director of the millennium

After staying in Hulunbuir for a few days, Wu Yuan left this beautiful place on his private plane.

This is what location scouting is all about. After visiting the location in person, confirming that the scenery meets the requirements of filming, and conceiving some scenes in mind, the director is considered to have completed the location scouting.

As for the subsequent contacting places to rent venues and other details, they are of course left to the assistant 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 "Mulan" crew needed a complete team of martial arts instructors.

Although this is a Disney princess movie, the most important element of "Mulan" from the very beginning is Chinese Kung Fu.

At that time, Disney valued the influence of Chinese Kung Fu around the world, and used this as an anchor, set its sights on the original story of "Mulan", and then adapted it into an animation.

Therefore, in the live-action version, Kung Fu elements are still the top priority.

It’s just that the domestic martial arts industry has been severely degraded.

Back when Wu Yuan first entered the industry, the domestic martial arts director 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 the mythological fairy tale dramas of the early years. 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 scenes.

For example, in dramas like "Feng Yun" and "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea", the fighting comes first and the magic comes later.

In that era, there were a lot of martial arts directors in the Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and each one was more professional than the other. There were probably dozens of martial arts directors across the country who led their teams to flourish in the circle.

But nowadays, martial arts directors have gradually disappeared from the industry.

How long has it been since today's audiences have seen genuine fighting scenes in a costume drama?
There are a lot of costume dramas nowadays, such as fairy tale dramas, fantasy dramas, martial arts dramas, and a lot of labels. When you click on them, you will find that they are essentially costume idol dramas about love stories disguised as various "high-end" shells.

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

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

These idol dramas are titled as fantasy, ancient costume, or new-style martial arts, but the fighting scenes in them are almost always failures.

The action language is "crudely made". For all the fighting scenes, the actors only need to wave their hands a few times, and the rest is left to the post-production.

The flashing swords and sabers that should be in the fighting scenes are gone, not to mention the physical punches. The world of martial arts where revenge and retribution are fulfilled has disappeared.

From beginning to end of the fight scene, the audience couldn't even see the actors' faces, let alone any heroic appearance.

The camera movement is even more obvious. When the critical moment comes and the male and female protagonists show their skills, the camera movement starts to "run wild", with various rapid shifts, leaving people with only the silhouettes of people rotating at a high speed, without any aesthetic feeling at all.

Why do we need such a "death camera movement"? It is simply to cover up the monotony of the fighting scenes, so we can only create a very intense fake scene visually. After all, "a good cook cannot cook without rice".

The beautiful fighting scenes of Liu Yifei in white in The Return of the Condor Heroes have become the swan song of today's actresses. In the subsequent versions of The Return of the Condor Heroes, actresses can no longer perform the unforgettable fighting scenes of Liu Yifei. In fact, the poor fighting scenes are nothing new in the past two years. Most costume dramas and fairy tales have been complained about.

But this result is caused by many factors. If you look at the cast and crew of many martial arts dramas and fairy tale dramas currently being broadcast, you will find that their action directors are all well-known, many of whom are action directors of classic martial arts movies in the past. However, the fighting scenes they directed are still a bunch of shit.

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

Actors in the past were willing to work hard. Zhang Ziyi was injured during a fight scene in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and her nails were cut off. She simply stuck her hand in ice, and when it didn't hurt anymore she continued filming, and the whole set of movements was smooth and flowing.

During the three years of filming "The Grandmaster", actors including Zhang Ziyi and Zhang Zhen had to practice martial arts every day. By the time the filming was completed, 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 “Damadan” by the audience. She was already “very skilled” when she was in her teens.

In contrast, most of today's actors cannot endure such hardship. Not being late is considered professionalism, and getting a minor wound will earn them "praise" from the entire crew. Of course, there are many more situations where they simply choose to use a stand-in.

With the advent of the traffic era, the criteria for selecting roles have changed. It becomes whoever is popular is selected. In this case, people with acting skills and martial arts skills cannot stand out.

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

So the bad money drives out the good money.

As for the martial arts directors in the circle, when they are no longer able to "command" the actors to perform wonderful fighting scenes, they are naturally marginalized, and fewer and fewer martial arts directors are willing to continue working in this field.

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

Those martial arts directors originally entered the industry around 2000, and now it’s almost time for them to retire. They just wave their hands and say, “I don’t want to serve you anymore.”

Old martial arts directors are starting to leave the industry, and there is a lack of new ones entering the industry, so naturally, excellent martial arts instructors 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 collaborated with Wu Baige on "Red Cliff" and in 2017, won the Golden Horse Award for Best Action Design as an action director for "Knife of the Assassin 2".

Martial arts directors like Yuan Heping, who were famous in the early years, have long since retreated to the third line and no longer take action personally.

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.

Not to mention anything else, his level of martial arts coordination 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 "Blade of the Assassin 1 and 2" are dazzling and exciting.

He has just finished serving as the martial arts director for Wu Ershan in "Fengshen Trilogy". The film was completed in Qingdao in January, but there is still some reshoot work to be done. The crew is currently reshooting at Wanda's Qingdao Film Metropolis.

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