Talk about the details in documentaries

Liu Jing

The so-called details are the smallest elements that constitute the character, career development, social situation and natural landscape. . It is like the bricks and tiles that build high-rise buildings in literary works, film and television works, and even the entire artistic creation.

The use of details is one of the most revolutionary features in film and television program creation. The difference is that the story details in film and television dramas, including the details of the characters' modeling and the development of the story, are all extracted and designed by screenwriters and directors in their daily lives. However, the documentary director is different. The details used here are Real life captured. In addition to the details, what is more important in film and television dramas is the use of carefully arranged storylines to create perfect artistic images, inspiring people to follow the steps of the creators to understand and be moved. Documentaries cannot use fiction to create plots. They can only stimulate the audience's emotions through details. Therefore, in most cases, details become important emotional triggers, and their status and role in documentaries are even more prominent. Therefore, some people have suggested that documentaries can be without plots, but they must not be without details. Others say: Capturing and using details is the soul of documentary.

The Charm of Details

Mr. Zhong Danian wrote in his book "An Outline of Documentary Creation": "In a work, details are very important. Details are like flesh and blood, and are the basic elements that make up the whole of art. Real and vivid details are an important means to enrich the plot, shape the character, and enhance the artistic appeal. It is a powerful method used by the author to express his feelings." There is often a situation like this: when you look at After a long time, you may not be able to remember the specific content of a program, but the wonderful and vivid plots in the film will be deeply imprinted in your mind and remain fresh in your memory forever. This is precisely because of the fascinating, finishing touch and soul-shaking charm of details in documentaries.

1. Emotional expression makes the original emotional power in life more concentrated, intense and shocking. Through a small detail in the program, the audience can gain insight, understanding, and understanding of the characters' inner shocking world, thus enhancing the authenticity and vividness. Such a detail in "The Story of Grandpa Sun Jingxiu": a last word from the old man. It was a note that the old man wrote to his apprentice before he died, "Let us help the children benefit." The handwriting was trembling, but it was so serious that the word "benefit" was difficult to decipher, and the old man Rewritten below. This detail vividly reflects the spirit of Sun Jingxiu’s lifelong selfless dedication to the next generation. It is deeply touching and makes people cry. "I Love Beijing Tiananmen" uses a set of vivid details to express the importance of Tiananmen in the hearts of ordinary people: photographer Jiao Bo's old parents used crutches to measure the thickness of the city wall under Tiananmen; an 84-year-old Shandong woman sat The flatbed truck pulled by his son arrived in front of Tiananmen; a "foreigner" carried dozens of cameras on his back and took photos of the owners of the cameras one by one in front of Tiananmen...

2. The exploration and expression of subtleties made it possible to The characters are more vivid, the images are fuller, and the personalities are more distinct. A word, an action or a look from a character in a program can often reflect the character's unique personality and mentality, reveal the character's fuller personality, and reveal the subtle connection between the character and the event. Such details The performance is more delicate, more concrete and more vivid. There is a scene in the documentary "National Day Chronicle": An old farmer suddenly stopped during the parade and bowed deeply to Tiananmen Square. It shows the gratitude of the farmers who have just obtained land to the Party and New China. In the "Technology Talent" column "Soil and Water Conservation Expert - Guan Junwei", in order to express the protagonist's persistent personality, this detail is used: He never comes uninvited to any professional meeting on soil and water conservation, even if it is at his own expense. go. There are several details in "Approaching Mao Zedong": When Mao Zedong returned to his hometown to visit his mother's grave, he picked a bunch of branches on the roadside and presented it to the grave: Mao Zedong played with the little monkeys on the mountain in Hangzhou; Mao Zedong's beloved tree These details allow us to really get close to the great man and feel his side as an ordinary person.

3. Deepen the theme and use details as a means of emphasis, so that the value of the details themselves is highlighted through the performance of the subject. This plays a very important role in documentaries.

The documentary "Shanghai Old Store Tracking" selected several old stores such as "Lao Jiefu", "Wang Kai", "Jin Hongxiang", and "Guanshengyuan" for tracking, aiming to show people their successful business concepts. The program uses several details to highlight and deepen the theme. For example, Chaplin went to Shanghai in the 1920s to order 300 high-end silk shirts in the name of Mr. Laojie Fu; The best photographers were hired at nearly a hundred times the salary of ordinary employees; Jin Hongxiang Women's Clothing Store made tailor-made suits for the popular actresses in Shanghai at that time, and took photos for publicity in various newspapers.

"Conquering the "Sea of ??Death"" uses some unforgettable details to express the spiritual theme of our country's geological exploration team members conquering the "Sea of ??Death" - the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang. The tears left by the camels when they fell due to thirst; the chapped lips of the exploration team; the flags that have been planted on the sand dunes that are rarely visited for more than ten years...

4. Exaggerate the atmosphere to enhance the atmosphere. The relaxed, lively and humorous details create a certain interest. This is often used in documentaries, and it can make the audience smile, laugh, or fall into deep thought, while bursting into tears. "Going to the Market from the Rural Areas" tells the story of farmers in rural areas in the south of the Yangtze River who became rich by processing woolen sweaters and built a woolen sweater market that attracted a large number of city people to purchase. The film followed two details of a city woman at the market: After she tried on a bright red woolen coat, she said to the boss with satisfaction: "It's very good, very good, I bought it." I won’t take it off anymore!” Another detail is that she held a lot of purchased goods and excitedly said to the reporter in front of the camera while showing them: “I bought more than twenty pieces, these are two pairs of woolen pants, This is a wool vest..." As she said this, she couldn't hold it anymore, and her clothes fell straight to the ground. This vivid and humorous detail not only highlights the theme of the program, but also adds a joyful atmosphere. I remember that the author also watched a program that reflected the scientific cotton picking by Xinjiang cotton farmers. It said that after scientific cotton picking was implemented, in order to reduce the impurities in the cotton, the cotton farmers all wore white coats and white hats. In one of the shots, the puppy watching the show was also wearing a white coat and a white hat.

Classification of details

The expression of details in documentaries is diverse, sometimes it is a subtle movement, sometimes it is a dialect, sometimes it is a scene, sometimes it is a still life.

Scene details: Scene details are often represented as a picture in the film, so they are also called picture details. There was once a legend circulating: In ancient times, in order to select court painters, the painters were asked to paint based on a poem "The scent of horse hoofs comes after stepping on flowers." The winner painted a picture of a dignitary riding on a horse, surrounded by a group of colorful horseshoes. Colorful butterflies are flying up and down. This concept has been wowing generations of people for hundreds of years. The reason is that the details of the picture are so wonderful. The use of this kind of detail in our documentaries is very common. "It's Hard to Realize the Green Dream" tells the story of ecological desertification caused by cutting down trees. There is such a detail in the program: a peasant woman used a small broom to sweep the dust and sand on the kang, and asked the reporter to sit down. As the broom swept, A thick layer of dust and sand was thrown up; a child dug very deep on the sand dune, but did not dig out the wet sand he wanted to dig... In the picture, a close-up of the dust and sand on the kang and a close-up of the deep sand hole , are all very convincing details.

Character details: mainly refers to the subtle inner meaning conveyed by the character's body. There is a detail in "The Green Dream Is Hard to Realize": when the protagonist Xu Zhimin, the desert control hero, came to the tree that he had planted that had been cut down, he stroked the big tree with his thick hands for a long time. The tree stump, without saying a word, tears dripped on the tree stump drop by drop. "Memory of the Huangpu River" talks about the joy of Shanghai citizens after the completion of the new Huangpu Bridge. There is a detail: a blind man, accompanied by his family, measured the width of the bridge step by step on the bridge that had not yet been opened to traffic. Stroking the railings of the bridge one by one.

Simultaneous sound and sound details. At the same time, acoustic details often play a finishing touch in documentaries. For example, there is a detail in the documentary "Twenty-First Summer": Because summer is the busiest season for oil pipeline workers, the pipeline team in the program already has 20 people. After spending a summer without their loved ones, when a reporter asked them what their biggest wish was, a worker replied: "I want to see my wife in a skirt." This was unexpected and the plumber was shocked at the same time. The spirit of selfless dedication and their human side as ordinary people were displayed.

"Love in Yangshutang" tells the story of an old couple overcoming many difficulties to raise the national endangered alligator alligator. There is a scene where the old couple's shouts are heard from all over the mountains and fields in search of the lost alligator, which is very touching; The design of several simultaneous sound segments in the documentary "Hello Xiaoping" highlights the charm of details.

The sound details are even more ordinary in the program. The unique and distant sound of the flute in "The Sound of the Flute on the Shore of Lake Hanas", the weeping gull call in "The 2001st Black-billed Gull", the whistling mountain wind in "The Last Mountain God", "Ying and Ying" The faraway artistic conception in "White", the female solo that sounds like humming from the depths of the soul, etc., all play a rare and important role in exaggerating the atmosphere and deepening the theme in the program.

Explain and dictate details. Narration or oral details in documentaries mainly play the role of picture details and interpretation of picture details, increasing the amount of information, satisfying the audience's need for more information, and making up for the lack of pictures due to the reporter's absence at the scene. The documentary "Let History Tell the Future" talks about the brutal suppression of the Guangzhou Uprising in December 1927. There is this explanatory detail: "Due to being soaked with sweat, the red cloth tied around the necks of the rebels lost its color. As a result, the Anyone found to have red stains on their necks will be killed." Another example is "Approaching Mao Zedong", which talks about the closing of the "Top Ten" when Mao Zedong was unable to stand up to watch the delegates leave due to leg disease. story, authenticity and appeal. Oral details have been widely used in documentaries, especially television documentaries, in recent years. "Fighting Across the Yangtze River" interviewed more than 140 witnesses and parties involved, telling many unforgettable details before and after that battle. In "Once Upon a Time in the West", the old photographers of our factory also told about some details that could not be seen in the pictures during the construction of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway.

Capturing details

The biggest highlight of a documentary is its documentary nature. Details are where the highlights of a documentary are most likely to emerge. They are also the difficulty in documentary creation, especially in shooting. Because it must be captured by our photographers in real life, and our directors must capture it in numerous video materials, graphic materials, and oral accounts of those who have witnessed the experience. Therefore, capturing details should be an important basic skill for documentary creators.

Successful detail capture is based on three foundations: First, the creator’s sense of responsibility, which is a very critical point. The second is the professional sensitivity of the creator. The third is excellent business capabilities. Here are two examples that illustrate the problem:

In the third volume of the memoir "Our Footprints" published by our factory, there is an article by Jin Yongfu "I Photographed "Inaudible" Sounds", talking about What is happening is a small incident he took when he visited Western Europe with the Beijing Buddhist Music Delegation in 1987:

"After shooting the performance clips, I observed the expressions of the audience and chose people in close shots. I found that there was one person in the middle. The young man's eyes were closed and he was asleep. When I looked carefully, I found that two fingers of the man's hand were flapping up and down in time with the music. I was fascinated. This made me very excited, so I quickly adjusted the distance and started taking a close-up shot of the audience's face. The camera shot in this close-up position for five or six seconds to give us a portrait of the future audience of this film. I also thought he was asleep, and then slowly pulled the camera away, and the picture changed to a medium shot of the audience - not moving at all, making people sure that the audience was asleep, and then slowly pushed towards the person on his lap. A close-up of the fingers. This shot will give people a sudden realization - it turns out that this gentleman is not sleeping, but he is listening intently!"

This solid text allows people to see something. The veteran photographer has a sense of responsibility for the audience in his heart, and he can also see his sensitivity in capturing details, and he can also see the use of his superb business skills.

There is also a documentary program about legal aid. A man's daughter was raped by a neighbor at home. The man angrily beat his neighbor to serious injuries and was arrested and imprisoned. However, the evil neighbor got away with it because of his connections. A year later, thanks to the imprisoned persons receiving legal aid, the evil neighbor was finally brought to justice. The victimized girl in the film has been lying on the kang in a small room, with her back to the camera from a distance. The words "I don't want to see anyone" are scrawled on the door of the cabin. The girl's mother cried and told reporters that since the accident, the girl had never gone to school, never stepped out of the house, and lay like this most of the time.

When the reporter went to the girl's home for the last time and told her at the door that her evil neighbor had been punished, the girl still lay with her back to the camera. It started to rain, and the reporter was leaving with an indescribable regret. It was this regret that made the cameraman not turn off the camera. When the reporters walked to the yard of the girl's house and looked back, something unexpected happened: a young girl's face was revealed in front of the window of the hut, and she smiled. . A precious detail was captured in this way. Although I have seen this movie for a long time, that unforgettable smile is still deeply imprinted in my mind. Talking about this detail still makes my heart beat. Without a strong sense of responsibility and a high degree of professional sensitivity, it would be difficult to capture such wonderful details.

In short, capturing details carefully and arranging them reasonably is crucial to making a good documentary. It can be said that whoever has rich details in documentary creation, and whoever can control and use these details well, is likely to be better than others and create high-quality programs.

Excerpted from "Documentary Film and Television" 2005