Four years ago, Zhang Ran filmed "Before Dawn" and stayed in Hengdian for several months, when he was still a rookie director, and he didn't know him when he walked on the street with his face facing the sky, and now he is already China's leading director, and appearing on the street without sunglasses will definitely cause onlookers. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

The hotel where Zhang Ran and the creative team of the opening ceremony settled in is a well-known VIP building in Hengdian, and the cost is paid by the crew of "Golden Armor". The creative team came to Hengdian because Zhang Yimou wanted to shoot "Golden Armor", and the crew must make proper arrangements, and it is impossible for everyone to pay out of their own pockets.

After checking into the hotel, Zhang Ran and everyone followed Zhang Yimou to the Ming and Qing Dynasty palaces on the set of the movie, where the scenes of "Golden Armor" in Hengdian will be completed.

The palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties is a filming location modeled after the Beiping Forbidden City, but now after more than two months of construction and millions of renovations, the entire scene has been transformed into what Zhang Yimou wants.

As soon as he entered the noon gate in the scenic spot, Zhang Ran saw that the original red walls were inlaid with gold edges, and hundreds of thousands of chrysanthemums mixed with real and false were paved on both sides of Yonglu for nearly 10,000 square meters, which was golden and dazzling at a glance.

Zhang Yimou told everyone with some pride that at the end of the movie, the second prince Zhou Jielun will lead tens of thousands of soldiers wearing gold armor and Emperor Chow Yun-fat's silver-armored warriors will start an earth-shattering battle in this sea of chrysanthemums.

The road outside the chrysanthemums is covered with a carpet embroidered with patterns, and a film is laid on the carpet to prevent it from being damaged by the rain. At this time, the art director of the film is leading a group of people to do the final work of filling in the gaps in the set, striving to give the audience a strong visual impact.

For the needs of filming, the crew built a cylindrical platform with steps in the palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which looks a bit like the Temple of Heaven in Beiping. The whole building is 12 meters high and 28 meters in diameter, and there is a staircase more than 20 meters long leading to the top of it, which is the most important scene of the movie.

Zhang Yimou took everyone to the Chrysanthemum Terrace, and said as he walked: "The drama in Hengdian will be filmed for almost a month, and then go to Wulong." There are very few literary dramas in Hengdian, most of them are martial arts dramas, and they are night dramas, and Cheng Xiaodong is in charge. A lot of the work can be given to him so that I can find time to talk about ideas with everyone. ”

Zhang Ran looked around and felt that the environment here was very good, so he said: "I don't think it's better like this, please let the crew build a shed here, we can talk about creativity in the shed, and you can also come over when you are resting." ”

Zhang Yimou thinks this is a good idea, but he also has concerns: "The shooting site is noisy, and I'm afraid that everyone won't be able to concentrate on talking about creativity!"

If Zhang Yimou is not there, then the whole team is Zhang Ran's final say, Chen Weiya didn't want this, and immediately said: "It's nothing to quarrel at all, we are all used to it, the key is that you can come over and talk to us about creativity at any time!"

Ma Wen also likes it here: "When we are tired of chatting, we can come out to watch you film, change our brains!"

Everyone else agreed, and thought it was good to talk about ideas here.

Seeing that everyone agreed, Zhang Yimou called the art director over and instructed him to build a shed in the open space next to the noon gate, so that the people of the creative team could talk about ideas inside, and then took everyone to the chrysanthemum platform.

Standing on the chrysanthemum platform, you can see a sea of golden flowers, coupled with a gorgeous carpet hundreds of meters long, the whole scene looks magnificent. Zhang Jigang was full of poetry, and recited with his mouth: "When autumn comes on September 8, I will kill a hundred flowers after the flowers bloom." The heavenly incense array penetrates Chang'an, and the city is full of golden armor!"

Everyone applauded and praised Zhang Jigang for reciting well, reciting that momentum, and then reciting them one by one.

Zhang Ran looked at the noon gate in the distance, a flash of inspiration flashed, and he patted his thigh: "I thought of another idea." ”

The people in the creative team all looked at Zhang Ran, waiting for him to say a new idea. Zhang Ran is a monster in the creative group, with a lot of ideas, and often particularly interesting ideas. For example, the stadium is built into a raised surface of the earth, a large "one" is written with a brush, projected into the middle of the field, and then the "one" is torn apart to become a performance area, and so on.

Zhang Ran smiled and said, "The opening ceremony can perform dramas, and we have also thought of a lot of tricks about drama singing, and my thoughts are like this." You should have received a greeting card, that is, a folded greeting card, and when you open it, you will set up a Christmas tree, or a character or something, which looks three-dimensional. I think you can make a folding device, which looks like two boards, put it in the center of the stage, and after the folding device is opened, a paper-cut style theater will slowly stand up, and then two actors will come up to perform, which is much more interesting than if you directly set up a stage and sing. And it can also be like this, the stage is covered with a veil around it, the actors are performing inside, and the audience sees shadow puppetry, so that shadow puppetry and drama are combined. What do you think?"

Zhang Yimou has a soft spot for shadow puppetry, and Fugui likes to play shadow puppets in the movie "Alive", and he is greatly admired by Zhang Ran's creativity: "This idea is interesting, it combines opera, shadow puppetry, and paper-cutting, and it is a product of modern technology, both classical and modern, really interesting!"

Everyone else was also excited, and kept reminiscing: "This is much more interesting than directly setting up a stage to perform, and the audience is singing and singing when they see it, and they lack a sense of expectation." But this idea, the audience first sees two boards, and then as soon as they open it, a stage appears with a click, and it is amazing, and the expectation value will come out!"

"It's a combination of old theatre and modern mechanics, and it's going to look new!"

"The audience would have thought that we would do a play, but they certainly wouldn't have thought that we would do it!"

Of course, not everyone appreciated it. Chen Weiya gave a negative view: "Your idea is too scene-stealing, it is completely an installation performance, and the audience is concerned about the installation, not the quintessence of the country!"

Zhang Jigang liked the idea very much, and retorted: "This is a combination of installation performance and theatrical performance, which provides the best platform for opera performance, which is very innovative." If it's just a simple drama, there won't be too many people interested, and it will be very bland. ”

Everyone stood on the chrysanthemum stage and had a discussion on Zhang Ran's idea, and most of them felt that this idea was very good and could be put on the opening ceremony. Of course, this kind of thinking is only temporary, and this show will definitely be like many other excellent ideas, and within three days, everyone will start to criticize it, no matter how you look at it, you can't think it's okay, and then you will reject it.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was only an hour long, but behind it was the hard work of tens of thousands of people for several years. There is no way, this is the Olympic Games, it is the expectation of the Chinese people for a hundred years, they can only succeed and not fail, and everyone who participates in it is burdened with invisible responsibilities.

Zhang Yimou was busy because he had to check the situation of the set and prepare for tomorrow's shooting. They chatted on the chrysanthemum platform for a while, and then began to walk down the steps.

As soon as he walked to the noon gate, Zhang Ran suddenly stopped: "Have you noticed, the ideas we are thinking about now are all ancient, and the modern part is basically absent." If this doesn't work, our performance will definitely be divided into two parts, the splendid civilization of ancient times and the glorious era of present. We can't just play the ancient and not the modern. ”

Not just Zhang Ran, but most of the creative team noticed this. Cai Guoqiang said: "The ancient part can be made into a lot of wonderful programs by grasping some elements, but the modern part is a big problem, and we lack something with a significant impact like the four major inventions!"

"Yes, what is acting in contemporary China is a big question. In ancient times, we could play the four great inventions, the Great Wall, Chinese characters, and Chinese paintings, and there were so many things that we could play, but there really is nothing to play in contemporary China. ”

The whole creative team was a little worried, what to play in contemporary China and how to act, this is really a big question.

Zhang Ran exhaled heavily, he always thought that the opening ceremony of the Beiping Olympics in his memory was extremely good, and it could be said that it was the most outstanding Olympic opening ceremony in history. Of course, he doesn't think the Peking Olympics are really perfect. The biggest problem is that the rhythm is not well controlled, and it looks anticlimactic. The opening ceremony was so beautiful, and the singing was really shocking, and it simply shook people stupidly. The whole first half after that was very exciting, in which the appearance of the scroll and the movable type printing continued this shock, giving people a strong visual impact. But it is precisely because the rhythm of the opening is too strong that the whole first half is too shocking, and the second half fails to continue this shock, which seems a little flat, so the rhythm of the performance has become a little dragged.

The reason why the second half seems dull is that it talks about the great achievements of reform and opening up in the past 30 years, which is difficult to perform, unlike the ancient part that has too many good things, and modern China does not have too many things that can be shown to the world. For example, the British can play Harry Potter, and the Japanese can show their anime and games, while contemporary China lacks such a thing with global influence and can only talk about it in generalities.

If there is a program similar to movable type printing in the second half, especially the last program can have the shock of movable type printing, then the overall effect of the entire opening ceremony will be on a higher level.

Zhang Ran's biggest wish to join the director team of the opening ceremony is to strive to improve the quality of the second half, and come up with one or two shocking works in the second half to bring the entire opening ceremony to a higher level.

Walking out of the Ming and Qing Dynasty palaces, many members of the creative team suggested that they take a stroll around to see what the legendary Oriental Hollywood was like, and maybe they could draw some inspiration from it.

Among all the people present, only Zhang Ran had come to Hengdian, so he naturally became everyone's tour guide, and he took everyone all the way forward, introducing them as he went.

As he was walking, a young woman with a fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy suddenly came up to her and exclaimed in surprise: "Director, long time no see!"

Zhang Ran looked at it, and the people who came were Li Yue and her younger brother Qin Junjie, Qin Junjie played the teenager Qiao Zhengfei in the movie "Aviator", and the whole performance was very well received. He couldn't help laughing: "It's you, I haven't seen you for a long time, are you okay?" He saw that Qin Junjie didn't speak, just looked at himself and smiled, so he said, "Junjie, don't you know me?"

Li Yue taught a lesson: "Junjie, what's the matter? Don't you often say that you want to play with the director and Sister Jingchu, why don't you even say hello when you see the director?"

Qin Junjie smiled embarrassedly and said, "Director, why are you here?"

Zhang Ran reached out and touched Qin Junjie's head: "We came here with Director Zhang Yimou this time, and I will also come to the set to see it when the time comes, you have to act well, otherwise I will curse people!"

Qin Junjie nodded seriously: "I will act seriously." ”

Li Yue saw that Zhang Ran was followed by a group of people, and they were all extraordinary, knowing that Zhang Ran must have something to do, so she chatted briefly, saying that she would come to visit again when she was free, and then left with Qin Junjie.

Zhang Ran was about to take everyone on the tour, when Ma Wen suddenly smiled and said: "Zhang Ran, there is a girl over there who has been watching you for a long time, it should be your acquaintance!"

Zhang Ran turned his head to look at the girl Ma Wen said, and then his brows frowned slightly, and he shouted, "What's the matter, do you want me to invite you over?"