Source: Beijing Daily

Wang Jinyue

Suddenly, the mode of multiple directors shooting a movie together became popular in the film circle.

Last year, "My Motherland and I", a National Day film, came out. Seven short films were jointly shot by seven directors, including Chen Kaige, Xu Zheng, Ning Hao, and Wen Muye, and finally won more than 3 billion yuan at the box office. This year's "Me and My Hometown" again applies this model. Five groups of directors, including Ning Hao, Xu Zheng, Chen Sicheng, Yan Fei and Peng Daevil, Deng Chao and Yu Baimei, shoot a short film separately for each group. In addition, with the strong participation of dozens of actors who can play comedy best in China, they are known as the "Comedy Sky Group" in China, and have also made great market returns.

Imitation and reproduction are the most indispensable in the film circle. This mode has been adopted again in the release of King Kong Chuan. The film was led by Director Guan Hu, joined by Director Guo Fan and Lu Yang, and the war blockbuster was shot in less than three months. From the perspective of the film, the degree of completion is very high.

Not long ago, another war blockbuster "Changjin Lake" held a launch conference, announcing that the film was jointly directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, and Lin Chaoxian. In addition, Huang Jianxin, the director of the film, made the lineup luxurious.

It is not new that a film is jointly directed by multiple directors. For example, Director Chen Kaige participated in directing Everyone Has His Own Film in 2007. That is, 35 Cannes related directors told their own feelings and emotional stories about the cinema, which was specially organized by the Cannes International Film Festival to commemorate the 60th anniversary. Zhang Yimou, Hou Xiaoxian and Wang Jiawei also participated. Tsui Hark, Lin Lingdong and Du Qifeng, three directors, also jointly shot The Iron Triangle, which was released in October 2007. It is a good story in the film world.

However, the former joint director mode is either for a commemorative activity or for a sudden inspiration, which is more a separate event, completely different from the current intentional one.

In the final analysis, audience buy is the key factor. The joint director seems to have many people working together, but most of them work in a "rush to order" mode, and the tasks assigned to each person are relatively simple. For example, if a director takes a production team to make a film of such a size as Vajrayagawa, it will take at least one year to complete it.

The sudden popularity of the joint director mode also hides the change of popular tastes. Zhang Yibai, the director of My Home and Me, once revealed in an interview that with the popularity of short video culture, the audience may gradually develop the habit of watching short videos and short videos. He wanted to take this opportunity to test the water and see whether this guess was effective. From the results, this guess is right. With the continuous involvement of microblog, dithering and other platforms, these have a subtle impact on the appreciation of readers and viewers. The popularity of joint directors must be influenced by them.

Even now, the popular tutorial based variety shows have inadvertently affected the audience's taste. A movie is jointly directed by several famous directors and performed by dozens of famous actors. It seems to be a luxury variety show. Before seeing the movie, the scene is lively enough.

Of course, this mode is still limited to some special films, especially those made to commemorate major festivals and themes. Whether it will gradually evolve into a new director mode is still difficult to judge. After all, compared with the film in the full charge of one director, the disadvantages of the joint director mode are also obvious, for example, the director's personal style cannot be highlighted, and the overall film aesthetics cannot be formed; However, if actors join together in a play, their individual acting skills will not be brought into full play. But one thing is certain, as long as the box office is good enough, such films will continue to appear in the future.