Lead director reveals behind-the-scene story of China Pavilion film
- Source: Global Times
- [17:13 June 02 2010]
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Lu Chuan, the director of the theme film of the China Pavilion is being interviewed by People's Daily journalists. Photo: Li Zhenyu
By Li Zhenyu, special to the Global Times
Upon mentioning the on-going Shanghai Expo, the first thing that pops up in our mind might be the majestic China Pavilion, and one of the highlights inside of the Crown of the East is the theme film, which poetically recounts China's grand urbanization process over the past three decades.
At the very height of the Oriental Crown, over the top story of the 49-meter high China Pavilion, on the 'three-dimensional' giant screen, the eight-minute film takes the stage.
It portraits, in an imposing fashion, a flow of beautiful sceneries, sentimental moments and historical occasions, profiling China's vast urbanization process over the past 30 years of reform and opening-up, people's enthusiasm for building a better city at present and pursuing a better life in the future.
Lu Chuan, the farther of the theme film of the China Pavilion was invited to pay the People's Daily a visit. For the first time, he revealed the behind-the-scene story in regard to the production process of the theme film - The Journey, and afterwards, the talented young director shared his insightful thoughts concerning how to promote Chinese culture to the world in a more acceptable manner and the spirits inside of the China Pavilion Film.
Looking a little reserved in the beginning, just as a typical Chinese, Lu presented his film - The Journey to the seated journalists.
"I can guarantee that, in terms of the overall effect, the copy you watched just now is merely 10% as good as the original film you may watch in the China Pavilion," Lu said with a regretful tone after the eight-minute film was over. "The screen, on which my film is shown in the China Pavilion, is 66 meters in width and 8 meters in height. The film is tailor-made for the pavilion. Here, it loses all its original power in sound and vision."
One distinctive feature of the on-going Shanghai Expo is that the so-called 3 D movies have been widely used by the pavilions, creating stunning effects to entertain the spectators as well as conveying to them their nation's respective cultural spirit.
The "blockbuster" shown at the China Pavilion, titled The Journey, is designed to reflect the Asian Giant's grand urbanization process over the past three decades of reform and opening-up.
"It just so happened that I was chosen as the lead director of the theme film of the China Pavilion," said Lu, the filmmaker of the City of Life and Death, known as Nanjing, Nanjing in Chinese. "And I underestimated the difficulty of this project."
"It's almost a mission impossible to record the history of Chinese urbanization in just eight minutes," Lu continued to say. "For the eight minutes, it took our team consisting of more than 100 staff one and a half year to get the job done. We've prepared over 100 versions of scripts, merely for the preliminary stage of the filming."
Despite the unexpected difficulty, the young talent took the challenge with little hesitation. The main reason behind the move is that he deemed it as an opportunity to help create a better image for China on the international stage.
