The proportion of special articles on the 1905 movie network soared from 6% to 19%; the box office went from the sixth place on the first day to the 200 million mark; "Sweeping Black And Decisive Battle" completed a beautiful counterattack in 10 days!
At the same time, the film has also achieved good ratings on various platforms, and its comprehensive reputation is second only to "On the Cliff", becoming a dark horse full of color in the "May 1st file".
As the first theatrical film in The country with the theme of the special struggle to "sweep away organized crime and eliminate evil forces", "Sweeping Gangs and Fighting Evil Forces" boldly touched on social issues such as collusion between officials and businessmen, violent debt collection, and migrant workers' wage collection, and the "scale" made many viewers shine. Zhang Songwen, Jiang Wu, Li Qian and other high-energy dramas led by a number of acting schools have also made people addicted.
"Sweeping Black And Decisive Battle" is the first theatrical work directed by Lü Yulai. In the face of such achievements, he frankly said: "Relieved, you can be worthy of investors." ”
But what he pays more attention to is the audience's reputation and the practical significance of the film, "sweeping the black theme, this movie is just the beginning." I hope that you can see more such realistic films on the big screen, and then reflect on life and society. ”
In 1905, the film network interviewed Lu Yulai, the director of "Sweeping Black And Decisive Battle"
#01 Story Find a balance between reality and drama
During the epidemic last year, Lu Yulai officially joined the project. From the script, shooting, editing, post-production to the original release in January this year, the whole cycle is less than a year, coupled with the breakthrough of the subject matter, which is almost an "impossible task" for newcomer directors.
The opening line "based on a real case" sets the tone of the creation, "the most basic principle is truth". The main creative team also started from the real case of the special struggle of "sweeping away criminal syndicates and eliminating evil", combing the story and designing the characters. It can be said that almost every character and every event is "a collection of thousands of real cases in one".
Due to the complexity of the events and the complexity of the characters, the team mainly focused on the "three events" and the "three-party struggle" as the starting point when creating: through the three incidents of demolition, burial, and debt collection, the special case team, the local criminal and evil forces, and the victims of the three parties focused on portraying, trying to restore a section of the "anti-gang crime and evil battlefield".
While emphasizing the sense of reality, Lu Yulai also admitted that the film cannot be made into a "documentary", and appropriate trade-offs and artistic processing should be carried out, such as the addition of elements of action, suspense, crime genre films, and the restrained presentation of the internal scenes and activities of entertainment venues, all in order to "find a balance between reality and drama".
In terms of characters, Lu Yulai focuses on portraying Cao Zhiyuan, the county magistrate played by Zhang Songwen.
At first glance, this character is a typical official "two-faced person", but the main creative team tried to avoid "facebooking" it when creating. In the film, he mourns his colleagues by the bridge, his emotional entanglement with Lin Qiao'er, and the details of Sun Zhibiao's sibling bondage, all make Cao Zhiyuan's image more flesh and blood.
"We want to restore the state of a real person. Teacher Zhang Songwen also said, I hope you let me play a real 'person', rather than a particularly stylized and conceptual thing. Lu Yu said.
Other major characters, such as Sun Zhibiao, played by Jin Shijia, and Lin Qiao'er, played by Li Qian, although they are limited by length and have less ink, Lu Yulai still hopes to increase the curvature of the characters through detailed portrayal.
For example, through the Cao family banquet, the audience was able to "peek" at Sun Zhibiao's growth experience, "Abandoned from childhood, growing up to do dirty work, he suppressed a lot of things, will be so arrogant." ”
Lin Qiao'er and Cao Zhiyuan's "emotional drama" also makes this villain have a "femininity", "She is a three-dimensional person, so that the actor's performance will have a fulcrum and can touch the audience more." ”
The "real texture" of the film is not only reflected in the theme, script and character design, but also in the coordination of every detail of the scenery, art, costumes, makeup and props.
Lu Yulai gave an example: in reality, the size and allocation of different levels of official offices have clear regulations, and the car assigned by the crew to Cao County's governor at the beginning is "non-compliant", and after being pointed out by professionals, it can only be corrected by post-production special effects.
From Lu Yu's point of view, in the creation of such main theme films, how to deal with reality and drama, the relationship between content and theme is the key to success or failure, "you can't directly instill concepts and slogans into the audience." Only when the audience accepts these good-looking characters and true stories can they feel the theme behind them. ”
#02 Performance "Wen Wu Shuang Xiong" "Full Drama Addiction"
After the release of "Sweeping Black And Decisive Battle", the performances of Zhang Songwen and Jiang Wu, two powerful actors, "Wen Wu Shuangquan", received rave reviews from the audience, and the drama clips were more frequently listed on various hot searches.
Lu Yulai revealed that the two male protagonists are actors who have been determined at the stage of script creation, and the personality characteristics of the two characters are just "one article and one martial art", just like tailor-made for them.
Both senior actors have also put forward a lot of valuable opinions on the script and characters, "They have richer experience in acting and life, sometimes their understanding of the role is beyond the director, we are a cooperative relationship, and work together to grind the role to the best." ”
In particular, Zhang Songwen designed a detailed and plump "character biography" for Cao Zhiyuan, and almost interpreted his life experience and mental journey in the first 47 years in his mind.
After the release, the film exposed an Easter egg: the imprisoned Cao County Governor confessed in front of the camera about his depravity and corruption. Zhang Songwen's 7-minute improvised, unscripted performance shows his deep understanding of the characters while his acting skills are convincing.
Lu Yulai sighed: "In fact, that monologue lasted more than twenty minutes, and he explained the background of this character, from the state of going to college to the state of graduation and casting full of aspirations, and then how he began to transform the degenerate mental process later, the development of the entire character is particularly clear, and many of them are not thought of by us as creators." ”
Compared with the experience of "cultural relics and two males", Jin Shijia's stylized performance has caused a lot of controversy: some people shout amazing, and some people question his exaggerated acting skills.
Lu Yulai admitted that for Jin Shijia, he was also "a little bottomless" at the beginning, "I will feel that this state is not a little too much." "But in his exchanges with Jin Shijia, he found that he had a strong idea and impulse to understand the characters and how to interpret and interpret the characters," Cao Zhibiao only had more than 20 scenes, but he wrote dozens of notes and opinions, and he had deep feelings for the characters. ”
For example, Lu Yulai revealed that the highlight of the scene of throwing money was Jin Shijia's own play, "The script is written to say goodbye with eyes, but he felt that the eyes alone were not publicity and externalization, so he designed this scene." ”
The brother confrontation scene between Cao Zhiyuan and Sun Zhibiao is also the result of an impromptu collision between Zhang Songwen and Jin Shijia. There was only one slap written in the script, but Zhang Songwen fanned more than a dozen on the spot, and the "neck pinch" was also improvised, "I saw in the monitor that the two actors had forgotten themselves, Jin Shijia was pinched to the point that he couldn't speak, I was particularly excited to see it, this real state is impossible to act by acting and method." ”
It is also this scene that makes Lu Yulai believe in Jin Shijia's performance, "I think he is really Sun Zhibiao, this is a performance that belongs to Jin Shijia, put on Jin Shijia's body, I think it is right, it is successful." ”
This state of "forgetting oneself" is also the norm for the crew of "Sweeping Black And Decisive Battle". It is not difficult to see from a variety of tidbits that the actors have a strong desire to express their roles, and you can always collide with improvised sparks in the scene, and each scene also has N ways to open.
"Sweeping Black Battle" tidbits
Lu Yulai, who is an actor, is very understanding and supportive of this, and it is this creative atmosphere of equal cooperation that has achieved the "full acting school".
"Actors love their roles, and even blend in with them, and a lot of the performances are physiological instincts, and with the emotions of the characters, they act in the right way. This state is particularly good, and I will help them realize more ideas as much as possible. ”
#03 Transformation Look at the practical significance of the subject matter
Whenever the official account of "Sweeping Black And Decisive Battle" publishes materials about director Lu Yulai, there will always be many netizens commenting: "Isn't this the security guard Xie Paul in "Skyscraper"? I didn't expect it to be a director. ”
In response, Lu Yulai responded with a smile: "Everyone has many faces. ”
The undergraduate science of university is drama literature, and the graduate student is a director, but Lu Yulai's main identity has always been an actor, who has starred in a series of literary and artistic masterpieces such as "Peacock", "Watermark Street", "Red Combain", "Court on Horseback" and so on, and his works have been shortlisted for international film festivals such as Berlin and Venice.
In the past two years, with his performances in the web drama "Skyscraper" and "Missing Persons", Lu Yulai's image has begun to be known to more ordinary audiences.
Lu Yulai in "Peacock"
This "Sweeping Black Battle" is the first directorial work to land in theaters after 8 years of graduate school graduation from Lu Yulai's department of directing. Looking back on the creative process, Lu Yulai admitted that there was a lot of pressure and unsatisfactory places.
"Because we were shooting during the epidemic, the preparation and shooting time was not so long, and we didn't do a particularly good job in creation, and if we worked with the actors for a longer time, something better might come out."
In addition, the film was filmed in the summer of Huizhou, Guangdong, which was hot and rainy, and the scene often had to "watch the sky to eat", such as the demolition scene staged in the cornfield at the beginning, which was filmed five times before and after the rain.
"It was hot, the pressure was high, I couldn't eat anything, my body became very thin, and everyone joked about me as a 'funeral director.'" Lu Yu teased at me.
On the other hand, the pressure also comes from the theme of "sweeping blacks" itself. For Lu Yulai, like many viewers, "sweeping away criminal syndicates and eliminating evil" was once just a slogan in the news, but after in-depth understanding, I felt the heavy weight behind these four words.
"The bullying of the evil forces and the people in reality may be more excessive than those presented in the movie." Especially in small places, the people may have a 'consensus', that is, we are a humane society, and what you want to do, the first thing you think of is to find a person who has power or money. But on the other hand, what about ordinary people who no one knows? Lu Yu said: "Therefore, the most important point in sweeping away criminal syndicates and eliminating evil is to create a fair and just environment for the people." Everyone can go through the normal procedures for doing things, which is closely related to our happiness. ”
In Lü Yu's view, many lines in the film, such as "how many umbrellas are there, how many to catch", "I will never allow you to eat meat, let the people drink soup" and other golden sentences can go out of the circle; the reason why the film can get praise all the way back, largely due to the "victory" of the theme, which tells the voice of the people.
This is his original intention of breaking through himself and choosing to shoot "Sweeping Black Battle", and it is the practical significance of this kind of film.
"Sweeping away the black genre is just the beginning."