After temporary withdrawal and postponement during the Spring Festival, the movie "Chinese Ping Pong: Jedi Counterattack" (hereinafter referred to as "Chinese Ping Pong") was finally officially released on February 17.
This film, directed by Deng Chao and Yu Baimei, evokes people's review of this past event in the 1990s through the story of Dai Minjia, an overseas coach who invited Ying to return to China to save the men's table tennis team.
As a sports film, "Chinese Ping Pong" not only has sparks, but also tears, and music has played an important role in promoting it.
As the first film in China to use music panoramic sound object technology, "Chinese Ping Pong" has both a magnificent melody and the sound of table tennis beating clearly. The strong sense of substitution makes the audience empathize instantly.
Recently, Yu Fei, the music producer of "Chinese Ping Pong", revealed the story behind the film's music production for reporters from Beijing Youth Daily.
new technology
Increase the sense of immersion
For ordinary audiences, the music panoramic sound object is a very unfamiliar concept.
Yu Fei tried to explain this complex concept in plain language, "Simply put, Dolby Atmos is a technological embodiment of surround sound, which makes people feel surrounded by sound. Object is one of these technologies. A technical term, translated as 'object', the specific feeling is to allow some sound elements to move freely according to the creator's own ideas".
The world's first film using Dolby Atmos as an "object" - "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" was released in 2016 and gave Yu Fei inspiration, "Some elements in the music of that film can be used as the universe's Part of it shuttles back and forth in the sky, which is actually consistent with the idea of "Chinese Ping Pong" this time." The effect of this technology on sports and competitive movies is very remarkable. "This time, this technology is applied to the sound of table tennis. Make the sound move overhead. That way the audience sounds more immersive and it adds a little bit of interest.”
In fact, before using this technology, Yu Fei started to make preparations a long time ago. Although the music has been revised and polished until it is close to the release, Yu Fei is very pleased to see the effect of the film.
cooperate again
More tacit understanding with Deng Chao and others
Yu Fei, who served as a music producer in many excellent films such as "Eight Hundred", "King Kong River" and "Assassination of Novelists", is quite famous in the circle, and many directors have taken the initiative to seek her cooperation.
Because of the good cooperation with Deng Chao and Yu Baimei in "Galaxy Tutorial", Yu Fei naturally became the music producer of "Chinese Ping Pong".
"The director's requirements are as strict as ever, but everyone has contributed a lot of their own ideas to this film." Usually, Yu Fei joins the crew during the early planning of the film, and this time is no exception.
She revealed that when she first read the script, she proposed to have a ping-pong music theme, "I wanted to integrate the sound of ping-pong into the music, and then I wrote the music theme of ping-pong to the director, and it was a one-time pass."
In order to reflect the sense of time, Yu Fei found a lot of old songs from the 1980s and 1990s, so there was a chorus of Li Ming, one of the four heavenly kings, Deng Chao, and Zhang Yanqi, "All these creative points collided with the director Formed in mutual trust and tacit understanding."
Lu Han sings
has an impressive tone
In addition to trying new technologies, Yu Fei believes that as a sports film, the biggest difficulty in the music part of "Chinese Ping Pong" lies in the control of rhythm.
"There are three competitions in the film, and the music of the three competitions needs to be compared. The first time is the Korean Open, the purpose is to show the victories of two 16-year-old teenagers, so the music should be a little more interesting in the tension. The second time It was the Battle of Gothenburg, which used music and sound effects while being tense. Simply put, we use whatever elements will make the audience feel uncomfortable. The third time is the Tianjin World Table Tennis Championships. Although we We won, but the process was very difficult, so the music cannot tell everyone the result in advance, leaving suspense. It is actually very difficult to translate these suspense into musical language."
Judging from the audience's feedback, these musics properly set off the atmosphere needed by the film. When the ending song "Path of Glory" played, the entire auditorium was surrounded by warmth amidst Luhan's clear voice.
"I was actually very moved when I saw the end of the film during the music editing stage. At that time, I felt that there was a need for a particularly touching song to enhance the sense of leaving the scene. Emotional and full of positive energy is what this song wants to convey to everyone." Yu Fei thinks that while Luhan's voice is penetrating, it actually has a particularly touching timbre, "The recording process made me feel his professionalism, and the recording took about 5 hours."
Because it is a song that brings hope and emotion, children's chorus and solo are also specially added to the arrangement. The ingenious design makes the sense of hearing richer, and the catchy melody is also very popular.
Text/Reporter Tian Wanting
Photo courtesy/Yu Fei