These days, a short film "Three Minutes" has exploded the circle of friends, which tells an unusual reunion in Spring Festival travel rush. The story is very simple. The mother in the film is a train attendant on the "Nanning to Harbin" line. It is the busiest time to work overtime during the Spring Festival, and her son Ding Ding, who is about to go to elementary school, misses his mother, so he asks his aunt to take him to the train station next to his home and meet him while his mother’s train stops on the platform for 3 minutes. This Spring Festival travel rush-themed short film was shot by Hong Kong director Chen Kexin, and the content of the short film was based on a true story. After the short film was launched, it was played more than 13 million times on Youku in one day. Enthusiastic netizens also found the prototype of the story.
The story is based on true events.
The joy in the compartment or the joy of meeting relatives on the platform are the most familiar memories of the Spring Festival. This can’t help but remind people of the mainland realistic film "Dear" filmed by Chen Kexin a few years ago. The strong local flavor and sense of reality in the film will also surprise people that the film was produced by a Hong Kong director.
Outstanding storytelling ability, keen perception of details, concern for reality and strong humanistic feelings are Chen Kexin’s consistent styles. Chen Kexin said that although he has no experience in Spring Festival travel rush, the Spring Festival and reunion are the themes he has been paying attention to for many years. "I can fully imagine the joy and happiness when Spring Festival travel rush comes home." When "Three Minutes" was filmed in Chongqing, Chen Kexin saw the crowds surging on the platform. Although there were all extras in front of him, he was still infected by this feeling of returning home. When the audition actors sang the song of returning home for the New Year, he said that he was also moved to tears.
The short film touches the audience, not only because the flight attendants are busy on the train every Spring Festival, but also because the most critical structural design of the plot is that after the train stops at the platform, the mother and son meet for only 3 minutes. Three minutes, the sense of time limit brought by this reunion is the tension of the plot. The short film specially emphasizes this sense of time with the creative idea of 3-minute countdown. In the film, the countdown number is displayed at the top of the screen, which reminds the audience that the separation time between mother and son is approaching from the time the train enters the station. When entering the station, my mother saw her son on the platform through the window, but when the door opened, she had to help the passengers get on and off first, so she couldn’t find her son at the first time. Because there were too many people on the platform, my son couldn’t find his mother at the first time. When the child found his mother through the crowd on the platform, the time of 3 minutes has become 2 minutes. When the mother and son met and hugged, the mother waited for her son to speak with eager eyes. An interesting scene happened. After a moment of silence, the son began to recite the multiplication formula loudly. It turned out that my mother had joked with her son who was about to go to elementary school, "If you can’t recite the multiplication table, you can’t go to school, let alone see your mother." On the platform, my son didn’t recite the formula fluently, and at this time, the countdown on the screen was changing rapidly. The mother didn’t know what to do, and she couldn’t bear to interrupt her son. The tense countdown contrasted with the child’s stuttering recitation, which touched the audience’s mood. When my son recited the multiplication formula, the train started. The brief reunion of mother and son left the audience with endless aftertaste without a few words of dialogue.
During the Spring Festival travel rush season, many people are close to their relatives because of their work, but they can’t stay. The short film "Three Minutes" is based on such a real thing. After the short film was screened, some enthusiastic people found the prototype of the story in the film. She is Liu Zhong, the conductor of the Shenzhen-Urumqi team of Guangzhou Bureau Group Co., Ltd. of China Railway. On January 24, 2017, the media reported the story that Liu Zhong met his son Chen Hongjin (nicknamed Ding Ding) during the four minutes when the train stopped at Hengyang Station after passing through his hometown in Hunan. At the premiere of Three Minutes, director Chen Kexin said that when he first saw the story, he decided to shoot it. In the short film, Tintin recited "99 Multiplication Table" to his mother. In reality, Tintin showed his mother "ma ma wo ai ni" written in pinyin.
For Chinese people, Spring Festival travel rush is a journey to return home or find their own roots. The director Chen Kexin from Hong Kong has never experienced Spring Festival travel rush, but he has touched countless audiences with simple pictures, regardless of Spring Festival travel rush in the short film.
Mobile phone shooting movies has its own advantages.
This 7-minute short film continues Chen Kexin’s narrative style of paying attention to reality and storytelling. What’s more special is that it is a short film shot with a mobile phone all the time, and it is also the first time that Chen Kexin was invited by Apple to shoot a short film with a mobile phone. When sharing his own shooting experience, Chen Kexin said that "Three Minutes" gives the audience some perspectives that traditional films can’t touch. The current mobile phone photography technology has reached a very high level, which can not only record people’s daily life, but also serve as a lens supplement to traditional film photography. In "Three Minutes" shot by mobile phone, the vision of the characters in the picture is more realistic. In the short film, the subjective shot of the little boy crossing the platform to find his mother is completed by putting his hand in front of the little actor, which shows the rhythm and height of the movement, which is closer to a child’s perspective.
Nowadays, more and more young people without professional training are shooting their own works with their mobile phones. As a daily tool, mobile phones are far beyond the reach of cameras in portability. When shooting in a narrow indoor space, in fact, a considerable space is needed behind the camera to set up the machine, and with such a small device as a mobile phone, you can freely take pictures even in a narrow and crowded train compartment. For the advantages of mobile phone shooting, Chen Kexin greatly praised: "Compared with bulky cameras, mobile phone shooting can try the effect of dynamic camera movement, and it also brings many unique and different shooting angles. For example, you can put your hand frame very close to the actor to capture the true feelings of the characters without making the actors feel disturbed, which is an advantage that traditional large cameras do not have when shooting at close range. "
After "Three Minutes" was broadcast online, many netizens were surprised that the picture texture taken by the mobile phone could actually achieve the effect of big screen broadcast, but some knowledgeable netizens reminded: "Don’t think that there is only one iPhoneX between you and Chen Kexin’s" Three Minutes ",but it is actually several times more expensive than the mobile phone. Stabilizer, adapter, lens, drone and palm photographer & HELIP; …” In Chen Kexin’s view, all auxiliary equipment is just a tool to help the director establish an emotional link with the audience. The most important thing in filming is not technology, but creativity. Technology is just a tool, and more and more convenient and practical tools provide the possibility for realizing creativity. The short film "Three Minutes" not only impressed the audience, but also clearly conveyed that the future may enter an era in which everyone is a photographer. The development of science and technology is giving more ordinary people and video lovers the opportunity to complete their dreams about images.
Our reporter Qiu Wei
