Special feature of 1905 film network When the opera meets the film, since its release, it has been evaluated with the high score of Douban 8.2 by virtue of the audience’s good reputation.
As the first 4K panoramic Cantonese opera film, it was shortlisted for the best opera film in the Golden Rooster Award for Chinese films, and also won the Golden Coconut Award for the best technology in Hainan Island International Film Festival. Through film technology, traditional Chinese opera is given a new look, and behind this, it is also inseparable from the credit of editing technology.
The editor of this film is a national first-class editor. His previous representative works include Youth Fight, Deep Sea Sword and Men’s Gang. Sun Yiqun’s mother is also an editor. She is Yang Xingyuan, the former president of China Film Editing Society, and her representative editing works are various.
Can editing technology be inherited? In this issue of Behind the Scene, Yang Xingyuan and Sun Yiqun, the editors, lead us into china national film museum to reveal the history of film film editing, and experience the technological changes of film editing together from the film age to the digital age.
Behind the scenes: Film editor Yang Xingyuan reveals the tools of "film film editing"
Film clip: "Manual sewing machine"
I have a particularly cordial feeling. I can feel the temperature of all these devices. Entering china national film museum, Yang Xingyuan knows a lot about the film editing machines in the museum.
Facing a splicing machine full of historical colors, Yang Xingyuan introduced that Premier Zhou Enlai cared about film splicing and specially entrusted Tianjin No.2 Optical Instrument Factory to develop this splicing machine for them, also known as the four-way sound painting machine.
From the end of the 1960s to the end of the 1990s, this was the only tool for their editors, and the frequency was controlled in the frequency of 24 squares by hand. "My editing of Man to Middle Age, Zhou Enlai and Armageddon was cut out by such a machine."
The process of film editing is particularly complicated. After the film is finished, it should be washed in the studio, and then printed into samples with the negative, and the editor and the director and other producers will jointly review it.
When editing, the sound and picture of the sample should be synchronized with the negative, so the first step of editing is not to cut, but to arrange, and each of the specific scenes, shots and sound tapes in all the shooting materials should be completely recorded first, otherwise the material synchronized with the negative can not be found later.
"So it’s not easy to start editing. All this work has to be done before you can enter the creative stage." Yang Xingyuan said that it is more difficult at the stage of revision. For example, if there are ten films and one place is revised, these ten films will have to be hand-cranked from beginning to end on the film receiver. "After shaking it down, it is a lot of films, and then it is lifted one by one. At that time, the state positioned the editor as a light manual worker. "
Recalling the editing work of "Zhou Enlai", at that time, the version of mixed editing of picture and sound was completed, but the director had to modify the picture temporarily. "I was so angry that I wouldn’t change it for you, but he personally took a dozen films upstairs and asked me to change it." In order to make the film better, Yang Xingyuan said that even if the editing process was not easy at that time, it still had to be modified.
In the past, when editing technology was underdeveloped, a small machine supported the creation of many excellent classic films. Sun Yiqun recalled, "At that time, my mother stayed up late at night, so I slept next to her with a small quilt. I always wanted to shake this film, and my mother was particularly afraid that I would destroy it. She said that if you broke it, the consequences would be unimaginable."
Nowadays, computer technology is very simple to operate the effects of transition editing, such as fade-in, fade-out, cut-in and cut-out, overlapping, etc., but it is very troublesome in the film age. It is necessary for the editor to make specific marks on the film with a special pen, and then let the special effects producers use optical skills to make them on the film.
The complicated and exquisite technology of film film editors bears the heavy history of China films.
"For example, there are seven kinds of scenes to record a dialogue and an action now. I think the workload is very heavy. There are more than 200 shots as soon as I open the folder, but it is much more complicated than us to hear these things that the predecessors are editing. My mother sewed by hand at that time, and now it is equivalent to using an electric sewing machine. "
Hearing his mother’s introduction to film editing technology, Sun Yiqun felt a lot. "Now we have mastered new technologies and brought us convenience, while the older generation got through it like that and admired it."
Digital editing: White Snake’s secret recipe
The era of film editing has ended, and digital computer technology has been fully popularized. Nowadays, Sun Yiqun’s editing work is no longer just a simple operation technology, but also needs to integrate his own ideas at the creative level.
Talking about her latest film White Snake, Sun Yiqun said that in editing skills, she paid special attention to the balance between drama and film.
"There are many stylized things in traditional Chinese opera. Actors often communicate with the audience and the camera, which breaks the spatial illusion that the film has carefully established." Therefore, she will especially avoid editing the lens that highlights the "fourth wall" and choose more pictures of actors communicating with each other.
When the traditional Chinese opera performance is put on the movie screen, it is easy to have a magnifying effect. In addition, it is 4K quality, and any tiny expression of the actor can be clearly captured. When editing, Sun Yiqun will also avoid the scenes that will appear exaggerated on the big screen.
"The hand, eye, body and steps of an opera actor, his figure is a very important aspect of expression. If I edit excessively or even choose inappropriate scenery, it will destroy the good rhythm of the opera, so I still have to pick up its rhythm and grasp it well." How to find a moderate point is a difficult part of this editing.
Sun Yiqun is also worried that if the aria is too long, it will affect the audience’s desire to watch. Among them, there is a scene of "Broken Bridge and Residual Snow", in which lady white snake complains to Xu Xian after suffering, and the recorded aria is very long. She took the initiative to discuss the reduction with the director. "Otherwise, it would ruin lady white snake’s image and become a dissatisfied housewife." Finally, after coordination and careful cutting, it was cut for more than 30 minutes.
White Snake reinterprets classic stories and boldly tries new editing techniques of combining drama with film. Yang Xingyuan feels that today’s editors have a higher pursuit than the older generation. "They need to have the ability to master the lens and handle the structure, not the things we have learned. Those things have passed. They can put more energy into creation. "
Two generations of editing methods
Yang Xingyuan was originally an actor, but later transferred to Changying and changed to editing. "Having been an actor for more than ten or twenty years, I can still understand the performance and rhythm, and this accumulation will be useful. I just thought I could learn to edit and play my little role."
Thanks to her experience as an actor, Yang Xingyuan switched to editing, and she can better handle the rhythm of performances and shots.
When cutting "Man to Middle Age", because Lu Wenting and Yang Xingyuan are both of the same generation, Yang Xingyuan said that she edited the character completely according to the character and her own feelings. "Lu Wenting went to see the child, and the editor must understand how she looked at it in order to impress the audience. So I chose her to post it in the nearest place to watch the child sleeping, so that I can understand the psychological feelings of this character. "
With more than 40 years of experience in behind-the-scenes editing, Yang Xingyuan concluded that editors should think about editing from three angles.
The first is the director. "I must know what he wants to do, what he wants to show and what he wants to give to the audience." Then there is the character, "to understand the character’s mentality and his various things."
Then there is the audience. "You must know what the audience wants to see and where his interest lies. I can’t say that I am an old lady now. My rhythm is slow, so I don’t appreciate the audience’s appreciation ability. I also deal with the film according to my rhythm and speed, and the audience will definitely stop watching it. "
Daughter Sun Yiqun did a lot of work that had nothing to do with art. Later, her mother thought she should learn a skill, so she taught her to edit and took her into the business. The two later jointly edited the TV series Behind the Vanity.
"They always ask why the play they cut is not good-looking. I said that because you cut the process, it is not a play." Sun Yiqun believes that a good editing is to "pick up" the scene and find the eye of the scene, while a bad editing is to exert an average force. "If the scene and the scene are not more energetic, it will not work."
In her view, editing and scriptwriting have a lot in common, they all want to tell stories, and they all want to think about how to make this story vivid, interesting and arresting.
From Yang Xingyuan to Sun Yiqun, from film editing to digital editing, the editors of mother and daughter have great enthusiasm for this art, which has been passed down from generation to generation not only for the iterative upgrade of film editing skills, but also for the consistent dedication, concentration, lean and innovative craftsmanship as editors.
