Poster of "Flavor Origin Yunnan". Profile picture
Poster of "Flavor of the World Season 3: Sea Fresh". Profile picture
In the last decade of the last century, Chinese documentaries flourished. After the new century, the broadcast of television documentaries nationwide has been reduced, and the overall production and broadcast of documentaries has entered a relatively stable period. At that time, as a documentary filmmaker, I tried many subjects, including history, culture, nature and other fields. Although there have been some improvements in the composition of the content and the level of production, no breakthrough has been made. The birth and success of the "China on the Tip of the Tongue" series is directly related to the encouragement and support of the state for the documentary industry and the launch of the CCTV documentary channel. In 2012, the first season premiered with a warm response, illustrating the truth: to meet the increasingly diverse needs of the audience, documentarians should continue to innovate in content, themes and expressions, and adhere to deep exploration.
From focusing on the domestic to looking at the world
From the creator's point of view, the broadcast performance and influence of the "China on the Tip of the Tongue" series have long been the attention and research of the Gein team on gastronomic culture. In 1987, I became involved in food shows. In 2002, he submitted the application for the first time to make a food documentary, and began to write a food column, writing a total of more than 200,000 words, which went through a full accumulation process. At the same time, our team has been learning and experimenting with the production process of documentaries abroad. In 2005, we received systematic training from foreign documentary teams such as New Zealand Natural History Corporation and National Geographic Channel of the United States, and completed the first large-scale ecological documentary "Forest Song" in China. During the filming process, we established a complete program operation process, and this relatively standardized production mode has continued until now in the production of the "Flavor of the World" series.
Through the creation of food documentaries, from focusing on Chinese cuisine to looking at the global world, we have a deepening understanding of food and the cultural connotations behind it from a global perspective. In 2017, the Daolai Documentary Laboratory was established to continue to deepen the field of food documentaries. Through food, what we really see is the cultural traditions of the planet and the charm of the diverse ways of human existence.
When our field of vision changes, so does the way we shoot. The episode "Chicken Style" of "Flavor of the World Season 2" covers more than a dozen chicken dishes from China's Heilongjiang chicken stewed mushrooms, Anhui Suzhou chicken grits soup to African roast chicken, marathon chicken, Korean ginseng chicken soup, fried chicken and so on, allowing the audience to see how people from different regions and nationalities process the same ingredient into dishes with local characteristics, reflecting the wonderful collision and change of food culture.
In terms of shooting methods, we constantly learn from advanced technologies at home and abroad, using the shooting means of nature documentaries to shoot the growth and environment of ingredients; using social documentaries to observe the various relationships between people, families and living environments; drawing on the narrative model of genre films, using mature story structures, people's hearts and labor, cooking, staged life and changes they face, etc., as completely and vividly as possible in front of the audience.
In terms of visual presentation, we have joined hands with the "Beauty Science" team of the University of Science and Technology of China to capture the microscopic changes of food through microphotography and ultra-micro photography technology, from crab meat instantly becoming transparent when it encounters acidic substances, to the precipitation of umami-rich mannitol in kelp, through new scientific and technological means, showing the unknown and wonderful world inside food. In terms of sound, we also adopt the film process, cooperate with the leading team in the industry, and complete the whole process of sound production such as foley, audio editing, and mixing with a high-level system, so that the audience can be immersed in the auditory sense to the greatest extent.
Cultural diffusion across regions
Food is a goodwill ambassador across regional cultures. Despite the language barrier and cultural backgrounds, people still have a bond that crosses languages – food – and a shared love for food culture. Audiences with different cultural backgrounds can discover the similarities between French blue cheese and Shaoxing fermented food, they have a deep affection for the food of their hometown, and they can also feel the warmth of the meals prepared by their families with love.
Some people say that the tip of everyone's tongue is a hometown. As a creator, we hope to use our deep affection for our hometown to show strangers those unfamiliar places, and show the locals' love for their hometown and food. Food is the home of the world, and by awakening people's understanding of food and resonating with the emotions to which human beings are attached, food documentaries can build bridges of human communication and dialogue overseas.
The "Flavor Origin" series is the first documentary series produced by the Chinese team purchased by streaming media video service provider Netflix, which has been customized for 3 consecutive seasons and received a warm response after broadcasting. The first season of "Flavor Origin Chaoshan" has been at the top of the list in the Netflix food program section for 6 months. We were delighted to see that audiences around the world were amazed by the whimsy of making food in many parts of China, and were also impressed by the sincere emotions of the locals. Some overseas viewers left a message saying that a certain food in the film bears a striking resemblance to the dishes cooked by his childhood grandmother.
We work closely with experts in the fields of biology, botany, food processing, nutrition, cooking and other fields, systematically introduce agricultural, historical, sociological and anthropological perspectives in the program, strengthen academic connotations, tell the geography and culture behind food, better trigger the audience's humanistic thinking, and feel the long history of Chinese food culture.
Looking at the feedback from all over the world, it is not difficult to see that overseas audiences have a strong curiosity about China's customs and local cuisine. Seeing the traditional hand-dried ham in Yunnan, the Handmade Beef Balls in Chaoshan province, and the beef noodles made by Gansu people, a large number of spectators expressed their hope to visit and taste the food. Traditional cuisine, together with local natural landscapes, characteristic buildings, folk customs and customs, is an important window to show cultural charm, and we should do our best to protect and record them and pass them on to more foreign audiences.
Looking forward to "change" and "unchanged"
Overall, the production and development of Chinese documentaries is currently in good shape, producing a large number of excellent works. At the same time, driven by commercialization factors, food programs currently account for more in the domestic documentary industry. On the one hand, food documentaries show higher commercial returns and stickiness, showing more market demand; on the other hand, a large number of program output will make the audience aesthetically tired.
As a pioneering team in the field of food documentaries, in such an environment, we must maintain a balance between "unchanged" and "change", and seek innovation and change while adhering to our own creative concepts and goals. In recent years, the original planned global shooting has been delayed by the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, we adjusted the perspective and produced the "Flavor of the World Season 3 • Sea Small Fresh" focusing on China, aiming at the Chinese marine civilization and cuisine that has received less attention in the past, discovering the unique lifestyle and personality characteristics of the Chinese fishermen group, and appropriately adjusting the form of the program to vividly show the lives of the fishermen. Among them, a small child who lives on a small island but has a heart for the world and dreams of becoming a geographer has caused a wave of enthusiasm among the audience and received care and blessings from people everywhere.
In addition, we will continue to promote international cooperation in documentary production and continue to make adjustments. We work with overseas production teams, foreign documentary markets and peers, and there are not too many barriers to overall communication. But because our main audience is still a Chinese audience, in the production process, we will make requirements for foreign photographers, planners and other executives, such as making food more attractive from the perspective of Chinese in terms of visual presentation. These adjustments and run-ins include the use of lighting, the capture of details, and the fine presentation of the texture of food that is of particular concern to domestic audiences.
More importantly than the specific measures for change and adjustment, why should these changes be realized? In the final analysis, it is because the socio-economic development of our country has not stopped for a moment, and the living standards of the people have been continuously improved. In addition to the attributes of the stomach, food is also an important dominant carrier of culture. This is a huge field that can be dug deep and viewed, and after going deeper, the heavens and the earth are particularly vast. In food documentaries, how to achieve the audiovisual presentation of more attributes such as deliciousness, nutrition and aesthetics of food is the goal of our future efforts, and we will also explore and try more in creation.
(The author is a Chinese documentary filmmaker)
People's Daily (2022-04-13 17th edition)