Wei Nan: The first Chinese trailer director

The trailer for Zhang Yimou's new film "The Flowers of War" is only 2 minutes and 43 seconds long, but there are a lot of gun battles, bombing and other war scenes in the film, accompanied by sound effects, quite a sensory impact. Everyone who saw the trailer wanted to go into the theater and see it. It is hard to imagine that its producer is a Beijing boy born in the 1980s. He founded the first movie trailer production company in China, and earns more than 2 million yuan every month. Now, almost all the major commercial films in China invite him to boost the box office at home and abroad...

Golden Scissors hit a low point

Wei Nan, 31, was born in Beijing to a teacher mother, a doctor father and a kind-hearted brother. He learned to play the violin at a young age and began acting at the China Children's Film Studio at the age of 12. The good-looking Wei Nan was one of the child stars in Qiong Yao's "Six Dreams". At that time, he worked in the group every day and traveled around the country. By the time he was 16, he felt that this controlled life was not what he wanted, and he began to tire of acting.

After so many years in the film industry, he seemed unable to do anything but work behind the scenes, so he began to move from the front to the back as an assistant at a post-production agency. Wei Nan seized any opportunity to steal from the editing master, and then his own thinking, gradually he found that the film is completely different from the fun: every day in the face of, are different customers, different editing needs, even an advertisement can be edited out of several different styles of finished products. It was this hard "apprenticeship" career that enabled Wei Nan to complete the original accumulation of technology. Wei Nan asked his boss, is there a future as a splicer? The boss said, "Yes! I see you."

In July 2002, due to the teacher's illness, Wei Nan was in urgent need of editing for a commercial film to save the scene, cut out the film with rhythm jump, unrestrained style of mixing and matching wind in the advertising industry is quite praised. In this way, Wei Nan wishes to become a splicing division, he is creative, understand advertising marketing, proficient in music, film, comprehensive quality, quickly become famous in the industry.

A chance, he met Zhang Yimou's special documentary director Luo Shasha. At the time, they were shooting "A Thousand Miles Alone," and because the film needed someone with a knack for editing, Roshasa invited him to edit the documentary with her. Although only sing supporting roles, Wei Nan is very serious to do down, it as a learning opportunity. Although he made little money, he became interested in film editing. He thought this might be the way out of his transition, so he tried his hand at film editing. Because there is nothing famous in the circle, after a long period of time, Wei Nan around to visit each major director, but everywhere. After all, film editing is such a big deal that no one can easily give it to someone they don't know.

"Three Guns" trailer opens a big market

It wasn't until early 2009 that he finally landed a decent job in the small-budget film Stubborn Radish, starring Huang Bo. While editing the film, he worked 16 hours a day and slept less than five hours a night, excluding meals, for half a year. On one occasion, Wei Nan drove home at 4 o 'clock in the morning, passing by the traffic lights near Beitaipingzhuang unexpectedly fell asleep in the car, until about 5 o 'clock was swept the street aunt's sweeping sound woke up, at that moment, the heart suddenly a little sad.

"Stubborn turnip", only let Wei Nan get a mere 40,000 yuan production costs. In his predicament, he began to study Hollywood's business model for promoting movies. Compared with the main promotion mode in China, which is press releases, premieres and new film conferences, Hollywood attaches more importance to the marketing method of "movie trailers". The trailer can show the character's personality and the wonderful story directly. Suddenly, a bold idea formed in his mind: maybe this is the future of domestic film promotion of the new direction! Wei Nan will tell Rosa this bold idea. He was so excited that he even said he wanted to use the idea of advertising to make movie trailers. The other party was immediately moved by this fresh and interesting idea.

Wei Nan never thought, this casual idea has let him despair every health. In the second half of 2009, Zhang Yimou was looking for someone to make a promotional film for his film "A Simple Story of Three Guns". As a result, several producers went around and recommended Wei Nan. After Zhang Yimou saw the Stubborn Radish, he felt that his editing was really beautiful. Therefore, Wei Nan was finally awarded the right to produce the propaganda film of Three Guns.

It has to be said that the reason why this film caused great reaction and controversy later was not only because it was produced by Zhang Yimou, but also because it brought an unprecedented "trailer", which was carefully produced by Wei Nan with reference to the Hollywood model. In the short 2 minutes and 05 seconds of the trailer, from funny, mysterious to thriller, the audience's imagination completely open space. As soon as the trailer of "Three Guns" was released, it received all kinds of praise. Many industry insiders believe that it overturns the conservative nature of domestic blockbuster promotion and successfully combines the advertising concept with the film art perfectly.

Wei Nan became widely known in the film industry after she shot to fame with the trailer for "A Shot in The Back". "Love Notice", "Don Quixote", "Tang Pak Hu Chouheung 2" and other businesses followed, just four months, the company earned 5 million yuan.

In August 2010, Wei Nan rented a small building with an area of 1,000 square meters outside the Southeast Second Ring Road of Beijing, hired more than 20 experienced Hong Kong and Taiwan editors and sound engineers, and founded Trailer Movie, the only professional Trailer company in Asia. In an effort to reach Hollywood standards, Wei Nan spent 5 million yuan to set up two recording studios, two dubbing rooms, eight studios for stunt editing, and a small theater that can accommodate more than 20 people for producers to watch sample films.

Wei Nan has the ability to create his own, his thinking is a leap type and comprehensive technology, never bound by the director, so make the trailer superb domineering, often "thunder" potential. Instead of just one trailer for each movie, he says, a series of things are produced based on the studio's marketing plan. A movie trailer can also be subdivided into pre-trailer, mid-trailer, movie patch trailer; Wei Nan will also make funny trailers, fantasy trailers and love trailers according to different audiences. TV, Internet, etc. Slowly, the course of study recognized Wei Nan's level and value, "Strong west wind" "laughing river's lake" and so on a pile of big films have come to the door to do the trailer.

In 2010, the total box office of Chinese films exceeded 10 billion yuan, and in that year, more than 50% of the Chinese commercial film trailers were edited by Wei Nan, who was praised by the media as "the first director of Chinese film trailers" and "the most expensive golden scissors in Asia". Many domestic A-list director, but also became his good friends.

Become Zhang Yimou's special trailer Producer

In the spring of 2011, Wei Nan received a new "big deal" -- the 600 million yuan investment in Zhang Yimou's "Thirteen Flowers of War." Zhang Weiping only on Wei Nan put forward two requirements: one is not exposed "thirteen hairpins" - that is, the face of the thirteen leading ladies in the film; The second is to cut out the feeling of a movie blockbuster. At the beginning of March, Zhang Yimou let Wei Nan into the cast to observe the scene and understand the whole picture of the film. He stayed there for half a month. Wei Nan also saved a selfish - to learn, because the cast gathered domestic and foreign first-line team, for example, demolition play is completed by the "Save Private Ryan" team, very eye-opening.

Wei Nan began to watch the film shoot the original material, every day from dawn to dusk, has been constantly watching a week has not finished, physical and mental breakdown. But Zhang Yimou can carry more than all the people, he shot a whole day in the daytime, come back at night not to sleep, continue to watch material with Wei Nan, the line of people all shocked.

In mid-July, Wei Nan made the first version of the trailer, Zhang Yimou saw it, and shot it. Make a second edition, then shoot it. It wasn't until the third edition that it got interesting. In this way, Wei Nan has been to the 15th edition, just basically determined.

For Wei Nan, "The Flowers of War" is undoubtedly the most difficult project since he entered the industry. It is a big international production, facing a global audience, and you can imagine the pressure. The secrecy of the Hairpins' faces is also a problem. Wei Nan countless times to choose "thirteen Chai" lens, those who are the most intuitive, the most eye-catching, can not be used. Finally, he chose a group of back, a few profiles, a cluster of long views, not only did not "give away the secret", but also give people unlimited space for reverie.

The final trailer for "Thirteen Flowers", released in December, has made countless people crazy. Tong Dawei, the actor in the film, confidently told the media that "we will strive for the global box office of 3 billion" and march into the Oscar! In fact, director Lu Chuan had approached Wei Nan to edit the film six months before the production of City of Life and Death. However, due to time factors and scheduling problems, the cooperation was not reached, and Wei Nan missed out on "City of Life and Death". The Flowers of War finally made up for a big regret.

Someone once asked him if he ever thought about directing movies instead of making trailers? Wei Nan said never, he just want to do a good job in the trailer industry. "I hope more people will join this industry and compete with me." There are few companies in China that specialize in movie trailers. "According to the situation of the entire film industry, there need to be at least three to five companies of my size and type," Wei said.

'China has international directors like Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee,' said one Hollywood director. International actors also have Jackie Chan, Zhang Ziyi; But in the aspect of editing movie trailers in the past has been blank, and now there is finally a work of very domineering Wei Nan! The young man admitted that he was proud of the media's reputation as "China's first trailer director" and Zhang Yimou's "special trailer producer", and he would also push himself to work harder.