A good story of China under the "small people" and "big background"

A good story of China under the "small people" and "big background"

——The creative process of "My Father and Me"

Author: Fu Ruoqing (Chief Producer of "My Father and Me")

After the success of "My Motherland and Me" in 2019, we found that the creative method of "small people, big background" is effective. "My Hometown and Me", released in 2020, continues the same creative idea, once again won the recognition of the audience, and formed a National Day to see the "Me and Mine" series such as a movie expectation. Therefore, from the end of 2020, we have made it clear that we want to continue this brand and tell the big story of Chinese with small people and big perspectives.

So the next question is what is the theme of this time? How to build the main creative team? "My Motherland and Me" coincides with the 70th birthday of the motherland, we selected 7 excellent directors of different ages, selected 7 different historical events as the background; "My Hometown and Me" was launched in the year when we achieved comprehensive poverty alleviation, so we chose the comedy method that the people liked the most, and it is also the most suitable way to show rural changes, which was completed by 5 groups of excellent directors who are good at comedy films. It can be seen that the core of the topic selection is to be closely related to the theme of the times, and the main creator and the form of expression serve the theme. So what is the theme for 2021? Under the guidance of the National Film Administration, after many rounds of discussion and full study of various materials, we finally determined the theme of "spiritual inheritance of fathers".

The problem that follows when the theme is determined is to determine the general historical background of each chapter. "Spiritual Inheritance of Fathers" is a theme with depth and thickness, how to show such an abstract theme in a way that the audience can understand and love? Each of us has parents and elders, and our growth has undoubtedly been influenced by them. In particular, our affection with our parents is the most likely to cause empathy. Therefore, we decided to carry this abstract theme by the love of "parents" for their children and their influence on their children's growth, and at the same time placed each chapter in several different representative backgrounds in the historical process of China's development, that is, the four historical stages of the revolutionary period, the construction period, the reform and opening up period, and the new era, and the characters involved in different occupational fields, so as to achieve the organic combination of the diversity and richness of the characters and the macroscopic and lofty theme background.

We identified four good actors as directors. Wu Jing, Zhang Ziyi, Xu Zheng, and Shen Teng quickly threw themselves into the creation and development work. Historical sources have the best creative material. Director Wu Jing found creative inspiration from the historical facts of the sacrifice of Ma Renxing's father and son in the Jizhong Cavalry Regiment in 1942; director Zhang Ziyi, in the investigation of rocket boosters, discovered the romantic but dangerous profession of "gunpowder carver", from which a euphemistic and moving story was born; director Xu Zheng returned to Shanghai, where he was most familiar, starting from the birth of China's first TV commercial, integrating the spirit of innovation into the home of an ordinary person who took place in a Shanghai alley; director Shen Teng's story should tell a new era. What is the New Age? It is the motherland's prosperity and strength now and infinite self-confidence in the face of the future. Shen Teng cleverly found the entry point of building a scientific and technological power, giving the third film in the "Me and Me" series a unique sense of futurism.

The process of planning and creating is not always smooth. For example, in the chapter directed by Zhang Ziyi, there was only one big background at the beginning of the creation: the construction period. First conduct a round of screening of major events that occurred in this historical period to find those that have a major impact on national development: the Tangshan earthquake, the launch of the Dongfanghong satellite, the explosion of the first atomic bomb... The original script idea chose one of the historical events as the background, but after many drafts of script discussion, it was finally decided to overturn all the things from scratch, start from scratch, choose the background of the Launch of the Dongfanghong Satellite, and settle down to an ordinary family that made rocket boosters for satellite launches. But this is an unfamiliar field that requires a lot of research. In order to be true to the details, zhang Ziyi's creative team interviewed a large number of people and related experts involved in the work of rocket boosters that year, and went directly to the place where the story took place to experience life. After meticulous investigation and research, the script has undergone dozens of rounds of adjustments, striving for the truth of the details, and the final effect of the film is indeed very good. We organized a movie viewing by space system staff and experts, which was fully affirmed by the moviegoers. There are also Wu Jing's "Riding the Wind" unit and Xu Zheng's "Duck Prophet" unit, these two chapters based on real people and events, both of which have restored history with a scientific and rigorous attitude in the creative stage, and strive to make the audience have a stronger sense of substitution with the truth of details.

Guangming Daily ( 04/04/2021)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily