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One day in 2021, Xia Peng took Wuershan to a bar. The sound, light and electricity in the bar were vibrating wildly at high frequencies. Wuershan stayed for a while and then went to pay the bill. "You play, I'm leaving first." It was only five minutes since he came in. After a while, he told Xia Peng that the special effects of the fight between Zhang Chulan and Zhang Lingyu were processed into a high-frequency feeling.

At that time, they were preparing for the movie "Under the Alien", with Wuershan as the director and Xia Peng as the executive director. Wuershan set the tone for the movie: watching "The Three Kingdoms of Gods" is like visiting a museum, while watching "Under the Alien" is like dancing. At that time, the "Three Kingdoms of Gods" he directed had been completed and was in post-production. The two projects were carried out in parallel and eventually went in completely different directions.

Among Chinese directors, few are as dedicated to fantasy themes as Wuershan. From Painted Skin II to Mojin: The Lost Legend to The Investiture of the Gods Trilogy, otherworldly elements have always filled his works. He also has a great passion for visual spectacles, and is keen to explore different technical methods and visual styles for each fantasy story to create a fresh audio-visual experience. This time, infusing the disco temperament into this Chinese comic story that is popular among the "post-00s" is his understanding of the aesthetic trends of young people today, and disco is only the most superficial level.

Superhero movies are very common in foreign movies. In the past decade or so, Marvel has risen rapidly by creating a superhero universe. But whether it is Marvel or DC, whether it is Iron Man or Superman, whether it is the audio-visual carnival of "Avengers" or the dark temperament of "Justice League", the original animation basically only provides characters and stories, and the audio-visual language is still the technique of traditional movies. But Wuershan is not satisfied with this. He hopes to create a unique film language, which makes many audio-visual elements that are not often seen in theaters appear in "Under the Alien".

Crowned as the “pinnacle of Chinese animation”, what kind of style does the movie “Under the Alien” have?

Concept design of the movie "Under the Alien". Photo/provided by the interviewee

How to capture the “Qi” in photos?

Wuershan encountered a difficult problem: how to shoot the word "炁"? 炁 is pronounced as qì, which is the ancient Chinese character for "气".

In the basic setting of the movie "Under the Aliens", life forms cannot do without a kind of life energy called "Qi". People who can sense and control this energy are aliens, and Qi will be transformed into various superpowers. Zhang Chulan, a male college student who has superpowers but is unwilling to enter the alien world, forms an alliance with Feng Baobao, a mysterious girl who has lost her memories and is looking for her life experience, and is involved in the disputes between alien sects.

Almost all the fighting scenes in the story are a contest between Qi and Qi. Yang Wu Lei mobilizes the energy of the heart and lungs to produce lightning and thunder; the energy released by the Golden Light Technique is like a flame, covering the whole body; the Prajna Palm has an evil power that stirs people's hearts; the Twelve Labor Emotion Formation stirs the twelve meridians through sound waves until people go crazy; the high-interest Qi loan can absorb and lend the Qi of others... Qi is the core of the world of aliens and the key to establishing the visual language of the film.

This imaginative world of Qi originated from the fantasy of a young man. More than a decade ago, a Beijing young man who worked as a chef, security guard, and odd jobs everywhere, wandered around until he was about 30 years old. In order to find a serious job, he attended an art tutoring class and then started drawing comics. At first, his submissions were rejected, and then he was tepid. In the third work that was officially published, he used Taoist culture, extracted elements from it, and borrowed the allusion of "encountering a strange person in the mountains" to create a world of strange people. In February 2015, "Strange People" (later renamed "Under One Person") was launched on Tencent Animation. Subsequently, this cartoonist named Mi Er jumped to the first line.

Since its serialization in 2015, Under One Person has exceeded 30 billion hits, and has become the top Chinese comic IP popular among comic readers in the past decade. Before the movie was released, the comic Under One Person had already been adapted into an animation and a live-action TV series.

In the movie "Under the Aliens", four alien organizations are stirring up waves beneath the surface of the peaceful world. The villains are the Quanxing faction, who are unwilling to be bound by the rules of the alien world. Four of them are called the "Four Madmen". A courier company called "Nadutong" is actually a management agency that maintains the order of the alien world and maintains the balance between the alien world and normal society. There is also a famous and upright Tianyi Sect that has been passed down for thousands of years, and a new civil organization Tianxiahui, which is developing rapidly with the support of a large group worth hundreds of billions. In the original comics, this world will gradually expand, connecting countless past characters and grievances in the rivers and lakes.

"In our film market, there is no such genre as traditional Chinese style superpowers," said Xia Peng. The comic book Under One Person provides a blueprint, "and I think this should also be a genre that young people like."

Superhero movies are mostly based on the simple and clear theme of good versus evil. Although "Under the Aliens" also ends with a battle between good and evil, the villain is obviously far from the ultimate "big boss", and the story also contains a lot of plot clues. This movie is obviously just the beginning. In the specially designed barrage at the end of the film, there is also a fictional comment from the audience: "The second part should be about the Alien Conference, right?" The Alien Conference is a major martial arts competition in the original story.

In this story with a huge worldview, which characters and story lines does the movie choose to extract, and ultimately, what theme does it want to convey?

Wuershan said that the surreal settings in all fantasy movies are ultimately about people's spiritual growth and emotional truth, which is the focus of the story. In "Under the Alien", the emotional past of Feng Baobao and Xu Xiang's family, as well as the story of Zhang Chulan and his grandfather relying on each other for survival, these two family stories touched Wuershan. He believes that a core clue of the entire movie is the emotional connection between these two people and their relatives.

Dance in the cinema

In the end, Wuershan used extremely brilliant colors and rich music to create a "Qi" of the level of a blockbuster movie. This effect is difficult to achieve in either comics or cartoons.

In the movie, different colors are used to distinguish different Qi, which is extremely gorgeous and exaggerated. Zhang Chulan and Zhang Lingyu, who are from the same school of martial arts, have a battle between Yang Wulei and Yin Wulei. Yang Wulei comes from the heart and lungs, showing bright red and white, while Yin Wulei comes from the liver and kidneys, showing dark blue and black. When the two sides are fighting, the whole picture is covered with two tones, accompanied by strong flashes of light. Wuershan said that every time the martial arts are mobilized, the first thing you see is that the meridians all over the body light up, which is not in the original work. By grafting the meridians and the theory of the five elements, the movie gives Qi a more concrete operating mechanism.

The music matches the colors. Each main character is equipped with exclusive music. When it is their turn to show off their skills, the music will become lively, like a dazzling MV. The strong sense of modeling and comics runs through the main scenes of the movie "Under the Alien".

When discussing with the music supervisor, Wuershan proposed to create a new mixed and collaged music structure, mixing completely different music styles on the entire soundtrack to form a sense of the present auditory experience. "The whole music concept is a bit like a DJ playing music for you." The mixed and collaged music also strengthened the sense of animation and weakened the sense of reality and violence of each action fight scene.

In 2021, a group of young actors entered the training camp, and the most important training subject was martial arts. In order to give texture to a large number of action scenes and present Chinese style, the main creators selected specific boxing styles for different schools and found professional martial arts coaches for training. Hu Xianxu and Wu Jiakai practiced Bajiquan and Baguazhang, Naer Naqian specialized in Tongbiquan and Fanziquan, Naran studied Snakequan, Lan Xiya studied Tai Chi, and Li Wanda integrated various boxing styles... The boxing styles tried to fit the character's personality and the style in the original work. For example, Feng Shayan's boxing style in the original work was rapid, which was somewhat similar to Tongbiquan and Fanziquan, and the charming image of Xia He coincided with the feminine and lingering temperament of Snakequan.

Naran, who plays Xia He, played the femme fatale Daji in the "Fengshen Trilogy". This time, she not only had to learn boxing, but also pole dancing, which was the most homework. The actors had 3 hours of acting classes in the morning and 4 hours of martial arts classes in the afternoon. After the long training camp, Li Wanda won the first prize of the Beijing Traditional Martial Arts Championship Youth Women's Bajiquan, Lan Xiya's Tai Chi was praised as "grandmaster temperament", and everyone learned several boxing techniques.

The training camp model that produced the "Fengshen Proton Group" has now produced a qualified "Alien Girl Group".

By the end of 2021, when the filming starts, the actors will perform all the action scenes themselves. The set of "Under the Alien" is densely covered with wires. In this comic story, the characters are always flying all over the sky. The main creators need to restore those imaginative freeze-frame comics into shots, and they have to use their imagination from shooting to post-production. "The difficulty lies in the advance anticipation and coordination during shooting. There are so many anti-gravity surreal scenes, and many shots have never been seen before." Xia Peng said, "The actors need to train a good sense of balance and strength. If the actors do it, the photography must also be very precise. Every time an action scene is done, there is an increase in the risk of injury. We should try to do as little action as possible."

For example, in comics, a person is often kicked all over the place, like a pinball bouncing from one wall to another. In the movie, Feng Shayan beat up Zhang Chulan in the hotel like this, with actor Hu Xianxu hanging on the wire and flipping back and forth, and the whole shot was shot in one take. Looking back, Xia Peng felt that this scene, which was not too big, was one of the most difficult scenes, "requiring very precise design."

Nowadays, most movies are shot with multiple cameras. The same performance can be shot with different scenes and angles for later editing. The "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy" was shot with five to six cameras at the same time. However, the movie "Under the Alien" was shot with a single camera, and only one scene was shot at a time. Because comics are all wide-angle effects, each movie lens is also wide-angle, and only one camera can be used at a time. Other cameras can easily appear in the picture and be exposed.

Single-camera shooting slowed down the pace of shooting. Two groups of "Under the Alien" started working at the same time, with Wuershan and Xia Peng each responsible for one group, and it took a total of 192 shooting days. "This is the price of pursuing this style, and it is also the only way." Wuershan said, "If we don't shoot like this, every picture won't be beautiful, tense, and comic-like. We want every shot to look like it was drawn and carefully designed."

In recent years, Xia Peng occasionally rewatched some genre films he had seen before. The films that used to be very fast-paced now seem very slow. "The pace of the drama is very slow, and it only tells one story, which is very simple." It is not the movies that have changed, but the people who have changed. He found that the pace at which he receives and processes information has become faster, which is the impact of the times on everyone.

What about the mainstream readers of animation, those young audiences who grew up in the era of information explosion? They must be faster in receiving and processing information, so "Under the Aliens" provides a faster pace and stronger drama than ordinary movies. Xia Peng said that the turning points in each scene are more frequent, new characters appear frequently, and no scene is straightforward.

Wuershan said that every scene is very rich and full of entertainment elements. Both the action scenes and the comedy scenes are done to the extreme, and fashionable and cool elements can be seen everywhere. "I hope that when the audience watches the movie, it feels like they are attending a big party, listening to two hours of various styles of music, and participating in two hours of disco, carnival and revelry." He said, "I hope that young audiences will have a hearty audio-visual experience when they enter the cinema."

Poster of the movie "Under the Alien".

From "Fengshen" to "Yiren"

Director Wuershan's most anticipated project in recent years is "The Conferred Gods Trilogy", which took nine years from project preparation to the release of the first part, and the last two parts are still in post-production. Last summer, "The Conferred Gods Trilogy" had a low opening and high closing box office curve in theaters. As word of mouth continued to ferment, the box office eventually jumped to 2.6 billion yuan, and was jokingly called "lifted out of the ICU".

The "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy" will not only bring an important mythological epic trilogy to the Chinese film market, but also, in terms of film production, Wuershan, who is a "technology geek", is exploring the film industry and cutting-edge technology through this project. Judging from the response to the first film, his exploration has been recognized. Within a year, the "Investiture of the Gods Part 1" was released in many countries overseas, bringing a world-class Chinese-style blockbuster to the international market and winning many awards.

As the first new work to be filmed after the "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy", Wuershan more or less applied the experience of the "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy" to the movie "Under the Alien". Wuershan said that one of the most important inspirations is the training of actors. "According to the scientific training step by step, the performance effect finally completed by the actors is beyond our imagination. Everyone has great potential, but you need to give the actors precise methods and guidance." Similar to the "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy", the leading actors of the movie "Under the Alien" are also a group of young actors. They are as clean as amateurs. Such long and solid physical training and performance training are rare in today's high-paced film and television industry.

Some of the filming techniques first used in the "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy" were also used in "Under the Alien" to create unique visual effects, but the two themes actually have completely different visual characteristics. The "Investiture of the Gods Trilogy" presents the mythological world in a highly realistic way. The characters, animals, and fairy beasts all pursue realism. Even the virtual non-human characters such as Lei Zhenzi have to approach the texture of every detail. On the contrary, "Under the Alien" pursues a high sense of form and imagination on the background of the human real world.

For example, Zhang Chulan's Golden Light Technique finally used the effect of the sun's corona to present a sense of energy light. Xia He's Prajna Palm emitted sparkling powder and then turned into a lotus. "This is not an absolute technical difficulty, but it especially requires the artists in the visual effects department to have this kind of beauty, creativity and ideas," said Wuershan.

In the past decade, domestic animation has entered a period of rapid development, and many IPs similar to "Under One Person" have been born, gaining loyal followers. The adaptation of the movie "Under One Person" may provide a way of thinking for the filming of live-action domestic animation movies.

After actor Shang Tielong had his nose and ears enlarged by one size, when Mi Er arrived at the set, he saw Zhang Xilin, who he had created, come to life for the first time and was dumbfounded: "The dimensional wall has been pierced." The degree of "face-to-face" of some characters is amazing, but it is also necessary to follow the rules of film creation. The famous scenes of the original work were basically retained. During the script research and preliminary editing stage, they also invited some people to conduct questionnaires on the plot. Based on the famous scenes and the audience's feelings, the rest is the production at the film level, which is the space for filmmakers to play.

"I think this type of movie is the most suitable style of movie for youth culture." Wuershan said that he also wanted to watch such a movie when he was 20 years old, but there was no such movie at that time. Now it is a way to make up for it. However, young audiences are leaving the theaters, and there are more and more entertainment methods, especially entertainment on small screens. "The essential function of movies is entertainment. I think there are fewer young people going to the theater because there are more other ways to meet this demand." Xia Peng said, "So the movie "Under the Alien" is to be fun."

Nowadays, more sufficient reasons are needed to bring young people back to the cinema, such as new film language, new story rhythm, and new viewing experience, but that is by no means all.

Reporter: Ni Wei