《Four Quarters》Pingyao Premiere: Four vertical screens put together four seasons of life

The film - Four Quarters - was screened for the first time in the world at the 10th Pingyao International Film Festival on September 25, and entered the “Hidden Dragon” section.Producer and starring Huang Bo, screenwriter and director Cai Chengjie, actor Wang Jiayi and photography director Da Jiang came to the scene to introduce the process of the film from trial shooting to completion.This feature film puts four vertical screens side by side into one wide screen, allowing four lives to happen simultaneously in front of the audience.After the premiere, the viewing method brought by the four-screen image became the focus of communication, and the film will later enter the main competition unit of the 42nd Warsaw International Film Festival.

The four pictures each carry a story, with characters in different ages and stages of life, corresponding to the flow of spring, summer, autumn and winter.They didn't know each other at first, and they each faced life, old age, illness, death, reunions and partings. Later, they intersected due to accidental events.On the screen, characters on one side are making decisions, and life on the other side may have just changed. The audience can follow a clue and be attracted by the actions and sounds in adjacent scenes.Four experiences are placed in the same time and space, and a complete sense of life slowly emerges.

This form is subtly related to today's common multi-window viewing experience.Cai Chengjie calls it an exploration of how to move forward with attention in your peripheral vision.The audience cannot see all the details in the four corners at the same second. They can only constantly choose the point of view, and then use sound, movement and the previous and next plot to complete the missed parts.Everyone's focus will be slightly different, and the same screening may also form different memory sequences.The film thus turns viewing itself into part of the narrative.

The juxtaposition of four vertical screens also gives the widescreen a layering similar to that of a screen or a long scroll.The mist and rain in the south of the Yangtze River, the figures and the living space are separated, and they echo each other through color, direction and rhythm.The doors and windows in one picture can be connected with the road in another picture to form a new composition; a period of silence of a character can also be used to make people feel more lonely by the excitement happening next to them.Photography director Ojiang believes that four vertical screens leave a richer combination of artistic conception and emotion, and details need to be fully developed in a theater environment.

The difficulty of shooting also increases.Before the official launch, the creative team spent 15 days using mobile phones to complete the trial shooting of the entire film, deducing in advance the character placement, shot length and the coordination between the four stories.Ordinary movies can adjust a single shot through editing - four quarters - and take into account whether the other three frames provide valid information at the same time.The actors' movements, the light in the scene, and the timing of sound entry and exit all need to be arranged more accurately, otherwise a certain picture can easily steal all the attention, or obscure important plots.

Huang Bo said at the scene that after many years of film development, there is still room to try forward, and this possibility excites him.He not only served as a producer, but also participated in the performance. He completed four stories together with actors such as Wang Ziming, Du Luotong, Xiao Dingchen, Wang Jiayi, Shen Jiani, Chen Youwang, Ge Zhaomei, etc. Wang Xun and Pan Zhilin also starred.Familiar actor faces enter an unfamiliar visual structure, which can help the audience grasp the characters first and then gradually adapt to the four-way parallel rhythm.

The freshness in form ultimately comes down to character relationships.《Four Quarters》twists four seasons, four lives and four scenes together, allowing loneliness, concern and chance encounters to appear at the same time.The "complete life" that the premiere audience refers to comes from these mutually mirroring fragments: one person's confusion may be echoed in another person's choice; the end of a relationship occurs side by side with the life that has just begun elsewhere.The premiere in Pingyao provided the first test. When the film reaches a larger audience, whether the four-screen narrative can reach emotions will become the most noteworthy part of this screen experiment.