The movie "1921" has been released in China on July 1, and on June 28, the barrier-free version of "1921", dubbed by the "Bright Cinema" public welfare project team of the Communication University of China, has realized the simultaneous screening of barrier-free films and movies in the same period of the theater in the Beijing area.
Poster of the official accessible edition of 1921.
Founded in 2017, "Guangming Cinema", all composed of volunteers from teachers and students, insists on making 104 barrier-free movies every year, so that Chinese visually impaired people have the opportunity to enjoy two movies per week for 52 weeks of the year, reaching or even exceeding the average viewing frequency of non-visually impaired people.
"Bright Cinema" is a barrier-free film production and dissemination public welfare project jointly initiated by Communication University of China, Beijing Gehua Cable and Oriental Jiaying. The project uses the film as the carrier, in the gap between the film dialogue and the sound effect, inserts the sound narration of the picture, and makes a barrier-free film that can be copied and disseminated. Visually impaired friends can "watch" the film online or offline through dubbed narration. And for a 120-minute accessible movie, how long does it take to write? What types of accessible films are the hardest to make? What type of movie do visually impaired people like best? With these questions in mind, the Beijing News reporter interviewed several volunteer teachers and students of the "Bright Cinema" and asked them to talk about how to successfully produce a barrier-free movie.
There are more than 500 volunteers for the "Bright Cinema" public welfare project
On June 28, the barrier-free version of the movie "1921" premiered in Beijing, and 50 visually impaired friends watched the film accompanied by 50 relatives. The screening of the "Bright Cinema" barrier-free film will be supported by the Disabled Persons' Federation and the Blind Association every time, and they will invite the visually impaired to the scene, and the "Bright Cinema" volunteers will be responsible for docking. Li Chaopeng, head of the screening promotion team and video group of the Communication University of China, said that from the visually impaired people getting off the bus to entering the movie hall to sit down, there will be volunteers to receive and guide, and after the film screening, volunteers will send the visually impaired people to the bus.
Li Chaopeng has traveled to more than a dozen provinces, including Inner Mongolia, Daliangshan and Lüliang, to screen barrier-free films for the visually impaired. During the screening, there were many impressive things. Once in a screening at a blind school in Beijing, a blind child grabbed a volunteer after the screening and said, Sister don't leave, can I listen to it for a while?
Visually impaired people are watching the movie.
Li Chaopeng said that there are 300 or 400 volunteers in the school, plus volunteers recruited by 100 colleges and universities across the country, covering more than 500 people.
The production process is like pulling a piece
It is best to be able to write and dub both
Chen Xingang, an instructor at guangming cinema and an associate professor at the School of Television at the Communication University of China, said that at first several teachers led student volunteers to produce barrier-free films, and later the students became more and more skilled, and their subjective initiative became stronger and stronger, and now they are basically operated by the students themselves.
The production process of barrier-free films is mainly divided into steps such as writing, dubbing, and post-production. The pre-writing is the most time-consuming, volunteers have to watch the film repeatedly, but also understand the plot background, otherwise the manuscript will have problems. Chen Xingang gave a few examples, before doing training, a volunteer for the movie "Titanic" (1997) to try to write an accessible version, "whether the Titanic is driving in the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean, at the beginning of the classmates wrote wrong." When another volunteer wrote the accessible version of "Brave Game: Battle jungle" (2017), a previous game console box appeared in the film, and the students did not know what it was.
Cai Yu, a 2019 doctoral student at the Communication University of China, said that a picture needs to tell a lot of content, and it is necessary to constantly make choices. For example, if there is a person in the movie who is drinking water, there can be N interpretations. The narration of each picture must be judged according to the development of the plot before and after. Because the narrative can only be inserted in the gap between the film dialogue and the sound effects, it may only take 5 seconds, and it is necessary to filter the information and extract the most critical information. "Making barrier-free movies is also a process of pulling films, especially exercising students' understanding of audiovisual language, knowing how to explain the content of the picture to visually impaired friends," Cai Yu said, the writing part is the most difficult, and the newly joined volunteers need to be trained.
Li Chaopeng said that when recruiting volunteers, a written test is first conducted, and the 5-minute film clip is given homework and written into a narrative. After the written test is an interview, there are hundreds of volunteers who sign up for the "Bright Cinema" every year, and only thirty or forty people are left.
"Bright Cinema" volunteers are dubbing.
For the dubbing requirements for barrier-free movies, Cai Yu said that Mandarin is relatively standard, and it has affinity and appeal, and will not ask for volunteers according to the standards of professional announcers. Cai Yu hopes that volunteers can not only dub, but also write manuscripts, because if they can't write drafts, they can't understand what the film wants to express, and they can't match the movie, "As a producer of barrier-free films, you can't just understand the movie from the perspective of the audience, but also from the perspective of the director, so you can understand more." ”
It takes 30 minutes to compose a one-minute movie clip
In Cai Yu's view, writing is the most critical part of barrier-free film production, the narration is finalized, and the follow-up dubbing and editing are also available.
Take, for example, the passage in 1921 where Mao Zedong runs. This scene adopts a more romantic method, through montage, showing different scenes, different times in the air Mao Zedong's running, and encountering different people in the middle, to explain clearly to visually impaired friends, it is extremely difficult. Mao Zedong started running from the streets of shanghai's French Concession to Nanjing Road, with rickshaw pullers on one side and a variety of goods in the window on the other. Here is about 6 seconds of time to fill the narrative, Cai Yu tried over and over again, while chanting while controlling the time, the time exceeded the deletion of words, time to add words. In a few seconds, the volunteers who wrote the manuscript may have to watch it twenty or thirty times. Because of repeated viewing, the volunteers basically memorized each frame backwards.
In "1921", Mao Zedong runs for a few seconds, and the volunteers who wrote the manuscript need to read it twenty or thirty times to explain it clearly in the narrative.
"The dubbing work of a barrier-free movie can be completed in four or five hours, but the narrative may take hundreds of hours to write tens of thousands of words," Cai Yu said, on average, a one-minute film clip, it takes about 30 minutes to write an accessible version of the manuscript. For a 120-minute film, the manuscript takes 60 hours to write, which is not counting the later revisions. Volunteers are not full-time creators, and they usually have to go to class, spend 4 or 5 hours a day writing, and write for 15 days.
After the first draft is written, there are students who specialize in reviewing the manuscript to review the manuscript. Any language problems that appear in the manuscript, sentences that are too long or too short will be marked, and the manuscript will be fed back, and it will take another week. The students who write the manuscript have to start from scratch again, and change it again according to the feedback on the screen, and the students who are mature in writing the manuscript can be completed by basically reviewing the manuscript once, and it will take about a month to complete the manuscript. There are also repeated modifications, Cai Yu encountered the most laborious one before and after a total of 6 or 7 times.
Volunteers basically complete the writing and review work during the holiday time, the holiday time is relatively complete, you can take out a whole piece of time to write, to avoid the cycle of elongated memory blur.
【Film Selection】
The first choice of patriotic classic films, moved by "Hundred Regiments War"
Starting in 2018, "Bright Cinema" produced 104 accessible films per year. For the criteria for selecting films, instructor Chen Xingang said that there will be several situations, first of all, not all movies are suitable for barrier-free versions, such as action films that rely on screen expression, and secondly, they will be combined with the recent patriotic propaganda themes of the party and the state, such as 2019 is the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China, "Guangming Cinema" has done 70 classic films in 70 years; in 2020, as the year of poverty alleviation, "Guangming Cinema" has made 20 poverty alleviation films 2021 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and "Guangming Cinema" has made a "hundred years" classic film.
This year, the Beijing School for the Blind launched a "January 1 Shadow" theme screening activity, and every month the volunteers of the "Bright Cinema" will go to the blind school to screen a "100-year-old" film, and in June, the "100 Regiments War" will be screened. When the Japanese army was finally defeated, the scene reaction was particularly fierce, and the visually impaired friends applauded and were particularly happy, "They did not have the component of deduction, they were all very real feedback, which would make people very moved." Cai Yu said that visually impaired friends are very willing to participate in such activities, in an exchange, a blind child said that through watching barrier-free movies, he better understands how loving the party and the country is, and he has feelings in his heart.
Stills from "Battle of the Hundred Regiments".
"Bright Cinema" will also produce barrier-free films with different genres according to the needs of different audiences. For example, in order to meet the needs of visually impaired children, animation films such as "Big Fish begonias" and "Nezha's Devil Child Descending" have been produced. Although science fiction is also a genre that relies heavily on visual effects, visually impaired friends are very fond of "watching" science fiction films. If it is to go to the community to show barrier-free movies, in the face of middle-aged and elderly visually impaired groups, they may be more interested in films with more historical themes, each age group has its own preferences, and the "Bright Cinema" will try to meet them.
【Challenge】
To accurately explain the meaning of the picture
War movies and comedies "not simple"
Last year, when Cai Yu reviewed the manuscript, she reviewed a barrier-free version of "Light Blue Amber", which is a very literary film, and the plot recalled by the heroine is to use a relatively happy warm tone, and the reality part is a cool color, which must be explained when telling visually impaired friends. For some details that have a driving effect on the later plot, it is also necessary to find an opportunity to explain to visually impaired friends, and it is very difficult to accurately tell the meaning behind the picture and the visually impaired friend.
War movies are also not easy to write. The film is often a few minutes of artillery fire, a group of people rushing down the hillside, the enemy coming down from the heights, the protagonist hiding under a bunker, these must be clearly described.
Comedies are not simple either. How to make the laughter of visually impaired people and ordinary people on the same channel and "laugh together" is something that volunteers need to figure out repeatedly when creating.
Describing color was once a conundrum, and now there's no need to shy away from it
Previously, when writing the narrative of accessible films, volunteers would try to describe colors as little as possible. Because some visually impaired friends are born blind, have never seen color, and have no concept of color, when telling the movie picture, volunteers will try to minimize the description of color, and use words with body feeling such as "hot" and "hot" to describe it, so that visually impaired people can better understand.
After each barrier-free film screening, the volunteers of "Bright Cinema" will also do offline communication. Not long ago, Cai Yu went to the blind school to interview, through communication, some visually impaired children said that they can introduce color in the movie narration, because they have a general understanding of color in textbooks or parents and teachers' mouths, although they do not know what color blue is, but they know that it corresponds to the sky.
"They still want to know a little more, so that when communicating with people, they can tell others about yellow flowers, white flowers, and the yellow and white they imagine may be different from the yellow and white we actually know, but they don't shy away from these." Such exchanges will be carried out after each screening, and the "Bright Cinema" will add the feedback of visually impaired friends to the creation of barrier-free films, so that they can also become part of the creation.
Li Yiying, a 2020 doctoral student at the Communication University of China and head of the publicity group of the "Bright Cinema", said that for the production of barrier-free films, "in fact, we have been exploring, so that barrier-free film production has a scientific unified standard, and 'Bright Cinema' wants to promote this matter."
Teng Chao, a senior reporter of the Beijing News
Senior Editor Huang Jialing Proofreader Li Lijun