Filming with Documentary Method —— Interpretation of the Spanish film Death Video

Although my love for horror movies is almost hopeless, I know that the real charm of such movies is by no means the endless rendering of bloody murder and death scenes (although it seems that they are always indispensable). The fear of being there often leads to a brief intimate experience of despair, which can inspire people and produce an unforgettable moment of pleasure-sometimes I even think that insecurity is the deepest animal instinct in human memory, and horror movies are born and bred based on this psychological background. This can also explain why the most active places to make horror films are always countries with strong crisis awareness such as Japan and the United States. In addition, before the reunification, Hong Kong people also (used to) like to use horror films and pornographic films to relieve the pressure of social life, while in Europe and Spain, people used to use horror films to relieve anxiety and anxiety from religion.

In Spanish horror movies, texas chainsaw massacre, Texas, who lived in seclusion and suddenly invaded the town, rarely appeared in Hollywood movies. They like to show darkness, death and human variation-darkness symbolizes endless repression, death is the result of this repression, and human variation is the dialectics of life and death. Not long ago, the orphanage revealed this theme, and this "more scared than jumping" death video is an organic combination of the three. However, the value of this film is not limited to this. The most gratifying thing is that it "creates" a brand-new way of film expression. This new form is likely to trigger a small trend of exploring emerging film languages because of the unexpected success of this film. To put it simply, this trend is to shoot feature films by documentary, such as the sci-fi disaster film Alfalfa Field recently shot by DV in Hollywood, or george romero's Diary of Death. And the more imaginative way, I think someone will try it boldly soon. Can I make a martial arts movie with a documentary? Don't worry. Just say no.

The 40-year-old Spanish director Jonmi Barnaglu has been fond of making horror movies for nearly ten years, but those movies (darkness, dead baby and nobody, apartment rental) have not achieved real success with the help of Hollywood funds and star effect. So did his co-star Capa Braga in The Video of Death. In addition to the creative downturn, they finally decided to take a slant and unexpectedly conquer the experienced audience. DV finally saved their career. This film reminds many experienced audiences of Blair Witch Project from 65438 to 0999. At the beginning of the movie, Angela, the hostess of the TV program While You Are Sleeping, took the cameraman to a fire squadron for a late-night interview. The whole movie was inadvertently recorded by the cameraman's shoulder. However, the Blair Witch Project failed to solve the core problem of "must be filmed well", and the conservatism and empiricism in Hollywood led to the amazing success of the Blair Witch Project 2 in the first episode, which failed to continue to explore. Instead, he strode back to the film pattern and delayed the maturity of DV, a new fruit of the film, for ten years.

The biggest attraction of documentary is that it can provide an immersive and tense atmosphere for the audience, which is very suitable for shooting "emergencies". The success of "Alfalfa Field" and "Death Video" is based on this. In "Death Video", the hostess and cameraman formed a unique scene of TV interview, which allowed the audience to be there and observe the trend of events in real time. The camera was first interviewed by the regular fire squadron. Soon, because the police and firefighters are together, the audience can enter an old apartment building with the photographer. In the next hour, they met the residents there in the evening. Because the film was shot randomly by a TV cameraman with a single viewpoint, it can't cover scenes and characters in the development process like traditional movies, but it enhances the fear and speculation brought by the unknowns, and the shaking of the camera increases the psychological ups and downs of the audience. Many films with similar photographic styles have indeed lost some viewers who can't stand the picture turbulence (this problem still exists in alfalfa), but with the effective influence of paul greengrass's two Bourne ultimatum films, more and more fans have learned to enjoy the news documentary shake. Jonmi Barnoglu and Kappa Braga did better. In view of this, they take some steady shots from time to time, and let the nervous nerves of the audience rest with short interviews, black screens and fixed shots.

The last scene of the movie is the most talked about by fans. This 7-minute night vision lens scene (the night vision function of DV is also used in Alfalfa Land, but the effect is far less than this) not only successfully pays tribute to the classic horror film The Silence of the Lambs, but also pushes the horror atmosphere created by the whole film to a climax, and the degree of shock is almost breathtaking. This episode also introduces the religious fears often involved in Spanish horror movies. Personally, I think it is a bit too serious, but it provides an essential explanation for this thrilling "zombie night". Experienced fans will also find that the last scene of the film is exactly the same as the Belgian film Man Bites Dog (1992). The camera fell to the ground to shoot mechanically, while the narrator (recorder) was dragged into the darkness with a scream. Because there is obviously no profound and sharp humanistic connotation in "Man Bites Dog", this not-so-novel shot is not as good as the ending of "Alfalfa Field". Despite this, the film still has little inspiration for finding a way out for low-budget movies-instead of making HD infinitely close to film, it is better to use its natural documentary texture to shoot creative stories with good quality and low price. I hope more DV lovers and young directors are interested in watching this film.

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Documentary —— A Brief Talk

In China, although it has been the object of fierce criticism for a long time, and the opinions of both sides are still in fierce confrontation, the expression "true representation" has been more and more widely used in film and television works, TV documentaries, TV feature films, and even TV documentary programs or columns. For example, CCTV's narration, legal report, man and nature, memory and so on. , including the documentary window of our new film, personal experience and witness, traveling around China, Chinese civilization, stories on the map, etc. , adopt the method of "real reproduction".

This method of applying fiction to non-fiction programs originated from film documentaries and spread to TV field for the first time on the basis of TV documentaries. This paper aims to discuss the reasons, advantages and disadvantages of "true reproduction" in film documentaries and the problems that should be paid attention to.

Documentary can clearly reflect the basic nature and creative method of this artistic expression, that is, recording, only from the perspective of words. Documentary is defined in the book "Applying TV in China" published by 1993 as follows: "Documentary is a documentary TV program that directly selects images and audio materials from real life and truly shows objective things and the author's understanding of it through non-fictional artistic expression." "Documentaries shoot real people directly, and fictional events are not allowed. The basic method is interview photography, that is, in the process of incident development, the shooting method of picking, waiting and grabbing is adopted to record the real environment, real time and real people. "

Real environment, real time, real people and real events have long been regarded as the place of life in China's documentary creation. Since 1950s, the shooting technique of "picking, waiting and grabbing" (also known as "naturalism technique") has always occupied a dominant position in China's documentary creation, and it was promoted to the height of political quality and attitude during the Cultural Revolution. However, with the development of practice and theory, the traditional definition of documentary has been questioned and subverted. It has been suggested that the definition of taking truth as the only attribute of documentary and fiction as the opposite of truth is limited, and this limitation is becoming more and more obvious in practice. Some people question: Is it untrue to use fictional expressions? Isn't what is fictional a documentary? More people generously apply the long-abandoned technique of "reappearance" to documentaries.

The "real reproduction" here means that when the event happened, no video or audio data were left, and then what happened at that time was simulated and reproduced in a fictional way according to the needs of creation.

In fact, in the hundred years after the birth of the film documentary, the method of "true reproduction" has been adopted. Robert Flaherty's film Nanook in the North (1922) is recognized as the pioneering work of the world documentary, and many scenes are also shot by fictional methods such as remake and posing. Documentary master Evans is also very good at organizing filming. He called this method "regaining the scene" and "resuming shooting".

The expression of "true representation" can be roughly divided into three forms:

First, repeat yourself, also called posing or makeup; It is a specific character in the documentary, repeating his specific real life fragments in the past according to the director's requirements. For example, when Flahadi filmed Nanuk in the north, Eskimos no longer lived in igloos. In order to show Eskimo customs, Flahadi asked the Nanuk family to recreate the scene of building an igloo. In addition, in the film, Flahadi also asked Nanuk and his neighbors to put on the skins that had been taken off and go to the seaside to catch walruses with steel forks like their grandfathers. According to the documentary photographers of the older generation in China, when the China People's Liberation Army occupied the Nanjing Presidential Palace, there were no embedded photographers in the advance troops, but the classic scene we are seeing now is that PLA soldiers ran into the Presidential Palace, and Kuomintang party flag was left on the roof, and the soldiers raised their arms and shouted.

The second is to play; It is an actor's act of playing past historical events or characters. For example, the British documentary Lost Civilization (8 episodes 1995) used a lot of acting skills. In the last episode of Mesopotamia: Back to the Garden of Eden, two actors played the scene when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947: two shepherds were walking in the Jerusalem wilderness under the scorching sun; They came to a small cave hidden under a steep slope; A shepherd climbed up; There are a large number of ancient ceramic fragments, parchment scrolls and other cultural relics in the cave ... In the program "Unlocking the Mystery of Xixia Mausoleum" in the "Window of Documentary" column, when it comes to the discovery of Xixia characters, acting skills are also used: a man with a torch goes down to a deep cave; The explorer's footsteps, step by step under the torch; The torch stopped in front of a broken stone tablet; The stone tablet is engraved with Xixia characters. This is manifested in the documentary pyramid, the installation of boulders at the top of the tower, the bonfire warning the police when looking at the Great Wall, and the construction of brine plank roads in Sister Creek.

The third is to use the relevant lens to achieve the purpose of reproduction. The relevant shots mentioned here include: borrowed film feature films, TV dramas and even TV drama films, shots of TV art films and empty shots with certain metaphors. In the series of "Witness and Experience" and "Silent Competition", a large number of related lenses are used to reproduce the diseases and disasters experienced by human beings. When talking about the disaster that happened a century ago to end leprosy and stop the Black Death, the author used many related scenes to show the living conditions of the ancient Greeks. In addition to a large number of documentary shots, "Send to athel Loren" also uses the lens of a film feature film. In the documentary "Chinese Civilization", there is a group of scenes in which Sima Qian wrote "Historical Records", which is a scene that Sima Qian thought deeply before several cases of "Historical Records" were being written. The documentary "Mawangdui" adopts the single shot of the heroine in the stage art film. Historical documentaries and biographical documentaries often adopt the fictional way of empty lens.

The expression of "true representation" can also be roughly divided into two categories in content:

One is detail reproduction, or process reproduction. Mainly used to reproduce the detailed process of something. Such as the detailed scene of how the Nanuk family lived. Another example is the detailed process of the discovery of the Dead Sea Roll. This "representation" is more real.

The second category is symbolic representation, or virtual representation. Mainly use vague scenes to symbolize something. Such as the torch and footsteps symbolizing the search; Accompanied by hurried footsteps and crowded people, it symbolizes running around; Ma Benteng's footprints and rolled-up smoke screen symbolize the hiss of the battlefield.

From the above classification and examples of "real representation", we can see that this fictional expression is indeed widely and widely used in non-fictional documentary creation. Correcting the root of its existence and finding the rationality of its existence can be summarized as three points:

First, expand the scope of documentary themes and enrich the program pictures.

The most fundamental reason why "true reproduction" can find the soil for survival in documentaries is the lack of original image materials.

This lack of original materials is particularly prominent in documentaries with historical and cultural themes, especially documentaries with retrospective features. For example, Confucius and Laozi in our new film "Light of Chinese Civilization", and the series "Great Harmony", "Suzhou Wuyue Spring and Autumn Annals" and "A Hundred Years' Journey to Dalian" in "Tales of the Millennium", the directors are confronted with problems not only in pictures but also in real life. In front of the directors, there are still only legends left by history; Or only the silence left by the ancestors; Or only those who have witnessed and those who know can have vivid and unforgettable memories. If you want to present these wonderful legends, shocking stories and unforgettable memories to the audience, "true reproduction" has become a good means of expression.

The documentary A Bing 1950 is a 34-minute film. When the director first came into contact with this legendary figure, the only information in his hand was a photo of A Bing's citizen card and six songs left by 1950 when the Japanese ruled Wuxi. In this case, if only interviews and this information are used to make up a film, it is obviously very thin, so the director adopts the expression of "true reproduction". The restored historical street view of Wuxi and the lonely background of A Bing, set off by the sad erhu opera, greatly increase the appeal of visual images and the spread effect of programs.

In our feature films "All over China" and "Chaozhou", we also used this "real reappearance" technique of chaozhou people leaving his hometown for his livelihood background and going to Nanyang. Imitate the picture of the old brown, and play a sailor walking barefoot on the beach to a lonely boat by the sea, holding a Chaozhou musical instrument coconut piano in his hand and carrying a small bag of blue and white on his back. Background music is a sad song in the tide music.

From the above two examples, we can see that the application of "true representation" greatly enriches the film and television pictures, and plays an important role in better mining historical and cultural documentaries, more vividly expressing retrospective documentaries and expanding the scope of documentary themes.

Second, satisfy the audience's desire to watch and enhance the narrative tension of the program.

Compared with historical and cultural documentaries, some documentary news documentaries are much closer to us in timeliness, but there are often various "absence" regrets in program production, and this regret is often the audience's desire to watch.

The desire to get real shock and real beauty from the picture is the main body of the audience's viewing mentality. A film expert said: "What is the definition of truth? You can see the facts from the feature film, but the documentary is more closely related to reality. " Another British documentary producer said: "People find that the development of modern technology makes people lose communication with the truth, so people hope to find real communication from documentaries and find the truth that they can't see or feel." In the creation, directors will find that the truth that the audience is eager to see is often just a regret of "absence" in front of the creators, which has a particularly obvious impact on some news documentaries. In order to make up for this regret, the phenomenon of "true reappearance" has been widely used in news documentaries, among which there are many successful people.

For example, the program "Signing with Life" in "Window of Documentary" is one of the successful works. The program tells the story of the protagonist suffering from severe blood diseases. If he is not treated in time, he fights with his life, signs a loan contract for Taoyuan and earns treatment fees for himself. In many places, the program skillfully uses some real scenes. For example, the protagonist fainted in front of the peach tree because of overwork, so he used makeup and organized filming. With the shouts of people, the guys working in Taoyuan rushed to the fallen hero with the shaking lens of the camera. The lens is real and touching, which makes up for the regret of "absence", better shows the indomitable spirit of the protagonist and brings shock to the audience's mind. There is also a paragraph in which the protagonist borrows money from his neighbor, which is also very touching. Due to drought and water shortage, funds are urgently needed to dig reservoirs. There is such a scene in the program: as night falls, the protagonist lingers in front of the neighbor's house … knocking at the door … a dialogue between the protagonist and the neighbor. Although we can't see the facial expressions of the characters clearly, through this reproduction, the narrative tension of the program is enhanced and the audience's viewing needs are met.

Third, create an artistic atmosphere and artistic conception, which increases the appeal of the program.

Michelle Reynolds said in The Art of Non-fiction: "It is extremely unwise to think that only feature films need to rely on the imagination of the audience ... If you exaggerate the plain and non-fiction characteristics of documentaries, you will often fail to understand the deep-rooted attraction of feature films." Facts have proved that the scene based on reality and rendered and reproduced by fictional expression is also an infectious creation like a feature film. The difference is that the truth of documentary is extracted from daily life, a drop of water in the real sea, not a fiction made up for the screen. Such as hurried footsteps, crowded people, fallen leaves after autumn, dead branches in winter, flying pigeons and so on. Commonly used in feature films, it has also become an important means of reproduction in documentaries, which can increase the artistry of documentaries.

The documentary "The Vicissitudes of the National Ball" tells the story that table tennis players in China were sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. When table tennis training was interrupted, the director used such a set of shots: a deserted farm yard covered with wormwood, a shed with agricultural tools, a broken table tennis case lying in the grass next to the earthen house, and a big red slogan was pulled in the shed.

The documentary "Dream Chasing Stage-"tells the story that when Mr. Lao She left the artistic body and passed away, he also used a set of highly infectious reappearance shots: an empty capital theatre, several stage spotlights shining on the entrance door, slowly pulling to the seat where Mr. Lao She sat before his death and pushing it onto the empty stage. ...

It can be seen that the lack of information and the regret of "absence" are only one aspect of the internal demand of documentary "true reproduction", and the pursuit of documentary artistry and appeal cannot be said to be an important reason for the widespread use of "true reproduction" at present.

It should be said that the use of "true representation" in China's documentary creation and documentary TV programs is not a bad thing for the development of China's documentary and China's TV. While making up for the lack of information and the regret of "absence", it enriches the picture and expands the scope; Enhance narrative tension; The role of creating artistic appeal cannot be underestimated.

However, the expression of "true representation" is a double-edged sword, which not only beautifies our programs, but also damages our works, leading to the failure of "painting a tiger instead of painting a dog". This is also an important reason why many documentary people disagree with this and advocate caution.

Its possible harm can be summarized as the following aspects:

1. provides convenient conditions for counterfeiting, and the negative impact is unimaginable.

1998 The apology statement issued by Carlton Central Independent Television Center in Britain caused an uproar in the world film and television industry. They called the TV documentary "Meeting" produced and broadcast by 1996 as a program that caught the wind and lacked factual basis. The story shows that the underground drug transportation line from Colombia to London does not exist, but the main part of the documentary is performance.

This situation is not uncommon in the world film and television industry. A fake program is exposed and a fake program is produced. Some people attribute all this to the proliferation of "real reproduction" technology, which may be biased, but it is also an indisputable fact that the wide application of "real reproduction" technology in documentaries does facilitate counterfeiting.

Indeed, "true representation" is based on such a false foundation, and its negative impact is terrible. It gives people such a message that everything can be imitated and played. Since the object is not real, is it still real now? Is there any way to know the truth? It can be seen that "real reproduction" must be based on reality and must always adhere to the real principles of life.

2. It may encourage the ethos of "ending at the expense of the original" and shake the foundation of documentary authenticity.

Reality is the life and foundation of documentary. Real images are always the main source of documentary creation and the most valuable, valuable and meaningful element in documentary. And "true reappearance" is just an expression technique that plays a supplementary and auxiliary role in documentary creation. However, in the creation of documentaries, there is a phenomenon of over-emphasis on reproduction and hope for reproduction. This ethos of "ending at the expense of the original" is a challenge to the authenticity of documentaries and must not be encouraged. The author once saw a movie, in which the protagonist was performing almost from beginning to end, but the protagonist was not an actor after all, and his poor acting skills made a program with good ideas ridiculous. Other films blindly pursue artistic effects and ignore the details of the quoted materials, thus making irresponsible mistakes.

3. The intersection of truth and falsehood misled and deceived the audience.

There is also a terrible misunderstanding in the technique of "true reproduction", that is, the intersection of truth and falsehood leads the audience to see things in the fog, misleading and deceiving the audience. There is a film that reflects the first conquest of Mount Qomolangma by the China mountaineering team. Speaking of three climbers finally climbing Mount Everest in the morning, three team members stood on the summit and cheered excitedly. But people with a little common sense know that it is dark on Everest at this time; Anyone with a little mountaineering history knows that the China mountaineering team climbed Mount Everest for the first time without leaving any video materials. Other programs borrow the big scenes of TV dramas without explanation, which seriously misleads the audience. Therefore, it has become an unwritten rule in TV programs that all places with "true reproduction" should be accompanied by subtitles.

4. The reproduction is untrue, which stifles the imagination of the audience and reduces the appreciation taste of the audience.

"True representation" should be based on truth, but we should also pay attention to the truth in expression. Reproduction is untrue, which is a taboo in the application of "true reproduction" expression. The result of this situation is often to turn truth into falsehood. Such as unreasonable structure, rigid dialogue, false politeness and helpless scenes, often make the audience unable to bear to watch any more. Too detailed reproduction also stifled the imagination of the audience. Therefore, when using "real representation", we must be cautious, pay attention to rough but not fine, be freehand but not realistic, and be true, natural and smooth.