The storm surge of Chinese science fiction movies has come, or rather, people with hearts have recognized the storm and are excited by it.
On October 16, Qingdao Oriental Film Capital, at the Qingdao Film and Television Expo "Science Fiction Film Expert Exchange Activity", Gong Ge, producer and screenwriter of the "Wandering Earth" series, admitted that Chinese science fiction films are in the initial stage of "one run". He used all his strength to circumvent the host Liu Yiwei's spying on the plot of "The Wandering Earth 2", and even joked that "The Wandering Earth 2 uses the concept of clones and robots".
Two days later, on October 18, the Pingyao Film Festival founded by Jia Zhangke awarded all three major awards (Fei Mu Honorary Best Film Award, Youth Jury Honorary Best Film Award, and Fan Choice Honorary Award) to the film "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department". This small-budget, pseudo-documentary style science fiction film represents another possibility of Chinese science fiction, and it is also another film invested by Guo Fan Studio since "The Wandering Earth", and Guo Fan and Gong Geer, as producers, have both appeared to support this newcomer's new work.
"The Wandering Earth", released in the Spring Festival in 2019, opened the first year of Chinese science fiction films and also cultivated the core team of the industrialization of Chinese science fiction films. From "Lone Moon", "Wandering Earth 2" to "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department", this team can be seen everywhere.
The poles of Chinese science fiction films have gradually taken shape - these two routes are also named by Gong Geer at the Qingdao exchange site: a "expensive, large, and many" route, Gong Geer claims that "The Wandering Earth 2" "has enough funds to support our ideas", and there will be no "Wandering Earth" looking for new investors in the middle; the other "small, clever, fine" route, "Space Exploration Editorial Department" can be called the best representative. In April, "Lone Moon" was successful in Qingdao Oriental Film Capital, and on June 3, Gong Geer brought "The Wandering Earth 2" to the Oriental Film Capital. At the time of the arrival of the science fiction film boom, what is Qingdao, what is Qingdao film, and this science fiction film and television summit collides with the spark of ideas with reference significance for the leading figures in the trip.
What to shoot in The Wandering Earth 2
Inside and outside the scene of the "Science Fiction Film Expert Exchange Event", the discussion of "The Wandering Earth 2" has always been the focus - the venue is a stone's throw away from the shooting site, which also makes the outside world curious about this large-scale production that once again pins high hopes on Chinese science fiction films.
Producer Gong Geer has a wealth of experience, he has transformed from singer and musician to actor, soundtrack, and as the screenwriter and producer of "The Wandering Earth", he has become a leading figure in science fiction film and television. Gong Geer said: "The core of "The Wandering Earth 2" is still taken from Liu Cixin's "The Wandering Earth" novel, its plot is also born from this novel, using its shell, but also using its spiritual core, on this basis, in order to meet the audience's needs for visual and plot, we will add some original plots, but behind these plots is still based on Liu Cixin's original work. As for the connection between the two "Wandering Earths", he joked: "Didn't Wu Jing appear!" ”
For the detonation of the science fiction film and television industry, "The Wandering Earth" has obviously made a great contribution. Gong Geer said that at present, the industry has finally established confidence in the prospects of the science fiction film market, and the amazing box office generated by "The Wandering Earth" has given the world more confidence in Chinese science fiction films. "The enthusiastic response from the audience has enabled us to make 'The Wandering Earth 2', hoping that more science fiction films will achieve box office success and Chinese science fiction films will become more and more prosperous."
This year can be called the explosive year of science fiction online movies. According to Maoyan data, as of the Mid-Autumn Festival, iQiyi's "Mars Change" had a box office of 7.5 million yuan, "Space Community" had a box office of 1.18 million yuan, and Tencent iQiyi's dual platform "Restart the Earth" had a box office of 15.34 million yuan. After the reputation of "Shanghai Fortress" took the theater route and suffered setbacks, the creators of science fiction movies found that the online platform was promising. Xi Xia, a film scholar and guest of "Seeing ideals", was deeply impressed by online science fiction films, "Watching the first ten minutes of "Mars Mutation" is like "The Martian Rescue", and the special effects are particularly bullish. "Once the first ten minutes attract the audience, the subsequent plot can reduce the special effects and attract people with the story."
Science fiction movies have made profits, and they have also formed a good situation in which new people continue to join. Both Gong Geer and Guo Fan pay special attention to newcomer directors, "Chinese science fiction films need more young people to join in." There is an online movie "Tough Guy Gun God", Guo Fan sent me WeChat in the middle of the night after watching it, 'Must watch, this film is definitely on fire'. "Tough Guy Gun God" has accumulated 15.788 million yuan at the box office in the 7 days after its launch, with a cumulative number of moviegoers of 3.508 million and 680 million douyin topic plays, becoming the annual topic of e-sports theme movies. Gong Geer sighed: "Some young directors' talents cannot be buried, if they go to make science fiction, the work will be successful, and I also look forward to our investors' strong support for young directors." ”
See the future from science fiction films
Although science fiction movies have attracted the attention of fans, there are still different views on whether the "science fiction film era" has arrived. Director Gao Qunshu believes that most of the domestic film investors are in the stage of "small and broad", and the investment in science fiction films is huge and the risk is huge, which poses a challenge to investors and puts forward higher requirements for directors, "The thinking of Hollywood science fiction directors is scientifically trained, and most of our domestic directors are liberal arts students, artists are the majority, so there are more artistic thinking when making movies, and there is a lack of scientific thinking." ”
Scholar Xixia also believes that "science fiction films are twenty or thirty years behind literature, and novels can only be made after twenty or thirty years." The logic behind this is that people who were moved by these novels as teenagers have the right to speak twenty or thirty years later, Guo Fan is a typical example, and The same is true of George Lucas (the director of "Star Wars"), they all want to shoot what they watched as children. ”
Shen Teng's "Lone Moon" was successful in The Oriental Film Capital in April. Another fantasy blockbuster "Happy Twist" "Super Family" is about to be released in the Spring Festival file. Liu Hongtao, CEO of "Happy Twist", believes that talent is an important factor in science fiction movies, "In the talent reserve stage, domestic science fiction movies have completed the initial growth stage. There is indeed a shortage of people, we do "Super Family", the most difficult thing is to find the right person, after the script is written, we can't find the main creative team, fortunately, Guo Fan's director "The Wandering Earth" has accumulated a group of talents for science fiction films. Liu Hongtao particularly stressed that the script of science fiction films should have a sense of the future, and screenwriters should improve their scientific literacy, "Science fiction films are the tip of the (future) iceberg, but you have to think clearly about the outline of the entire iceberg." ”
"Lone Moon" tells the story of how a hapless space maintenanceman lives on the moon as the "last human being in the universe". Whether it is a comedy or a science fiction film, Liu Hongtao's view is very firm, "'Lone Moon' is comedy, but also science fiction, and it is a particularly hardcore science fiction. Interestingly, Liu Hongtao thanked "The Wandering Earth" for accumulating science fiction film talents, and "The Wandering Earth 2" producer Gong Geer also thanked "Lone Moon", "Many members of "The Wandering Earth 2" also came from the "Lone Moon" team, which is a particularly happy phenomenon for me, which means mutual support and relay, which did not exist in 2017, especially in some special props, important production environment production chain, we have received the blessing of "Lone Moon". Gong Geer lamented the strength of China's production chain, "When we filmed "The Wandering Earth", there were only three spacesuits, one of which was borrowed from "Crazy Alien", and the three spacesuits were put together and found different. Now we cooperate with the industrial chain in Shenzhen, we can make more than a dozen sets of spacesuits in a short period of time, and the industrial standards are very high, which is our attempt to cooperate across industries and develop new work links in the film industry, which can only be done in China. The Wandering Earth 2 will also be constrained by the industrial level, but this constraint stems from both our ability to transform design and our imagination. ”
"Cameron's Question"
At the scene of the "Science Fiction Film Expert Exchange Event", host Liu Yiwei put forward a "Cameron's question": In recent years, some filmmakers have repeatedly claimed that their film special effects are assisted by the visual effects team of James Cameron (a famous director who has filmed "Avatar" and "Titanic"), "We roughly estimated that in the past five years, the Cameron team has probably had thousands of people 'eating together' in China. I would like to ask, can our own post-production team in China complete a science fiction film independently? ”
For this issue, the views of science fiction filmmakers have different emphases. Xu Jian, visual effects supervisor of "The Wandering Earth", believes that the foundation of the film visual effects industry is graphics and imaging in computer science, and Hollywood leads a lot in this subject area, "From the perspective of the amount of special effects production, it needs a certain scale and the number of personnel and the number of hardware equipment to complete." "Film special effects require a large number of compound talents, both artists and computer experts," this kind of talent is scarce all over the world, they are highly circulated in the fields of film, television, animation, and games, attracting talent, and ultimately needing funds. ”
The ceiling of the domestic film box office is currently in the range of 5 billion to 6 billion yuan, while the benchmark of Hollywood science fiction blockbusters, "Avatar", has accumulated a total of 2.788 billion US dollars in the global box office. The industry believes that the current level of domestic science fiction film hardware has developed to a certain extent, and then further down, it is necessary to put forward new goals for the box office, that is, to strive for the global box office. Xu Jian admits that some young directors have good scripts and ideas, but there is not enough investment to support. "A big problem with Chinese films is that we only have one means of box office recycling, which is not normal. We need to make the film industry chain long, can sell toys, stationery, develop games, etc., in order to do enough product chain. "Pirates of the Caribbean" is already a big bad movie when it shoots the third part, and the reason why it can make the fifth film is because Disneyland has enough channels to support the film's monetization. When an IP has more monetization channels, not only consider how much the box office is recovered, investors dare to invest more, and the film industry can continue to develop. ”
In the 1980s, Chinese science fiction movies once broke out, and movies such as "Dead Light on Coral Island" and "Thunderbolt Babe" appeared, but this wave of science fiction movies was suddenly interrupted, which made filmmakers regret it. Scholar Xixia believes that "when filming "Thunderbolt Babe", the gap between domestic films and the world special effects industry was far greater than the current gap. Why did you dare to shoot at that time? Because there is no baggage. In addition to digital special effects, in fact, the special effects industry also has physical physical special effects, that industry is also very large, such as the aliens in "E.T.", the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park", those dinosaurs are really made of physical special effects, which is involved in the technology of the industrial industry sector. ”
"Small and fine" also has a big future
"Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department", which has just won three awards at the Pingyao Film Festival, features Tang Zhijun, editor-in-chief of the on-the-verge-to-die science fiction magazine, through the story of this downcast middle-aged man looking for aliens, combining multiple elements such as absurdity, black humor, and road movies to present a vast and persistent spiritual world. The film has received investment from Guo Fan Studio, and also allows the industry to see the opportunity to invest in science fiction movies.
Gong Geer believes that science fiction films are divided into "expensive, large, and many" and "small, ingenious, and refined", "which requires creators to have a certain literary foundation and mastery of scientific knowledge, through performance and screenwriting to create a world view, spending very little money can create a fine product." The industrialization of Chinese science fiction films is first of all the industrialization of categories. It's not just space that's science fiction, and science fiction fans know that many science fiction movies have only one or two people from beginning to end, and they are still very wonderful thought experiments. I hope that the audience will also eat some small fruits after eating a big meal, and the taste is still good. ”
The difficulty in shooting "expensive, big, and many" science fiction blockbusters lies in "coordinated combat", Gong Geer said: "How to complete a neat film with a large team and let the largest audience get happiness at the same time is the process of finding the greatest common divisor, which is very difficult." The difficulty of small, ingenious and refined movies lies in expanding the dimension, expanding the movie circle, deepening the trust of science fiction fans in Chinese science fiction movie scenes, and planting a long-term seed. ”
"The Wandering Earth" has cultivated science fiction fans, and also let the audience pay attention to Chinese and foreign science fiction writers such as Chen Mufan, Han Song, and Ted Jiang in addition to Liu Cixin. Xixia said, "There are many kinds of science fiction, including interstellar travel, time and space travel, bioengineering clones, steampunk, cyberpunk, etc., it is not just about the future, but covers all time and space from the past to the future, and even historical science fiction." The greatest meaning of science fiction is that you will not cling to a mind, whether it is about the past or the future, it is a kind of art of speculation. "Small, ingenious, fine works coexist with high-investment large works, so that the audience is full of expectations for science fiction films and television."
Although there is still a gap in production standards with the top Hollywood teams, Gong Geer is full of confidence in the future of Chinese science fiction, "science fiction movies are related to national strength, it is closely related to the development of science and technology, where the level of science and technology is the most prosperous, where science fiction movies will explode - from the United Kingdom to the United States to the current China." Liu Cixin said: China is the country with the most sci-fi sense. I think China has a latecomer advantage, and we're just getting started. ”
Looking to the future, Gong Geer said, "I hope the audience is familiar with our IP. In the future, if there is an anime party, a comic book exhibition, or a science fiction film festival, don't just stand at the door of Stormtrooper (Star Wars" Stormtrooper), hoping that Chinese science fiction characters will appear, and it should not be only Hollywood's Superman and Batman standing there. When players turn The Wandering Earth or Chinese science fiction into a part of their lives, our purpose is achieved. "Mi Jingyu."
Source: Qingdao Daily