the afterglow can be swept to the extension of the plate surface, that is, 20 degrees. Zhong Xiulin, a 28-year-old class leader, is from Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province. Although Mandarin is not very standard, meticulous observation and rigorous training make his movement standards a model for everyone.
I'm great for the mission, and the task is brilliant because of me.
During the first drill, standing in Tiananmen Square and seeing the five-star red flag rising in front of his eyes, Zhong Xiulin's tears fell at once.
During the second rehearsal, the soldier Liu Peizhe's hand was injured. As you go, the blood ticks. The comrade next to him reminded him: "Your hand is dripping blood." ”
Of course, Liu Peizhe knows that he is moving forward in pain, because the 3290-person square team cannot be less than any point, no one can replace anyone, and under any circumstances, it must be on. Arriving at the tiananmen Square preparation area, team doctor Zhang Jian arrived: "The wound is on the index finger of the left hand, the wound is relatively deep, the skin is torn, and the bones can be seen." ”
The drill began immediately, the time was urgent, and after the anesthesia was completed, the needle was needed. Liu Peizhe bit his sleeve and felt the needle penetrate the skin. He persevered in the rehearsal. When his comrade-in-arms took the light and shadow screen from his hand, the gauze on his hand was already soaked with blood.
After three rehearsals of the gala, although the theme performance itself has not changed, in order to present the overall integration of the gala activities, the theme performance has been actively adjusted. The warriors sang, shouted, jumped, and ran, and while the big picture was presented, each of them vividly explained "freedom, vividness, joy, and liveliness."
Jiang Kui, an instructor in Block 47, always had an irrepressible smile and excitement on his face when he ran on the field. Like every comrade-in-arms, he always kept an eye on the spot, and he did not care to turn his head to look at the rare grand scene. "We don't have time to look around, everyone has to be highly focused to finish the show flawlessly."
Zhang Mei, head of the "Ode to the Red Flag" chapter director group, witnessed the soldiers' "thousand hammers and hundreds of refinements". The sun was like fire, the heat wave hit people, the soldiers sweated like rain, the skin was sunburned into soy sauce, even the pink training clothes were sunburned; when it rained, the rehearsal progress was rushed, the rain crackled on the prop board, and the sound of the rain was accompanied by the soldiers firmly counting the rhythm of the trumpet. Zhang Dao sighed: "The bloom on Tiananmen Square was forged by the sweat of all officers and men, with extraordinary tenacity, and with the courage of soldiers to serve the country. They have completed tasks that ordinary people cannot complete, salute them! Love them! ”
The innovative "Little Zhuge Ge"
"We are obsessively catching up with time, against our own limits, and launching an impact again and again."
- Warrior Gu Tingkai
It is not enough to sweat, but to overcome difficulties depends on a flexible mind.
The participating units quickly selected and identified 64 young instructors. These little instructors are known as "Little Zhuge Ge" and are all trained and innovators. They must gather and hold "Zhuge Liang meetings" every day to jointly solve the key and difficult problems encountered in training.
When I just got the prop board, in order to find the inclination angle of 20 degrees, the little instructors came up with a soil method - on the back of the light and shadow screen, install a water column, and draw a scale on the water column. As the angle of the light and shadow screen is adjusted, the bubble changes its position back and forth on the tick line, the top is 90 degrees, the middle is 45 degrees, and the position of the lower third is exactly 20 degrees. At the beginning of training, the warriors used this method to find the angle, and after a long time, the arm muscles had formed a memory, and they no longer needed the help of the water column.
At the beginning of the rehearsal of "Ode to the Red Flag", some of the fighters had not been exposed to the rhythm of the dance, and the rhythm was not accurate. Xu Haohan and Zong Jieqiong used the training interval time to ask the director group for the beat, and produced the "Beat Rhythm Table" and "Position Guidance Map", which became the "position navigation" that was sought-after in the team.
"Rhythm Table of Beats" is the invention of Xu Haohan, a "master of mathematics". How to keep up with the beat of the action, Xu Haohan moved his brain. The first time the flag was posed, there was a wave flow, which was grouped into 11 groups, each with a different rhythm but regular. "I'm in group 7, so in terms of rhythm, it's the 7th beat, and then the next 4 beats, which is the 3rd beat of the next eight beats, and the other groups are the same. If someone is in the x group, then his starting shot is x or x-8, and the ending shot is x-4 or x+4. "Decomposing the movements in simple mathematical formulas, the rhythms and rhythms that initially feel chaotic and clueless, and then there are rules to follow.
Finding that the warriors could not always go to their own points according to the musical beat, Yan Mo and Jiang Dongsheng summarized the "point beat correspondence table" and "horizontal and vertical coordinate memory method". Among them, the "point beat corresponding table" was included in the rehearsal manual by the director group, which greatly improved the training efficiency.
Zhao Fei, 32, is the big brother in the team. He participated in the celebration performances of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In December this year, Zhao Fei was about to retire, and he felt that he was the "luckiest" soldier. "In the first year of being a soldier, he participated in the Olympic performance; in the last year of the soldier, he participated in the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the National Day. With these two major national events that have entered the annals of history as the starting point and the end point, my military career is also very complete. ”
Zhao Fei remembers that when he participated in the Olympic drills, there was no visual equipment on the training ground, and he could only stare at the movements of the people around him to mark the "blind practice".
But this time, there were camera drones and LCD screens on the training ground. The big screen is the size of half a basketball court, and the rehearsal image is placed on the big screen in real time, so that everyone can clearly see the queue shape and subtle movements.
"I truly feel that the motherland is getting stronger and stronger, the level of economic development is getting higher and higher, and the guarantee conditions are getting better and better, which is enough to show that our national strength is constantly increasing!" Zhao Fei said proudly.
"Behind the Scenes Heroes" Who Share glory
"Maybe in the eyes of others, we are all just a trivial point, and even we can't recognize ourselves, but when we get together, we show the vicissitudes of New China in the past 70 years." ——Point 0802 Warrior Chen Rui
Among the performers, there is also a reserve team of 340 people, who wear blue number plates on their chests and train hard every day. Once there are special circumstances in the official team, they can replace them in time to ensure that the performance is foolproof.
Official players, each chapter has hundreds of points; as a reserve team member, because you may have to replace actors in different positions, you must be one to ten, remember thousands of points! When rehearsing, they are the shadows of the official team members, "tied" to the official team members, and complete each point and action together.
18-year-old Jiang Mingsen is a new recruit who only joined the army last year, "To celebrate the birthday of the mother of the motherland, I can join it!" That excitement in my heart, that excitement! ”
Eating, walking, and even dreaming, Jiang Mingsen was confusedly chanting a string of numbers. In the second drill, a formal player could not play because of the certificate problem, and Jiang Mingsen took the place and walked down perfectly.
Ten times the effort, but does not mean that you will be able to play. Just three or four days before October 1, a formal player could not play because of a foot injury and bruising, and Jiang Mingsen received a replacement task. But on the day of the performance, the official player's injury improved and he was ready to play. "I must have a little regret in my heart." But no matter who plays, it is enough to give a wonderful performance. As behind the scenes, we also feel honored and proud. ”
Behind the honor, it is to pay, and it is inevitable to regret. During the mission, 27 people took the initiative to postpone the marriage date, 10 officers and soldiers returned to the training ground after only three or four days of leave after their parents died, 91 officers and soldiers still stuck to the front line after giving birth to their wives and their relatives were seriously ill and hospitalized, and 1498 people postponed their retirement and schooling.
Tian Bing's mother also participated in the National Day celebration and served as a volunteer at the event site.
Tian Mama, who was originally in her hometown in Nanyang, heard that the local government was going to select 3 volunteers to go to Beijing to participate in the clearance work after the parade, and she signed up for the first time. Of course, she also has a small selfish heart - she has not seen her son for almost two years, and this time her son also has a celebration task, and she may be able to meet him with this opportunity.
However, the mother and son's tasks were one at noon and one in the evening, and the two regrettably missed it. After the mission was completed, Tian Bing returned to the camp and found a message on his mobile phone, which was sent by his mother several days ago - "Mother and child are in the same heart, and their profits are broken!" "This big guy suddenly blushed.
One person is read, and the whole family is glorious.
After the mission, the family heard that Zhang Jiaming participated in the "Eleventh" celebration and was proud. A large number of children watched the replay repeatedly looking for shots with him. "My mom posted a lot of TV screenshots in my WeChat group, 'This is my son' and 'That's my son'. Not really. Speaking of the excited mother, Zhang Jiaming smiled very happily.
Also lying in front of the TV was Zhong Xiulin's wife. The husband "disappeared" for five months because of training, and the son Xuan Xuan was still swaddling. Two months ago, the child had a continuous fever due to teething, but the wife could not contact her husband. Anxious and complaining, they have all been there, but in the end they all turned into a sentence of "you have worked hard."
Success does not have to be in me, success must have me. This glory belongs to all.
On the afternoon of October 1, soldier Ding Chen and comrades-in-arms Zhu Yubiao, Su Guowei, Chen Yu, Zhou Peijian, Li Wenqiang, Fu Longlong, Jia Yizhe, and Xie Yingchun had arrived at Tiananmen Square to prepare for the scene. Because of the needs of the performance, they did not bring mobile phones or cameras in such a bright moment of life.
A reporter walked past them, and Ding Chen shyly stopped the reporter, "Can you leave a photo for me and my comrades-in-arms?" ”
Who can say no to such a group of performers who are about to amaze the whole world? The reporter held up his camera and left them with a precious moment.
After the performance, Ding Chen excitedly wrote: "Mom, I have created a miracle with my hands! History will remember this sacred moment, and I am proud of this honor! ”
Source: Beijing Daily
Reporter Jin Ke Dai Lili Tian Yuan Correspondent Ma Yuan Zhang Yi
Process Editor: Sun Yujie