"Without fireworks, life is a lonely journey." This summer, "A String of Life", which is considered to be the first documentary in China to present the plot of Chinese barbecue, has gone to the audience's heart and stomach with a steaming market posture. The documentary, jointly produced by Bilibili Video Network and Banner Media, scored a high score of 8.9 on Douban, and many viewers bluntly said that this is the "late-night canteen" of Chinese, "making people have an appetite when they see it".
Tonight at 8 o'clock, the last episode of "A String of Life" will be updated on the b station. Director Chen Yingjie admitted in an interview with the Morning News that although he had certain expectations about the theme of barbecue, he did not expect to be able to fire to this extent, "Barbecue itself is more likely to trigger appetite than ordinary food." The most fundamental point is that there is this thing in everyone's life and memories, and the appetite is easily mobilized. ”
From "No Meat, No Joy", "Darker Than the Night" to "Come on With Some Antidote", "Protest of the Teeth" ... Just the title of each episode, "A String of Life" is eye-catching. In this 6-episode documentary, the main creative team divides episodes according to meat, special ingredients, vegetarian dishes, bones, etc., just like the choreography of "a la carte" with diners, breaking the "routine" of previous food documentaries.
General director Chen Yingjie told reporters that at first he considered telling the story of this barbecue from the traditional documentary ideas such as the source of ingredients and regional characteristics, but after overturning it one by one, he and the team still wanted to do something different, "We actually arrange it according to the different psychology of people and the different feelings brought by barbecue." ”
But since it is a food shoot, everyone has a say. Some people "protested" in the bullet screen, just after passing the addiction in the first episode of "No Meat, No Joy", they were frightened by the roasted cicada pupae and roasted animal eyes in the second episode of "Darker than the Night". Some people also joke that there is no popular science information in "A String of Life", because once the science is popular, no one dares to eat it.
In this regard, Chen Yingjie laughed and said that "Darker Than The Night", which focuses on "dark ingredients", was not originally planned to be released in the second episode, but due to the high degree of completion of the episode, the team decided to release them in advance, "These special ingredients have not been seen by many people, to a certain extent, they are attractive to the audience, and the documentary also needs to give everyone a lot of information." At the same time, he believes that the focus of "A String of Life" is on the market, in food, rather than healthy life, "we have a lot of things in life that can bring happiness to people, you can enjoy it in moderation, it is a comfort for life." If people live too fine and dusty, the happiness index will be relatively low. ”
Yinchuan's roasted lamb's trotter flowers, Kunming's roasted chicken feet, Jinzhou's grilled dried tofu rolls... "A String of Life" ran through more than 500 barbecue restaurants in more than 30 cities during the filming process. But in Chen Yingjie's words, the team did quite a good job of copywriting before shooting, "definitely not according to the scoring software to find."
However, during the search, the team did not fail to take detours. For example, the team once went to a county town in Jinzhou to explore baked tofu rolls, but they did not expect many twists and turns, first waiting for more than two hours in the cold of January in the northeast, and then finding a family making bean skins with extreme twists and turns. "When we finished checking our press cards, the family told me that they no longer made bean skins by hand. Fortunately, they also provided clues, and later there was a Jinzhou dried tofu roll that appeared on the show. ”
And with the continuous visits, "A String of Life" also recorded the unknown "ingenuity" that belongs to the barbecue: Yinchuan's roasted lambshoe flower master, who never eats cumin, is stunned by the nose, and has mastered the essence of seasoning; in Changsha, the owner of the roasted leek is always "impatient", the leek must first pass through the water and then go to the fire to roast, the fire is too small and not cooked, everything must be just right; roasted Liangshan small pork, you must go to the Liangshan Yi people's home to buy, buy well, but also use dried fern and pine tower to fade the hair, seeping into the fragrance of fern and pine trees ...... When the commentary joked that "if we had not eaten the tendons at all according to this standard", there was immediately a barrage echoing, "If according to the standards of "A String of Life", we have never eaten barbecue at all." ”
Chen Yingjie, who is now a "barbecue connoisseur", said that he had to say that there was no trick to visiting the store, he was looking at the "old brand" and "passenger flow", "the old store has gone through the natural selection of time and diners, if it does not taste good, it will definitely not survive." Of course, more directly, you can also see how many guests there are. ”
"Delicious!" "Look hungry!" Open "A String of Life" on Bilibili, you can see many hungry "bullet screens", which is also considered to be an important reason for the success of "A String of Life". In Chen Yingjie's view, the barbecue itself is particularly "with appetite", "on the fire to spit oil to make a sound, coupled with the feedback of diners, the effect will be very good." In fact, in addition to using the common food documentary shooting method, the commentary of "A String of Life" also designs some "small traps", "When I describe the taste, I will repeatedly say that it is very spicy and sour, and after saying it two or three times, the audience's appetite may be mobilized." Of course, the most fundamental point is that everyone's living habits, memories have barbecue, there are feelings. ”
Interestingly, Chen Yingjie, who has a vicissitudes of voice, served as an understanding theory himself. "At that time, we tried a lot of famous commentators and voice actors, but they didn't feel particularly right. When making a film, every director has to dub, and finally everyone reviews the film and generally reflects that my voice is still quite close to the vicissitudes of the big brother on the barbecue stall, telling you a story of the jianghu and listening to a lively and happy. ”
More importantly, in order to let the audience see the most vivid and real barbecue stalls, Chen Yingjie and all the directors confirmed a shooting principle from the beginning, and never posed for filming until the last resort. "Posing is like a drama, setting up the ingredients, putting on the lights, shooting fast. But the capture is not OK - I want to shoot baked potatoes, but what if no one bakes potatoes for half a day? Can't be forced to wait for real guests to order baked potatoes. Sometimes, the film crew wants to use macro lenses and asks the stall not to shake, but the stall owner can't take care of it at all from the beginning of the work, "They are doing business normally, you have to purely wait, to capture the ideal picture." 」 We want to present them in a normal state of life and not to do anything for us to change. ”
From self-deprecating "Do you know why I'm so dark?" Because I don't want to live a lifetime in vain" barbecue shop owner, to the diner who says "no matter how good it is to eat outside, there is no hometown flavor", "A String of Life" not only has food that opens up to the taste buds, but also a living city well, a group of real you and me.
"Every time I slaughter more dogs, I respect these bosses." Chen Yingjie said that during the shooting, he saw a lot of legends belonging to ordinary people, such as the Chongqing small brain shell barbecue that appeared in the film, the boss once closed the shop after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 to take supplies to disaster relief; for example, the owner of the shrimp ball shop in Wuhan, who originally ran a fruit shop after being laid off, stepped forward when she saw the children of the barbecue stall next door being bullied, and unexpectedly got the guidance of the owner of the barbecue stall next door for a day, which achieved most of her life. "This kind of story has a very kind of tone, but many times it is limited to the repetition of ingredients and regions, coupled with the limitation of the length of the program, it is filmed but not finally presented."
In fact, how to balance "life" and "a string" is one of the most tangled problems of the main creative team. "I have been old friends with chief producer Wang Hailong for many years, but the debate on this issue has hardly stopped. I remember the first day of the shoot, we talked about three or four in the morning in a barbecue restaurant, and for the last half hour, everyone didn't say a word, and no one could convince anyone. "In the end, about 70 percent of the food in the film, the characters and the story account for only 20 percent and 10 percent, respectively." In the past, there were too many shows to show off feelings and stories, which was a bit overcorrected, but food documentaries must first make people have an appetite and make people swallow. ”