On April 22 this year, firefighters Feng Chenmin and Tang Weijia died in the process of search and rescue in a fire at the factory building of an enterprise in Jinshan District, Shanghai. The last image of the two martyrs brought countless people to tears.
In the exchange with Guo Jing and Kodindin, the general directors of "Line of Fire Rescue", we also inevitably talked about "sacrifice". The reporter asked, "What do you think about saying that firefighters are the most dangerous profession in peacetime?" ”
Guo Jing's answer was without thinking: "What other profession do you think is life-threatening every day?" ”
Guo Jing, a veteran director of documentaries at Shanghai Radio and Television, has been working on documentaries for nearly 20 years, but she describes her knowledge of the firefighter community as too late and too little — until she met her first firefighter friend in the spring of 2019, until she completed the documentary "Line of Fire Rescue" in more than 18 months.
"I used to think that firefighting had nothing to do with me and didn't know anything about the profession, but when we started looking forward, I found that almost every aspect of life was related to them."
Kodinding, another general director of "Line of Fire Rescue", who has worked with Guo Jing for nearly 20 years, then added: "Since we don't know them, there must be a considerable degree of audience that doesn't understand, so we know very clearly that these problems are also what the audience needs to know." ”
From "The World on Earth" to "Patrol Scene Record" and "The Story of the Police Station", many people are waiting, the Shanghai Radio and Television Station, which has filmed doctors and policemen, when can I shoot firefighters?
It's simple to say, but it's not easy to create.
The first is the implementation of the fire brigade system in China in the past, the fire brigade is based on active officers and soldiers, the fire station that implements military management is a mysterious forbidden area, and no documentary team has ever been able to enter the fire rescue team in a close-knit manner.
The change occurred three years ago: on November 9, 2018, according to the CPC Central Committee's "Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Institutions", the public security fire brigade and the armed police forest force retired from active service and collectively transferred to the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People's Republic of China to form a national comprehensive fire rescue team.
Since then, "olive green" has become "flame blue", and the fire rescue team has officially assumed the important responsibility of preventing and resolving major safety risks and responding to various disasters and accidents, and has changed from the original fire fighting and rescue to "all kinds of disasters and major emergencies".
It was also then that fire rescue teams increasingly appeared in the public media. By chance, Liu Yue, the director of Guo Jing Studio, met a Shanghai fire cadre in a street interview, and the cooperation opportunity for "Line of Fire Rescue" was also planted.
"The idea of shooting firefighting has been around for a long time, and we've always had this complex." In Kodinding's view, the wave of documentary commercialization has surged in recent years, but the firefighters are undoubtedly a group that deserves and should be filmed with the standards of a real documentary, and the team finally invested 18 months of creative time, "The real sense of documentary is that there are standards, there are characters, stories of characters, emotions of characters, it takes time to get all of this, it takes time to record." ”
Since 2019, Guo Jing and Ko Ding Ding led the team to carry out preliminary research in the Shanghai Fire Rescue Corps, and they visited more than 20 fire stations and special service stations in various districts and counties of Shanghai to try to find the site that best reflects the characteristics of Shanghai's urban life.
The first to be finalized was the 155-year-old Hongkou Fire Rescue Station, the oldest surviving fire station in China and still working. What is more fascinating than history is the unique geographical location, the typical jurisdiction, and the rich story behind it.
Guo Jing recalled that the jurisdiction of the Hongkou Fire Rescue Station has a high population density, a high degree of aging, the coexistence of old-fashioned old buildings and high-rise buildings, many police situations, heavy responsibilities, "When we were investigating, the average number of police dispatches a year was more than a thousand times, and after the increase in the number of surrounding fire stations in recent years, it still has about 800 police points a year, so as to ensure that there is a story." We want to see how this site with a history and honor will pass on the tradition in the context of the transformation of fire protection, when the average firefighter is 23 years old and the whole is younger. ”
Then locked in is the 90-year-old Yichang Fire Rescue Station in Putuo District. Here, not only does it also have the great responsibility of guarding the central urban area, but also has a fresh story: before the start of filming of "Fireline Rescue", Yichang Station has just replaced the main officer, and how the new main backbone boosts morale and cultivates talents is also a story line worth paying attention to.
In this way, in June 2020, "Line of Fire Rescue" was officially launched.
In the nearly 20 years of cooperation, Guo Jing and Kodindin's documentaries have won many international awards. But in the filming of "Line of Fire", new difficulties and challenges are still there.
A direct question is, how does the film crew keep up with the well-trained "Flame Blue", how to achieve 24-hour "every police must follow" and close-up shooting?
60 seconds during the day and 45 seconds in the evening, this is the time when the firefighters are ready to assemble and leave after the fire alarm rings. Kodintin recalled that when he first entered the Hongkou and Yichang fire rescue stations, the team was often caught off guard by the alarm bells, "How fast are the firefighters?" We got the equipment and ran out, but before we could leave, they had already dealt with the police situation quickly and came back. ”
Running-in, communication, training, the team was fierce, and the use of "stupid methods" was also used. The film crew is divided into day shifts and night shifts, but the directors, photographers, and recordings of different shifts invariably choose to remain fully armed at all times, so that they can save time wearing fire suits and equipment, and as soon as the alarm bell rings, they pick up the machine and run to the fire truck.
"Whether it's cold or hot, you also wear fire suits and fire boots when you sleep, and a whole set of equipment is placed next to it, and if you don't wear it, you will definitely not be able to keep up with the firefighters." Kodintin said: "You have to carry all the shots on your back, every day." So now looking back at the work photos, there are quite a lot of young men sleeping in equipment, which is very hard. ”
In the end, the team ate and lived with 58 front-line firefighters, followed the police more than 800 times, and accumulated 97,200 minutes of material. The long follow-up made the film crew highly sensitive to the alarm bell, and running fast became their instinct.
The team behind the documentary center once recorded an interesting and poignant detail during a visit: the recording engineer Zhao Jingyan played back the sound material in the bedroom, the alarm bell in the material sounded, the director Liu Yue and Pang Chen habitually rushed out of the dormitory, and when they arrived downstairs, they found that the fire truck was in the garage, and the firefighters were not assembled, and they realized that they were "deceived" by the material.
The speed has kept up, and the camera must also keep up: in order to record the working status of the fire rescue commanders and fighters from multiple perspectives, multiple gopro camera positions have been set up inside the fire truck, the commander's helmet, and the firefighter's combat suit, which restores the most real situation of the police scene from the first perspective.
In Guo Jing's view, the ideal situation for shooting the first scene of the fire alarm is for the photographer to enter and record the working state of the firefighters from the perspective of a third person. But in order to ensure safety, the team could only streamline the equipment, using two latest cameras and a recording pole to enter the train shooting, and set gopro to restore the first perspective of the firefighters, "through their voices and perspectives, let the audience feel the situation seen by the front-line firefighters after entering the fire scene." It was a very frightening environment, there was no sight, only suffocating smoke, all kinds of smoke. ”
Of course, the film crew's "every police must follow" also means that they, like the firefighters, repeatedly face unpredictable dangers. In Guo Jing's recollection, being smoked black by hot fireworks is not the most terrible situation. Once, the fire rescue team received a police at 11:30 p.m. that a residential building gas pipe leaked, rushed to the scene only to find that the gas concentration at the scene has been very high, must quickly find the leak point, dredge the air, prevent the explosion, "this is the danger that can not be seen on the screen, photographers, sound recordists are on the scene, everyone has no special equipment, and even dare not use the key, machine, for fear of sparks to cause an explosion." This kind of danger, which cannot be seen or felt, is faced by firefighters every day. ”
"Firefighters are the most dangerous profession in peacetime" "If there are any good years, but someone carries the weight for you"... Since the restructuring in 2018, the attention of all sectors of society to the fire rescue team has been continuously improved, and the discussion about the mission and responsibility of firefighters has also been endless.
During the filming of "Line of Fire", the creative team also used real records to try to answer some of the following questions: How are heroes made? Why were they born here?
During the filming process, the team recorded the life side and inner world of many young firefighters: Gao Jieqing, the ace station manager, who was physically ill but still stuck to his post; Wang Dajing, the squad leader who was entrusted by his family, learned to attend work without mistakes, and worked hard for the dream of applying for the China Fire rescue academy; Qin Lingjing was the backbone of the business, but he encountered the dilemma of family affection and career, and had to make a difficult choice; Wang Hao, a member of the "Rookie" team, was not discouraged to face the challenge and achieve a counterattack...
"They are heroes, but they are also sons, fathers, husbands, and they all have small families behind them. In the process of becoming heroes, they not only have to endure harsh training and pressure, but also face many problems like ordinary people. Kodintin said that different firefighters, different lives, as if it is a different movement in "Line of Fire Rescue", "how to become a qualified firefighter from a recruit, whether you choose to go home or stay in the dilemma, all kinds of entanglements, may not be exactly the same theme, but they set off each other, and finally tell everyone that heroes are born this way." ”
In Guo Jing's view, taking the character as the main line is also the characteristic of "FireLine Rescue" that is different from the general similar theme, "We do not want to classify the case, but advance from the timeline to record the personal stories of 8 characters." We want you to see more of the firefighters who are alive and whose names and characteristics you can remember. ”
This creative concept requires a high level of the team's ability to shoot, narrate, and edit: the police situation should be filmed, but it cannot completely rely on the police situation to attract the audience. "It requires pre- and post-production cooperation, and it requires the director and the main creative team to discuss and determine what we want to shoot, rather than shooting without moderation." It's hard, but I think the audience will find that the police is just a cross-section, it is very tense, very exciting, but more importantly, there are strong characters, stories, personalities and emotions between each police. Kodintin said.
It is worth mentioning that due to the three-police linkage mechanism adopted by Shanghai, "Fireline Rescue" not only restores the "Flame Blue" life, but also records the figure of other city guardians such as 110 and 120. The three parties cooperate with each other to solve the people's anxieties and help the people's difficulties, highlighting the rapid, efficient and professional urban management level of Shanghai, an international metropolis.
"We believe that the audience can feel the efficiency of Shanghai's urban management through the story, feel the professional, civilized and humane attitude of the three police officers to carry out their tasks, and you will be very pleased that you live in this highly civilized city." In the eyes of the two directors, this is also the meaning of the birth of "Line of Fire Rescue", so that more people remember the heroes of these cities, and let more people really think about the sense of gain, happiness and security of living in the city, where they come from and why it is long.
Source: Thoughtful