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Less than two months after the release of the documentary, the KOLs on the entire network have covered more than 110 million fans, and the short video has been circulated more than 52 million times. It has received enthusiastic recommendations and praises from a large number of mainstream industry media such as the "Guangming Daily Client" and the "Study Strong Country" platform, as well as many people inside and outside the industry...

This documentary is called "Li Shutong", which tells the story of what intellectuals do and what they don't do in the context of the great era. Because of its magnificent tentacles and delicate touches, it is called a "life revelation" with practical significance. It is reported that the film is jointly produced by Zhejiang Radio and Television Group and the Publicity Department of the CPC Pinghu Municipal Committee, and produced by Zhejiang Satellite TV. Since its premiere on Zhejiang Satellite TV and Z TV platform on May 30 this year, the popularity of word-of-mouth has continued to rise. In more than a month, it has been circulated on Weibo for more than 5 million times.

Why did this documentary work of great humanistic concern become popular? How can we film a historical and cultural figure like Li Shutong just right?

With such questions and curiosity, Nandu reporters interviewed Huang Xiaoyu, the director of the documentary "Li Shutong" - a nationally renowned TV news reporter. She started working in the news industry in 1996 and has been working on the news front for 22 years. She has been engaged in in-depth investigations of TV news, public opinion supervision reports, TV news reviews and large-scale event planning, and is particularly good at in-depth reporting and creative planning of TV programs.

Taking advantage of the introduction to this documentary, the reporter chatted with this veteran TV journalist about "Li Shutong" and the story of how journalists turned to making documentaries.

Directed by Huang Xiaoyu.

1

AI technology empowers and helpsCultural documentariesOrientation and departure

In an era where fast-paced, shallow short videos are all the rage, do we still need cultural documentaries?

Every time she got a topic to shoot, this question would linger in Huang Xiaoyu's mind. She would ask herself again and again, "Do I still need it?", pack up her new backpack again and again, and set off again.

"I think we really need a good cultural documentary." As a journalist, she was the first to catch the need. Having worked in journalism for more than 20 years, Huang Xiaoyu has always positioned herself as a journalist with clear vision. She was once the producer of a very popular news program "News in Depth". The nationally renowned news investigation column "Witness" created by her, which focuses on undercover investigations, has won the China Radio and Television Award, the Zhejiang Province Quality Project Award, and was nominated for the first "New Weekly" Newcomer List. She has only turned to the documentary industry in recent years.

From focusing on public opinion supervision and news investigations to creative news actions, and then to creative news commentary and large-scale live broadcasts, Huang Xiaoyu has long been accustomed to the rhythm of chasing news hot spots at the forefront every day. She observed that in recent years, all parts of the country have attached great importance to cultural construction, and all cities and regions want to base themselves on local cultural resources and tell the story of urban culture well. Documentary is one of the most commonly used means. "A good cultural documentary can let us see the truth of history, feel the depth of culture, and enlighten us in the present."

She was determined to calm down and use the perspective of an investigative reporter to create a "small" work with the sentiments of a great intellectual, just as she focused on doing in-depth news.

She thought of Li Shutong, the author of the song "Farewell", a historical and cultural celebrity with story connections to many cities. She hoped to record the story of how intellectuals stood firm in that great era by visiting his footsteps.

"Outside the long pavilion, beside the ancient road, the grass is green and endless..." Li Shutong, born in 1880, is a descendant of the famous "Tongda" Li family in Tianjin. This widely sung "Farewell" is a farewell song written by Li Shutong to his literary friend Xu Huanyuan in 1914. Huang Xiaoyu said that in addition to this song, there are many well-known stories about Li Shutong. But these are far from enough for the broadcast of TV programs. When the team was struggling with how to present the ups and downs of the life of this intellectual, Huang Xiaoyu decided to use reenactment.

“Personally, I don’t like re-enactments, but for the sake of intuitiveness, we decided to use them anyway,” she said. “We tried to find authentic things from his life, but this is an ideal situation. In reality, we can’t find everything related to him.”

Real-life shooting is relatively more feasible, but it also has a problem, that is, many scenes need to be taken according to the weather. For example, for the scene of releasing the animals in Baima Lake, they sat in Baima Lake and waited for several days, and only started shooting when the light of the morning light and sunset was really suitable. They rushed to Putuo Mountain to shoot the scene of Li Shutong walking between the mountains and the sea, but it was rainy. The crew set up the camera and waited until the sky suddenly cleared up in the evening. They immediately rushed all the way and captured more than ten minutes of sunset afterglow, which resulted in the main poster with the excellent light and shadow of "Hongyi Pedestrian Picture".

This accidental randomness just gives this type of documentary, which mainly revisits historical events, a "living" "soul".

Re-enactment is a good practice, but its use in the documentary field is always praised and criticized. How to control the risk and make the shooting present unexpected results? Huang Xiaoyu browsed the old historical photos left by Li Shutong in various periods, and suddenly had an idea - can the photos be made "alive"?

How to "live"? Huang Xiaoyu's team added diversified visual expressions such as hand-painted original painting creation, AI illustrations, and animation performance technology to the film.

Practice has proven that this does help today's audiences better understand this period of history.

In order to recreate the "First Lesson of Chinese Human Body Sketching", they reproduced the scene at that time in a "one-to-one" manner, and reproduced the facial shape, hairstyle and sitting posture of the actors played by Wu Mengfei and Li Hongliang in strict accordance with old historical photos. They also boldly revived the image of Li Shutong, making the photos of him after fasting in Hupao, the group photo of the Five Friends, and the photo of him playing chess with his brother before studying abroad, all of which came to life, leading the audience through time and space and into the history of a hundred years ago.

These are all different from the creative modes of traditional historical and cultural documentaries, and have become a highlight of the documentary. Huang Xiaoyu said, "These are not found in previous documentaries, and it is also a brand-new exploration and attempt of cultural documentaries for them."

2

Domestic documentaryWe need to go out to the public and also go global

Huang Xiaoyu said that the most important value of doing TV news, especially being an investigative reporter, is how to better let the audience reach the truth. The same is true for making documentaries, but the difference is that making documentaries also requires learning to reach the audience in a more artistic way.

"To make a documentary, you must reach out to the audience and the public. There are many different methodologies, and innovation and exploration are endless." Following this original intention, they planned a series of activities and recruited actors through the Internet, hoping to get the whole nation involved in the creation of the documentary. The actors who participated in the filming were mainly selected from hundreds of young students from various universities and middle schools through one event after another.

When asked, "Is it harder to do news investigations, or is it harder to make documentaries?" and "What is the social value of domestic documentaries in the context of the new era?" She admitted that filming the documentary "Li Shutong" was obviously something that could be "criticized." There are three reasons: First, humanities and history documentaries have reached many peaks over the years, which are difficult to surpass, and there are all kinds of newcomers who are leading the trend; second, Li Shutong has many admirers in China, and various types of literary and artistic works such as dramas, dance dramas, movies, and TV series have already emerged in an endless stream; third and most importantly, Li Shutong spans multiple fields such as music, fine arts, calligraphy, and drama, and has made great achievements in culture and art. How to present such a top IP in modern culture in a documentary is a difficult problem.

But she firmly believes that in this fast-paced era, if we want to tell good stories about urban humanities, use social effects to help improve the city's image, and promote regional economic development, we must use humanistic feelings to create social issues, and documentaries will still be the best choice.

She is willing to accept the challenge of such difficult problems.

The filming team spent more than a year to shoot the entire film "Li Shutong", following Li Shutong's footsteps in more than 20 cities. Huang Xiaoyu said with a smile, "Some people joked that our director team turned themselves into 'runners' in order to find the master's footsteps. We followed his travels all the way from Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Fuyang, Quzhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo, Zhoushan, Shanghai in the Yangtze River Basin, to Tianjin, and then to Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Fuzhou and other places in Fujian. We also went to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Shizuoka in Japan to find the old house where Li Shutong lived, the classrooms where he studied, the ruins of the theater where he performed dramas, etc."

The most valuable thing is that this documentary also shows Li Shutong's handwritten annotations in precious books and the original oil paintings he painted when he graduated. This is the first time these original works have been made public.

In addition to running between different cities, they also read thousands of pages of big books, searched every corner of the Internet for information related to Li Shutong, walked through the basements of museums, art galleries, and university history museums, and followed the clues to the cultural relics market in small cities in northern Jiangsu, looking for cultural relics scattered among the people from stall to stall, and even went down to a canyon dozens of meters deep to shoot a single frame of image...

She said, "We were very lucky to have photographed many precious historical relics and learned about the more three-dimensional and real side of historical figures. The footprints he left in Chinese cultural history are profound and have far-reaching influence. At the same time, we also came into contact with many interviewees and were moved that there are still many people willing to practice Li Shutong's spirit of 'advocating frugality and avoiding extravagance'. I feel that these are very worthy of contemporary young people to touch and feel."

Therefore, she particularly hopes that through this documentary, more people can touch and understand the snapshots of China's modern and contemporary art history and cultural history, and draw cultural influence and spiritual nourishment from it.

The film has been launched on video platforms such as iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku, and Bilibili, and won the second place in the biographical documentary category on Tencent Video with a score of 9.3.

Of course, the significance of making documentaries is not only for scoring, its greater value lies in: it can also set off with honors, taking good Chinese stories to the sea. According to Huang Xiaoyu, the overseas promotion activities of the documentary "Li Shutong" will also be launched simultaneously, and they will also actively explore the path of "going out". At present, the film has also been launched on Zhejiang Satellite TV's YouTube documentary channel, and related promotional content is being launched on the LED screens of internationally renowned landmarks such as Times Square in New York, the three-station four-screen BTS station in Bangkok, Thailand, and the Onoden Main Building in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, as well as overseas social media such as Instagram and Facebook. In the future, the film will also be broadcast in countries and regions such as Singapore and Japan.

dialogue

Exploring the new voice of mainstream documentaries

Nandu Entertainment: Many viewers left messages saying, "This type of documentary is difficult to shoot, but you did a very solid job." "It contains a lot of knowledge points and is worth watching!" What do the three episodes of the documentary tell about?

Huang Xiaoyu:Although everyone is familiar with Li Shutong, in fact, we know relatively little about his life and these real historical materials. How did he live a legendary life full of joys and sorrows in the turbulent times? From a pioneer in the art world to a pioneer in the newspaper industry, and then to a famous teacher in the teaching profession, what caused the change in his life trajectory?

Before filming began, we did a lot of research and visited many experts and scholars in the academic community. When communicating with the experts, we learned that scholars in the industry were very disapproving of many literary and artistic works on the market that interpreted Li Shutong's story. From their point of view, they felt that these literary and artistic works either made Li Shutong too artistic or elevated him too much, and were not real enough.

They were not optimistic about us. At that time, I thought, since there were so many works that made them very dissatisfied, we might as well make a documentary that seeks truth and is pragmatic. Professor Chen Xing, director of the Hongyi Master Feng Zikai Research Center of Hangzhou Normal University, gave us a thick research monograph of more than a thousand pages. We circulated and studied these monographs, and then made selections from the vast amount of story materials.

Because documentaries cannot be boring like textbooks, they need to be artistic and appealing. In the end, we chose to present Li Shutong's life story in three episodes: "Ask me where I am", "Spring is in the branches", and "The full moon in the sky". The title of each episode comes from the verses in his will.

Nandu Entertainment: In addition to "Li Shutong", what other documentary works have you made that left a deep impression on you?

Huang Xiaoyu:Before, I had been engaged in in-depth investigation work for television news. I only switched to documentaries in the past two years. I also served as the chief director of the three-episode television documentary "East to the Sea" and the five-episode television documentary "Chronicles of 26 Counties".

"Eastward to the Sea" is a documentary about the reality of the ocean. The East China Sea has 770,000 square kilometers of sea area and more than 6,000 kilometers of mainland coastline. We spent several months conducting in-depth research on the East China Sea coast in Zhejiang and Fujian. We decided to focus on the current reality and the marine economy. We took three scoops of water from the vast East China Sea. The most essential and exciting content of these three scoops is divided into three episodes: "Viewing the Tide", "Exploring the Sea" and "Riding the Wind". The green development of the East China Sea's marine economy is presented from three perspectives: "macro perspective in the sky", "micro perspective in the water" and "meso perspective on the ground". The theme of the whole film is very clear, that is, "Based on the first high ground of China's economic strategic belt, under the concept of green development, see how people and nature can coexist harmoniously."

"Chronicles of 26 Counties" is also a film with a strong theme. The structure of the whole film is designed to be 5 episodes, which are the wonder of "Mountains and Rivers", the fantasy of "Mountain Rhythm", the dazzle of "Mountain City", the appointment of "Mountain Flavor", and the alliance of "Mountains and Seas". Each episode is 50 minutes. We hope to vividly tell the road to common prosperity of 26 mountainous counties in Zhejiang through the stories of 26 counties in Zhejiang's mountainous areas in the government-led super project construction, the rise of digital technology, the first move of livelihood projects, the new road of traditional agriculture, and the Zhejiang experience of mountain-sea collaboration. It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most "Alexander" projects I have taken over in my more than 20 years of work. During the preliminary investigation, 26 counties, 26 seminars participated by local departments, one city a day, non-stop, and two thick notebooks were recorded. The shooting stage was during the epidemic, and I lived and ate with the mountain people and followed them closely, which lasted nearly a year.

Although "Eastward to the Sea" and "26 County Chronicles" are both theme films, what I want to do is not a thematic essay, nor a narrative essay that is merely emotional, but a "good-looking expository essay" that objectively records without emotion, with real records, rational expressions, and objective presentations.

Looking at those documentaries with an international perspective, they all aim to "tell the story of Donghai well without praising it in a single word" for audiences in different contexts. The same is true for "26 County Chronicles", which features a big background and small stories, highlighting the documentary and thematic nature.

These are the documentaries we want to make.

Introduction Huang Xiaoyu

The chief director of the documentary "Li Shutong" is a senior television journalist with more than 20 years of experience in the industry. His main works have won the China News Award, China Radio and Television Award, and Zhejiang News Award first prize many times. Among them, in 2006 he initiated the large-scale news action "Zhejiang People on the New Long March Road", led the reporting team to travel through mountains and rivers, crossed snow-capped mountains and grasslands, and conducted in-depth interviews in 8 provinces and 66 cities and counties along the Long March Road, and creatively initiated the "Long March Site Protection" activity, mobilizing Zhejiang businessmen in various provinces along the route to actively participate. His representative work "Zhejiang People on the New Long March Road" won the first prize of the 17th China News Award, Zhejiang Province's Five One Project Award and other awards, and was praised by the Central Propaganda Department as an excellent example of innovative red-themed reporting; he initiated the TV live broadcast program "Facing "Double 11"", the TV talk show "Who is to blame for the water dispute", and the continuous report "Zhejiang People on the New Silk Road" which won the China News Award in succession; he initiated the special film "Wu Juping, a real civilian hero" which won the China Radio and Television Award; his representative works "Farewell to Coal Boss", "Shanghai Judges Collective Prostitution Case: The Truth of an Atypical Anti-Corruption Case", and " In-depth investigative television reports such as "Safety Hazards in Key Projects", "Customs Clearance Transactions Along the National Highway", "The Court Corrects Mistakes, but the More It Corrects, the More Mistakes It Makes", and "Investigation into the "South China Tiger" Incident" have aroused strong social response, and the works have a wide social influence.

Written by: Southern Metropolis Daily reporter Wu Fengsi and intern Zhou Linlin