Rebirth 02, the Celestial Being Told Me to Stop Pretending

Film analysis is the foundational course of the directing department at Beijing Film Academy.

The so-called "film analysis" is to dissect a movie frame by frame, from camera position to shot size, from lighting to movement, from editing points to sound and image relationships, like taking apart a watch and putting it back together.

This class only shows classics, films that have been definitively established in film history—films like "Citizen Kane" and "The 400 Blows".

Occasionally, we show award-winning short films from international film festivals, but these are always carefully selected, well-developed works. However, we never show undergraduate students' assignments, let alone short films from second-year students' classroom presentations.

So when Lu Chen walked into the film analysis class on Monday morning and saw the film analysis video "Who Turned Off My Lights" on the projection screen, he was a little confused. Didn't Teacher Tian say that it was just so-so? Why do we need to analyze it?

Lu Chen walked to his usual seat by the window in the third row from the bottom and sat down. Zhao Bo and Wang Yan sat next to him.

Tian Zhuangzhuang walked to the side of the podium, wearing a black turtleneck sweater, frameless glasses, and holding a thermos of tea in her hand.

He glanced around the classroom, his voice not loud but steady and powerful, "We won't follow the teaching plan today."

He paused for a moment.

"Last Thursday, during the undergraduate short film presentations, there was one film that I thought was worth watching. Not because it's perfect, but because it made a fairly clear structural attempt under very limited conditions. For you, this is more useful than watching 'Citizen Kane'."

The classroom was quiet. Tian Zhuangzhuang walked to the projector and pressed the play button.

The old tenement building appeared on the screen, three times larger than when it was shown in the theater, with every detail magnified—the texture of the peeling paint on the walls, the dim yellow light in the corridor.

But film analysis lessons don't involve watching films; they involve dissecting them.

The first shot shows Zhao Bo sitting in his room reading a book, and Tian Zhuangzhuang presses pause.

"Where is the camera positioned for this shot?"

Someone whispered, "Fifteen degrees to the left of the front."

"Shot type?"

Medium close-up.

"Why 15 degrees to the left? What would happen if you shot it straight on?"

No one responded.

Tian Zhuangzhuang looked at Lu Chen, who leaned back in his chair and said in a moderate voice, "If we shoot from the front, the character is in the exact center of the frame, which is too visually stable. If we shoot from 15 degrees to the left, the character is off-center, but the deviation is not significant, so the audience won't notice any imbalance. This subtle sense of instability matches the scenario set in the script."

Tian Zhuangzhuang nodded and continued playing.

In the second shot, footsteps are heard passing by in the hallway, and the light bulb flickers slightly.

The video stopped again.

Who designed this swaying light?

Lu Chen raised his hand. "It was an accident. Someone was walking through the hallway while we were filming, and the light bulb was shaken."

"Didn't you call a halt?"

"no."

Why?

"Because the frequency and amplitude of that shaking were better than what I designed."

Tian Zhuangzhuang looked at him.

"continue."

"If I were to redesign this flashing light, I would make it flash two or three times, gradually increasing the amplitude, to simulate the physical logic of 'someone passing by.' But during the actual filming, the light bulb only flashed once, with a small amplitude and a very short duration, like an uncertain signal. It doesn't tell you that there's someone in the hallway; it only tells you what might be in the hallway. A 'possibility' is more unsettling than a 'certainty.'"

A graduate student in the back row of the classroom whispered something to the person next to him, but Lu Chen couldn't hear it.

The film continues. The four storylines are introduced in turn, and Tian Zhuangzhuang breaks down the narrative at each point of transition by pausing the screen.

When the scene shifted to the single mother's storyline, he mentioned "sound pre-production." Before the camera even switched to the scene, the child's crying was heard for half a second, creating an emotional anticipation for the audience before they even saw the image.

When the story shifts to the old lady's storyline, he talks about "restraint in movement." The old lady stands up and walks to the window very slowly, so slowly that it's almost not a reaction to the light going out, but rather a daily habit. This "nonchalance" is itself the most powerful way to portray the character.

With each pause, Tian Zhuangzhuang asked the same core question: Who is the target audience of this design? Is it for aesthetic appeal or for advancing the narrative?

Lu Chen's answers have always been in the same direction: serving the narrative.

The entire film analysis process lasted forty-five minutes. The six-minute and fifty-two-second film was broken down into seventeen shots and reviewed frame by frame.

Finally, the scene ends with the last shot—four people standing at the entrance of the building, the beam of a flashlight shining on the electrical box, with a notice whose contents are illegible posted above it.

Tian Zhuangzhuang did not press pause, leaving the screen frozen.

"What does this notice say?"

No one spoke.

"Lu Chen".

"Nothing was written on it, it was just a blank sheet of paper."

Why use white paper?

"Because there's no need to write anything. When viewers see a notice that's barely legible, they automatically fill in the blanks in their minds. The purpose of this blank sheet of paper isn't to convey information, but to trigger their imagination."

"Did you plan this before you even started filming?"

"No. Before the shoot, I was thinking of posting a real notice. When I got to the location, I found one already posted in the hallway, and I thought it was better than my design, so I kept it."

"So those analyses you made up about 'triggering imagination' were fabricated afterward?"

The directness of this statement caused several people in the classroom to gasp slightly.

Tian Zhuangzhuang picked up her thermos, took a sip of tea, turned around, and turned off the projector. The classroom dimmed briefly and then brightened again.

That's all for today.

As he packed his things, he added something that everyone in the classroom heard clearly:

"This is the first time I've shown second-year students' work in a film analysis class since I returned to Beijing Film Academy. This work is quite good, and I hope everyone can see something from it."

……

The post on "Screen Frontier" went viral that very evening.

The poster was a graduate student in the directing department, with the ID "Film Never Dies," and the post titled: "I don't need to say what we showed in today's film analysis class, right?"

The content was even shorter, just two lines: "This is the first time since the establishment of the Beijing Film Academy that a film analysis class has shown undergraduate sophomore works. Tian Zhuangzhuang personally analyzed it for forty-five minutes. Go and find out for yourself."

The message conveyed by this post is "Tian Zhuangzhuang's approval," which is a power judgment. In a place like the Beijing Film Academy, your approval and Tian Zhuangzhuang's approval are two completely different things.

Two hours after the post was published, there were more than eighty replies.

By the next morning, there were more than three hundred.

By the second night, there were over 500 posts, completely flooding the screen.

The discussion in the thread has completely stopped focusing on the film itself, and has instead revolved around the two topics of "who is Lu Chen" and "why did Tian Zhuangzhuang release this film".

Some people posted Lu Chen's old posts as "Bankruptcy Bro," some posted his movie reviews on Tianya, and some started analyzing the questions Tian Zhuangzhuang asked when he reviewed the film.

Lu Chen saw the post on Tuesday noon. He read through the first hundred of the more than five hundred replies, but didn't look at the rest.

When Lu Chen arrived at the classroom on Wednesday, there were actually people sitting in the first three rows. Previously, the first three rows were always empty, with all thirteen students crammed into the middle and back rows, avoiding the podium like they were avoiding a plague.

But today, there were four people sitting in the first three rows. Two of them were from the directing department, and he didn't recognize the other two. They were probably graduate students auditing the class.

Sun Hao was sitting in the fifth row, and his expression was complicated when he saw Lu Chen come in. The seat next to him was empty; last semester, his closest follower used to sit there, but he didn't know where he was today.

Lu Chen didn't look at Sun Hao, but walked to his usual seat in the third-to-last row, sitting down next to the two from his dormitory.

"There are more people here today than usual," Lu Chen said.

"Hmm." Zhao Bo didn't look up. "You should be used to being watched by everyone by now, after all, the short film is so popular."

"Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing?" Lu Chen asked.

Zhao Bo put down his pen and thought for a moment.

"This is good for you. I don't know about it."

Why?

Zhao Bo put down his pen and turned to look at Lu Chen.

"Because what makes you famous is the structure, not the visuals. In the film analysis class, Teacher Tian dissected 45 minutes, and all he did was analyze your script and editing design; not a single shot was praising Zhao Bo's filming."

Zhao Bo turned back to his notebook and said, "I know you're right, structure is more important than visuals. But I shoot videos, and if you make me serve the editing every time, won't I become a machine that only executes other people's designs in the long run?"

Lu Chen leaned back in his chair, looking at the unfamiliar backs of the heads in front of him in the classroom, and went through all the photography directors he had worked with in his previous life in his mind.

The best examples, like those that use long takes to shoot "Gravity," are those who find a balance between serving the narrative and personal expression.

Those who served the narrative entirely became technical workers. Those who sought purely personal expression became independent artists but couldn't find work.

"You decide what happens next," Lu Chen said.

Zhao Bo paused for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"It means you decide the structure, you decide the shots, and I'll coordinate the editing rhythm with you. You shoot the shot you want, and I'll figure out how to fit it into a frame that can tell a story."

Zhao Bo didn't turn around, but Lu Chen noticed that his fingers loosened their grip on the pen.

"You said it."

"I said it."

What Zhao Bo needs is not praise, not recognition, not even respect. What he needs is to be treated as an individual with independent aesthetic sense, not as a technical worker who conforms to the structure.

Lu Chen had worked with too many people like this in his past life: talented but conflicted, sensitive to the point of being neurotic. The more you praised them, the more uncomfortable they became; the more you used them, the more they felt you were taking advantage of them.

The only effective way is to do it the other way around: you let him use you.

It's not about "I'll serve you," but rather "You take the lead, and I'll cooperate." By relinquishing control, he can actually feel more at ease.

Lu Chen snapped out of his thoughts and opened his notebook.

From "bankruptcy guy" to campus celebrity, the transformation took less than a week.

But Lu Chen knew in his heart that this transformation was superficial. The Beijing Film Academy was only so big; his reputation within the school couldn't extend beyond its gates. He was like a director who received positive reviews at a small screening—acclaimed within the industry, but unknown outside of it.

What's truly useful isn't the reputation within the school, but the external resources that reputation can leverage.