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At the just-concluded 24th Shanghai International Film Festival, a short film attracted a lot of attention, namely "Song of Life", which won the "Golden Jubilee Award for Best Live-Action Short Film".
For this film, the jury gave high praise - "the film is extremely complete, strong personal style, very authorial style, both aesthetically and photographically, very in place, is a good work."
It can be seen that "Song of Life", adapted from the famous science fiction novelist Wang Jinkang's novel of the same name, stood out at the Shanghai Film Festival with a very distinctive image style and innovative adaptation methods, and the film's award has aroused the high expectations of the audience, and everyone has expressed "looking forward to more excellent science fiction films in the future", "a good movie worth watching", "there must be a chance to see, too connotative"...
So, why did "Song of Life" win the short film award at this film festival? What enlightenment has been given to the industry behind the success of "Song of Life"?
The adaptation of Chinese science fiction literature ushered in a new representative
The Festival compared "Song of Life" to "China's version of Artificial Intelligence", which can be described as giving high praise. As a short film rookie who has been amazed by the four seats of this year's Shanghai Film Festival, "Song of Life" is indeed a chinese cutting-edge work with good quality, and its advantages are also reflected in many aspects.
First, The Song of Life has a solid textual foundation. The film is adapted from Wang Jinkang's 1995 science fiction short story of the same name, the original author Wang Jinkang is known as "the pioneer and thinker of Chinese science fiction literature", has won many awards such as the Global Chinese Science Fiction Nebula Award and the Galaxy Award Lifetime Achievement Award, and the original "Song of Life" has also won the grand prize of the "Galaxy Award", the highest honor in the Chinese science fiction industry. Therefore, classic literary works have become the background of the content of "Song of Life", ensuring the solid and deep foundation of the film's content, and the IP bonus also helps the film.
At the same time, "Song of Life" has completed the transformation of science fiction classics into video-visual art. Especially for science fiction, how to express and reproduce the science fiction world and content atmosphere it constructs through the language of images is actually a very difficult creation. At present, although the climax of Chinese film creation is repeated, there are still not many successful science fiction works, and the reason behind it is also that the creation is extremely difficult.
The original was born in the 1990s, and the film "Song of Life" was created in the present, the different times and market backgrounds, the differences in the way of thinking of creators in different eras and the commonality of human emotional spirit, etc., are all problems that need to be solved in the creation process of "Song of Life", but the final presentation of the film undoubtedly gives the best answer - "The short film "Song of Life" tells the story of robots rebelling against humans on the basis of respecting the original work, through the unique audiovisual language of the film, with a more concentrated scene narrative technique. ”
It can be seen that the success of the creation of "Song of Life" has also made a good demonstration for the film and television adaptation of literary works, especially science fiction literature, which not only inherits and carries forward the spirit and characteristics of literary works, but also integrates the personal understanding and artistic expression of the creators, creating a brilliant spark formed by artistic collision.
In addition, behind the creation of "Song of Life" is also the exchange dialogue between the two generations of creators, such as Wang Jinkang in the 1990s through such a literary work to tell his thinking about the relationship between artificial intelligence, scientific and technological development and human civilization, while the young director Qiu Sheng added his own understanding through the adaptation of the novel and the creation of the film, such as in Qiu Sheng's view, a key word of the story is "let go", that is, let the next generation grow freely, the film story also conveys some thinking about traditional Chinese family relations. The combination of creative ideas such as this has also made "Song of Life" a film that is more resonant and more in-depth in the current market.
The strength team completed another breakthrough in high-difficulty creation
Looking back at the Shanghai Film Festival, "Song of Life" is undoubtedly one of the most surprising works, and combined with the current development status of the Chinese film market, the emergence of "Song of Life" is naturally an attempt to make Chinese science fiction film and television creation feel very pleased, and the wonderful and successful film of the film lies in the creators in the final analysis. For example, the team behind the scenes of "Song of Life" is actually more worthy of our attention, such as the behind-the-scenes team of the supervising producer Wang Hongwei, the chief planner Nanpai San uncle, the chief producer Ye Fangcang, the director Qiu Sheng, the cast of Cao Xian, Liang Jingdong, Xiao Li Zhenyao, etc., it is the cooperation of such a strong team that has the "high pitch" of "Song of Life".
In the creative team of "Song of Life", it is also the most popular "old with new" combination form in the film and television industry, such as film producer Wang Hongwei is a senior producer, screenwriter, director and producer in the industry, and has always adhered to the cultivation and help of young filmmakers for several years, co-directors include Guo Fan, Xin Yukun, Ma Kai, Lu Qingyi, etc. This time behind the scenes of "Song of Life", Wang Hongwei also "assisted" young director Qiu Sheng as a producer again.
Qiu Sheng also said in the interview that after the film was filmed, he took out several versions to show Wang Hongwei, initially because of the narrative method, the structure of the film was not balanced, and then wang Hongwei tried a new narrative method, and the result was surprisingly good.
As for director Qiu Sheng, he is one of the cutting-edge directors who are currently attracting much attention, and Qiu Sheng's film debut "Birds in the Suburbs" has won the "Best Feature Film" at the 2018 First Youth Film Festival, the "Best Film" at the Novos Cinemas Film Festival in Spain, the Macao International Film Festival and the Netpac Award at the Qcinema Film Festival in the Philippines, and was shortlisted for the "Contemporary Filmmakers" competition unit of the 71st Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Although being a film director is a "halfway out of the house", Qiu Sheng's directing talent has been recognized by many people, and this time "Song of Life" won another award at the Last Film Festival, which further proved the strength of this young director.
In addition, the third uncle of the southern faction behind the scenes of the film, and the chief producer Ye Fangcang are also experienced traders, escorting them throughout the creation of "Song of Life". It is worth mentioning that "Song of Life" is actually a work in the strategic cooperation plan between Nanpai Pan Entertainment and Wang Jinkang, and in 2016, the two sides reached a cooperation to develop and create all the science fiction literary IP of Wang Jinkang, and jointly promote China's excellent science fiction brand projects.
When the film won the award a few days ago, Wang Jinkang also issued a speech on his personal Weibo, saying, "Thanks to the Southern Sect for supporting science fiction, thanks to Teacher Wang Hongwei, director Qiu Sheng, "Song of Life" can meet you in the form of images today, 26 years after its publication, I am also very excited!" congratulate! thank! It can be seen that the development of Chinese science fiction films has also taken another step forward.
Southern Pan Entertainment Helps Chinese Science Fiction's "Song of Life"
"Song of Life" brings new hope, and once again proves the strength and attitude of Nanpai Pan Entertainment to create a high-quality IP ecology. Since its establishment in 2014, Nanpai Pan Entertainment has been a well-known company in the industry, with the ecological development and operation of IP as the main purpose, it is committed to creating a unique IP operation system, an IP incubation system of "Nanpai World", and building a comprehensive industrial ecosystem. After the strategic upgrade in 2016, the company opened three major sections of "heaven into the earth, flying immortals outside the sky", including the tomb robbery system dominated by the super IP of "Notes on the Tomb Robber", the science fiction system composed of more than 100 science fiction novels by wang Jinkang, the king of science fiction, and the new IP of xianxia jointly initiated by frish Guoguo, the author of "Flowers and Bones", and the three uncles.
Based on the strategic cooperation between Nanpai Pan Entertainment and Wang Jinkang, the two sides are also actively promoting the project of Wang Jinkang's science fiction short film collection, as Ye Fangcang, the producer and chief producer of "Song of Life" and ceo of Nanpai Pan Entertainment, said, "What we are good at is to use various art forms to do IP, including movies, network series, animation and so on." The reason why I had the idea of doing a short film collection was because I watched "Love, Death and Robots" and realized that this form of film and television expression is a very good way for operating IP, so we chose to use the way of short film collection to do some new attempts and breakthroughs. ”
Behind the scenes of the creation of the short film collection, Nanpai Pan Entertainment also invited Wang Hongwei as a producer to cooperate with a new generation of young directors in China to jointly complete the boost of this wave of science fiction creation. For this cooperation, Wang Hongwei also said: "We found that there are still relatively few production and creative teams that can withstand the test of making science fiction films in China. Their business is all about finding young directors, and they are different young directors. At the same time, we also need to start paying attention to some short films and episodes, because they are relatively less demanding on creativity and less difficult to produce. Through the creation of these short films and episodes, the popularization we have done for the beginning of science fiction can be more solid. Personally, I actually joined for these two points. ”
From this point of view, in addition to the in-depth and comprehensive development and operation of Wang Jinkang's science fiction IP, Nanpai Pan Entertainment is also trying to find a way to solve the rising breakthrough point of science fiction film and television works, and to explore the genre segmentation of Chinese science fiction film and television, one of the methods is the attempt of science fiction short film collection. At present, as the first film in the short film collection to complete the production, "Song of Life" has won the applause of the whole hall for the first trial, which proves the correct strategic thinking of Nanpai Pan Entertainment and the ability to create China's local science fiction film and television works, and also makes us look forward to the future it will create together.
As Wang Jinkang expressed his feelings about this short film collection project: "Science fiction writing is personal, and the author is more concerned with the spirit of free writing; while science fiction movies are universal, and the choreographer is more concerned with finding the greatest common denominator of public taste and Yangchun white snow." There is a huge chasm between them. I believe that these talented young directors with unique styles can help my work cross this gap and promote them to the public. Thank you for their job! “
What Nanpai Pan Entertainment and its cooperative team are doing is a pioneering project that is wade through mountains and rivers, but the smooth road it is building is of far-reaching significance for the future of China's film and television industry, and I hope that after this "song of life" is played, there will be more and more wonderful "movements".