The Return Train is a documentary worth watching.

The Return Train is a documentary worth watching.

The filming of Return Train started in 2006 and was completed in 2009. CCTV reporter Fan Lixin organized a film crew to shoot it. It has received about 7 million yuan from CCTV and other overseas investments. According to historical data, China is in the stage of building a well-off society in an all-round way and getting rid of poverty in 2006. The large income gap between urban and rural areas makes the rural population flood into the rapidly developing cities such as North, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, bringing labor and market to the economically developed cities. Social problems such as rural population migration, rural recession, left-behind children and left-behind elderly people became prominent social contradictions at that time, which affected the happiness of rural population. "Spring Festival travel rush fever" is a very representative activity in this period, which reflects the hardships faced by migrant workers in China. The world economic crisis in 2008 is also the twists and turns of the social environment experienced in the filming process. The closure of factories and the unemployment of workers undoubtedly caused great harm to the working population at that time. The documentary "The Return Train" set in this environment reflects the discovery and thinking of the whole group of migrant workers from a typical perspective. The contradiction between parents and children in the family and the individual's choice between studying and making a living are all difficult problems that haunt the minds of migrant workers.

The Train Home was filmed by Fan Lixin, his brother Fan Liming and photographer Sun Shaoguang. The main producers have the identity and professional ability of CCTV reporters, and we can see that they have captured and excavated the family status and state of mind of Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin in the film. The number of production teams is small. Considering shooting, planning and extension, we can guess that the production team will follow the starring family to record real life. For the director, cameraman and the whole shooting team, shooting a documentary with this theme needs to be truly integrated into the environment at that time, which is a challenge to physical strength and energy, as well as the ability to deal with emergencies.

When "The Train Home" was broadcast, only the production team invested about 6.5438+0.5 million yuan by CCTV. During the production process, there was a shortage of funds. To this end, director Fan Lixin cut the existing material into a short film of about 8 minutes to seek investment on a global scale, and obtained $65,438+0,000 from Europe, America and Japan. This classic way of raising funds has brought me subtle inspiration. Combined with the traditional investment method of producers, it is more risky to obtain funds through sample bidding, which will test the quality of the film, but it is undoubtedly a more challenging way for the shooting team. In the face of more "producers", the director has more right to speak and can better realize the shooting effect in the director's mind.

Secondly, the marketization and internationalization of return train financing have brought a broader market and more advanced international standards for its issuance and screening. Different from Wu's personal documentary Wandering in Beijing, The Return Train is shown in cinemas, which has a broader overseas market including the United States, the Netherlands and Belgium, which should be regarded as the first time in the history of China documentary.

The shooting technique of "The Train on the Way Home" has a strong rendering, and many images, empty mirrors and pitching techniques are used. For example, in the story of her daughter Zhang Qin, when Zhang Qin finished a bundle of jeans in the factory for the first time, she piled it in the corner. The photographer followed her movements, followed the camera from Zhang Qin to heavy jeans that were sleepy. With the return of Zhang Qin, the camera continued to stay on jeans. This expressive lens seems to tell us how difficult it is for a girl of 17 to make these jeans. There are similar shots, which are shot around the elevation angle, accompanied by very "trendy" background music, which is also a way of transporting mirrors that is often used to shape characters in movies. It can be seen that "Return Train" conveyed the director's certain emotional thoughts in the filming process.

In addition, there are a lot of people crowded in the movie "The Train Home", overlooking the crowd from a height and the location on the train route. The cooperation of many departments and the transportation and protection of equipment in the shooting process are unimaginable difficulties. At this point, the necessary experience is a very necessary factor for me to shoot successfully. When shooting indoor shots, the documentary photographer's grasp of the position and the handling of close-ups and shots of people are full of a sense of scene. Direct zoom makes the rhythm change with the position of the lens, which is in line with the third party's cognitive process of facts.

The train on the way home added background music in the post-production, which I think is very decisive for the documentary. In my opinion, the background music with emotional rendering is dominated by the creative factors of the documentary creators, while previous personal documentaries often abandon the use of background music and adopt a completely objective attitude to make statements. Therefore, this feature can flaunt the weight of documentary in art and documentary as much as possible.

From the classification point of view, the train on the way home seems to be between the real movie and the direct cinema. It not only has a lot of viewing angles, but also seems to add a little incentive to the self-report of the characters. The editing of the lens seems to be quite satisfactory, but it still brings the editing ideas of western film feature films to a certain extent. This is related to the internationalization of financing. The investment from many countries makes The Return Train no longer a purely domestic film, but also brings elements of western film and television production standards. This makes the film use international editing technology in many places in post-processing, and also brings more factors and ways of discourse acceptable to westerners to this film about China phenomenon.

Due to the diversity of investors, The Road Home has been internationalized in market and standards, screened in developed countries including the United States, Japan and Italy, and applied international standards in production and distribution. What is worth mentioning is its initiative in network communication. Around 20 1 1, when China's internet industry took off, this documentary also went to the internet, and was released on Youku, Tencent, iQiyi and other platforms, realizing the interaction between online and offline screening. At home and abroad, online and offline, while spreading in a broader space, this also requires documentaries to meet the needs and tastes of different audiences in content form. How to make the audience get psychological and sensory stimulation and recognition in different communication channels is a factor that should be paid attention to in future documentaries, which also brings higher requirements to documentary creation.

Regarding the cognition of documentary as art or in-depth reporting, this documentary has made me systematically sort out my own ideas. The Train Home records the working life of a migrant worker in Zhang Changhua. Taking "Spring Festival travel rush fever" as the breakthrough point, I went there twice to outline the difficult choices and various realities of rural population under the huge income gap between urban and rural areas. If the documentary is born for the truth, the posing shots in the film obviously refute this assertion. Many shots have strong artistic creation factors, even if they have no influence on the facts themselves. On the contrary, from many scenes and plots, we can feel the sympathy of the director, photographer and even the whole production team for Zhang Changhua's family, and the regret and regret for Zhang Qin. These emotions are brought to us by movies, not only through the story itself, but also through the later factors such as the way the story is told and the soundtrack. It must be said that artistic creation is carried out on the basis of real life, while documentary is produced by adding artistic expression techniques on the basis of retaining the greatest truth. Photographers and directors will be influenced by subjective factors in the shooting process, which is not an obstacle to the authenticity of the documentary, but a documentary perspective.

That is, documentaries record the truth from the perspective of documentaries. The angle of documentary is perceptual, artistic and creative, and the truth of documentary is rational, realistic and objective. Documentary directors convey their feelings and emotions about reality through truth, so what distinguishes documentaries from news reports is precisely the factor that conveys the author's feelings.

Documentary is art, no doubt.