The health and prosperity of Beijing’s literary and artistic ecology cannot be separated from the help of literary criticism. In order to focus on commenting on Beijing’s literary and artistic creations and promote the birth of masterpieces of literary and artistic works, starting from this issue, this edition has added a column of “Jinghua Art and Literature”, presenting literary and artistic commentary articles with opinions, attitudes, styles and tastes, providing readers with a thought , a window for tasting and examining Beijing literary and artistic works.
The film’s chief director Fu Qiong
first
Photographing Beijing People’s Art from the Perspective of “Teaching Performing Arts”
The first time I took an acting class was at the Beijing Film Academy in early 2017. Feng Yuanzheng gave acting training to postgraduate students in the Department of Photography. He taught a group of students with no acting experience to speak, recite words, play warm-up games, and sit in a circle with each other. Open your heart. Feng Yuanzheng said that in fact, everyone has the potential to perform, and it depends on whether the teacher can help him discover it. A month later, the group of photography students put on a wonderful drama. This is the first time I realized that Feng Yuanzheng is not only a good actor, but also a good teacher.
Two students follow Lantianye for internship
At the beginning of December 2019, the channel director Yan Wei and I were invited to Beijing Renyi. In the actor team office, Feng Yuanzheng introduced Renyi’s purpose of restarting the performance student class after 34 years and the idea of making a documentary. After listening to it, my heart immediately moved. , it is our honor to be able to go behind the scenes of the palace of theatrical art and observe and record the inheritance of the acting style of Renyi at close range! At that time, it was less than two weeks before the start of the class. We quickly set up a film crew. Before filming started, I felt that this should be a documentary without any narration. The intention of the director was hidden in the story and details, so that the audience could To experience will play.
There are quite a few documentaries about Beijing Renyi, but this is the first time to shoot from the perspective of teaching performing arts. In the history, Renyi has held six student classes. Many old actors on the Renyi stage were trained by Renyi’s own student class. However, in the past, only photo materials were left in each student class, and they used the method of documentaries. This is the first time that the whole process of cultivating actors is tracked and recorded. Compared with the previous two-year social recruiting student class, this one is only one year. The students are all from the performance class of the art academy, and their ages range from their twenties to their forties. The lineup of mentors can be called the top class in China, including “Face Face” actors such as Lan Lanye, Pu Cunxin, Feng Yuanzheng, Gong Lijun, etc., and “Pillar” directors such as Ren Ming and Tang Ye, and specially hired Quyi performing artists Li Weijian, Kunqu opera artists Gu Weiying and Shao Zheng came to teach the students the essence of traditional Chinese performing arts.
I heard that I’ve been filming in a class for people and arts students in the past two years, and some friends are curious to ask what big stars like Pu Cunxin and Feng Yuanzheng look like in real life? How much will the students improve their acting skills when they enter this class? These questions actually represent the basic interest of the majority of the audience in this documentary, while those who love art, especially those who are engaged in acting, will have higher expectations – what are the performance secrets of these veteran actors? How did Renyi’s acting style develop? As a director, I hope this film can take into account the needs of the general public and people in the circle.
problem
How to make “cycle and start” “engaging”
The performance trainee training class is a serious talent training program with the aim of creating actors who are suitable for Beijing Renyi’s acting style and who can play various roles on the stage. If it is only shown to professionals, it is enough to record the teaching process completely, but for the public to watch, it is necessary to depict characters and tell stories. The challenge facing the director is: how to extract and extract a compelling story from the cycle of script reading, rehearsal and performance?
One of the challenges: filming should not interfere with teaching, and not extend the lens to the personal lives of teachers and students at will. There are many stars in front of our cameras, but we can’t pre-set plots and create topics like reality shows, and let teachers and students act according to our scripts. Regarding the filming of a documentary for the student class, there has actually been a controversy within Renyi. Will it interfere with teaching? Will it have a negative impact on teachers and students? After all, the classes are all star actors and famous directors. Will there be suspicion of hype? In order to win the trust of teachers and students, during the filming process, we tried our best to minimize the impact on teaching. The film crew arrives at least one hour in advance to prepare equipment at the scene, and keeps as silent as possible during the shooting, because it is a two-camera shooting, and the camera position and light position need to be adjusted constantly, and most of the time, only one director leads the two on the shooting scene. The camera, a recording, and two assistants. During the class, the film crew can’t make a sound, and the scheduling of camera positions and lights can’t be done by gesturing. I can only constantly guide the two camera positions back and forth. During the one-year follow-up filming of the student class, we worked hard to do the “fly-on-the-wall” (a flies lying on the wall) required by real movies, observe faithfully, record objectively, and do not interfere with teaching. But it is impossible to not affect the class at all. The camera lens is facing and the lights are on, which is a disturbance to teachers and students. Therefore, I thank all the teachers and students in the student class. Because of your tolerance, this performance art The video textbook was completed, and because of how you really looked in front of the camera, the film was wonderful and moving.
Challenge 2: The shooting scene is single and the events are repeated. We have three main locations: classrooms, rehearsal halls, and stages. Basically, every teacher’s teaching process is: reading the script, rehearsing, and reporting the performance. From filming to scripting to editing, I’ve been figuring out how to get the audience to watch a group of people go around in one place all the time without getting bored? First of all, we must keep an eye on the scene, capture the wonderful details in time and follow up the development of the incident. When making a documentary, it’s not enough to be sharp on the spot, because you don’t know what will happen next, you must rely on observation and understanding to predict the next step, and sometimes even rely on hunch. If the funds allow and the teachers and students agree, I hope to be there every day. In fact, the program budget is not settled until two-thirds of the shooting is in progress, so sometimes it is difficult to decide whether to shoot tomorrow or not. At the beginning of July 2020, the student class reported that the performance of “Pride of the Sky” was over, and the study came to an end. We stopped filming for a week, but a certain hunch drove me to send a WeChat message to the monitor Cao Lei to ask about the latest course schedule. Thinking of his reply that he was about to quit the student class! Because of my mysterious premonition, we recorded Cao Lei’s farewell to his teachers and classmates in time.
Feng Yuanzheng teaches students abdominal breathing
Although shooting scenes are limited, I firmly believe that audiences need nutritious content, and as long as the content is valuable and interesting enough, there is no need to worry about single scenes. Among the ten episodes, the eighth episode is the longest, at 57 minutes, with the least scene changes. It hardly leaves the classroom. Will the audience lose their chains when watching? I don’t think so, because what happens in the classroom is exciting and dramatic enough. Teacher Pu Cunxin taught the class for ten consecutive days, rehearsing the clips of the three dramas “Thunderstorm”, “Cai Wenji” and “The Pride of Heaven”. We recorded a lot of material, and finally reluctantly gave up the two dramas and kept only “Thunderstorm”. thunderstorm”. Because from the performance class of “Thunderstorm”, the audience can fully understand the essence of Pu Cunxin’s performance art and see the amazing transformation of the students.
method
Substitute the audience’s perspective and psychological experience
Acting is a profession, how can laypeople be able to watch it? My method is to substitute the audience’s perspective and psychological experience in the process of filming and editing, so that the audience can participate in the process of learning to perform and feel the pain and joy of performing. Teacher Song Dandan said that “acting is just playing the house”. As a documentary director, I watched the “playing house” for a year, and “really listened, watched, and felt” together with the student class. , I hope this documentary can convey the charm of the drama to the audience. For audiences who are familiar with star mentors in the film, this film may subvert your understanding of stars; for audiences who have no intention to learn acting, this film allows you to see how to be a person; for audiences eager to learn about performing arts, it may I found some misunderstandings about performance; and Beijing Renyi fans like me will see that a good actor needs to go through all-round strict construction of the sound stage, and a good show needs to be carefully polished.
Pu Cunxin guides students to rehearse “Thunderstorm”
The training purpose of the trainee class is to let the trainees “fit in” with Beijing Renyi’s acting style, but each instructor’s performance class is different, and the artistic essence they impart to the students combines the tradition of Renyi with their own unique experience. The same is rehearsing “Thunderstorm”, Gong Lijun and Pu Cunxin’s classes are completely two ways and effects. Director Tang Ye and head teacher Yue Xiuqing’s “North Street and South Courtyard” focuses on teaching the students to live on the stage, and in the process of rehearsing the graduation scene, Director Yan Rui led the students to change the script and change roles, and performed a performance with a sense of content and form. A contemporary new edition of “North Street South Courtyard”. Lan Lanye said in the first class of the class, “The acting style of Renyi cannot be carved out of a mold, it is constantly changing and exploring.” The color of individuality, this is the secret of the continuous brilliance of Beijing Renyi Neng.
At this moment, the trees outside the window are swaying messily in the wind. Since mid-January 2020, I have been sitting in front of this window view almost every day, immersing myself in reading materials and writing scripts. I often sit for a day, and when I wake up, my back is sore and my eyes are sore. pain. When the first two episodes finally got the desired effect, my heart began to settle down. Looking at the material, writing the script, rough cutting, fine cutting, and revising, this process lasted a full year. In the process of reconsidering the shots, my understanding of Beijing Renyi’s acting style has become deeper and deeper. I joked with my editing partners that I graduated from the acting class in one year, and I was equivalent to repeating it for another year. If there is a written test, I should be able to pass the test.
This film took a year to follow and shoot, and another year to post-production. During this period, due to the epidemic, it was forced to interrupt several times. In the end, more than 400 hours of material were accumulated, and ten episodes were extracted from it. I hope these ten episodes can help the audience understand what a good performance is and see the true birth process of a good actor. As a video recorder, I am gratified that not only have ten episodes of documentaries been completed, but also hundreds of hours of material will become a permanent archive of the heritage of Beijing Renyi’s performing arts.
Fu Qiong, Director of Science and Education Channel of Beijing Radio and Television Station, Senior Editor of News, Chief Director of “I’m Performing in Human Arts”
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责编：张晓荣 ]