It has been nearly a month since "A Bite of China" was aired, but various topics related to it are still popular.

On May 23, the day after "A Bite of China" was aired on CCTV, the CCTV Documentary Channel held a special press conference. But this was an unplanned press conference. Because there were too many reporters asking for interviews, the production staff couldn't handle it, so they had to gather nearly 20 media outlets at a press conference to answer questions and answer questions. On May 30, the "A Bite of China" seminar was held in Beijing. The participants were all celebrities in the cultural, media and food circles. Such a lively follow-up is rare in the history of Chinese documentaries.

Both CCTV Documentary Channel Director Liu Wen and "A Bite of China" director Chen Xiaoqing (Weibo) admitted that they had not expected "A Bite of China" to be so popular. "After making documentaries for more than 20 years, this is the first time for me to hold a press conference and give interviews for a documentary." Chen Xiaoqing said.

Even so, Chen Xiaoqing still gave this film a "harsh" self-evaluation: "There are too many regrets. If we can be given another half a year and more budget, we can make this film The film has been polished smoother."

Since the second half of 2011, more than 20 film crew members of "A Bite of China" have traveled to more than 60 places in Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. County and city, which lasted 13 months, shooting various materials. The documentary has seven episodes, branching out from natural products, staple food stories, transformation inspiration, taste of time, kitchen secrets, five-flavor blends, and field origins.

Different from the way today's mainstream media promotes high-end ingredients and exquisite life, "A Bite of China" uses down-to-earth civilian food as a carrier, and spends one year connecting the folk customs and livelihoods that only locals know. rise. Hand-made Ningbo rice cakes and stone-milled yellow steamed buns from northern Shaanxi have become famous in other provinces and even foreign countries. The Miao family's street banquets and neighbors' help in the fields continue to be aspirational.

After the broadcast of "A Bite of China", traditional media, the Internet, and the public have continued to discuss it, mainly from the positive side. Needless to say, it is a hot topic. However, some viewers pointed out the weaknesses of the film, such as the obvious artificiality in the filming techniques and the different styles of the episodes. When "Bite of the Tongue" is still in the spotlight, "The Bund" interviewed several of the film's main creative staff and asked them to talk about their satisfaction and regrets about the film.

Too Many Regrets

After "A Bite of China" was aired, some netizens immediately expressed their opinions, saying that the main theme of the film was too heavy, the commentary was too high-minded, and the tone of the dubbing actor was too high. Too sophisticated, sentences like "No matter what, the birth of tofu completely changed the fate of soybeans" appear frequently in the film. Regarding this point, Chen Xiaoqing also agreed: "It is indeed elevated, and I agree, especially now that I look at it, I may agree more. At that time, the audience was not positioned so broadly, and those words were originally intended to poke at the sensitive parts of literary young people. Now It's a bit "literary" for the general public, but a bit "storytelling" for young people. Nowadays, especially some professional writers, they will criticize the text, but I don't think it will affect the entire film. ”

"Cai Lam still doesn't agree with my approach and thinks it's too showy." Chen Xiaoqing added.

As for the filming, the director of each episode felt that it was not perfect. "The Story of Staple Food" episode director Hu Yingying said that it was her regret that the unpredictable weather caused delays and made filming impossible. She went to Ruian Nanshan Village in Wenzhou for research last summer. The rope noodles, which were one of the planned shooting materials at the time, were in a spectacular drying state, with noodles like silver waterfalls hanging from top to bottom across a large area of ??the sky. When we were waiting for the official start of filming, we happened to encounter the rainy season in the south, and we had to wait for many days without sunshine. She said: "God will not let you go just because you booked a flight and sent you a large swing arm equipment." If there is a next time, she will conduct detailed research on the local climate in advance and prepare the materials before bad weather. Take a photo.

The regret of Yang Xiaoqing, the director of the "Our Fields" episode, is that the farming and fishing scenes were not fully filmed.

In the Zhangzi Island section of the film, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and abalone are mainly caught from the sea. These seafood are artificially seeded into the sea and then grow naturally. It would have been very spectacular if we could have captured the scene of the staff throwing countless fry into the sea. Next comes Guizhou glutinous rice and Tibetan highland barley. Due to the limited shooting time, we could not fully cover the planting, planting and harvesting processes, so we could only capture what was. However, she believes that using a few points to illustrate the point is also one of the documentary techniques, and it is "unnecessary" to cover everything.

The hot discussion in the media and the surprise of the creators

At this year's Cannes Film Festival, the chairman of the film festival asked to watch the trailer of "A Bite of China". "Tip of the Tongue" is the second most requested film among all Chinese documentaries participating in the exhibition, second only to "Super Project" (a documentary reflecting China's contemporary major and extraordinary projects related to the national economy and people's livelihood). Since the trailer was aired at the Cannes Film Festival, "A Bite of the Tongue" has signed contracts with dozens of overseas buyers, and the price of a single episode may exceed the previous highest-priced single episode of "The Forbidden City."

In addition, the reporter learned from the video website Tudou.com, "On the day it was launched, the number of views of "A Bite of China" exceeded one million. It is one of the few documentaries in recent years that has exceeded the ratings of TV series of the same period. As the first documentary Domestic documentaries that have achieved such success on video websites have even surpassed the broadcast volume of "The Forbidden City" and "Ride to Berlin" that have been sensational in the past few years."

"A Tip of the Tongue". After the film came out, almost all the media reported it at a larger length, not only digging into the stories behind the filming, but also interviewing the characters mentioned in the film. On the Internet, various "tips of tongue" emerge in endlessly, and "×× on the tip of the tongue" has become the most popular Internet term recently. Netizens associate this documentary with "the taste of hometown", "the taste of childhood", "the taste of mother", and even associate it with patriotism.

In this regard, Chen Xiaoqing said that he himself did not expect that the audience would "over-interpret this documentary about food and pull out many profound thoughts." The original intention of the creation was just to express the Chinese people's The relationship with food, showing the changes in contemporary China through food. Chen Xiaoqing said: "I remember very clearly that when Shen Hongfei was revising the commentary, he changed a sentence: In today's China, every city looks very similar; the only things that can be used to distinguish cities are eating habits and... The smell that permeates the city. ”

In stark contrast to the enthusiastic feedback, the creators were caught off guard. The publicity department of the documentary channel can provide extremely limited picture materials to the media. Most of them are video screenshots, because at the time of filming, there were only videos and no special photos.

After some Internet searches, the reporter found a blog called "The Days Before the Broadcast", written by Gu Jie, the original director of the eighth episode. "Episode 8 collects interviews with the episode directors and filming highlights of each group." Gu Jie said that due to various reasons, the eighth episode could not be broadcast along with the previous seven episodes, but she took a series of photos during the filming process. , but it is extremely important information in "A Bite of China".

Is the photo staged too heavy?

As a food documentary broadcast in the middle of the night, "A Bite of China" feasted the audience's eyes and filled their mouths with saliva. Some netizens even left a message saying that they were "so greedy that they wanted to lick the screen." This exquisite picture presentation also elicited another voice. After all, the public’s original impression of documentaries is “true.” If too many human traces are revealed, they will inevitably raise questions about the details, such as “Is this a documentary?”

This starts with the early planning. Chief director Chen Xiaoqing intends to break through the domestic documentary standards and use the BBC as a benchmark. The purpose is to create shock waves of color, aroma and taste in your brain through the screen. He required the directors to have a certain portion of the food presentation. In some filming locations, due to limited conditions, the food portions were not so attractive, so they had to reshoot after returning to Beijing. How to present the freshness and simplicity of the ingredients, the crispness and ease of cooking, and the calmness of freshly baked food? This is undoubtedly a big test for the episode directors and photographers.

Wu Hong, director of "The Harmony of Five Flavors" said: "The food needs to be steaming.

Filming cooking in glassware is a must-see. This is my photography secret. "

Hu Yingying, the episode director of "The Story of Staple Food", is more straightforward: "Everything is for the sake of visuals. So many people feel hungry because the equipment and lighting are in place, both of which are essential. "During the filming, the director instilled this idea into the use of every macro lens and telephoto, and used their professional language to tell the story.

Liu Yile, director of "The Secret in the Kitchen" believes that a The documentary of more than 50 minutes is not a straightforward narrative. The camera should capture the love for food that is insignificant but always flashes in the filming scene. Liu Yile said that Ouyang, the chef of the village banquet was filmed in "Kitchen Secret". When Guangye cooks the steamed pig, the key is to shoot the character's hand movements. The operations of putting the steamed pig on the pot, cutting it, frying, etc. can all reflect the protagonist's mood at that time. It was because he felt that this part was very important, but he almost missed it because he was busy capturing other scenes. After all, there was only one pig. “As a village banquet chef, cooking is the first priority, and being photographed is second. "Liu Yile finally realized it.

As for some viewers' reports that there were too many sensational scenes in "A Bite of China", Liu Yile said that during the filming, he never thought about deliberately sensationalizing, at least he himself had Sensational passages were eliminated from the episode. He told the Bund: "When it was filmed, more people at the scene were moved to tears after watching it. For example, when Chef Ju Changlong returned to Yangzhou to visit his sister, when we were interviewing his sister, the other party talked about how their family conditions were not good when they were young, and the siblings depended on each other. It was really touching, and my own nose felt sore. But when we calmed down afterwards, we realized that we didn’t want to go too far on the path of sensationalism. First, we had to control the subject well, and second, we wanted to avoid the display of emotions as much as possible to leave more space for the audience. ”