One
Another way: design a cute shape for the character, complete self-victory and transcendence
Tan Fei: Welcome Li Chen to "Four Tastes of Poison Uncle". I feel that every time I see you, I feel that you are more and more energetic, that you have surpassed yourself.
Li Chen: I have returned to my childhood.
Tan Fei: This time in "Beyond", the image of Iron Han completely subverted the feeling you originally brought to everyone. I heard that the pot lid head was designed by yourself, which can be said to be a "self-disfiguring" performance, how did you come up with this way?
Li Chen: At that time, Zheng Kai called me and invited me to his house for a meal, a greenhouse or something.
Tan Fei: Hongmen Feast.
Li Chen: After going there, while eating, he introduced me to director Han Bowen and said, "We are now working on a project, you can play a role." "I feel like no matter what my friends do, I wish I had time to support them. Then we talked about the play, which made me feel very moved. I said you're pretty good now, switching from actor to all sorts of identities. From the little cheetah, from the actor to the executive producer, it may be that in the future, everyone will have a constant change of identity. In fact, it is very good, everyone in their own field continues to break through and grow, and constantly surpass. So I said no problem, as long as the time is up, 100% present to support you. Then I slowly had a script, a role, and then I knew that I was playing such a role. I don't think I'm so strong that I shouldn't be playing a handsome character in a movie.
Tan Fei: A handsome athlete.
Li Chen: Actually, I like the feeling of the whole character. Because in our impression, whether it is classmates or colleagues around us, we will meet people with a little different personality, such as a little slow and half-beat, a little stupid, or mischievous, bullying others and then indifferent classmates. So I thought, just play a boy like this. After arriving at the crew, I thought about how to act.
Tan Fei: I've tried everything.
Li Chen: I have tried all kinds of styles, bald head, long hair, short hair, and then I wanted to try the watermelon head and get a Qi bangs.
Tan Fei: Ah Fu Tou.
Li Chen: Everyone is still quite satisfied, and the director also thinks it is OK, Zheng Kai directly said in the group, "You see, perfect shape!" Later, during the filming process, there was a lot of live communication, and I think everyone still had a shadow of school.
Tan Fei: I have the enthusiasm of going to school.
Li Chen: And this play is about a flashback: we have entered middle age, from a teenager with a dream to a middle-aged person who works hard for life. Sometimes flashbacks are often a reflection of his youth, can he really go back? Can't go back. But that beautiful feeling is all an imagination of your own youth. Including a line at the end that says, "I did put my barbell piece under the foot of my table, but I didn't put my dream under the foot of the table." ”
Tan Fei: It's very touching. I thought your image on the screen was rarely so entertaining.
Li Chen: Because I act in comedy very rarely.
Two
Don't be alarmed: gain and loss from the edge, learn to let go slowly
Tan Fei: But I can really see your changes. In fact, the more a person lives, the more understanding and relaxed, I see your relaxation, is this mentality also a change for you?
Li Chen: I think I feel this way. It turned out that in a way, I might have had a lot of my own ideas and designs for the characters, but then I found that there was really nothing to design, and there was no idea.
Tan Fei: No design is the best design.
Li Chen: Yes, just come directly, find the feeling of the character, and then cooperate with everyone. I think there are also some changes in mentality. Like you said, acting well, acting badly, or what other people say about me, etc., I have slowly put it down. Putting aside the concept of good or bad performance itself, the original I would care more about the evaluation of others, such as how others think of me, how others feel about this play, in contrast, at this stage, I see these a lot less. Maybe people will slowly find a new performance experience or field. For example, if the same thing can solve other and more things in your life, you will become more indifferent, you will feel that many things are nothing, and if you can't solve it, then it won't be solved.
Tan Fei: The biggest feeling I had when I watched the movie was that Li Chen was relaxed, and even I felt that in this movie, you were the most relaxed. Because you don't have any ambition, you're not a producer, you're not an investor, so you're having a lot of fun in it. Of course, there are also questions on the Internet: Are you so old, like a teenage student? There will always be this phenomenon of accusation, what do you think of this question?
Li Chen: First of all, the original design was niu Tieju lying about his age. Everyone is talking about how to make this character more fun. Classmates introduced themselves one by one, and when it was Niu Tieju's turn, he wanted to confess to the girls, and then was asked: "How old are you?" "I'm seventeen." Then there's the plot behind.
Tan Fei: I want to leave a good impression on this girl.
Li Chen: Right. The audience will feel: You are so old, you still report this age. In the same way, the people in the plot feel the same way. When we first designed it, we thought that the audience reacted to the point of actual age.
Tan Fei: Yes, the response on the scene was particularly good, and when you reported your age in the play, the audience below laughed.
Li Chen: Yes, we think that if we can put this thing into the play, then let the audience find empathy with the characters in the play, and the characters in the play are also, and if they take the chair and copy it, they will beat him, "You say it again!" How old are you? ”
Three
Ten years of covenant: grow up in experience, mature in time
Tan Fei: And I was surprised that you played Li Dazhao in "1921", and when I looked at the makeup photos, I really didn't see that it was you. How do you grasp Li Dazhao? Because some people think that you and Li Dazhao have some gap.
Li Chen: I think this is a ten-year covenant, ten years ago, in director Huang Jianxin's "The Great Cause of Party Building", I played Zhang Guotao.
Tan Fei: It was in 2011, right?
Li Chen: Yes, this time it is 2021, and ten years later, I will shoot a tribute film "1921" with director Huang Jianxin again related to the founding of the Party. At that time, the producer called us and said that the director especially wanted these people from ten years ago to come back again.
Tan Fei: Why did the director think of letting you play Li Dazhao, and did he tell you the reason?
Li Chen: I asked. He said you go back and take a good look and learn more about this history and this character. I said yes, I will do my homework seriously and make sure to complete the task. When doing styling, I also hope to be able to give some help to the characters from the styling. Styling is on the one hand, on the other hand, when I like to look at the state of my characters the most, I sit in front of the monitor and look back after shooting, because that is the atmosphere. For example, in the modeling photo, we can see that behind it is a blank piece of paper, a shape, but when you sit in front of the director's monitor and see all the scenery, lights, effects, and complete images in the monitor, you will know whether to rest assured or not. In fact, this is my personal habit, when I face a new challenge, I don't look at the makeup photo at all, because I think it is for the service, the makeup, and the Tao.
Tan Fei: You care what you see in front of the monitor.
Li Chen: I only go to the front of the monitor to watch, for example, after shooting one, or after shooting for a day, I will sit in front of the monitor and watch the playback, or sometimes I will let the assistant use the mobile phone to take a picture of the mono and look through it repeatedly. When making a TV series, it may take a little longer to find the feeling, but the movie does not provide so much space, so if it is fast, I must find the feeling in a day. Don't say a day, sometimes A scene I have to find the right feeling, if the feeling is not accurate, the scene can not pass. I remember the first shot I shot that day was a rain scene, raining and rushing to the prison in a rickshaw to visit Chen Duxiu. After that shot, I sat there and watched it, and then I asked the director, "Don't you think I've grown up?" "It's really been ten years, ten years ago I played Zhang Guotao, one of the initiators of the May Fourth Movement. After sitting in the car this time, all of a sudden I felt this way.
Tan Fei: How did the director answer?
Li Chen: And then the director said, "It's because of this that I asked you to play this role."
Four
Cut through the thorns: tell the story of the "war epidemic" and praise the retrograde spirit
Tan Fei: But I think in the past ten years, you have not changed a lot, such as your youthful spirit.
Li Chen: Is there one?
Tan Fei: Your youthfulness lies in the fact that you always have a sharp spirit that wants to continue to move forward, but you are not a person who likes to speculate, so many of the scenes you do are very tired.
Li Chen: It's really tired.
Tan Fei: A lot of people fly around, just hang a wiah in front of the green screen in order to make money. But you're not, you either run to the great west and the wind and the sun, or you run to the south and smear a lot of soot on your face. Then there's "The Chinese Doctor," where you wear protective goggles and protective clothing. This play is not only very demanding and difficult for the performance, but also has a huge amount of labor. Can you tell us how you felt in "The Chinese Doctor"?
Li Chen: Actors act, the shape is on the one hand, the expression is more important. Let's use a scene to say, why finally give a close-up, may first give everyone a panoramic view, explain an environment; then everyone sees the middle scene, the character actor goes a dispatch; finally when two people are on the line, the cut must be a close-up, why? Explain that the last thing you see must be the most important. However, for a goggle, the actor's performance space is too small. So this difficulty is given to the crew to the director.
Tan Fei: It's all scenery, and there is no depth.
Li Chen: Yes, there are many difficulties, what kind of way to present these characters? How does the audience learn about each character? What kind of character relationship does the character have in this story? In these aspects, the director has a lot of ideas of his own and has done it according to his ideas. Also, we were filming in the summer. After putting on the protective clothing, basically shoot for 5 minutes and the clothes are all wet. So after filming "Chinese Doctors", my reverence for all medical staff is overflowing.
Tan Fei: Liu Weiqiang is a Hong Kong director, he is from the photography background, your scene would have been difficult to shoot, because it is the same costume, it is difficult to identify the characters, then he may use a lot of small skills and details, try to present a sense of beauty in the picture, can you tell us how he did it?
Li Chen: The amount of shots shot this time is particularly large. It's hard for a character to stand there and be noticed by the audience, because the goggles worn are too small, so every time we shoot a scene, there are a lot of camera positions on the scene, sometimes nearly ten or so.
Tan Fei: Like a reality show?
Li Chen: No, there may be an angle, such as when saving people to get some medical equipment, you need to shoot various angles. If there is only one camera position, the actor will not have a close-up of his face as soon as he turns around. But on the scene, sometimes I don't know how many cameras the director has arranged, and often when I look up, I find that there is a machine on it. So before shooting, the director had already thought about these problems and studied how to solve them.
Tan Fei: He vividly enriches the scene with a lot of details. Okay, thank you very much Li Chen for sharing!
Li Chen: Thank you Teacher Tan, thank you!
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