Dangrenke's breathing amplified in the cave, and the camera swayed violently - this "imperfection" is exactly the "detechnical reality" pursued by the program team.

Deep in the rainforest in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, musician Renke curled up in a narrow mine. The beam of the flashlight swept across the wet rock wall. Cold sweat oozed out of his forehead, and the breathing sound was infinitely amplified in the cave. Top pigmentation master Shancai is observing the ore and trying to extract natural pigments. Outside the camera, the director team held their breath, and at this time, Renke's "cluophobia" attacked.

"Fear is not a weakness, it proves that I am still alive."

When Renko trembled and said this, everyone present suddenly understood the essence of the show. This famous scene was also called "the most moving documentary of the year" by netizens.

Renke and Shanzhuan are taken to observe ores together in the rainforest mine cave

When short video big data cuts life into fragments of dozens of seconds, "I also think of the life I have seen" tries to use a 40-minute film to show the wonderful lives of different creators and retain the reality of "not daring to fast forward".

Program poster

This Douyin exclusive variety show "I also think about the life I've seen", created by the original team of "Adventure Life", has caused heated discussions since it was launched on April 17 with its real record of "no script" and ten ultimate life issues. In an exclusive interview with The Paper, Zhao Qi, the director of the program, and Zhu Ming, the executive director, completely retrospectively traced the creative logic and behind-the-scenes challenges.

Zhao Qi, the founder of Adventure Studio, once produced the Oscar-nominated documentary "Train Back", and the "Adventure Life" produced by his team has become a benchmark for domestic documentary variety shows with the "documentary reality show" model.

Director Zhao Qi

Zhu Ming said that the new program continues the core of "real record", but must be adapted to the short video ecosystem: "We no longer wait for the 'adventure' with long shots, but use close-ups to capture the momentary emotions."

Executive Director Zhu Ming

Faced with the question of "whether to compromise with traffic", Zhao Qi responded: "Propositional essays may not necessarily not be able to shoot interesting things, and interesting things may not necessarily not be able to make money."

In the interview, he further revealed the creator's identity anxiety: "When we describe our motivation in words, it has actually been filtered by social templates. Real creation should capture the truth under language - such as the sweat beads dripping when farmers farm, which are more real than any interview."

This time, the team's exploration experiment was also reflected in the minimalism of the shooting site.

When the famous scene of the mine cave was born, there were only 4 people on the scene: director, dual-machine photography, and recording. Reducing crew interference is to preserve the bottom line of truth. Dang Renke's breathing amplified in the cave, and the camera swayed violently - this "imperfection" is exactly the "detechnical reality" that Zhao Qi pursues.

Douyin creator "grass trolley" Lao Zhou and Xiao Min left the city to settle in the grasslands in Xinjiang, and analyzed the relationship in front of the camera: "We are like managing our lives in partnership, and our rights and obligations must be equal." During the program, Xiao Min received a call from her mother asking "What should I do if the social security is cut off". Lao Zhou responded after being silent: "This is the way I choose, and I agree with both good and bad."

This conversation, sitting on the ground, has sparked heated discussions because it breaks the traditional love narrative framework. The most touched was Xiaolu, a visitor and talk show actor, who cried in pain in the subsequent interview.

Xiaolu (first from right) and the "grass cart" grassland gather together to share their life insights

"When the audience questioned whether the social security payment was interrupted or not, it just revealed that we have long been preset by social discipline and preset the "normal life". Zhao Qi said: "This kind of criticism directly points to the core of the creation - the 'imperfection' deliberately presented by the program is a resistance to the inertia of public perception."

Regarding the question of "whether three days can present a real life", Zhao Qi proposed: "The material of ten days may not be more profound than that of three days. The key is to capture the 'moment of cognitive subversion', such as Wannida's story about the tearing between the stage and the fragile ide when she told the trauma of childhood." Zhu Ming admitted that this kind of creation is like "spiritual archaeology". When the creators first confessed to the camera, the shooting team turned off all artificial light sources and "make darkness a safe house."

After the program was launched, issues such as "escape from the city" and "niche love" triggered discussion among young groups, and the focus of the controversy was on "whether ideals have to pay a price."

Before the broadcast, the team was most worried that "no one finished watching the 40-minute movie." However, data shows that the discussion in the first episode was not low. After the broadcast, it directly entered the hot spots of Douyin and remained relatively stable during the subsequent broadcast of the program. What surprised them even more was that some viewers would ask: "Did Lao Zhou and Xiao Min buy sheep later?" "Where is Jason's Insect Museum?"

Perhaps this is the secret value of the show: when most people are used to expressing their yearning with likes, the show uses ten "imperfect" life to prove that real life is never on the screen, but in the courage to "put down your phone and do it".

When netizens compared the show to "the documentary version of "A Life of Longing for", Zhao Qi sharply criticized: "The 'accurate' language we think is itself a cage. 'Ideal' comes with a filter. The real action is to break this discourse system." He said, "Action must contain fear and retreat, and this is the truth beyond the imagination of the screen."

This idea was extended in the episode of Olympic champion Li Wenwen. Zhu Ming observed: The audience envied her achievements but it was difficult to replicate, but the lives of most creators were reachable, and what was important was self-awareness after the action.

Although the answer to an ideal life was not given at the end of the show, the seeds of action were planted. Zhao Qi's conclusion in the final interview became the strongest resistance to the mobile phone era: "The record itself is resisting forgetting, resisting numbness, and resisting our arrogant imagination of our own lives."

【dialogue】

The Paper: Let’s talk about the differences between programs and other documentary reality shows from the perspective of planning?

Zhu Ming: Whether it is comparing our previous documentary reality shows, such as "Adventure Life" or other types of reality shows on the market, first of all, it has a very clear theme and subject positioning. It is a high-quality creator in various vertical fields on the Douyin short video platform, which is equivalent to giving you a very clear goal and scope. The Douyin platform itself has a rich ecosystem and a wide theme. Interesting authors from different fields are doing interesting things and living an interesting life. In this regard, it is similar to many documentary reality shows, and it also has its own clear positioning distinction. The second point is more reflected in the presentation of the program. From the perspective of long-form, it needs to be more adapted to the entire viewing characteristics of the short video platform, such as more direct narrative, more full emotions, and stronger interaction with the audience.

Program poster

The Paper: How to choose a guest of TikTok creator?

Zhu Ming: First of all, the platform, as the operator and producer, has a large amount of creator data. Based on the author's personal characteristics and account performance, there are hundreds of people who choose to choose from. We then select candidates from the perspective of content production. After confirming the guests, we need to establish contact communication, invitation, time and content matching, and other aspects, such as platform operation and business cooperation, so as to determine the final list and composition of the guests.

The Paper: How to ensure the authenticity of "no script"? For example, the plot of Xiao Min's mother suddenly calling is mistaken for the script by the audience.

Zhu Ming: It was not the arrangement of the director team, but the call from Xiao Min's mother. About a month before the filming started, her mother went there to live with them for a while. It was the process of a mother going to the grassland to get along with her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. Due to other reasons, it was not possible to shoot at the node, so when the filming was possible, this content line of her mother was weakened a lot, which may be some kind of will and coincidence.

The Paper: Short video platforms emphasize quickly capturing emotions, but documentary content needs to be waited and brewed. How to balance the two?

Zhao Qi: You need to consider the characteristics of the platform. I don’t think it will correspond to the rhythm and narrative style like traditional long videos, which needs to be adjusted. These adjustments are based on different technical levels of choice. As you said just now, you are a documentary audience. The so-called documentary refers to the type of documentary that has been defined by the rhythm and narrative of the documentary. Short videos cannot be considered not documentaries. They may be documentaries under another definition, but are different from the rhythm and narrative of enjoying watching long stories.

The Paper: The program is compared to "the documentary version of "Longing for Life"". Do you agree with it?

Zhu Ming: The difference is that what we show is not pastoral fantasy. Some people follow the filming and flee back to the city after three days. Real life requires a price, and this is the value of the show. For example, Jason took the deer to the rainforest to explore. Three days later, the deer said, "When the insects crawled into the tent, my mind was full of going back to Shanghai to take a shower."

The Paper: There are many "homogeneous content" in the short video era. How far can it be? How to tear off the short video filters when designing ten ultimate lives?

Zhao Qi: What is the so-called filter? When watching an operation video, if someone thinks that both short and long videos contain filters, does he project his obstacles and timidity on the video being watched, rather than whether the video content is real or comprehensive? No video creator or director can fully present the story or life of two people from an omniscient perspective. This is something that no one can do, and there must be subjective choices.

Yu Yang and Li Wenwen walked into the campus

The Paper: Visitors and creators only spend three days together. How can they ensure that their lifestyles and values ​​resonate and interest from the audience?

Zhu Ming: One of the key points is whether two people are suitable to walk this path together. Just do the same thing and go to the same place. The interaction between people must be inherently different. For example, Renke and Shancai have considered it in the early planning. Renke has the characteristics of being wild, and he has also proved the variety show effect that the audience likes in other programs. We cannot fully predict what kind of sparks he will produce when he is with a creator who is a geological science and pigment research. It turns out that there were more performances that the director team had never expected.

For example, we did not expect that Renke was very timid and had various physiological and psychological phobia, such as claustrophobia, abyssphobia and giant phobia, and was particularly afraid of various animals, such as snakes, bats, etc. he encountered during the show, but he was interested in the process of pigment from collection to production, and what impressed him was the location. He kept overcoming his fears and tried to complete several adventures with the mountain pick, which was an unexpected gain.

The Paper: How to add or subtract between documentary and entertainment?

Zhu Ming: Many documentary contents are also entertainment themselves. Perhaps things themselves can be viewed from another perspective, without deliberately distinguishing concepts. For example, the life of a "grass cart", do you think it is documentary or entertainment? I used to watch immersive videos, such as renovating World War II pistols, Zippo lighters, repairing donkey hoofs and growing potatoes, and I could also spend half an hour watching them myself. This is also a kind of entertainment for me. Regarding entertainment, its nature should not be defined so simply.

The Paper: What is the core of the program that most wants to convey to the audience?

Zhu Ming: Action. Whether you yearn for saving yourself through music like Wanida; or you don’t like big cities and want to live a small life in a sparsely populated place; or like Jason, you like mantis and a niche hobby; you can do it, just do it.