Millennium director

After staying in Hulunbuir for a few days, Wu Yuan took his private plane to leave this beautiful place.

This is how location scouting works. After visiting the scene in person, confirming that the scenery on the scene meets the requirements of filming, and conceiving some scenes in mind, for the director, the location scouting is completed.

As for the subsequent contact with the place to rent the venue and other details, of course, it is the responsibility of the deputy director of the crew.

As a director, Wu Yuan has more important things to do.

He did not fly back to Beijing, but flew from Hulunbuir to Qingdao.

The reason why Wu Yuan went to Qingdao was simple. The crew of "Mulan" needed a complete set of martial arts instructors.

Although this is a Disney princess movie, the most important element of "Mulan" since its birth is Chinese Kung Fu.

At that time, Disney also valued the influence of Chinese Kung Fu in the world, so it took this as an anchor point, took a fancy to the original story of "Mulan", and then adapted it into an animation.

So when it comes to the live-action version, the Kung Fu element is still the top priority.

It's just that the domestic martial arts industry has been very depleted.

Back then, when Wu Yuan just entered the industry, the domestic martial arts industry was in its most prosperous era. There have been a large number of costume dramas in the mainland since the 1990s, and almost every costume drama is inseparable from fighting scenes.

There are also early mythological fairy dramas. Although there are various spells, because the special effects technology is not advanced enough, there are still a lot of fighting scenes, but some special effects are added during the fighting process.

For example, dramas such as "Wind and Cloud" and "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea" all have fighting first and magic later.

In that era, there were many martial arts directors in the mainland, Hong Kong Island, and Taiwan Island, and each one was more professional than the other. There were probably dozens of martial arts directors across the country with their teams thriving in the circle.

But now, martial arts directors have gradually disappeared in the industry.

How long has it been since the current audiences have seen pure fighting scenes in costume dramas?

Nowadays, there are a lot of costume dramas, such as fairy tales, fantasy dramas, and martial arts dramas. There are a lot of labels. Click in and you will find that they are essentially costume idol dramas with various "high-end" shells about love.

There were many categories of TV dramas in China back then. Although all types of TV dramas are inseparable from the love line, they are definitely not all idol dramas.

But now, no matter what type of TV drama, except for a very small number of urban dramas targeting the market of grandpa and aunt, the rest are all idol dramas.

These idol dramas are called fairy tales, ancient costumes, and new martial arts, but the fighting scenes in them are almost all thunder.

The action language is "shoddy". For all the fighting scenes, the actors only need to wave their hands casually, and the rest is left to the post-production.

The swordplay that should have been in the fighting scenes is gone, not to mention the punches, and the martial arts world of revenge has disappeared.

From beginning to end of the fighting scenes, the audience can't even see the actors' faces clearly, let alone any heroic posture.

The camera movement is even more concealing. When the critical moment comes, the male and female protagonists show off their skills, and the camera moves "randomly", with various rapid transfers, which makes people see only some fast-moving figures, without any aesthetic feeling.

Why do we need such "death camera movement"? It is nothing more than to cover up the singleness and poverty of the fighting scenes, so we can only create very intense fake scenes visually, after all, "a good cook cannot cook without rice".

The beautiful fighting scenes of Liu Yifei in "The Return of the Condor Heroes" have become the swan song of today's actresses, including the later versions of "The Return of the Condor Heroes". Actresses can no longer play Liu Yifei's unforgettable fighting scenes.

In fact, the decline of martial arts scenes is nothing new in the past two years, and most costume and fairy dramas have been complained.

But this result is caused by many factors. When you look at the cast and crew of many martial arts dramas and fairy tales being broadcast now, you will find that their martial arts directors are all well-known, and many of them are martial arts directors of classic martial arts movies in the past, but the fighting scenes directed by them are still a mess.

So, this is not just a problem of martial arts directors, a large part of the reason is also related to the actors.

In the past, actors were willing to work hard. Zhang Ziyi was injured in a fight scene in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and her nails were cut off. She just stuck her hand into ice and continued to shoot after it didn't hurt. The whole set of movements was smooth.

During the three years of filming "The Grandmaster", Zhang Ziyi, Zhang Zhen and other actors had to practice martial arts every day. By the time the filming was finished, Zhang Zhen had a good understanding of Bajiquan and accidentally won the championship in a martial arts competition.

Wu Yuan's own wife Liu Yifei was even jokingly called the last "Dancing Lady" by the audience. She was already "very skilled" when she was a teenager.

On the other hand, most of today's actors cannot stand such hardship. Not being late is considered professionalism, and getting a small wound can get "praise" from the whole crew. Of course, there are more cases where they choose to use a stand-in.

Because of the advent of the traffic era, the standard for selecting roles has changed. It has become whoever is popular. In this case, people with acting skills and martial arts skills cannot stand out.

So the market is full of traffic stars who are not from professional schools. They don't even have time to hone their acting skills, let alone the more difficult martial arts scenes?

So the bad money drives out the good money.

For the martial arts directors in the circle, when they can no longer "command" the actors to perform wonderful fighting scenes, they are naturally marginalized, and fewer and fewer martial arts directors are willing to continue to work in this industry.

After all, no one wants to be a "mascot" in a crew, and it is very likely that they are the mascots who are bullied.

Those martial arts directors originally entered the industry around 2000, and now they are almost ready to retire. They just waved their hands and said that they don't want to serve anymore.

Old martial arts directors began to leave the industry, and there is a lack of new martial arts directors entering the industry. Naturally, excellent martial arts directors are becoming increasingly scarce.

Most of the martial arts directors currently active in the circle have worked in classic movies but are not old enough to retire.

For example, Sang Lin, who once worked with Wu Baige on "Red Cliff" and won the Golden Horse Award for Best Action Design for "Blade of the Assassin 2" as an action director in 2017.

Like the famous martial arts directors Yuan Heping in the early years, they have long retired to the third line and no longer personally act.

And Wu Yuan went to Qingdao just to meet Sang Lin in person.

Sang Lin is considered to be the best martial arts director still active in the circle.

Apart from anything else, the level of his martial arts direction for "The Blade of the Assassin" alone is enough for Wu Yuan to give him a thumbs up.

The martial arts and weapons of various schools in the movies "The Blade of the Assassin 1 and 2" are dazzling and exciting.

He has just finished the martial arts direction work for Wu Ershan in "The Legend of the Gods Trilogy". The filming of this movie was completed in Qingdao in January, but there are still some reshoots. The crew is currently reshooting in Qingdao Film City built by Wanda.

Wu Yuan plans to personally visit Sang Lin, the top martial arts director in the circle! (End of this chapter)