90% can’t be a director. Are these "future Jia Zhangke" ok?
"How did you come up with this story?"
"Where does the money for filming come from?"
"Are you still making movies after graduation?"
……
Special feature of 1905 film network All these problems occurred in the "Pingyao Corner" unit of this year’s Pingyao International Film Exhibition. Many students from major film and television universities in China gathered here to raise their doubts in interactive communication.
These problems are not concentrated in Pingyao Film Festival. It can be said that this is the puzzle and problem that students in film and television colleges have been lingering in the stage of learning to create movies.
"One Corner of Pingyao" is the educational module of Pingyao Film Festival. Every day, excellent short film collections shot by students from a film and television university are arranged to be screened, and a venue is provided for students to communicate freely after the screening.
This year, seven film and television universities participated in the activities. Taking this opportunity, we got in touch with the film director students and teachers from different schools. In the interviews with them, we can vaguely spy out the development status of student directors in domestic film and television universities.
Learning film technology has benefited a lot, but I am still confused.
Domestic film director majors are mainly distributed in three types: film professional colleges, media colleges and Chinese-foreign joint-venture colleges. These different schools have different teaching modes for film creation.
For example, Zheng Yue, director of the School of Drama, Film and Television, Communication University of China, introduced after the screening that their directing courses will integrate the cultivation of drama, television and film. The director department of Beijing Film Academy is divided into three directions: film director, documentary director and film editing. Jia Zhangke, the founder and director of the film festival, is the dean of the vancouver film school. He introduced at the event that the director major of the college is to use the international teaching mode, especially to strengthen students’ actual combat training on the set.
Huang, Yue and Xu’s graduation short films were all selected to show in Pingyao this year. They came from different schools, and they all studied directing. When they mentioned the teaching mode of the school, they all agreed that what they learned the most was the technology and skills of the film, which benefited them a lot:
"Movies have an industrial system, and they need to learn technical skills. They are not free to play, and they can be filmed well if they want to.In addition to stories, you still need to master editing, photography and other technical means to make a good movie. The school mainly teaches the technical level, and then does free creation and expression by itself. "
Jia Zhangke also said that it is very free to create movies now, and the equipment for filming is also very convenient. However, after mastering the technology of filming, you have to improve your own cultural literacy and humanistic literacy, so that the level of your works can be improved.
“We will all be confused.",almost every student interviewed mentioned his confusion period, but their confusion is not the same. Some people like movies at first, but after learning movies, they find that they are incompetent and give up halfway. Some people just want to get a diploma from the beginning, and some people encounter difficulties in expression in their creation. …
Teacher Zhou Xinxia told us that these phenomena abound among the students she has taught:
"There is a great distance between hobbies and majors. From high school to college, it is a different leap. No one in college is staring at you, so you must be inspired by hobbies. In the environment of free learning, some people can’t find the north at once.
Watching movies is very interesting, but learning movies is very boring.Majors need to learn skills, not to master them at once. He will feel happy when he can really use these skills to create. But in the boring stage of learning, they often can’t survive. "
Lack of creative experience, the money for filming depends on parents.
After mastering the professional knowledge and technology of filming, many students also encounter many practical problems in the process of creating movie scripts.
Song, a local director in Shanxi, has been to Pingyao Film Festival for three years in a row. He has many questions in writing the script, such as whether to shoot a complete story or a simple event in a short film, but the school teacher did not give him a good answer. However, after consulting Qiu Yang, the director of this year’s "Pingyao Corner" opening film, he said that he was somewhat enlightened.
This actually reflects the students’ lack of experience in film creation, and another question commonly mentioned by the interviewed students also reflects this situation. They say that when writing a script, they are always uncertain about the understanding of roles other than the protagonist. "You may use your own logic and worldview to shape what you write, and you will imagine some unrealistic information for these characters, which is very unreal.”。
Zhang Yimou said in the master class of Pingyao Film Festival that suffering was the source of their previous creation. Teacher Zhou Xinxia also observed that she thought that students’ living conditions were better than in the past, and their understanding of a theme expression or role could not be as tight as in the past.

Although it is not mature enough, the works directed by students are richer in theme and type than in the past. Judging from a series of short films shown this time,Most students like to focus on personal emotional expression in their works.About their restless youth love, the life closely related to students and the affection between father and son.
Even though the production seems a little rough, these works are all based on their own truth, trying to dig out their softest feelings.
When it comes to specific shooting and production, the interviewed students all said that the behind-the-scenes team is not the main problem. Xu told us, "Since the freshman year, there have been small assignments that cooperate with other departments, and teachers will deliberately connect our cooperative relationship. For example, students in the recording class must cooperate with students in the director class once, so by the time the shooting is completed, the team is relatively mature.The hardest thing is actually money."
Although the school will provide some budget support, most of it will be raised by students themselves. “I’m grateful to my parents, who contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars."At the post-screening exchange meeting, Yue said directly that his short graduation film was entirely funded by his parents.
It is understood that at present, the production cost of joint graduation short films of students from major film and television universities in China is roughly 100,000-— 150,000 yuan, such a large sum is basically supported by family members, and many students indirectly made money from many projects or borrowed money from each other last semester.
“Majored in film, but it costs a lot of money.",an interviewed student said.
90% didn’t become a director after graduation, waiting for opportunities in the film and television circle.
After the graduation work is completed, do the directors directly enter the profession? The reality is not so ideal.
Zhou, a student from a media college, revealed, "Nearly half of the students in our class go to do variety shows, shoot advertisements and shoot Tik Tok after graduation, but few insist on making movies.There are also some graduates who continue to work in the film industry, including literary planning, editing, project development, publicity and distribution, but they are far from the core director’s work.
Teacher Zhou Xinxia also provided us with a data.In a certain session, 90% of the graduates of the North Film Director Department she brought were screenwriters.. She believes that the film market in China is getting bigger and bigger, and the demand for talents is getting higher and higher. Students who graduate from the director department don’t have to be directors. She often encourages students not to lock in the future immediately. It can take two or three years to find it, but it can’t take too long.
Several students from Beijing Film School who graduated this year also told us that the employment rate of graduates is very high, and there are many opportunities in the film industry. It is easy to find a job, but it is difficult to directly engage in director work.
They also revealed that if their own scripts are put into the venture capital units of major film festivals in China, the success rate of final implementation is not high, so they should sign a film company first, help the first-line creators, and silently wait for the opportunity of directing.
For these young people who are interested in directing, Ms. Zhou also gave some suggestions. She advocated that we can first talk to several film crews and get to know the various work departments of the film. "A film director needs the ability to organize and deal with people. I have worked with director Chen Kaige.Even a great director like Chen Kaige said that he carried seven or eight fire extinguishers every day and put out fires every day. Movies are created by many people. As a director, it is difficult to lead them if they don’t understand their majors."
Among the directors interviewed in this interview, they all have the dream of being a film director to make a feature film, but most of them still treat it with a normal heart, as one of the students said, "There is no hurry, just keep your passion, make money first, sharpen the script first, and accumulate first."







