Frant Gwo, a Class 2003 alumnus of Hainan University, is a director, screenwriter, executive producer, cartoonist and graphic designer in Chinese mainland. He now serves as the Executive Chairman of Gonghe Culture Media (Beijing) Co., Ltd. He has directed a number of films such as Lee’s Adventures, My Old Classmate and The Wandering Earth, and won many awards including the Best Asian Film Award at the 16th Puchon International Film Festival and the First Chinese Nebula Awards for Best Writing Original Screenplay. Besides, his graphic design, Are You Hot, won the only Golden Award in the 2007 World Greenpeace Global Public Service Advertising Design Competition. On November 23, 2019, The Wandering Earth won the 32nd Golden Rooster Awards for the Best Feature Film.

Frant Gwo

Picture source: The Wandering Earth

Over the years, I have been making science fiction films, and I do feel that the China’s robust development has been a powerful support for the rising and prosperity of science fiction industry. On the one hand, the booming economy has created a huge market for cultural products, and it is now one of the largest markets across the world, fostering conditions and opportunities for the development of science fiction industry. On the other hand, technological advancements make the spread and acceptance of science fiction possible. For example, people feel to natural to watch on the big screen the Chinese astronauts, wearing space suits, walk outside the space station. The real world and the image world are necessarily linked to each other. Only a prosperous and technically strong country can support a growing science fiction industry, which has been proved by the history of literature and art and the history of film.

In terms of film creation, Chinese films have made breakthroughs in many aspects. For example, benefited from achievements in manufacturing industry, especially with the application of 3D printing and CNC machine tools, we have reached a world-class level in making special props with product-level precision, creating vivid picture texture on screen. In addition, we have also achieved a qualitative leap in visual effects of films. Common problems in making scenes like vast and deep space, disastrous earthquakes and landslides have been well solved. Progress has been remarkably made in the most challenging part of biological visual effects. For example, in the film Moon Man, the kangaroo’s hair, muscles, bones and expressions are very much vivid, highly similar to the real ones. Most importantly, these visual effects are achieved by the sheer efforts of Chinese technician team.

It’s true that the technologies in making props and visual effects are minor details, but a film, science fiction film in particular, is made up of these nitty-gritties. One of the biggest challenges for science fiction films is to make the imaginary scene look real with concrete and vivid details such as a cup, a chair, streets or even a vast universe, so as to attract audience to the story. For example, in a survey after the release of The Wandering Earth 1, some audience asked: how to solve the drainage problem of underground cities? Will the absence of sunlight affect human life? Some audience even had sharp eyes, pointing out that some scenes are not real since the background of the characters didn’t change with the change of camera distance. Besides, they also found that the corner of the white wall was too clean and new, lacking of flavor and tactility of life. After reading the feedback, I truly feel that the audience is too knowledgeable. These seemingly hypercritical opinions actually push the continuous improvement in film creation. A good film must be created through the deliberation and polish of countless details.

Still from Wandering Earth 2

In order to ensure the worldview is scientific and details look real, we asked scientists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and many other institutes for advices when making the sequel of the Wandering Earth 1. In the movie, there is an assumption that “earth rotation halts” which might change time and calendar. After careful calculation, the scientists pointed out that there would be 60 hours in a day under that assumption, and the time shown on the clock might be 35:20…. When we were conceiving the film, we spent plenty of time and energy in setting up the worldview in an encyclopedic approach from the perspectives of social science and natural science. We made a 100,000-plus words entry according to library taxonomy, covering human life and space exploration, namely geographical environment, astronomical calendar, occupational structure and living habits.

The success of Wandering Earth 1 has inspired a sense of honor for our team and fostered an ambition to create a better film. In making Wandering Earth 2, we set a high standard on a par with the best one globally. It is not difficult to reach this standard in shooting a single play, but it will be much more difficult when it comes to the making of the whole film. We have to take into account different scenes, personalities of different characters, plots development and visual effects etc.. In addition, with the richer details and more complicated plots, we will have a new problem -- the surge of information density may result in information overload, making people dazzled and even sleepy. We need to simplify what is complicated and set a modest pace so that the audience can immerse in the movie on the one hand and relax themselves on the other.

After all these years of film making, I have an idea that we need imagination, but what we need most is the practical methods to turn imagination into works. Hence, we need to build a more powerful film industry system that fits our national actual situation. It is not only a matter of advanced facilities and technology, but also a matter of improved processes and standards. With a complete and sound film industry system, repeated works and exploration can be avoided, and for filmmakers, it will be easier to create various excellent works based on the past experiences of others, ensuring high-standard quality and efficiency of film production. Over the years, what we have been doing is to record and research the film making process and artistic management, in the hope of providing experience for later generation in film production. I believe, with unremitting efforts, promising youths will eventually surpass us, and we will see more great Chinese films.

Source: People’s Daily (January 31, 2023, Page 20)