On the morning of October 14th, Huang Jianxin, winner of the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, East-West Exchange Contribution Honor" at the 7th Pingyao International Film Festival, held a master class "Movies Will Not Get Down" at the Pingyao Film Palace. The event was hosted by China Film Archive program planner Sha Dan and Pingyao International Film Festival founder Jia Zhangke. After the screening of the 1986 science fiction film "Dislocation" directed by Huang Jianxin, Huang Jianxin discussed topics such as AI technology, film development, and film creation. The audience present shared their experience in film exchange and creation.

Jia Zhangke, Huang Jianxin and Sha Dan took a group photo on the spot

It is worth mentioning that at the opening ceremony of the 7th Pingyao International Film Festival on October 11, all the young directors present who were shortlisted for the Hidden Dragon section of this film exhibition served as award guests and awarded director Huang Jianxin the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, East and West" award. Party exchanges and contribution honors”. As a pioneer in the new era of Chinese film, Huang Jianxin uses advanced film concepts and unique directing techniques to play the voice of destiny in images. In terms of creation, his works are both small and ordinary, and extraordinary. In recent years, as a producer, Huang Jianxin has helped Chinese films develop a new look and built a bridge for cultural exchanges through film as a medium; as early as the 1980s and 1990s, Huang Jianxin filmed the "Pioneer Trilogy" ("The Black Cannon Incident" ”, “Dislocation”, “Reincarnation”) and “City Trilogy” (“Stand Up Straight, Don’t Lie Down”, “Back to Back, Face to Face”, “Stop on Red Light, Go on Green Light”) and other works with absurd color and realistic significance. .

Director Huang Jianxin

In his speech, Jia Zhangke recalled that the first time he watched the movie "Black Cannon Incident" directed by Huang Jianxin was in a cinema in Fenyang County in the 1980s. At that time, he noticed that the film had a strong sense of authorial innovation. "This pioneering nature is still the same in "Dislocation", and to me, the vision reflected in the work is particularly surprising. It presents a world outside our inherent experience. And at that time, Director Huang and Teacher Liu Zifeng There are many innovations in the way the film is performed, which is a kind of 'zero degree performance'."

The movie "Misplacement" is a companion piece to "The Black Cannon Incident". It tells the story of engineer Zhao Shuxin who was promoted to director and built a robot exactly like himself to deal with various situations, which resulted in a series of unexpected events. When Huang Jianxin spoke, he first expressed his memory for the film's lead actor Liu Zifeng and photographer Wang Xinsheng, who passed away in recent years. "Without them, this film would not have been made. At that time, like-minded people like us were brave enough to explore together and put Ning's failure in exploration into perspective." , don't live by experience' was a slogan posted in the film crew's office."

The following is a compilation (with deletions) of his speeches in this master class, presented in oral form.

Master class scene

[Oral by Huang Jianxin]

The success of "Dislocation" was an accident

When did "Dislocation" suddenly start to attract attention on the Internet? It’s been three years since the epidemic, and everyone can’t go out, so they watch movies online. After seeing this movie, they immediately became hyped.

I know some friends who are not in the film industry and they also watch it. They are all in the sciences. Some of them are university science and engineering teachers. They asked me how could you have a concept of AI at that time? I said no, I make absurd comedies. He said that you made a movie in which the protagonist made an intelligent robot to hold meetings for him. I thought about it for a long time, but I forgot about it.

In fact, this movie was an accident, and it was an accidental success.

"Dislocation" poster

I have been a person who loves to think wildly since I was a child. When I was very young, I said that what I need a car for is that the road should be able to move like a crawler track. For five kilometers, ten kilometers, or fifteen kilometers, when I go out, I can just get on the crawler and take it to the place. There is no need to car. When filming "Dislocation", we wanted to use absurdity to skip the logic of science and technology. If we were to dismantle countless circuits or something like in American science fiction movies, we couldn't do it at the time. We could only write about our reality, soul and real people. The most real part and the false part are in opposition, showing the story of split personality or the conflict of alienation. At that time, I actually wanted to write this from the perspective of social significance, but came up with such a shell.

We ran into problems as soon as we started filming. I remember very clearly why it was so "real" on the first day of filming. There was no way to solve it. I said at the meeting that if the film is shot like this, the logic of the film will not hold up at all, and the audience will not be able to follow the absurd logic into the play, and the play will inevitably collapse. At that time, there was a person who was the assistant artist who was imaginative and often had very strange ideas in his mind. He suggested that there was a painting hanging in the main scene and that the content of the painting should be removed, leaving only the black frame. I made another black door, and through the black door is the Devil City in Xinjiang... During that time, the artist put forward many absurd setting suggestions, and I discovered that the Chinese actually have their own imagination for science fiction, such as We have all read "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", which contains many fantastic imaginations.

Screenshot of "Dislocation"

I had a little understanding of the concept of AI at that time. In fact, the concept of AI has a history of nearly 100 years, and it has been 100 years since it was first proposed. It is only with the development of science and industry that people are seeing this more and more. ’s work, and when AI suddenly became an established fact in life, everyone had this awareness. At that time, I felt that a robot could appear in the movie, and it would be scientifically feasible in the future. However, this does not mean that I understood the theory and concept of AI at that time. It was just that all the factors collided together, and a robot that could appear in the movie could be established. Intelligent robots that simulate human objects.

The theme of this film festival is "Modern Era", which happens to be talking about the relationship between AI and movies. For example, our experience when watching Chaplin - in the silent film era, Chaplin was supreme; after the invention of sound films, he rejected this new option and was unable to enrich his intimacy with the audience. However, it was inevitable that sound films would replace silent films. The changes brought about by the emergence of AI are the same now.

Traditional film crews could be gone in eight years

I recently read some books about AI, one of which is "The World in 500 Days" by Kevin Kelly. Everyone uses computers, and a program will issue an instruction. When we use the word "instruction", we are actually using the computer as a tool. But in the face of AI, the author of this book proposes "dialogue". What is a conversation? It is communication between two persons who are equal in intelligence. AI is another intelligent system, so we must have an attitude of making friends with AI. It is definitely not good for you to go against it. We don’t have to worry about the next generation of humans. The next generation interacts with the AI system during their birth and growth stages. On the contrary, today's human beings, the more successful they are and the more they recognize their own value, the easier it is to solidify. Solidification is the enemy of the future. Therefore, creators must activate themselves and must not solidify.

In recent years, I have investigated various AI experiments and its virtual space reconstruction capabilities. I don’t know if I am right to think so, but my intuition tells me that in about eight years, the current film crew will not continue Existence - In the traditional sense of the filmmaking process, there must first be a film crew, including photography, art, lighting, and scenery, and a group of people working together in a specific physical space. Maybe in the future, just a few imaginative people + a technical support team working with AI can complete a movie.

People always say that film is a regrettable art, because the vision and concept of the core creative people are always limited by various factors in the process of realization, or attenuated due to the different frequencies of collaborators. With the intervention of AI systems, we can complete the artistic image that is closest to what we want. In this sense, AI will bring about earth-shaking qualitative changes to movies.

Why movies are more sensitive to new things is because movies are particularly closely related to technological development. I remember when we co-produced the movie "The Mummy 3" with the United States, we needed to use scanners to shoot a scene in which the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of King Qin were fighting in the desert. At that time, the United States proposed to use their most advanced domestic scanners, but our country did not approve this model because its accuracy in environmental scanning was too high and might endanger national security. Finally, under our full supervision, the instruments were supervised as soon as they landed at Tianjin Port. After scanning at the set in Hebei, they were immediately "carried" to the port and left. What does this mean? The most advanced things in the world are always related to movies.

"The Mummy 3" stills

I remember that after television became popular in mainland China in the 1980s, a TV station director once said to me, when you (those who make movies) can no longer do it, please come to the TV station. The current situation is that TV stations can no longer "mix", and the Internet has replaced them. TV sets have not solved the essential difference between viewing places. You can watch them on mobile phones and iPads. When you watch a video on your iPad, you have a one-to-one relationship with the player. But we are the terminal for movies, and cinemas still have value. In a cinema, there may be five hundred people facing a screen at the same time. This is a concept of "field". When we watch a horror movie, we may not be frightened by the plot, but when a girl next to us yells, we are infected by her emotions. This is the charm of the movie, and there is currently no other substitute.

In addition, our film industry also has its own characteristics. Its production process is open to the public. The media is always reporting on the film production process, so the relationship between the creators and the audience is very important. Movies actually have two attributes: one is the attribute of the work, and the other is the attribute of the relationship between the creative team and public opinion. This is what I have learned from making movies over the years. While filmmakers persevere in pursuing artistic creation, they must also learn to handle the point of emotional connection with the audience, so that they can get twice the result with half the effort.