"Finding Sugar Man" is a music documentary directed by American director Malik Bender Jean Lauer. It was released in the United States in 2012 and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in the same year. The film focuses on finding the musician Rodriguez as the main clue, connecting the legendary deeds of Rodriguez's life. The film also has a very vivid and delicate portrayal of the music fans and musicians he has influenced. The film shows an excellent personal style in the selection of narrative structure, the design of narrative viewpoint, the creation of suspense and conflict, and the arrangement of audio-visual language. This article will combine the content of the film to make a specific analysis of the above aspects.
In terms of narrative structure, the film adopts a precise choreography that appears to be a linear narrative, but is actually a non-linear narrative. At the beginning of the film, the owner of the "Sugar Man" video store in South Africa recalled the singer Rodriguez: he became famous without leaving any information other than his name, and finally disappeared suddenly, and there were even rumors that he was on stage Burn yourself alive. As a result, the background sound suddenly becomes full of suspense and solemn color. Immediately, the title and title appeared, and the film began to look for the narrative clues of Rodgriz.
From a logical point of view, it seems that the search for this person from his rumors is a linear narrative. However, if we look through the whole film, we can easily see that Rodgriz's story begins in Mexico. He came to Detroit to work as a Mexican American. Since he started working, telling his legendary stories along the way can undoubtedly feel the ups and downs of his life, and also have a good sense of substitution. But the choreographer chose a completely different way: using the fans to find him as the beginning, especially the fans or South Africans as the beginning, left a big foreshadowing: who is this person? Why was his message vague? Why was he so influential in South Africa suddenly disappearing? If he really committed suicide, what kind of person is he himself? This creates a lot of legacy problems for the audience, and allows the audience to gain a strong sense of substitution.
Then, the film came to Detroit. Here, we learn that Rodriguez is a blue-collar worker at the bottom of the hierarchy, doing the hardest physical work. However, due to the unique texture of his works, he was still appreciated by big producers and released 2 albums. However, the outstanding musical works and the hard work of professional musicians did not bring about the fire of the album, and Rodriguez never released a music album after that.
After this, the film wisely begins to leave Detroit, which reflects the charm created by the director's mastery of the narrative point of view. Why is it smart to leave Detroit? Because Luo did not actually die, in the previous interview, the film consciously blurred out the description of Luo's current situation by Detroit musicians, and only stated his experience and unsatisfactory results, plus the previous death rumors, Make the audience mistakenly believe that he is dead. After that, choosing South Africa to continue the narrative once again demonstrated the charm of viewpoints.
It turned out that Rodgriz's songs were accidentally brought to South Africa. In South Africa, which is undergoing apartheid and isolation, public opinion and freedom of entertainment are strictly controlled, but Luo's song bluntly mentions: "how many times you have sex a week?", the song "establishment blue" is to a certain extent The event ignited the flames of protests and freedom of speech in South Africa, and Luo has become an iconic figure. He sold more than a million albums in South Africa and became a hotly debated figure on the streets.
In this way, Luo's character image has been fully shaped, and the way of shaping is based on the answer to the previous question: Who is he? What has he done? From the point of view given by the director, he is a different kind of musician. After creating a unique musical work, the response was mediocre and then disappeared. There were rumors that he set himself on fire in South Africa, and there were rumors that he committed suicide by drinking bullets in the United States. On the other hand, by accident, he had a huge influence in South Africa and became an "opinion leader" and "symbol". The story here is already very rich, and it only took about half an hour.
Obviously, if you only use the next 50 minutes to find Luo and confirm the previous point of view, it will indeed confirm the previous article, and close the end, but the rhythm will appear protracted and tedious, and the second half will also appear very boring and lack visibility.
But the director has received a gift from heaven: the drama of life. When we thought the legend would end at this point, we found an unexpected harvest as the fans searched: Rodriguez is still alive, still living in Detroit, and still living a mediocre blue-collar life.
This made the audience suspicious. I said before that Luo set himself on fire and drank bullets. How could he live again? At this time, it is not difficult to recall carefully that everything is still controlled by the director. All the arguments to prove his death are only circulating and possible, and none of them came from close people who really knew him. And the statement of the musician who mastered his current situation was only spread by the director after the answer to this mystery was revealed, which made people feel that they could see the sun through the clouds.
After this, the point of view of the narrative begins to come to Rodriguez. We learned from interviews with him and his family that he still insisted on music creation, but he thought it was inferior to the previous work "Coming from future" and did not publish it. At the same time, although he does heavy physical labor, he still maintains the artist's love for life and a solemn sense of ritual: wearing a tuxedo to do heavy physical labor.
From here, the choreographer begins to really shape Rodglitz himself: musically, he is adored by countless South African fans without him knowing it. In China, he is just an unknown nobody. In life, he is a person who spends every day with true love and lofty respect: he will fight against the injustices in the system as written in his lyrics. Reasonableness and racism; will try to get elected, but never succeed; will take her daughter to high-end places, although they live very simple, let them know that people can do anything and everyone should be equal.
It is not difficult to find that the choices of all viewpoints and events have a strong sense of conflict with the previous ones. He's not a cynical, world-defying cynic who ends his life scrawled with suicide. Instead, he lived his life with passion and worked hard to make him a better person.
At this time, Rodriguez's image became full: he was unaware of his overseas reputation, and he loved life in obscurity at home, and continued to create music.
Then the viewpoint naturally follows the audience's reaction: so he knows what happened after he was so popular in South Africa?
The plot then introduces his concert in South Africa. This concert is the intersection of music fans and Rodriguez, and it is also the first meeting of the two major locations in South Africa and the United States. In the enthusiastic response of the live music fans and Luo's loving singing, all the merits and virtues were fulfilled. When the love that travels through time and space and the appreciation that seems like a lifetime comes quietly, the audience and fans, including Luo himself, will naturally gain love and touch from the familiar music.
In the end, the film brought him back to life, back to his original state of life. Without performing, he was still happily working as a blue-collar worker to support his family, and he did not earn a lot of money because of it. Spiritual wealth made him rich, but real material things only filled the pockets of unscrupulous businessmen.
It is worth noting that the director's thorough understanding and deep love for Rodriguez also made the film even better. This is not an abstract emotional expression, but is actually reflected in the work: for example, after finding Luo, the picture is of him walking on the street, and the music is Luo's "street boy". man" and South Africa, returning to the place where he performed his miracles and paying homage to him. For example, when he showed his love for life, he had to work so delicately and decently. I chose a photo of him wearing a tuxedo, and that shot lasted 5-6 seconds. Obviously, a pure photo usually doesn't take that long to edit, unless the director consciously embodies a certain quality of the protagonist. Another example is that all the songs in the film were composed by Luo himself, which has to be said to be the biggest publicity for Luo. Since then, Luo Neng has toured around the world, and the relationship with the film, especially the director, is inseparable.
In the creation of documentaries, a problem that is easy to arise is: object determinism, that is, if the subject is interesting and has a story, then I will definitely succeed in shooting him. This statement is certainly reasonable. After all, people are the theme of life, and interesting people have interesting lives. However, the author believes that as a documentary creator, how to discover the characteristics of a character as much as possible, make the audience fall in love with this character to the greatest extent, immerse in the story instead of sitting on pins and needles, and even understand the deviation to generate disgust and resistance is a very test. creative ability. This should even be fundamental to the director.
Obviously, Rodriguez's life is full of legends, and the drama is far beyond the drama itself. It should be said that as long as the production and director are in a satisfactory manner, it will not be a bad work. However, it is clear that the director who is well versed in the sense of writing and directing takes the work to a higher level. By consciously choosing the viewpoint, he completes the design of the subjective narrative structure. The effect allows viewers to experience the emotional ups and downs with the parties.
In addition, some animation and realistic gradients are used in the film (Detroit store and street traverse), lift shots (South African music store), stabilizer traverse shots (South African music store shelf empty mirror), artificial design shots ("Cold Reality") When the album was archived, the shelves slowly opened, and Detroit musicians opened the album to find the memories related to Luo when they were hand-held and shot), as well as the moderate and timely sensationalism of the soundtrack, the choice of viewpoint, the rhythm and norm of editing, etc. And so on, are extremely test of professional skills. As a professional practitioner, you must deeply study the design of director thinking, shot scheduling and soundtrack editing, and apply them to your own creations in order to further improve.
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