Author / Baoyi
This May Day, the film "Sunshine Robber" high-profile promotion of the real tiger element, is bound to bring the audience a real and shocking visual experience.
▲ "Sunshine Robber" promotional materials
According to producer Fang Li, in order to highlight the texture of the real tiger in the film, he used a total of five real tigers in the photography process, including three Siberian tigers and two Bengal tigers, and after the screening, many viewers also gave positive evaluations such as "cute", "realistic" and "best in the whole field" for this little tiger.
However, the true tiger element does not seem to have greatly driven the box office and word-of-mouth of "Sunshine Robber". The film was released for 4 days, the box office was less than 40 million, Douban 5.5, Maoyan 7.2, Taobao ticket 7.3, the wave of boycotts of animal performances arrived as promised.
From this, we can't help but ask: animal actors, can they make stars, and what is the value?
Recently, Mr. Hao Shuai, a professional animal actor director, shared first-hand industry information with the Film Intelligence Service (ID: dianyingqingbaochu), this article, let us face the current problems and challenges around animal actors.
From props to actors
Looking back at film history, the status of "animal actors" in Europe, the United States and China can be described as a century apart.
As early as the 1920s, Hollywood giant Warner Bros. began to sign animal actors and successfully created dog stars like the German shepherd "Rin Tin Tin". However, when did China's film and television industry begin to officially recognize the title and identity of "animal actor"? Hao Shuai, who has been working as an animal actor director for nearly a decade, believes that this time point should be between 2015 and 2017, because during this period, the TV series "Shen Dog Little Seven" was broadcast on Hunan Satellite TV, and "A Dog's Mission" was released on the big screen, and both of them have received good market response.
"After these two projects, more and more crews no longer classify us as props, and the staff in the group are willing to call our little animals 'animal actor teachers'," Hao Shuai shared with satisfaction to The Intelligence Jun.
▲ The movie "Rinty of the Desert" starring Ren Tintin
However, Hao Shuai also said bluntly that in addition to the rise in market demand to improve the status of animal actors, the unpleasant events that have appeared in the filming process of some film and television projects have sounded the alarm bell on how to regulate the use of animal actors.
"For example, some directors will think that dogs are born to stand or catch the ball, some directors will watch some videos on the Internet and think that dogs can work endlessly for two or three hours, and some directors will ask dogs to make the facial reaction required in the script at the first time... Then something went wrong," Hao Shuai continued, "we have also been involved in and witnessed related unpleasant events, so now everyone is paying more and more attention." ”
There are also traces of this by looking at past news.
First of all, animal sacrifice accidents caused by imperfect crew work procedures and negligent operation of the crew members have really occurred in China, especially in the use of horse actors. According to a 2009 report by Youth Weekend, due to the inappropriate remarks of Gao Xixi, director of the new version of "Three Kingdoms", "sacrificed a total of six (horses) and went crazy eight (horses)" in the filming, the China Small Animal Protection Association "held" a media briefing through the form of a salon, and the president at that time, Lu Di, not only directly denounced the new version of the "Three Kingdoms" crew to the media, but also pointed out many "animal cruelties" in the Chinese film and television industry.
Secondly, even if the awareness of the protection of animal actors has been improved, and many crews have now used more bionic mechanical animals to assist in shooting, due to plot needs, the crew is sometimes unable to make a 100% safety guarantee for all actors, including live actors and animal actors. For example, the "Lonely City Closed" crew (later renamed "Qing Ping Le"), which was accused by netizens of deliberately tripping over horses and dogs in order to restore the plot of "Yi ma killing dogs" in ancient books, had issued an explanatory statement, and the "Crazy Alien" crew, which had been condemned by animal protection organizations for abusing dogs and throwing rivers during filming, also made relevant statements afterwards, and director Ning Hao also deleted the relevant scenes in the finished film.
▲ CCTV6 "Crazy Alien" behind-the-scenes interview
However, the dangers that can arise between the interaction between live actors and animal actors are also two-way. Once, the director of the movie "Wolf Totem", Jean Jacques Arnold, and the lead actor Feng Shaofeng showed the media that acting with animals is very difficult and very dangerous; and even in Hollywood, where the training mechanism of animal actors is quite mature, it is impossible to avoid the tragic accident of trainers being accidentally bitten by bears or tigers during filming.
It can be seen that in order to create an animal actor, we must first let everyone admit that "it" is an actor, and if you want the animals on the set to achieve a gorgeous turn from props to actors, it is not only a matter of changing the name, but also the cognitive transformation, process specifications and supporting technical innovation of all nodes in the industry.
First, real animal actors need to receive the same professional acting training as live actors. Therefore, from the animal training courses designed and developed for the common needs of film and television projects, to the cooperation of animal owners, trainers, animal directors and other personnel, it is necessary to have a specialization in the art industry.
Second, animal actors also need to enjoy corresponding labor benefits. For example, they must not only get proper living and eating care on the set, but also work in moderation, avoid overtime, and more importantly, all welfare items need to be determined in black and white to avoid unnecessary drama disputes.
▲ The animal actors who have just arrived at the scene of the crew
▲ The field staff is taking care of the animal actors in the waiting field (Source Hao Shuai)
"Then who will sign the contract on behalf of the critter?" When talking about this labor agreement, the intelligence jun asked Hao Shuai a question. "Wouldn't it be necessary to grab the little claws of the small animal to cover the red handprint?"
Probably amused by the brain hole of the intelligence jun, Hao Shuai replied without hurrying: "In fact, the animal as the body and the actor as the identity cannot be directly equated, because behind an animal actor there is the effort of a trainer and an animal director, so you can understand the party B in the contract as a trinity collection noun, including the animal itself, the trainer and the animal director." ”
"So Party B in the contract is actually the animal director or the company legal person, right?" Intelligence Jun summary.
"Yes, that's right, we perform on behalf of the agent." Hao Shuai answered.
Bolder ideas
By clarifying how animals on set "become" actors, Hao Shuai describes to us a vibrant and growing branch of the film and television industry. However, there are slogans that say "how bold people are, how productive the land is", and in addition to the current cognition and ability of practitioners in the field of animal actors, there are other bolder star-making ideas in the market.
First of all, the margins of animal actors' abilities are constantly being broken, from simple twisting their heads and blinking their eyes, picking up the ball upright to more complex subtle emotional expressions, the business level of the animal performance training team is constantly being pushed up, in Hao Shuai's original words, "We will be eliminated if we don't progress." ”
Secondly, the business scope of the animal performance training team is constantly expanding outwards, from the initial performance training, script planning to the subsequent brokerage business, medical support and animal placement, the animal performance training team has long been not limited by the four words of "performance training". The reason is also very simple, if they do not participate in the script planning, it is difficult to train the animals in advance according to the requirements of the crew, and if they are not responsible for the post-use placement, most of the crews do not have the ability and obligation to assume this responsibility.
Therefore, as Beijing Mingshi Dog Industry Co., Ltd., which was deeply involved in the TV series "Shen Dog Little Seven" project, contains on its official website, matters related to pet film and television, such as foster care, performance training, theme planning, actor management and the construction of film and television shooting bases, all belong to their business scope.
Third, the types of animal actors are constantly being enriched, from pet actors with the lowest training difficulty coefficients (cats, dogs, hamsters, etc.) to scene actors with a slightly higher training difficulty coefficient (horses, sheep, etc.), to beast actors with training difficulty coefficients (tigers, bears, wolves, lions, etc.), writers and directors are increasingly trying to complete richer and more interesting film and television expressions through animal actors.
In this regard, some are rigid requirements, such as the horses needed to be used in the war scenes, and some are based on the soft requirements of the story character setting, such as the horse named Joey in the classic movie "War Horse", the monkey of Geng Hao (Huang Bo) in "Crazy Alien", and the pet tiger of Xiaoxue (Song Jia) in "Sunshine Robber".
▲ The war scene in the trailer of the "Fengshen Trilogy"
▲ Stills from "War Horse"
However, training beast actors is no easy task. Time costs, money costs, ability qualifications, risk coefficients, legal guarantees and other issues have become the current constraints on the vigorous development of beast training business in China.
In this regard, Hao Shuai explained to Intelligence Jun that if a crew put forward training needs for specific animal actors to them, they would consider undertaking it under the premise that time and funds were sufficient, but not all crews were willing to provide corresponding time and remuneration. More importantly, not all kinds of animals can be called into film and television projects, such as parrots included in the "List of Wild Animals under National Key Protection"; and as for tigers, their keepers have to pass many examinations to successfully work in China.
It is reported that when film and television crews need to use beast actors in the filming process, they will mostly seek assistance from compliance agencies such as circuses or zoos. For ordinary people or general training teams, domesticating beasts of prey in a daily environment is comparable to ascending to the sky.
Take tiger farming, for example. According to the investigation, Article 17 of the Wildlife Protection Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that the state encourages the domestication and breeding of wild animals, but should hold a license. If you want to obtain a permit to tame a tiger, you need to meet the conditions of tiger breeding facilities and equipment, ensure the source of feed for tigers, and make a plan to prevent tigers from escaping. In this way, circuses, zoos and other institutions are indeed the right choice for taming tigers.
Therefore, if the domestic film team wants to introduce beast actors such as bears, tigers and wolves in the project, it will choose to cooperate with foreign teams, and even set the shooting location of the relevant shots abroad. Just as "Wolf Totem" and "Sunshine Robber" both work with teams of renowned animal acting trainer Andrew Simpson, The company Simpson founded, "Instinct Animals for Film," features animal actors like wolves, tigers, and leopards.
▲CCTV6 column report
That being the case, why are there always fresh commercial film projects that choose to use animal actors other than cats and dogs, or even choose to use animal actors at greater personal risk? "Maybe I want to pursue freshness," Hao Shuai guessed.
It can be seen that in the vision of star-making animal actors, the various parties with a keen sense of commercial smell have already considered and laid out, and they are also constantly pushing up the possible margins of star-making animal actors through more bold business expansion. Regardless of whether such motivations and goals will be understood and supported by the whole society, it is not necessarily a good thing to continuously improve the training system and welfare protection mechanism of animal actors in this process.
However, around the "animal actors", the bottlenecks in the industry and the doubts of the outside world have never stopped.
Limitations and breakthroughs
Just as live actors face problems such as acting appraisals, pay payments, labor benefits, and career transitions, animal actors are no exception. However, these problems are more demanding for animal actors, and the objectivity of animal actors and actresses has also increased the difficulty of promoting the corresponding rights and interests.
The above problems have been continuously concerned and solved by Hao Shuai in the past decade, among which the problem of animal actor transfer placement that he is particularly concerned about has also been improved.
Nevertheless, the quality level and precision of animal performances certainly have a ceiling, and probably no one can clearly answer where the breakthrough in the development of this field will fall.
At present, the existence and development of animal actors are facing two major problems: one is the technical problem, that is, the competition and integration of animal actors' real shooting and visual effects technology, and the other is the ethical problem, that is, the integrity and renewal of animal performance in social audio-visual.
Let's start with the first question.
Looking at a number of films involving animal scenes and their behind-the-scenes production tidbits, it is not difficult to find that no animal can consistently and 100% participate in the actual shooting of the film, with stand-ins, green screens, special effects, bionic mechanical props... Behind a screen animal character, it must also be supplemented by a sufficient amount of scientific and technological support.
▲ Hedwig "People" in Harry Potter
(Source Warner Bros. Studios London - Harry Potter Studios)
However, if visual effects technology can really be developed to the level of perfection in the future, can animal actors still have a foothold? In this regard, The Intelligence Jun believes that the optimization and industrialization of film visual effects technology is an inevitable trend, and a higher level of visual effects production capabilities can also give the crew more space for animal protection. But even so, the existence value of animal actors cannot be completely replaced - "mainly time and capital costs do not allow", Hao Shuai explains.
Specifically, whether it is the bionic machinery used in physical visual effects, foam latex, or the 3D modeling and animation rendering used in digital visual effects, they are not affordable options, and for shots such as capturing subtle expressions of animals, real animals are indeed a more cost-effective option.
▲ Behind the scenes of "The Fantasy Drifting of the Young Pi": Tiger Chapter
Let's move on to the second, more complex issue.
Ethics has never been a black-and-white word, and the debate about the significance of animal performances has always been in the gap between supply and demand and defenders. For example, just now when "Sunshine Robber" is hotly released, social groups led by the "China Green Development Association Endangered Species Special Fund to Save Performing Animals Project" are also sparing no effort to speak out for the treatment of Tiger Wenwen.
However, does "animal performance" include film and television performances, can "animal film and television performances" be compared with zoo performances and circus performances, where should the "moral yardstick" in animal film and television performances be placed, and does "stop all animal performances" include special effects for collecting animal muscle data and reprocessing? And so on, all to be discussed.
After all, no one can give a satisfactory answer to all parties in a state of authority, and no one can make a presumption of guilt for the supply and demand sides and defenders of animal performances. Just as one can applaud the shawshank redemption crew for using naturally dead bugs to feed crows in response to an animal protection group's call, but has no right to blame Christopher Nolan, who did not explicitly disclose how to shoot the magic trick of "shooting the dead bird".
▲ Stills from "Deadly Magic"
So, can we find a compromise breakthrough in the career planning of animal actors? For example, like the "Palm Dog Award" at the Cannes Film Festival, a similar "Best Animal Actor Award" was set up at the domestic film and television awards ceremony. In this way, not only can animal actors who contribute superb acting skills to film and television works be commended, the service team behind them can be encouraged, but also a positive animal publicity image can be established in the whole society, thus promoting the benign development of the entire animal performance industry.
"We are looking forward to the birth of such an award, but I think it will take at least a generation or two to see the light of day," Hao Shuai said. Because china's understanding of animals is still relatively uneven, the older generation still has many concepts of equating kittens and puppies with livestock, and equating jackals with fierce elephants, and the younger generation is beginning to think about the companionship role of kittens and puppies and the cultural significance of jackals, wolves, tigers and leopards."
Yes, in the past discourse, such as Geng Hao (Huang Bo) in "Crazy Alien", you can burn incense to the bodhisattva while worrying about whether the name of "Southwest Monkey King" will be broken in his hands; for example, Secretary Bao Shungui (Yin Zhusheng) in "Wolf Totem" is even more regarded as an enemy and killed. In the discourse of the younger generation in China, it is also blooming the need for companions of various animals, the propositional reconstruction of traditional cultural imagery, and the active thinking of the value of life.
But that's not enough, at least not enough on both the "partner" and "life" dimensions.
"Suppose an ascending actor is going to walk the red carpet with a cat or a dog, can he/she really accept that she is not as good as an animal in the spotlight?" Hao Shuai asked Intelligence Jun.
"Not necessarily," replied the Intelligence Jun. But the intelligence jun thinks in his heart, some people will treat pets as pearls in the palm of their hands, some people will eat in dog meat shops; some people will sincerely regard pets as emotional dependence, and some people will go to the "suck cats and dogs" shop to complete social needs; some people will bow to the experimental animals under their knives, but some people will only illegally amass wealth under the guise of protecting animals... Who's to say that no one in our country will walk the red carpet with joy and honor with animal actors in the future?
epilogue
From witnessing the small animals around them get rid of the label of props, to promoting the landing and improvement of projects such as animal actor welfare agreements and job placement, most of the animal performance-related practitioners represented by Hao Shuai have witnessed and personally participated in all aspects of star-making animal actors.
In the case of star-making animal actors, their goal is also very simple: that is, to shoot the project in hand seriously, try to give preferential treatment to the actors in their hands, and if they can still get a little praise, it is even better.
Just like Uggie, the dog who contributed superb acting skills in "The Artist", he not only completed the feat of climbing the red carpet of the Academy Awards, but also left paw prints on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and wrote a brilliant page in the history of world cinema.
▲ Jean Duardan and Aggie "shared" the Academy Award for Best Actor
(Source Getty Pictures)
From this summary, animal actors can make stars - there are already many pioneering cases, and it is even more promising to look forward to the future.
However, how can we better and more positively create star animal actors in our country? -- This question still needs to be continued to be pondered by all parties.