Zhou Daming's Life Experience

Zhou Daming has lost his father since he was a child, and he lives in this family. At the age of thirteen, he left Guangdong with his relatives to study in Shanghai. After studying in a technical secondary school for two years, he became an apprentice in a shop opened by his relatives because of the pressure of life. 1927 introduced by fellow villagers, he was an apprentice in the photography department of the then Youlian Film Company, and later worked as an assistant to Hong Weilie, a photographer studying in Japan. At that time, Youlian Company mainly made martial arts films, all of which were shot in the sunshine. 1930, Zhou Daming began to shoot the third episode of Woman by the Wild River independently, and the next year he filmed Hero at Sea, officially starting his career as a cinematographer. Then I made three films. 193 1 year later, the "September 18th" and "November 28th" incidents occurred one after another. Under the call and leadership of the Producers' Party of China, anti-Japanese and anti-Chiang upsurge was launched everywhere, and the national salvation movement was launched all over the country. Conscious China people stand on the side of * * * producers and resolutely resist Japan. 1933, the underground organization of the party established a film group headed by Xia Yan. At this time, I had frequent contacts with progressive people such as Zheng, Li and Li, and my thoughts were greatly improved. He is extremely dissatisfied with the absurd and unreal martial arts films shot by Youlian Film Company, but he tends to reflect the wild roses and the national tragedy shot by Yu Lianhua Company.

Real life feature film of anti-Japanese progress. At the same time, I am not satisfied with shooting only with sunlight. I am committed to shooting with lighting as a powerful modeling means. This spring, the party's film group systematically sent left-wing forces to relevant film companies. Introduced by Hong Weilie, Zhou Daming entered Lianhua Film Company. In order to learn lighting technology, he is willing to be an assistant to photographer Zhou Ke, and participated in the filming of Dawn, Struggle and other films. At the shooting scene, he carefully observed how Zhou Ke used lighting, gradually figured out the modeling function of lighting, and at the same time worked hard to study the photography business, which won the photographer's love and trust. Eight months later, Zhou Ke recommended Zhou Daming to the boss of Lianhua Company. In this way, I independently undertook the photography of the feature film "The Wind" (directed by Wu Lin) at 1933. During the period of 1934- 1937, he made films such as debauchery, fortune, new woman, lost lamb, a bloody battle at Langshan, and bachelor. Due to the cooperation with directors such as Cai Chusheng and Fei Mu, their serious creative attitude and progressive tendency in filming greatly influenced Zhou Daming. He pondered carefully and summarized constantly, especially in shaping characters and creating environmental atmosphere with light.

Method, gradually formed a unique style with fewer lights, clear light path and strong atmosphere. For example, 1936, when shooting the Lost Lamb, in order to show the tragic scene of street children, he used a picture, put a dim street lamp on the left side of the picture, occupying half of the position, put the poor street children's face on the lower right corner of the picture, and shot a lamp on the street children's cheeks from the direction of the street lamp. Except for these two bright spots, the rest are black. In addition, he also has his own style and ideas in composition. In The Lost Lamb, a waif came to Huangpu River in Shanghai, and the first thing he saw was foreign warships and cannons. Zhou Daming deeply understands the director's intention. In the subjective shots of street children, foreign large-caliber pike pipes occupy most of the pictures, while the Bund only occupies a small position in the pictures. This deformed picture vividly shows the present situation that old China was ravaged by imperialist aggression. Since then, Zhou Daming has developed his own specialties and accumulated experience in films that reflect the life themes of middle and lower working people, such as "Blood Rain on the Wolf Mountain" and "The Bachelor". As he himself said, "I am a photographer who specializes in taking pictures of straw houses."

1937 at the beginning of the anti-Japanese war, he took his camera to Jiaxing and worked in the army for a period of time, then Fei Mu went to Zhengzhou to shoot the documentary A Record of the North Battlefield. 1939 After returning to Shanghai from Hongkong, he participated in the filming of Confucius and Ancient Songs of China in Hua Min Film Company. It is worth mentioning that Confucius has reached a certain height in artistic processing and photographic technology processing. However, Zhou Daming always said modestly: "This is all due to the director Fei Mu." In fact, Zhou Daming has made painstaking efforts and labor in scene scheduling, originality of composition and strangeness of using all the shots.

His handling of the picture is very bold, the picture is concise and clean, and it also reflects Kong Qiu's mood at that time. He likes improvisation and is good at grasping the special atmosphere caused by light in an instant. For example, once he entered the shed to film in the morning, opened the shed door, and a ray of sunshine shot into the shed and passed through the round door of the studio. He immediately seized the opportunity and grabbed the shot. On another occasion, with the black tile roof of the dining room as the background, he set up a platform and steps in front of the roof. Standing in the hatchback, a warrior held the battle array and took a picture of Confucius walking up the steps. These pictures fully show his strange, strange, simple and vivid characteristics in photography. Later, Zhou Daming was transferred to Xinhua Film Company as a photographer, and co-produced 1 1 films with director Pingqian Li, including Madame Butterfly. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, from 65438 to 0946, Zhou Daming participated in the Shanghai Experimental Film Workshop led by Fei Mu, and made six films, including Hualien Port and Spring Return.

After liberation, Zhou Daming joined the Shanghai Film Studio. He has successively made films such as Man's Palm, Song Jingshi, Shangganling, Heroes Drive Long Guns, Spring Man, Festival Song and Dance, East Wind Blowing, City that Never Sleeps, Creating Grassland and New Song and Dance. In decades of practice, Zhou Daming has maintained and developed his own photography style, especially in black and white movies. The film Shangganling, which reflects Chinese people's Volunteer Army's heroic deeds in 1956, and the film prairie fire, which reflects Anyuan workers' struggle life in 1962, have made certain achievements in reflecting heroes, shaping group images and expressing environmental atmosphere. When Zhou Daming was filming, he was willing to study the script hard and fully understand the director's intention, so he knew every scene and even every shot like the back of his hand. At the same time, he knows the performance of photographic lenses and lighting equipment like the back of his hand. At the shooting scene, he was able to dispatch troops in an orderly manner. As soon as he entered the set, he put all his energy into the play. There seems to be no one around except the director, actors and lights. He deeply understands that light is just a brush in the photographer's hand, and he should have his own style to use it. In his view, photographers can't mechanically stick to the limitation of numbers on the light meter in order to achieve a certain artistic effect, and use light to shape characters and create a specific atmosphere. Through years of photography practice, he has developed a pair of "golden eyes" and can see the brightness distribution of the picture with his eyes without any tools. He often adds strong highlights to characters or backgrounds, and sometimes he often makes most pictures in dark parts with low illumination. These bold treatments make the photos he took really have their own characteristics. Secondly, he advocates that the use of lamps and lanterns should not be much, but fine. He is very familiar with lamps and lanterns, and advocates that every lamp should play a certain role, and all lamps that can or cannot be used should be resolutely used, because one more lamp will have one more shadow, which will destroy the simplicity of the picture. The third feature of Zhou Daming's photography is that he does everything himself. He likes to block the machine by himself. He thinks that this can fully grasp the scheduling of actors, the composition and lighting of the picture. He is conscientious and meticulous in his work, but he cares for the younger generation and tries his best to cultivate it. When shooting the big scene of "reasoning struggle" in "Starting a prairie fire", he took the initiative to teach the deputy director to decorate the mass scene, arranging a dozen people on one side of the picture in the foreground, and then arranging the people behind them according to the level, which is grand but not chaotic; When shooting a pilot film reflecting rural life, he earnestly warned another photographer how to enlarge the light ratio between the subject and the background, which benefited him a lot. Nowadays, many of his students are famous photographers.