1905 movie network feature The third day of the National Day box office counterattack has also become the fastest National Day film to break 1.10 billion yuan box office.
The five unit short films in the film have different audiences’ impressions. Among them, although the "Road Home" directed by Deng Chao and Yu Baimei is not the best one in the public evaluation, it has also achieved a certain comedic effect and emotional expression that fits the theme.
"We also know that the level is indeed better than when we first started," Deng Chao and Yu Baimei said in our interview. If a two-hour movie is compared to a grade, they have now entered "the third and a half grades" from "The Road Back Home."
Deng Chao and Yu Baimei were interviewed by 1905 Movie Network
"We still have many books to finish. We can only continue to deepen our learning through practice. In the project we will do soon, think about what problems we had last time. We hope that each time we perform better than last time."
Deng Chao and Yu Baimei admitted that if "The Road Back Home" were remade now, they believe it would be better than it was then.
The filmmaking duo, who made three and a half films in six years and called themselves "directing students" in the "third and a half years," knew that graduation was still some time away, or that, on this so-called directing path, there would never be a day when they would actually graduate.
Behind the scenes: Deng Chao gaining weight and growing a beard, Wu Jingcheng "action guidance"
The story of "The Road Back Home" is inspired by director Yu Baimei’s observation and experience of changes in his hometown.
In 2018, he returned to his hometown in northern Shaanxi and saw that the Loess Plateau, which used to be full of rocks and ravines, had become green, and millions of acres of the Mu Us Desert had also been successfully greened. He wanted to write a story about this theme.
In the process of conception, Yu Baimei just saw the news that Yulin had successfully developed the sand apple, "They are digging pits in the desert, and after digging the pits, they put loess in the sand, and after putting the loess, they plant fruit seedlings. The seedlings are also wrapped in plastic sheets for fear of water loss, and then they need to be watered continuously. Because northern Shaanxi is relatively dry, it is very difficult in the desert."
Yu Baimei introduced that it took seven or eight years to develop the sand apple before it was finally successful. The difference between it and the Three North Shelter Forest is that it has both a sand prevention effect and a cash crop. Combining the Mu Us Desert with the sand apple, there is a story background for "The Road Back Home".
Co-director Deng Chao is still starring this time. In order to play Qiao Shulin, a seemingly opportunistic and full of lies, the local boss who is called "Joe’s richest man",He wants to look "greasy" on the outside, grow a beard, gain weight, and "eat his belly out".
As a native of Jiangxi, Deng Chao also had to learn to speak Northern Shaanxi dialect. He said that it was really difficult to learn Northern Shaanxi dialect, "It was me and Wu Jing who struggled more. Of course, Wang Yuan won.
Wang Yuan is the only actor who did not ask for correction in the later dubbing stage. He directly used the original sound on the spot, and Deng Chao and Wu Jing both got the dubbing shed to re-record, and the teacher in northern Shaanxi pronounced it word by word.
Yu Baimei revealed to us a little voice-in-the-scene: "The northern Shaanxi dialect has very heavy nasal requirements, and Deng Chao and Wu Jing were forced to fold in the end, stuffed with toilet paper and blocked their noses. Teacher Shaanxi said this has a smell, but this is more like it."
Mr. Wu has made three consecutive guest appearances in films directed by Deng Chao and Yu Baimei, from "The Breakup Master" to "The Milky Way Tutorial School" to "The Road Back Home." This time, he played the owner of a snack bar in northern Shaanxi. Although he did not show the action scenes he is good at, he volunteered to become the "action director" on the set.
In Miao Fu’s appearance, he needed to brake suddenly at a fixed point in the frame of the camera. For him, who had not driven a car for many years, this action was very difficult. Miao Fu drove many times and couldn’t stop to the designated location.
Wu Jing, who was in the same scene, couldn’t help but take a big cushion and put it at the front, instructing Miao Fu to drive directly into the cushion, and step on the brakes as soon as he heard the sound of the collision. Miao Fu followed Wu Jing’s suggestion and finally succeeded.
Miao Fu’s legs went soft after getting off the bus, "He didn’t expect him to be acting in an action play." Deng Chao also imitated Wu Jing’s state of being guided unconsciously on the set, "Let’s see how to put this, come, okay, wait for this… Teacher Wu Jing doesn’t want sand in his eyes."
"The Road Back Home" was filmed for 26 days and was the third film of "My Hometown and Me." Yu Baimei used "heartbreak" and "gritting teeth and cutting love" to describe the editing stage. The original duration of each group was basically about 40 minutes, and the five groups were 200 minutes. Considering the theater, audience and various factors, they also had to shorten the scene and cut some shots.
Why did Deng Chao and Yu Baimei make progress in making movies?
Deng Chao in "The Road Back Home" and Ge You in "Good People in Beijing" are actually a kind of people who share the same characteristics: they love to lie and play tricks, but they also complete the appropriate response to the main theme proposition.
They all attempt to create a scam by themselves, with the ultimate goal of achieving kindness to others and to their hometown.
The image of Qiao Shulin portrayed by Deng Chao was very distinct. He was wearing a polo shirt with a slightly wrinkled blazer, a briefcase under his arm, and sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. He looked like a down-to-earth local tyrant, not to mention a "fake local tyrant".
In the comedy section, "The Road Back Home" is not the laughing fruit of "The Breakup Master" and "The Villain Angel", but uses Deng Chao’s disguised identity as a local tyrant and his mouth when he fooled "Cargo Queen" Yan Ni to make jokes, such as forcibly doing first class, forcibly rubbing group photos, unable to afford hotels, and using bus cards to swipe to pay.
Why is it that Deng Chao and Yu Baimei have made progress in this film than before, not only in terms of comedy, but also in their success in shaping a relatively plump screen character?A pitiful and lovely Qiao Lin, Deng Chao also played him quite realistically and interestingly.
At the end of the story, a speech story reversal subverted Qiao Shulin’s disliked image as a liar at first. He was the one who really contributed to his hometown. In order to successfully grow and sell sand apples, and lead the villagers to poverty reduction and wealth, he was willing to invest all his money in desert greening and apple development, and even fell into bankruptcy.
Yan Ni’s live streaming host Yan Feiyan also showed a high-minded, arrogant and rude appearance at the beginning. Along the way, she gradually led to her poor childhood and growing up.
Both "The Road Back Home" and Xu Zheng’s "The Last Lesson" depict rural teachers – Teacher Fan and Mother Gao – whose inculcation to their students has nurtured a generation of young people who work together to build their hometown and change the face of their hometown. The same is true of Qiao Shulin, the son of Mother Gao, and Yan Feiyan, who finally changed her attitude.
Yu Baimei said: "Your hometown can be your teacher. There is a teacher Gao in’Galaxy Tutorial School ‘. This time I wrote about another mother Gao, who was a teacher who deeply influenced me in my hometown." From Yan Ni touching Gao’s mother’s red headscarf after getting on the plane to her climbing to the top of the mountain to see her new alma mater, these brushstrokes also stem from Yu Baimei’s true nostalgia for his teacher.
The connection between "The Road Home" and "The Milky Way Tutoring School" also includes the male protagonists Horned Horse Haowen and Qiao Shulin. They are also the same kind of people, both of whom are not understood by the outside world and misunderstood by others. They are all down-and-out fathers who have experienced glory and fallen to the bottom at the peak of their careers.
"The Road Back Home" also has various problems left by "Galaxy Cram School", which needs to be further optimized and improved by Deng Chao and Yu Baimei in creation.Using a tearful student speech to reverse the image of the character inevitably fell into a didactic sense, and also made Qiao Shulin too tall.
No matter what, "The Road Back Home" still had the greatest advantage of "My Hometown and Me" as a whole. It was a movie with "human flavor". There were no absolute good people and no absolute bad people.
It is to use less perfect little people, with small changes in human feelings, to project the inner operating laws of the Chinese countryside, and to reflect the grand proposition of the changes of the times.
We are beginners in directing and watch the same movie textbook as Wu Jing
Three of the directors of the five units of "My Hometown and Me" are "acting is good" – Xu Zheng, Chen Sicheng and Deng Chao, and their directorial debuts are also box office hits.
Deng Chao and Yu Baimei firstThe first co-directed film "Break Up Master" won the summer domestic film box office championship with 665 million yuan in 2014. But what does not match the box office is the criticism of the low quality of the work to the bottom.
At that time, Deng Chao said in an interview with 1905 Film Network: "I hated Deng Chao even more before filming’The Breakup Master ‘. For example, I would complain about other people’s works and compare things… After I finished a movie completely, I knew how difficult it was to be a filmmaker, and then I said I would never complain again."
When it came to "Villain Angel", the infamy of bad movies came one after another. A first-class actor, along with Yu Baimei, was named "an underclass director", and Deng Chao gradually understood how difficult it was to make a movie.
Deng Chao and Yu Baimei admitted that the commercial success of "The Breakup Master" was a fluke, and they began to wonder what it was like to be a director. "Neither of us are actually professional directors. After each shooting, the most discussed thing is the review. We still feel like beginners in directing, and there are many secrets we don’t know."
Obviously, from "Breakup Master", "Villain Angel" to "Galaxy Tutoring School", Douban’s score has also increased from 4 or 5 to 6, and this time "The Road Back Home" can also see a little improvement.
"Galaxy School" can even be seen as a watershed moment in the filmmaking of the directors’ co-directors, moving from a rambunctious comedy to a work with more emotional depth.
Wu Jing, who has made many guest appearances, is the object they have always wanted to cooperate deeply. During the filming of Wu Jing’s scene in "The Road Back Home", Deng Chao and Wu Jing simultaneously received an invitation to cooperate in the film "Kumgang River" to resist the United States and aid Korea. They also hope that the three can find an opportunity to make a feature film together.
Deng Chao, Yu Baimei, and Wu Jing also had a small group in common, and the most talked about their own gains and losses as directors. They bought movie textbooks together, read the same book, and saw that a certain page was related to the movie they shot. They would take screenshots and send them to the group to share the problems encountered during filming, help each other, and make progress together.
For the future, Deng Chao and Yu Baimei do not make too many assumptions. What is clear is that they will make genre filmsSeveral projects will not be comedies, but the comedic elements will always exist in a certain proportion, and even the two people will not always be bound together as directors, with the possibility of independent directing.
