(1) With high word of mouth, Zhang Yimou's first challenge to the spy war genre of "On the Cliff" first achieved a single-day box office counterattack in the second half of the May 1st file, and then achieved a cumulative box office counterattack yesterday, becoming the leader of the new film. (2) May 1st box office champion "Your Wedding". (3) Qingming box office champion "My Sister".
This May 1st file, which has no "blockbuster" blessing, broke the three highest records in the history of the box office, the number of people and the number of scenes. And this is not an accidental event. From "Send You a Little Red Flower" in last year's Lunar New Year file to "Hello, Li Huanying" in this year's Spring Festival file and "My Sister" in the Qingming file, in the past six months, domestic films that do not take the route of technical and visual effects blockbusters have repeatedly set box office records. On the one hand, this has revived people's confidence in the Chinese film market, and on the other hand, it has also triggered a hot discussion in the industry and academic circles about "what kind of movies can make today's audiences enter the cinema".
The background of this thinking is that last year, when the national cinema was closed for more than half a year due to the epidemic, and the audience gradually got used to watching movies on video websites, filmmakers had a more consistent consensus: to make a movie that is more cinematic, more cinematic, and more suitable for watching on the big screen of the cinema to pull the audience back to the cinema.
However, judging from the films that have achieved box office success in the past six months, the audience does not seem to care about the so-called "big screen attributes" of the film. Does this mean that technology and visual effects are no longer important to movies? Does this mean that filmmakers no longer need to consider the media characteristics of the big screen in the future? Nor does the answer seem to be simply "yes" or "no." Because of this, this topic has more value for discussion.
A new understanding of cinematicity: The true core of cinematicity is intensity, not simply equivalent to technology and visual effects
Technology and visual effects have always been regarded as the representative elements of the attributes of the big screen of movies, and those films that win the best technology or visual effects awards in the awards are often included in the list of "most suitable for big screen viewing", which is the so-called "blockbuster"; "blockbuster rescue" has always been taken for granted by insiders. Because of this, the successive box office dark horses, especially the super high box office of "Hello, Li Huanying", have left many practitioners confused: Does the Chinese film market not need blockbusters? In the view of Yin Hong, a professor at Tsinghua University and vice chairman of the China Filmmakers Association, the recent box office performance of domestic films has a corrective significance to some extent: "It is not that the film market does not need blockbusters, but it is also one-sided to equate cinema with special effects." At the real heart of cinematicity is intensity, and the resulting commercial appeal. And this intensity is actually composed of stories, characters, rhythms, emotions and visuals. ”
From this perspective, Yin Hong believes that the reason why several recent domestic films from the perspective of family affection can become box office dark horses is not only because the human affection they focus on has always been an important theme of the film, but also because the creators have learned how to give the intensity of the screen presentation to such a theme, whether it is the choice of actors or the rhythm of the narrative, which fully takes into account the commercial attributes of the film, so as to more effectively stimulate the audience's emotional investment. This makes several films not only obviously different from the common art film styles of similar themes before, but also makes up for the shortcomings of many visual effects blockbusters in telling stories, shaping characters and triggering empathy, and has won audience recognition on a larger scale. Gui Lin, an associate professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also captured a very clear commercial genre film thinking in several high-grossing films, that is, to summon the audience's emotional investment in the film.
A new understanding of cinema: emotional effects rather than audiovisual effects, have become the determining factor in today's cinema box office
Redefining "cinema" is necessary because today's cinemas have changed.
In the view of Zhao Yi, an associate professor at Shanghai Normal University, we are facing the era of a new cinema. Although this "new cinema" inherits the structure of digital multiplex cinemas since the new century in terms of technology and space dimensions, it is closely linked with new media such as streaming media and social media in terms of cultural functions and consumption methods. This linkage, on the one hand, is manifested in the flow of film content to various media platforms, including theaters, on the other hand, in the marketing and dissemination of movies is also closely linked to the mobile Internet and social media, and its social attributes are becoming increasingly prominent.
Based on such changes, we cannot simply think that the irreplaceability of the cinema is still manifested as the audiovisual advantage built on top of the digital cinema system, and we cannot simply equate the cinematography of the film with the special effects. Of course, it should be emphasized that it is not that technology and audiovisual effects are no longer important, and many well-known directors at home and abroad still need to use the big screen and corresponding technical specifications to get the most accurate presentation of their creative intentions. But at the same time, the industry should realize that when discussing issues such as "how to make movies that make audiences willing to go to the cinema", it is necessary to have an understanding perspective that goes beyond digital multiplex cinemas, and overcome the creation, production and dissemination thinking based on this understanding, such as "movies suitable for the big screen". As Zhao Yi said: "Only with a new understanding of theaters can we explain the box office appeal of this recent batch of domestic films, and can we understand why emotional effects rather than audiovisual effects have become the decisive factor in today's theater box office." ”
In the view of Liu Qi, a postdoctoral fellow in communication and a young scholar at the Film Art Center of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, in the future, "cinema survival" itself is not a problem, but "what kind of movies the audience is willing to go into the cinema to see" is indeed worth discussing. This year's May Day show let people see that when the video platform can largely meet the various viewing needs of young people, the biggest attraction of commercial movies is to bring the audience the strongest emotional stimulation in a certain period of time. From this perspective, suspense, espionage, crime, comedy and melodrama will become the most competitive film genres in the future. Cheng Bo, a professor at the Shanghai Film Academy of Shanghai University, commented on "On the Cliff": Zhang Yimou made "brain-burning" give way to "empathy" and "walking heart", and in the end, it was the wisdom, will and emotion of the characters that touched the audience.
Art originates from emotions and will also act on emotions. In the case of cinema, the purpose of technology is not simply to create a set of visual spectacles, but to highlight the power of cinema as an art to summon emotions. Perhaps this is the biggest lesson we can learn from the Chinese film market in the last six months.
Author: Shao Ling
Editor: Fan Jing
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