"Finding Dongguan" makes food the new name card of Dongguan, producer Li Jie talks about shooting stories
Looking for sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy food
Yang Cheng Evening News reporter Gong Weifeng intern Yu Shuyuan
Guiwei litchi, Linbian zong, butter crab... With the official ending of the documentary "Xunwei Dongguan", food has now become a new business card for the modern city of Dongguan in addition to the "world factory". Through this urban food documentary co-produced by the CPC Dongguan Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department and Daolai Media, audiences across the country felt the little-known customs of Dongguan and the Lingnan style of the integration of urban civilization and farming traditions.
Why did you choose Dongguan to shoot such a documentary? How to produce new ideas in food documentaries? How to build an industrial chain of gourmet IP? Why do food documentaries favor Guangdong? …With these questions, Yangcheng Evening News exclusively interviewed Li Jie, the producer of "Xunwei Dongguan".
"Searching for Dongguan": "Showing Dongguan's Little-Known Side through Food"
In February 2017, Li Jie and his team went to Dongguan for the first time to investigate and understand the basic information to finalize this project. They thought that they could continue the concept of "Xunwei Shunde" and continue the "Xunwei" series, so they had "Xunwei Dongguan".
Yangcheng Evening News: Is "Xunwei Dongguan" and "Xunwei Shunde" a series?
Li Jie: Our team may continue the "Xun Wei" series. However, when we did "Xunwei Shunde", we didn't want to make a series. The opportunity to do "Finding Dongguan" was to receive an invitation from the Dongguan Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department to shoot a food documentary for Dongguan. Before that, we didn't know much about Dongguan's human life, flavor and cuisine. Before this program, no one systematically introduced the local specialties of Dongguan.
Yangcheng Evening News: After receiving the invitation, did you think of grafting the concept of "finding"?
Li Jie: Before making any documentary, our team will have a large number of social surveys and literature surveys. We will invite experts in sociology and anthropology to demonstrate the plan and infer the documentary’s communication power and professional quality. It takes 4 months from accepting the invitation to deciding to do the project. The shooting started in the spring of 2018, and the production was completed by the end of 2019, and the shooting spanned four seasons.
Yangcheng Evening News: Why is there only three episodes of "Xunwei Dongguan"?
Li Jie: Before we make it, we will consider using modules and logic to sort out the content. According to the survey, we believe that the three aspects of "Tianshi", "Geographic Location", "People and Harmony" can represent Dongguan, so we went to find the corresponding theme and determined the volume of the three episodes is more appropriate.
Yangcheng Evening News: Where is the "difficulty" in producing this documentary?
Li Jie: Before we made this documentary, we didn't know enough about Dongguan. We needed to rediscover and find the communication power that made the audience refreshed. We contacted the publicity staff of local cities, districts, towns and streets to understand the basic situation of the local area and look for the inevitable connection between people and food. In order to photograph a food, to find a filming character, the director and researcher will visit a dozen characters, and finally select the most suitable one. We need to see from the characters that they are devoted to food. They have labor, family, and social relationships. At the same time, they must be active and three-dimensional.
Yangcheng Evening News: What is the humanistic value reflected in this gourmet documentary?
Li Jie: Whether it is "Xunwei Dongguan", "Flavour World" that was broadcast some time ago, or the earlier "Xunwei Shunde", we will see the figures, feel their sweet and bitter, life experience, life changes. What I want to do in this kind of food documentary is to see the changes in the world we live in through food. This world is made up of people, and "people" is the core of expression.
Yangcheng Evening News: Regarding the relationship between people and food, is there any answer after finishing this show?
Li Jie: Dongguan is a rare city sample. It retains the traditional appearance and customs of the Lingnan area in the farming era outside the era of rapid economic development. By doing "Xunwei Dongguan", we further strengthened our original intention of doing "Xunwei" series, because we saw another side of Dongguan that is little known through food: Hakka life in the hills, Guangfu people's life in the water country, boils Family life on the beach in Humen... Maybe not even many people in the Pearl River Delta region know.
Food documentary: "Building a complete ecological chain in the long-term plan"
In recent years, the food documentary is the "blue ocean" in the documentary world. After the success of "China on the Tip of the Tongue", high-scoring food documentaries such as "Fruit Biography", "Breakfast China" and "Life String" began to sweep the screen. Chen Xiaoqing's "Dao Lai" team created the "Flavor" series and "Xun Wei" series of documentaries, which can be called the most delicious food team in the industry.
Yangcheng Evening News: If the "Xun Wei" series is going to be filmed, where is the next stop?
Li Jie: The "Xunwei" series really wants to continue to shoot. Through "Xunwei", we saw the unknown aspects of some regions in China. As for which region to do next, one step at a time. As a private production company, we don’t have many people and the output is not high. The creation depends on the will and timing. We are now preparing for the third season of "Flavour World". The company's project is in a state of rolling preparation, and "Xun Wei" is also in the work list.
Yangcheng Evening News: Your team seems to have been making food documentaries?
Li Jie: We may have been attracting more attention in recent years because of food documentaries. If we say teacher Chen Xiaoqing, he started from making social reality documentaries and made a series of such documentaries in the 1990s. I joined the team in 1999 when I first started "100 Years of China". In 2007, I tried the natural business documentary "Song of the Forest". Maybe everyone knows that we started from "China on the Tip of the Tongue", but in fact we are a professional documentary team, and our interest is not only in food. In the past few years, we have also made social reality documentaries, such as "The Documentary 72 Hours" in collaboration with NHK.
Yangcheng Evening News: You have spent more years making food documentaries because food documentaries may be easier to make money?
Li Jie: It is difficult for documentaries to make money. This is a consensus among documentary practitioners all over the world. We make documentaries more with a passion. At present, the commercial space of domestic food documentaries will be more attractive to customers, but more important is the topicality and attention of the documentary itself. There are more food documentaries, most of them are "streaking". Compared with TV series, its commercial appeal is not so great.
Yangcheng Evening News: In addition to gourmet documentaries, what other types of documentaries are easier to attract commercial customers?
Li Jie: There are a lot of documentaries made very well now. For example, last year there was a cultural experience documentary called "Bread, Air, Miracle", and a fashion documentary "Our Wave", all with commercial customers. Invest.
Yangcheng Evening News: What attempts have you made in the development of the IP industry chain of food documentaries?
Li Jie: This requires the entire production process and the ecological connection of the documentary. It is not a production team that can do it alone, nor is it that a young production company can do everything perfectly at the stage of its establishment. We discuss the possibility of IP industry chain development with commercial customers, such as giving fans some small gifts such as soy sauce, which is considered an attempt. Letting the documentary build a more complete ecological chain based on the content is definitely the ideal state of every practitioner. We are willing to work in this direction, but more teams are required to work together to complete such work.
Yangcheng Evening News: Have you not yet reached that point, or have you encountered resistance?
Li Jie: For a company that has just been established for three years, we have been communicating with our partners. After branding the program and branding IP, how can we make this IP an ecological "self"? Is it possible for the documentary to build a complete ecological chain? This is in a longer-term plan. The so-called monetization, making money and even playing capital games are at least temporarily out of our plan.
Crisis and Future: "Only breaking through oneself can avoid aesthetic fatigue"
The food documentary has done a lot, and there is a routine. How to make new ideas is a difficult problem for food documentary practitioners. According to Li Jie, the team members are "both happy and painful" and can eat a lot of delicious food, but there are too many things to eat, and it is necessary to tap the unknown culture behind the food.
Yangcheng Evening News: Will you worry that the audience will have an aesthetic fatigue with the food documentary?
Li Jie: From entry to the present, this sense of crisis exists at any time and anywhere. We do not feel that the programs we make are invincible in the world. Part of the sense of crisis comes from how we can make updated content at our original level.
Yangcheng Evening News: So jumping out of the routine is especially critical?
Li Jie: Now the audience is very high. I often tell the team that the audience is always right. What we do is a commercial documentary. If the program wants to be spread, it must be approved by the audience, so the negative evaluation of the audience should be studied with humility. There are indeed some problems in the food documentary. For example, there is no core expression, and the food is only displayed in slow motion and close-up of the characters. The storyline is always the old man and the old lady making farm meals. This is really not possible. We try to avoid such routines.
Yangcheng Evening News: Do you have to work hard to extract humanities and emotions in order to make the food documentary feature?
Li Jie: Our team is good at paying attention to the changes in the world through food, and other teams are better at so-called "hard-core cuisine", telling you what to eat in this place, and taking pictures of the food particularly beautiful. There is no distinction between good and bad for different channels, only related to the interests of the production team. We are more looking for the differences between the big thousand worlds and the correlation between these differences. "Differences" come from people's work, from differences in culture, tastes, and life experiences. These differences make these foods unique.
Yangcheng Evening News: How to understand the documentary sense of the food documentary, how do you think about the questioning of the posing?
Li Jie: This is an issue that has been discussed for a long time in the documentary world. I can only say that our documentary does not take pictures of the protagonist. In the preliminary investigation, we had an understanding of the protagonist's general life laws. There may be more than one field test and light adjustment before shooting. Before shooting, we will communicate with them "what are you going to do" instead of "what do I want you to do", and will coordinate the photography equipment and shooting plan according to their arrangements.
Yangcheng Evening News: From "The Taste of Laoguang", "Tuning Shunde", "Origin of Flavor: Chaoshan", and now "Tuning Dongguan", it seems that the food documentary still favors Guangdong. What is the reason?
Li Jie: Guangdong is a very important place for Chinese cuisine to gather. Cantonese cuisine is very representative, and cooking can't be avoided. On the other hand, there are also many documentaries about food in other parts of China. Perhaps because of your preference for Cantonese cuisine, more attention is paid to films with the theme of Cantonese cuisine. Our team is full of curiosity about food, and has always wanted to eat all over the country and shoot all over the country, step by step.