The category of food documentary began to really enter the public's field of vision through high-quality works, and this story needs no elaboration. After joining Tencent Video, he had more creative space, and he launched "Flavor World". The food in the film is still mouth watering, but the status of the protagonist has been weakened, and the overall content has left more room for the profile of local customs.
"Flavor House" has been broadcast for more than four months, among which there are praise, confusion and criticism-why do you have to pile up so many gorgeous scenery shots, can't you talk about the food itself?
Now, the Dolby version of this documentary will be released soon, which can present richer colors and more exquisite details than the original. The production team needs to pay more time and energy costs for this new version, but this improvement in visual details cannot be clearly perceived by all audiences.
In the eyes of people who don't know, Chen Xiaoqing's demand for this food documentary seems to have been seriously "paranoid".
The flavor room has 15 food consultants and 12 scientific consultants. As a gourmet film, the proportion of scientific consultants is really outrageous.
The role of scientific consultants in the video content is obvious. From the crystallization of the picture with a microscope head to the words "horse meat, ribs and fat are decomposed and transformed together, and flavor substances are calmly accumulated" and "free amino acids and volatile flavor substances are released", meticulous and rigorous science popularization can be seen everywhere, just like "how do 100,000 foods become this taste?"
This rigorous and meticulous attitude and pursuit is also reflected in every frame of the program and every sentence of the copy. Just editing a short video, the audience has to agree with its intention and efforts.
"I changed from traditional media to new media. The advice I hear every day is not to do these particularly detailed jobs. Now everyone watches movies through their mobile phones, and they can't hear or see the details of what you did. However, my team and I have been sticking to our bottom line. I think these two sharing (that is, the original intention of doing this program, sharing knowledge and experience about food) need to be done through particularly delicate work, which requires particularly small but vivid changes. It turns out that it has been done. "
Chen Xiaoqing has almost strict requirements on the quality of Flavor House, and also has his own expectations on the artistic style: it should be infinitely close to the truth, but it should also have very clever content.
In order to achieve this effect, he is willing to boldly try techniques that are not common in other food documentaries. What the audience can obviously feel is the ingenious part, such as the microscopic picture that the human eye can't see originally, but what the audience can't feel is his efforts to achieve this agility and "infinitely close to reality".
These tasks include preparation in the early stage of shooting and color matching in the later stage. Making Dolby version is more time-consuming, laborious and expensive than ordinary color matching in the later stage. After the production team has edited the original video materials, the colorist will use Dolby Vision HDR technology to color these materials to achieve higher contrast, richer colors and finer details.
According to Chen Xiaoqing, he didn't decide to make a version of Dolby Vision at first. Although Dolby expressed his desire for cooperation many times during the filming, the opportunity that really excited him and decided to cooperate came from Greg hamlin, a professional colorist in Dolby Lab.
"The light ratio of the picture seen by human eyes (referring to the light receiving ratio between the dark side and the bright side of the subject in the lighting environment) can reach 1: 10, and the movie can reach 1:7- 1:7.5, but the ordinary TV content can only reach1:5 at most. However, after Greg hamlin used Dolby Vision to color a snowy night scene in Flavor House, Chen Xiaoqing was surprised by the effect of the picture near his eyes, and he decided to use his technology.
After all, before I hope to "make an excellent food documentary", the first thing is to "make an excellent documentary". An ambitious director who pursues content quality can hardly help but be moved when he sees brighter and more detailed pictures.
But this is not a simple random decision. After all, the overall budget of each movie is limited, and using new technology to color the whole movie again means paying extra time and expenses.
The final product did not meet Chen Xiaoqing's expectations. He was as happy as a 200-pound child and excitedly asked the staff to pause the video to a rice field scene to show the audience the picture effect he was proud of:
"Compared with the normal version, the darkness, fullness and chromaticity of Dolby Vision HDR images are completely different. Rice can see the transparency of just grouting, which is the same as the transparency we see with the naked eye. "
"(Dolby version) Even the side backlight we added can be seen. The regular version can't fully understand our intentions and can't fully show the most vivid part. "
This new version, which was tinted by Dolby, finally succeeded in presenting the glutinous rice texture that Chen Xiaoqing wanted to express in the picture.
Dolby's version is undoubtedly closer to the truth than the ordinary version, and it is also more sultry in food scenes, such as the shiny yellow and tight orange-red between the hepatopancreas and gonads of hairy crabs, such as the pink meat quality and moist and transparent texture of Spanish ham.
But in addition, the cost paid by the production team for the Dolby version was also spent on aerial bird's-eye view, snow scene, sheep, character stories and other pictures. If the main purpose of this food documentary is purely to satisfy the audience, it seems uneconomical to use Dolby technology to color all the pictures.
Chen Xiaoqing did not shy away from this point. He told Ping Xipin to play, "Our food is different from other people's. Besides the food itself, we also tell many stories about the local customs, human feelings, nature and geography behind the food. If the audience only looks at simple food, they will soon get bored. " Although positioning is a food documentary, the story part is equally important to Chen Xiaoqing. His expectation for these two parts is that the higher the presentation, the better the quality.
As said at the beginning of the article, the audience who have been educated (greedy) by a group of pure food documentaries are used to eating greedily from beginning to end, and may not understand this setting. The essential contradiction here actually lies in the understanding of food.
For Chen Xiaoqing, food has never existed independently. It is closely related to soil, earth, memory and human beings, and it is difficult to cut. In his previous food column, behind every unforgettable dish or food, there are always stories, big and small.
Speaking of shepherd's purse flowers, I will think of my childhood memories with my sister. Speaking of instant-boiled mutton, I have to mention Yang He ... just like sometimes we miss a restaurant, not necessarily because its food is hard to replace, but more likely because we left many wonderful memories there, which in turn will add color and flavor to the dishes themselves.
For example, one of the most unforgettable foods is soy sauce. Every time I return to my hometown for 40 years, I will try to find the familiar taste in my memory. It's hard to get over it, but that doesn't mean this side dish sauce tastes great. The real reason behind it is the lack of material in childhood. Soybean is one of the rare dishes with rich flavor, so it leaves a deep impression on people.
When traveling to Jinggangshan on business, local tourists often choose "characteristics" (which are more acceptable to tourists), while Chen Xiaoqing directly chooses "taste" (the original food eaten by local people themselves). Local dishes are salty and spicy, which are not very friendly to foreigners, but only these dishes can truly represent the real taste of local people. The collocation of ingredients and seasonings in these dishes also includes local soil, water, climate and history.
If we just want to make a "documentary about food", we just need to list a bunch of foods with good visual perception and focus on taking pictures of fat, juice and bubbles, and we can successfully make the audience in front of the screen drool for 40 minutes at a time. Chen Xiaoqing is well aware of this. But this practice can't fully express his understanding of food and his love for the earth.
The ingredients are regional, so are the corresponding dishes. Grasping mutton by hand is too heavy for people with light taste. Even if meat is tempting, it may not attract all the audience successfully, but for local people, it is an indelible element in the memory of hometown. Memories of this hometown are usually accompanied by charcoal fire, sheep, fur coats, and sunny nights when moonlight shines on the snow.
Food is not the only protagonist, but the texture of lamb hair is as important as the snow particles on the moonlit ground, just like the transparent ears of rice. What Chen Xiaoqing wants to shoot is not a traditional food documentary, but the story behind the food. Scenes related to these stories, like food, deserve to be better displayed.