A few days ago, I had the privilege of watching the new martial arts network movie "The Sword of Death", which tells the story of six doors catching Duan Xiaofeng to track down the truth of the successive murders of the eight masters of the martial arts and thus get involved in a conspiracy. I didn't have any expectations before watching it, how can the online movie do well, but after watching it, I accidentally punched my face and refreshed the three views.
As a special existence between cinema and digital cinema, online movies have always been extremely embarrassing. In the early years, many low-cost, shoddy online movies flooded the Internet, scraping the edge ball, plagiarism, rubbing IP, overnight as if everyone can be a director to do production, almost making the network movie a synonym for shoddy production, the cinema film market does not recognize the network film director, in the hearts of fans, only the cinema film is the real movie - a rare stage that makes the new director emerge is thus covered with an obscure veil.
And this film, although it is a network movie, the texture of the picture presentation is very sophisticated. In addition to the realistic part of martial arts, the use of special effects on some action martial arts is not at all rough in past network movies, although it is still not the same as foreign special effects technology, but many special effects scenes and lenses are not lost at all, which are known as domestic special effects blockbusters that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars, and are released as small and large low-cost cinema works. Where the huge investment in those special effects blockbusters was spent before is worth pondering. In the near future, the capitalized "greater than sign" between cinema movies and online movies may have an additional "equal sign".
The film has a unique path, the story is full of suspense, the martial arts action is sharp and ethereal, and the political court and the jianghu martial arts are organically combined. In the martial arts superimposed suspense and judgment elements, both full of joyful design, but also the reversal of the continuous direction of character relationships, the separation effect is particularly prominent, with the restraint of classicism, the restrained stupidity collides with the other kind of suppressed blood, full of sense of man, is a surprising new school martial arts movie.
It must be mentioned that the art set and cinematography of this film, the scenes and pictures presented in the film can make you feel that the production cost is really used on the blade. At the fine arts level, the film takes the Tang Dynasty as the historical background, and while presenting the texture of real historical reality as much as possible, it is also trying to create a lot of "jumping off" comic elements, and the ropes, pendants and wooden buildings in the house carry the atmosphere of daily manga.
Photography and lighting are not separated, but must be crazy for the lighting engineer to call, the lighting design of this film is called a heavenly show, creating a dreamlike ghostly atmosphere, the fantasy sense of sword walking and the most romantic dynasty in history - the Tang Dynasty natural fit, there is a real and false time fake and true afterglow.
The water waves flow, the light reflects on the actor's face, the water light glass, the dim candlelight always becomes the finishing touch. Serious suspicion that the lighting engineer is a heavy fan of "Nie Yinniang" and "East Evil and West Poison", which makes people want to invite them to have a long talk with them.
In addition, the actor Pan Yinxiao, who plays the male protagonist in the movie, is impressive, the lines are very good, the people have feelings and righteousness, the dirty braids are full of personality, and they are circled on the spot. Good filmmaking begins with content loyal to aesthetics, and aesthetics are the muse of miracles.
After watching this film, you can strongly feel the ambition of the director, the director did not stay in the commercial entertainment level, but tried his best to make the film into a martial arts film with style and connotation, the use of the lens, did not blindly pursue the sense of coolness, but strive to shape the atmosphere, can perceive the director's exploration of the balance between commercial and artistic. Although there is still a lot of room for improvement in the final presentation, this effort is extremely gratifying, and it can be felt that every creator is "engaged in creation" rather than completing the assembly line work across the screen. If every director who is making an online movie, no matter how big or small the cost, no matter the environment, regards his current work as a tempering to the theater in the future rather than a means of "making quick money" and "living", the future of Chinese cinema can be expected.
When it comes to the investment of eight million yuan in this film, I also want to call for the capital. Eight million in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in today's cinema films, it seems like a dime, but for an online movie, it is no exaggeration to call it "huge capital". To this day, the Internet is still filled with a large number of films with an actual production cost of 500,000 or 600,000 yuan, and the slightly better is only 2 or 3 million. Eight million, how much courage is needed, what kind of dreams are carried. Perhaps it is because of their efforts and boldness that Chinese films will progress little by little, and the new pattern of the Chinese film market will be opened up little by little. Looking forward to the official broadcast of "Death Sword" on Tencent Video on July 24, I wish it a big hit at the box office, and I wish every sincerity not to be disappointed.