China Entertainment: Indulge in Vanity Fair

Chapter 78 The Joy of Making Movies
What director skills does He Fang have?Why can the films he made be said to be commercially successful if they are commercially successful, and everyone thinks they can give it a try when they say they win awards?
In fact, the skills of a director are not difficult to learn. Simply put, a director needs to know several abilities.

One is to turn words into images. You need to know how to turn literary scripts into continuous images. Literary scripts are just imaginations of words, while movie images turn imaginary words into the feelings you want to present to the audience, making the audience lose their imagination. But you're blown away by your imagination.

For example, 'Maple leaves flying all over the sky, like a romantic golden rain', how do you transform such words into pictures?If you only shoot the four elements of flying maple leaves, romantic couples, winding forest paths covered with maple leaves, and autumn sunshine, and then combine them skillfully, then you can at best be considered a basically qualified director , because as long as the director has learned how to manipulate the camera, he will shoot, and it is also the image of all the audience's imagination. You have not let the image surprise the audience.

And a further director will let the camera shake the sunlight, and the men and women dance gracefully together, and then the maple leaves do not fly down naturally, but go up and down with the wind, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, matching the movements of the men and women. dancing.With this method, the light is moving, the people are moving, and the maple leaves are also moving. It becomes a romantic flow instead of a static one.

Is this picture more advanced?Or a little more unique, at least one movie will make the audience think 'wow, this director made me break through the imagination'.

Of course, there are more advanced...

This is the method of technical processing to turn words into pictures. Whether each director is skilled in technology and has enough imagination determines how good his technical processing will be.

The second ability is that you have to be able to tell the story well, logically, well-versed in structure, and suspenseful.Of course, this is only for commercial directors. For literary directors who do not want to tell stories, maybe it doesn’t matter whether the story is well told, but whether the director’s thoughts are expressed is the key.

The third ability is that you need to know how to act and be able to act on camera.Although not to say that all directors must be an actor with excellent acting skills, basically the director must be a basically qualified actor.There are many directors in the world with good acting skills, even those like Zhang Yimou and Feng Xiaogang can act.

Director, you don't understand acting, how do you guide actors to perform?How do you communicate to the actors what performance you want?
The fourth ability is the mastery of photography. The director does not have to be a photographer, but a qualified director must be an excellent photography lecturer.

Because film is the art of audio-visual, and video is the picture, and the picture must be taken by the camera. Do you not understand how photography can present the picture you want?
The fifth ability is that the understanding of color must be top-notch, and color is an expression of emotion.Don’t say it’s mysterious, it’s not mysterious at all. For example, if you stare at a movie with black and cool colors on the screen for 10 minutes, it’s guaranteed that your heart will be extremely heavy, which will cause your facial expression to be serious and your heart to be nervous.

And if the screen is full of romantic tones, it is guaranteed that no matter how deep your face is, it will be slightly relieved, and some people will smile uncontrollably, looking happy and sweet.

Of course, color can also divert the viewer's attention.

Therefore, a director must understand color.The colors in movies come from three aspects, one is light, the other is art, and the third is clothing.

The sixth ability is the ability of editing. If a director does not understand editing, he will not have editing thinking when shooting a film, and he will not think about what will happen when I cut this shot and the next shot together. Feel.

The seventh ability is the ability to appreciate music. After all, audio-visual audio-visual, in addition to movie images, sound is another major category of movies.Sometimes you have to know how to make a fuss about the sound, and it will have a good effect if you do it well.

If each of these seven abilities were to be explained, it is estimated that a thick book can be written.It can only be clicked here, which means that the reason why He Fang was able to make "Far Cry" into another movie with a different time and space is because he has a certain foundation in these seven abilities.

This is one of the roots of his self-confidence in filming, because he has no shortage of skills. He has been in Hollywood for eight years, from script to photography to performance to art to editing and music. He has studied in depth and operated it himself.

There is no problem with the basic skills of a director, and the soul from 2024 allows him to see film creation more clearly and his thinking more clearly from the dimension of time and the thickness accumulated by a large number of excellent films in the next ten years.

Because two films were shot in a row, the filming of a film like "On the Journey" feels smoother and easier to handle.

What surprised He Fang was Wang Baoqiang's hard work and acting skills. He is not just a simple and honest person, his scripts are always dense, and he even wrote a three-page character analysis. His homework is similar to that of an actor with a professional background Exactly the same, even more serious.

He also asked He Fang to help him confirm a performance baseline, but He Fang did not give him much help, because the character setting is to be hard-pressed with optimism, setbacks and positive characters, which is in line with Wang Baoqiang's own characteristics It fits very well, it can be said that he doesn't need to use much effort to act, he is the burdock in the film.

"Brother Qiang, play well, maybe the next part will find you." He Fang patted Wang Baoqiang on the shoulder and said.

"Really? Your sci-fi blockbuster?" Wang Baoqiang asked.

"Ah? That might not work. I have to invite Hollywood stars for that. The second part I'm talking about is the next part of People on Journey." He Fang laughed.

"It's okay, Director He, I promise to be there when you are called." Wang Baoqiang said very loyally.

"OK."

……

"People on the Journey" has a lot of rushing scenes, which requires the use of sports shots. At first, Du Jie wanted to carry on shoulders, but He Fang stopped him.

"Brother Du, carrying on shoulders is not suitable for this movie. Although the 'breathing feeling' carried on shoulders has the meaning of a pseudo-documentary, it can make people feel the process of going home during the Spring Festival. However, Chinese audiences are not used to this. This kind of dangling lens is easy to make the audience spit in the movie theater. Let's play it safe and use the Steadicam."

"That's fine." Du Jie didn't object.

"By the way, let's play a long shot during the walk home." He Fang said suddenly.

"Long shot? That's too boring, are you sure?" Du Jie was a little surprised.

He Fang suddenly patted his forehead, "It's not a long shot of a literary film, but a long shot of a commercial film."

"How long do you want? The whole scene in one shot?" Du Jie asked.

"You can challenge it."

"Hiss, this is a bit difficult, let's challenge it."

Many people think that long shots are only a standard feature of literary and artistic films. No, there are many commercial films that use long shots, but many audiences can't see it.

Most of the long shots in literary and artistic films are fixed long shots, or long shots followed by shoulders, etc., which are all metaphorical.

For example, a fixed long shot generally shows that the character slowly walks away from the shot, further and further away, until it disappears into the edge of the shot.This represents that the character is looking for a new life, or it is different, or it remains the same, giving people a kind of imagination.

The shoulder-mounted follow-up long shot is generally expressed as the impatience of the character, the uncertainty of life, the trance of the spiritual world, etc.

But commercial long shots are different. They are all for fun, or for the audience to have a more immersive experience.

For example, the long shot of Optimus Prime's transformation in "Transformers" is a cool shot that gives the audience an immersive experience. It is to let the audience see from the beginning to the end, from far to near, from the whole to local shots.

There is no need to introduce more about Optimus Prime, just a long shot of sports can make the audience completely fancy Optimus Prime.

The long shot that He Fang wants to shoot is this kind of sports long shot. He wants to use a shot to let the audience look down from a high altitude, see it from the perspective of God, and then follow it, and then let the camera be at the same level as the person, so that the audience becomes a part of the walk .

Then push again to look at someone emphatically, and finally pull again, slowly pulling away, so that the audience will change from becoming one of them to God's perspective again, and let the audience lose their immersion.

This requires good scheduling, so when this shot was shot, the entire crew spent a whole day there, and finally shot this one-shot shot to the end when the sky was about to set.

The result was unexpectedly good, because there was a sunset glow all over the sky, didn't this just give people a sense of urgency, must go home before dark, New Year's Eve is coming soon?
"This is fine, this is fine, this is awesome. I think this movie is worth it just for this one shot." Du Jie shouted excitedly.

"Haha, don't get excited, there will be better ones in the future."

"That's the fun of making movies, sometimes a perfect shot can make people so excited that they can't sleep."

(End of this chapter)