Chapter 7 Did You Kiss? Like a Kiss!
The next day.
The crew of "17-year-old Bicycle" gathered on a busy street in the west of Beijing.
Wang Xiaoshuai's film crew is not a grass-roots team. After all, he is a director who has won awards at foreign film festivals and has been to Europe and the United States. He is quite famous!
If the crew of "17-year-old Bicycle" lists the staff, there must be more than 30 people, not counting the actors!
In this day and age, this is the scale of a large crew.
However, not all people who are on duty in the crew will come to the scene to follow the filming of the movie.
For example, the Baodao Jiguang Company, which invested, and the French investors, although they all sent producers and supervisors, they are all big-name figures, and they are just in name only.
Just like Han Sanye, the former deputy director of the Beijing Film Studio in the mainland and the current deputy general manager of China Film Group, he also took the title of supervisor in the crew of "17-year-old Bicycle", but Wu Yuan never saw this big man who will helm the Chinese film industry for the next 15 years.
The people who really work on the set are mainly the workers who do photography, set design, script management, recording, lighting, and props.
In addition, there are screenwriters, art designers, costume designers, editors, and music behind the scenes.
These are the people who really work in the crew.
"The planned shooting period for this play is 15 days, so there is still plenty of time."
"If both of you were newcomers, it would only take seven days to finish shooting."
Sitting in the director's chair, Wang Xiaoshuai stared at the set and props of the "Feida Express" store while chatting with Wu Yuan who was sitting next to him and curiously observing the monitor.
Movies in this era are shot very quickly. After all, there is no need for any special effects or transfers across the country. Generally, art films can be shot in a week to half a month.
Some directors in Hong Kong Island can shoot a movie in three days!
After all, every extra day of shooting is spent on film money!
"Oh, you really have a good eye. Seeing that Wu Yuan's eyes were always on the monitor in front of him, Wang Xiaoshuai pointed at the monitor with some pride and introduced it: "You haven't seen it before?"
"This is the latest IVS system, a high-end product. Now foreigners use this thing to make movies."
"In recent years, domestic crews of a certain level have all used this thing."
Wu Yuan curled his lips and didn't respond.
How could he feel novel? He was amazed to see such an ancient device!
What IVS system? To put it bluntly, it is actually to connect a beam splitter to the optical viewfinder of a film camera, and then output a video signal, which is then connected to the director's monitor.
In this way, the director can see the picture in the lens and the performance of the actors in real time.
Before this set of equipment, it was really troublesome for the director to shoot a movie. At that time, the photographer was the only person who could see the picture during the shooting, and the picture could not be played back. Only the photographer could decide whether the material shot could pass.
The director had to see the developed sample film the next day to know what effect the filming had yesterday.
Until the IVS system, That is, the so-called "monitor" was born, and the director could finally see the shooting picture in real time.
However, this thing has been around for more than 20 years, but it has not made much progress.
Even if Wang Xiaoshuai uses the latest model, the picture effect is not very good, and the output video signal resolution is only 480P.
It is only enough to see a composition and the general performance of the actors. The details of the light ratio, light effect, and color cannot be seen. You still have to wait for the sample to be developed to see the real picture effect.
However, with the development of technology, the director can finally play back at any time on the set. The monitor has a recording function, which is quite convenient.
Wu Yuan remembers that it was not until 2009 that there was a "three-channel 10-bit 1920x1080 digital signal output HD-IVS", this thing is really useful.
It was not until the era of digital photography that the director finally saw the almost perfectly restored picture on the high-definition monitor on the scene.
In addition, in digital photography, each shot is a separate file, basically you can watch it any way you want, forward or backward.
Some high-demand directors can even let the editor cut the film on the set, and you can see the rough cut of a scene half an hour after shooting.
When Wu Yuan was the executive director in his dream, he often watched the editing on the set. Often, he, the executive, would stay up for three nights for just one word from the chief director!
Wealthy crews can even do on-site pre-color adjustment, and the director can directly see the picture effect after the first-level color adjustment on the monitor.
That is to say, it has added a filter!
At this point, directors finally don’t have to develop film, watch samples, and hold discussions every day after shooting.
Wu Yuan, who has rich experience in the digital photography era, feels fresh when he returns to the film crew of the millennium.
Although "Seventeen-year-old Bicycle" is not shot in sequence, the film mainly tells the story of two separate lines of the two protagonists.
The lines of Xiaojian and Xiaogui in the film are parallel but intersecting, and finally reach a climax and end in a "hot-blooded" fight between teenagers.
So when Wang Xiaoshuai was shooting, he mainly shot with Cui Lin and Zhou Xun in one group, and Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan in another group.
The first few days were mainly shot with Cui Lin and Zhou Xun.
One of them is Xiao Jian, a courier who came to Beijing from the countryside to work, and the other is Hong Qin, a rural girl who came to the city to work as a nanny for a rich family, but always secretly wears the clothes of the host family and wants to disguise herself as a "city dweller".
Xiao Gui, played by Cui Lin, always stays in the dilapidated courtyard, peeping through the wall at Hong Qin, who is dressed up in the French window of the high-rise building next door.
The characters played by Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan are two city dwellers who grew up in Beijing.
Art films all have to use "images", "symbols" and values.
In this "Seventeen-year-old Bicycle", the bicycle is a special symbol and symbol. Through Xiao Jian and Xiao Gui's attitudes towards the bicycle, it reflects the differences in the lives of city dwellers and rural people, the difficulties of rural people integrating into the city, and the differences between cities and rural areas.
The sixth generation directors like this, as if they can't make movies without shooting some difficult social realities, the tragic fate of small people in the big era, and satirizing things like society and the times.
Wu Yuan is not saying that he despises or rejects this type of film, but he is not a member of the generation born in the 1960s and 1970s who experienced that complex and turbulent period of change and was brainwashed by a large number of European art films.
Especially after 20 years of dreaming, his film concepts and values have long been changed.
In his film view, he either makes commercial blockbusters that are popular with the public, can bring laughter and excitement, or makes art films that can move people's hearts, resonate, and explore more human nature and character stories.
He really can't make this kind of film that indulges in self-expression, explores the social system, and outputs rebellious, cultural, and political ideas, and he has no interest in making it.
Anyway, there is already a generation of directors working hard in this field, so there is no need for him, a newcomer, to get involved.
Chinese films need such a group of filmmakers to make this kind of film, but not all filmmakers need to go into this field!
He should open up more new paths, new styles, and new types for Chinese-language films!
Therefore, during the period of joining the crew, although Wu Yuan has been following Wang Xiaoshuai and eagerly learning the operation mode and knowledge of the film crew of this era.
However, he did not take the various film concepts and artistic ideas that Wang Xiaoshuai constantly instilled into him to his heart.
Every night at the film viewing meeting, Wu Yuan mostly just sat quietly beside and listened to the fierce arguments between the director and the screenwriter, and rarely expressed his own opinions.
His attitude made Wang Xiaoshuai think that this guy was a promising talent who knew how to listen more, watch more and talk less!
Just when Wang Xiaoshuai's favorability towards Wu Yuan was getting higher and higher, and he was about to succeed in his own strategy, Cui Lin and Zhou Xun's group's scenes were almost finished, and only the rival scenes involving Wu Yuan were left.
This also means that Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan's group's scenes will start shooting.
Compared with Cui Lin and Zhou Xun, the content of Wu Yuan's group is more inclined to youth love stories, that is, the ambiguous things about the first love of two high school students.
Wu Yuan and Gao Yuanyuan also got their shooting schedule.
However, when Wu Yuan saw the specific arrangement of the first scene, he immediately found Wang Xiaoshuai.
"Brother, the first scene between me and Sister Yuanyuan is going to be a kissing scene?!"
Wu Yuan had heard before that many directors of art films like to shoot passionate scenes, emotional sublimation scenes, and kissing scenes first, because they can help actors get into the role faster and let the actors find the feeling faster.
But he didn't expect that this kind of thing would happen to him one day.
Pointing to the script in his hand-"Houhai, Xiaoshulin...", Wu Yuan was a little speechless.
"This scene is the most difficult to shoot in your scene. First overcome this difficulty, and then it will be easy." Wang Xiaoshuai said righteously.
"Okay." Wu Yuan smacked his lips and nodded helplessly in agreement.
Anyway, there is no French kiss in this play, and the only intimate scene is this one.
However, after reading the script carefully, Wu Yuan frowned, a little confused, and asked again: "Brother, you didn't write it clearly, am I going to kiss her cheek in the end or not?"
It's no wonder that Wu Yuan was confused, because the script was too vague. There was only one sentence "Xiao Jian nervously and shyly approached Xiao Xiao's cheek, wanting to kiss her cheek, and the ambiguous atmosphere of youthful first love lingered around the two of them..."
Then it changed to "Xiao Gui took the opportunity to steal the bicycle..."
So was it a kiss or not?
Facing Wu Yuan's doubts, Wang Xiaoshuai smiled slightly and slowly uttered two words: "Like a kiss."
"So was it a kiss or not?"
"Like a kiss!"
"Did you really kiss it?"
"Like a kiss!"
Giving Wu Yuan a look that said "you figure it out yourself", Wang Xiaoshuai walked away with his hands behind his back.
"I'm just annoyed by these stream-of-consciousness art film directors! What nonsense do they say every day!" Wu Yuan looked at Wang Xiaoshuai's back and complained fiercely in his heart.