After his debut, Niu Chao was constantly labeled with various labels: dancer, painter, and actor. Previously, in the hit drama "The Silent Truth", he was a police pony with "something"; on the big screen for the first time, in the movie "If One Day I Will Leave You", he was Zhao Qingmu, who had yellow hair and made a living in a foreign country, no matter which label, he was finally dyed with a unique personal color.
Maybe it's purple? It is a neutral, cooler hue, a color that Niu Chao likes, and is used to some extent to represent the color of his soul. In the face of different shots, Niu Chao shows a different self, he is straightforward during the interview, and he has the empathy of rapid integration with the role when performing.
The film "If One Day I Will Leave You" was shortlisted for the Temple of Heaven Award at the 2021 Beijing International Film Festival, after the film was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 23rd Udine Far East International Film Festival in Italy and nominated for the Best Debut "White Mulberry Award", which won a good reputation at its Asian premiere. For the actor Niu Chao, Zhao Qingmu is not simply the role of a certain play, but a person who has shared "bitterness" and "happiness" with him.
"Zhao Qingmu makes me miserable"
At the post-screening meeting of the movie "If One Day I Will Leave You", actor Niu Chao introduced himself in Japanese and Chongqing dialect and interacted with the audience, and before becoming an actor, the recognition of these two languages in the eyes of Ningxia boy Niu Chao was almost zero. In the movie "If One Day I Will Leave You", he played Zhao Qingmu, a Chinese-Japanese mixed race, a role that made him have to master Japanese and Chongqing dialect, the former is the survival of Zhao Qingmu given by the story, and the latter is the foundation that the character has had since birth.
Asked about his current Japanese ability, Niu Chao frankly said that his Japanese level was limited to living in the movie with Zhao Qingmu (the line part), and back to reality, he could only do a simple self-introduction of Japanese Xiaobai, and the same was true for Chongqing dialect. However, after watching the film, it is difficult to feel that he learned the language for the role, and the audience sees Zhao Aoki as a young man who is familiar with Japanese life and integrates with it.
As a companion who joined hands on the big screen for the first time, Zhao Qingmu once let Niu Chao fall into an inexplicable "pain". In Niu Chao's eyes, Zhao Qingmu is "stubborn, lonely, and does not accept defeat", "You may think that he bullies people in the shop, a little bad." But as the filming progressed, he gradually deepened his understanding of the role and felt that Zhao Qingmu was "a bit pitiful, and many of his actions actually have their own reasons and places of compulsion."
This understanding gives him some confidence when he "becomes" Zhao Qingmu, and as a newcomer actor, finding similarities with the role is also one of the ways to establish empathy with the role.
"Zhao Qingmu and I have similarities, we are both quite stubborn. I don't like to tell others about my pain or similar feelings, and zhao Qingmu is the same. "Even with some similar qualities, it is not easy to play Zhao Qingmu well.
The first hurdle to overcome is language, Zhao Aoki spends most of his time in Japanese communication, and speaking fluently in Japanese is the basis for standing up the character. As a new language, Niu Chao spent two months to master some simple conversations before entering the group shooting, and the crew will also arrange special teachers to do pronunciation and line guidance for him during the shooting process, from reading smoothly to reading like, this process makes Niu Chao suffer a lot.
After the language, grasping the state of the character is also one of the performance lessons he needs to complete, Niu Chao admits that his state at the beginning is not right, and there are several scenes that portray the loneliness of the characters, fight against fate, and parting, which is not a small challenge for Niu Chao. How do you establish such an emotional state? Niu Chao mentioned the filming of the last two scenes, and he locked himself in a hotel in Japan for about two weeks.
In his cramped, cramped hotel room with security barbed wire hanging from the window, he was alone almost every day, and this "alone" time made him feel some of Aoki's emotions and states, "I felt more withdrawn as if I had really been in prison for more than ten days (laughs). ”
Another challenge that Zhao Qingmu brings to Niu Chao is the proposition of "parting", in the process of being interrogated by the police, he needs to mix some kind of parting in his life in a foreign country, he began to look for similar emotions from the past, his touch returned to the university era, some "lonely" He and his classmates did not have much daily communication, but they were very chatty with their partners who danced together. However, these partners who are older than themselves will eventually leave because of graduation, and the "parting" at that time impressed him deeply, and eventually refracted to Zhao Qingmu, becoming a "parting" in the film.
Other moments of becoming Aoki also made Niu Chao unforgettable, as a newcomer actor, he felt that he had not even touched the real doorway of the performance, and when he used too much force, the director would tell him, "You are acting too calmly, you have to be like a young man again." ”
"Calm" is Niu Chao's own temperament when entering the role, previously in "The Silent Truth", he played the police pony, when assisting Yan Liang (played by Liao Fan) to solve the case, he is different from other young policemen, more focused and calm, even if the role is not much, it also makes people impressed by this small policeman who has been looking for a hanger model on the road. Needless to say, Niu Chao's acting talent is wrapped in a natural sense of character empathy, which gives him the ability to let the audience naturally substitute when he does not have skilled acting skills.
Unlike most of the new generation of actors, Niu Chao's humility is tinged with a bit of honesty. He admits that he is just a newcomer, and the only few works he has are not enough to give him a deeper insight into the identity of the actor; shooting the first big-screen work is not a small challenge for him, so it is "quite difficult"; but the months of living as Zhao Qingmu make him very unforgettable, especially in a scene at the end of the whole dialogue with the police in Japanese, in close-up, he completed the most critical moment of the role; he has not yet clearly figured out what it is like to walk out of the role. It's just "a relief" when it comes to the end.
But the joy of acting transcends these difficulties and challenges, and having already starred in four small screens and one big screen, the biggest energy he draws from the role is "gradually understanding the acting thing and falling in love with it." When these accumulated happiness is finally displayed in front of the audience, it becomes a new generation of actors Niu Chao who can be expected in the future.
Zhao Qingmu makes me happy, and performance makes me happy
Before becoming an actor, Niu Chao had many impressive points: a characteristic face, a handsome dance posture, and from time to time he would pop some of his own paintings or sculptures on Weibo, and his style was his own.
When he appeared in front of the public as an actor, he became a police pony in "The Silent Truth", in such a high-scoring network drama with a large number of acting schools (Douban score 9.1), he and Liao Fan, Bai Yu, Tan Zhuo, Ning Li and other dramas, all the way "silent" investigation still impressed the audience with him; when he came to the movie "If One Day I Will Leave You", he was obviously more mature than Xiaoma, and he felt that all the roles so far had similarities with him. He believes that before the newcomer actor relies on acting skills, it is more important to adapt to the role.
"The director thinks I can most likely not think I'm good at acting, but that some part of me is similar to the character."
Whether it is an interview or other, Niu Chao shows an undisguised bluntness, will take the initiative to ask questions in the face of confusion, on the one hand, he has a clear understanding of the identity of his newcomer actor, and on the other hand, he completes the performance work with a positive, serious and hard-working attitude. Privately, he felt that he was casual, grinning, and even a little short-tempered, but he would not attach any pretense to such a self.
He has his own standards for good performance, and the blind officer Lieutenant Colonel Stefland, played by the film Albert Al Pacino in the film "Smell the Woman", is what he hopes to achieve: "He plays a blind man, he can't see, but you can see all the anger, happiness and even hysteria in his face." 」 ”
He prefers realistic themes to fantasy and idol genres, and those close to reality roles make him feel more gripping, but once he has the opportunity to challenge and completely different types of roles, he is more looking forward to it.
Everyday Niu Chao, as he himself said, is not a person who likes to "share", you can feel a certain delicacy and sensitivity from his words, but when he appears in front of you with the role, you can feel the role understanding ability and performance tension that does not match the newcomer, which tends to be a certain talent rather than skill, but he is not willing to fall into the routine of "natural acting", he just hides the effort like hiding the real self, because all the efforts can eventually be seen. Not through storytelling, but through characters.
Xiao Ma and Aoki are such narrators, the actor Niu Chao is reaching a certain consensus with each character in his own way, and the audience feels the empathy of the character brought about by the consensus.
From Zhao Qingmu, Niu Chao more clearly harvested the happiness that belongs to the performance, if the pony only opened the door to happiness for him, then Zhao Qingmu is the leader who openly and honestly let him experience happiness. In the time spent with the characters, learning languages, speculating on emotions and even understanding the past, present and future of the characters, Niu Chao feels that this is a process of feeling happy.
So where does this happiness go? It probably requires the audience to go to the screen to find the answer.