Among the nominations for the 31st Golden Rooster Awards for Chinese Cinema announced not long ago, Shanghai director Zheng Dasheng's new work "Village Drama" received four nominations, including Best Director, Best Screenwriter, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actress. This is also the best result of the films produced by Shanghai Film in recent years.
Director Zheng Dasheng (right) at the screening scene of "Village Drama".
"Village Opera" has been screened in a series of on-demand screenings in shanghai film museums, China Film Archives and other places this year, although the plans for the release of the theater have not yet been announced, but it has been included in the list of "the best Chinese films of this year" by some fans who have seen it.
Director Zheng Dasheng is a director who is called "the mainstay" of the Shanghai film circle, and is also a good descendant of the "root is miaohong" that the elders of Shanghai film have watched grow up. He has deep ties to Shanghai cinema. His grandfather was Huang Zuolin, a master of drama and film, and his mother was the famous fourth-generation director Huang Shuqin.
After graduating from the Directing Department of the Shanghai Theater Academy, Zheng Dasheng went to the Art Institute of Chicago to continue his studies. In 2008, Zheng Dasheng directed the Peking Opera film "Lian Guan Yu Jackie Chan", which won the 13th China Film Huabiao Award for Outstanding Opera Film and the 18th Chinese Film Golden Rooster Award for Best Drama Film. From 2011 to 2012, the films "Tianjin Idle Man" and "Dangerous City" were shortlisted for the Montreal International Film Festival in Canada.
A few years ago, Zheng Dasheng made Mao Dun's "Eclipse" into five small-cost films, with overstretched funds and "times" of screenings.
There are 80% black-and-white images in Village Drama. Stills from this article were provided by the crew.
And this "Village Drama", the investment is still not enough in the film circle to "plug the teeth" of the million level, but it is Zheng Dasheng frankly said that the most "bold" shot. 80% of the film is black and white. The elaborate light and shadow ratio and the unbridled and smooth long shots outline an old and old event in the hinterland of the Taihang Mountains fresh and intriguing.
Black and white images contrast "big red and big green" to illustrate the relationship between the collective and the individual
"Village Drama" unfolds the narrative through the village to arrange a new play, the emotions of young people, the collision of new and old concepts, and the short entanglement of interests in parents, all roll out with the progress of the rehearsal. In the end, the audience could not see the "village drama" arranged by the villagers, but watched another era drama of life.
As a director, Zheng Dasheng thought at the beginning that he would not shoot this scene. "It's not a story about the show, it's a rehearsal story. This is not a matter of the drama not being performed, the process of the villagers rehearsing the play is itself a play. The industry is complete, lively, and the whole village is a drama. ”
Zheng Dasheng has filmed many period dramas, and his previous works "Tianjin Idle People" and "Dangerous City" are the themes of the background of the Republic of China. He once confessed that he prefers to express historical themes, and feels that it is more free and easier to express things through history.
And this time, he wanted to talk about the relationship between the individual and the collective. So when viewers lamented how rare it is to see a film about a particular historical era today, he only said that for his generation, "this history is easier to describe this national nature." ”
"Village Drama" is adapted from the novel of writer Jia Dashan, and the three stories of "Village Drama", "Peanuts" and "Nine and a Half Acres" are synthesized into a lamentable old time. Zheng Dasheng admitted that the novel's "vivid and simple, white depiction, and unfinished intentions are very suitable for adaptation into a movie."
In the early 1980s, in the folds of the mountains between Hebei and Shanxi, the household contract system was about to be implemented, and the problems left over from the past decade were not buried under the traces of another historical rut.
Every character in the movie seems to have an evil side, but the people who watch it can feel the hardships and limitations, the only little girl, like a clear stream that brings the only warm color to the whole movie. Zheng Dasheng said, "She was not a participant in that era, not a party at that time. ”
As a director, he chose to express the main line in black and white, while the memory part retained the color of "big red and big green" through post-production technology. It is a red and green that is extremely saturated and even brings some discomfort.
The film also deliberately retains the big red and green that people are not suitable for.
For such a design, Zheng Dasheng said, "Black and white images inherently have a sense of distance, which is different from the multicolored world of the naked eye, and is a meaningful distance. And black and white have an innate sense of language and history. The background of that era is like the color of the photos in our family photo album. ”
And "big red and big green" is his visual memory of that era. The colorist said the two colors were uncomfortable. Yes, this color is just uncomfortable. Zheng Dasheng said.
In order to restore the era mark in the village, the crew spent a lot of effort to do art research, "What era is what kind of slogan, those slogans do not appear overnight, are covered layer by layer." The most basic layer is the traditional characters, later into simplified characters, slogans of different generations, make a layer, shovel off the old, brush another layer, and then shovel off the old, in order to have the texture of the layers of stacking. ”
The crew even invited local compatriots who had previously worked as propaganda officers to do art. "Our artists are too regular and professional, and the paintings are so beautiful that the villagers feel that they are not like the paintings in the village before."
The crew grows peanuts in the field, and the country theater troupe is a gift from God
Although there are no stars at all, the scene is also concentrated in a village. Zheng Dasheng told reporters that the film was "not cheap" for him.
The important scene in the movie is a peanut field, the crew finished filming most of the scenes in the winter of 2015, and hired 7 uncles in the local area to plant 9 acres of peanuts in the spring, contracted the materials, and went to Hebei again in the summer.
In fact, in order to make the peanuts ripen a month earlier, the crew also invited the doctor of the local agricultural science station to use new technology to make the fruit ripe a quarter earlier. "Our production director is there every day to see if the peanut seedlings have grown." This shooting experience is still very interesting today.
The actors in the film are all local farmers, but they contribute professional performances.
Zheng Dasheng said that he was lucky to meet this group of actors, and the crew walked through 9 counties throughout Hebei during the preparatory period to see the scenery and find people. "In the beginning, we made it clear that we were not looking for professional actors. There are no ready-made actors who can play the peasants of 40 years ago, and there must be a basis for singing. ”
After searching for this kind of sub-county level folk troupe, the crew found a private drama team in Jingxing County, "This is really a gift from God, the drama class has all the characters we need, as well as the band." The music in the film is played live. In the end, the troupe took all the roles it needed and played the villagers of the whole village.
Because the natural fit between the actor's true color and the role is very high, at the same time, they are brothers and sisters of the same disciple who have practiced together since childhood. It is also quite tacit to cooperate. Zheng Dasheng arranged roles for everyone on the spot, and the person who played the village branch secretary in the film was originally the choreographer of the troupe, and the natural respect of the villagers for the branch book was presented in the film.
Zheng Dasheng liked their way of acting, "They were the acting style of the Molière era, the caravan tour. A village asks a drama class to perform for five days. The three villages make up the village in the film, which is their hometown. When filming in each village, the actors returned to their relatives' homes. Acquaintances, native speakers, their own doorstep, very comfortable. ”
At first, Zheng Dasheng was also worried that they would not be able to adapt to the camera, but later found that these worries were completely redundant, "They have to perform 500 times a year, one is not less than 3 hours." To act in a movie is not called 'work', it is too relaxed, and it is like playing. ”
Many people admire the smooth use of long shots in the film, who ever thought that it is the actor's unique performance method that has made the director's smoother film language.
"When we first started shooting, we were worried about non-professional actors, hoping to use medium and long focal lengths, secretly shooting, the lens was farther away from them, trying not to cause them pressure, we thought they would be nervous. After two days of filming, we found that there was no problem at all, their adaptability to the performance was too strong, from the third day onwards, we felt that they could do our usual relatively high requirements for professional actors, such as walking, they were on the opera stage all year round, for everything scheduling, taking care of the machine, taking care of the lights, taking care of the opponent, everything is not a problem. Opera actors on stage, on the size of the feet. And they're very good at acting long shots. A long shot, they cooperate tightly, the opera actors have their own sense of rhythm, and there are gongs and drums in their hearts. I look so good, I don't shout stop, just let them act. Based on their characteristics, we quickly found the most suitable language for shooting this scene. ”
Zheng Dasheng's way of working in filming is somewhat "old-school", in order to find the actors' sense of age, the creators live in the actor's home three weeks in advance, wear stage costumes every day, get up after the chicken crows, and the whole village practices singing the songs of that time together, learning "Mao Xuan", memorizing the "old three pieces", watching model plays, "until they are very accustomed to such a life." Zheng Dasheng believes that "although they are not separated from rural life, the age of the characters is their parents' generation, and there must be a process of making things old." ”
The question of funding must be crossed in an aesthetic way
After "Village Drama" is screened on some small occasions, the audience will mostly express the surprises brought by the theme. After all, today, there are fewer and fewer films that reflect that history. Talking about the creative process, Zheng Dasheng said that he did not encounter a very hard obstacle or a forced reversal.
Also because of the special theme, Zheng Dasheng said that it is just a chance for the creators to "have the opportunity to try to find better and more advanced means of expression, beyond some too shallow expressions, and more accurately reach my original intention."
"The meaning of this film that we want to express is not aimed at a certain era, but only that collective and individual drama is very prominent in that era. For my generation, this is a more appropriate and easier topic to express, to put it in the historical context, but not to deliberately describe that historical background. ”
Compared with past works, "Village Drama" should be the film with the highest degree of completion by Zheng Dasheng. Although it is still a small cost, it will no longer have the regrets caused by insufficient funds that are very obvious in the past movies.
Always shooting small costs, Zheng Dasheng now has more and more of his own experience, "small costs, thin funds, the restrictions on technology are of course very large." But my feeling is that the advantages of a director are no burden, and the capital is too small to deform a director's ideas and original intentions, so the director is forced to do better creations and ideas. The problem of funding must be crossed by aesthetic solutions. Of course, this time filming "Village Drama" is much better than before. For me, it was a shot that was not stretched, and it was the most free and cheerful shooting in my shooting. ”