Story Behind the Making of FOMH
https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4924228442262673#comment
Story behind FOMH -- Earthquake (part 2) <-- too bad I can't find the other "parts"
The climax in ep.22 was the part where they delivered the baby. I can still proudly tell everyone that that was still shot in a real set. There was no doubt this scene was very important. The newborn represented the faith and hope for the people in the disaster area to keep on living. It also brought power to the firefighters, doctors, and all others that have been busy helping with the rescue. It brought them uplifting power and persevering motivation. So, this scene had to be filmed in a real set. Our final plan was to demolish a building. Or, more precisely, demolish half of a building.
After we found a suitable building, we first reinforce the structure at the foundation/lower level. Then, we demolished the upper half of the building, and made the exterior look like it was collapsed due to earthquake. Of course, we also built the path that the firefighter crew would demolish and open up to enter the interior of the building. Everything is carried out with full assurance of safety. You know, although the earthquake was fake during filming, the half collapsed building was a real cement masonry structure that did not allow any mistake or incident. We need to achieve the goal of completing the filming, as well as 100% ensuring the safety of the actors. Fortunately, we did it! So, are you all satisfied with this scene?
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Below are the translation of a few replies in the comment area, including a comment left by the author (่ๆๅ, I think).
Comment: The slab the actors carried on their back seemed so heavy. Song Yan's expression when Jiang Yi hit it hard with a hammer in the attempt to break up the slab, and the scene where they almost slipped when they carried the slab down the slope both made me feel that slab was real.
Reply: YY's acting was too real.
Reply (by the author: ่ๆๅ (Mango Uncle)): If it (the slab) was real, then our ML would have got hurt for sure. I still need him to continue filming๐
Reply: If you're interested, please check out ep.28 of Who Rules The World, in which YY got beaten brutally by sticks. The way his veins popped out made many people think he really got beaten up badly๐
๐
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More story behind FOMH. The 1st and 9th images were the same content as the one I shared above. So, I left those out and just translated the rest of them.
Story behind FOMH -- Rescue Xu Qin
The scene where Song Yan saved Xu Qin from the flooded underpass in the big storm was a famous scene in the original novel. Just like the director said in the official BTS video, it was a very daunting task to find an underpass that could be closed down for more than 7 days in a big city; we also had to fill it up with water, and this underpass could not be too remote from the city center (as required by the story). And last but not least, the area nearby had to have the right conditions for us to set up lighting and artificial rain equipment on both sides of the underpass, and the vicinity had to be big enough to park several large crane vehicles... It was nearly impossible at that time. The team, including us who were responsible of filming location, had once thought about giving up. But because of the director’s persistence, this famous scene could eventually be shown to the audience. Don't underestimate this amount of standing water, the production team used multiple layers of seals to block all the drain holes ahead of time before we started to fill up the underpass with water. However, even after the standing water reached the required depth, there was still leaking through the drain. In order to achieve the filming requirement, we couldn't help but increase the amount of incoming water and keep the water flowing for 7 entire days, using thousands of tons of water (special note: Ningbo area has rich river resources, so they have sufficient water source. And the water drained through the drain holes would return to the rivers via underground water system, so this did not constitute any waste in water usage) to barely reach the water depth required by filming. After an overnight shooting, all the actors' and crew members' feet were soaked and turned white. But after seeing the completed footage, I believe we all felt quite a sense of accomplishment.
Story behind FOMH -- The Bus Incident
Many people asked me if this scene was done via CG. No, it was not. This dangerous and tense rescue scene was indeed shot on a real cliff. It was actually a coincident discovering this shooting location, when I took the director to check out an unfinished building nearby. Just when we were about the leave, Director Li Muge suddenly pointed at a row of street lights halfway up the mountain and asked: "What's over there?" I said, it seemed to be a mountain road. He suggested taking a look over there, so the whole group of people drove to the foot of the mountain. We found it was indeed a very narrow but beautifully built highway winding up the mountain. Next to it was a huge, steep cliff. So, everybody started to discuss excitedly about how to film the bus rescue scene, and the discussion eventually came to the core issue about where the bus should lie after falling from the cliff? After discussion, we found two candidate locations. One was relatively easier for all the operation; it was a gentle slope, which was more convenient whether for shooting or for setting up the scene. The other location was an immediate 90 degree cliff which would be extremely challenging to film. Everybody had his opinion and couldn't reach a conclusion. The director didn't say anything, and he seemed to be struggling inside his mind, too. It was really late at that time, and the sky was getting darker. The early summer night in Ningbo had arrived. Director walked to a certain place and suddenly said: "here! Shoot from this side of the cliff!" We all went over to where the director stood and looked to the direction of the cliff, just like the shooting angle shown in the 3rd image (too bad the image was not captured in this weibo post). "This scene should be filmed at night. Our firefighter will descend from the cliff by rappelling, and deploy the bus rescue mission. The camera will turn slowly. The other side of the cliff is the bustling night view of the entire city. That's the scene of our firefighters at the front line fighting to protect the thousands of flickering lights of this city."
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The scene of rescuing the backpackers at the scenic area also has a lot of background stories. We actually found a natural scenic area close to Ningbo. The scenes including the parents urging/demanding the firefighters (to deploy search rescue immediately) were shot in the reception room of this scenic area. It would make sense to find an appropriate location in the scenic area for shooting the rescuing scenes (The scenic area had already been used when Jiang Yu went on cross-country running with weights with the crew after he became the new instructor/advisor for Shilitai Fire Station). However, the director pointed out an important point: the terrain in the scenic area has been repaired and maintained by people. For safety reason, guard rails and protective structures had been installed at harsh and dangerous places in the scenic area. This would spoil the effect of the scene. I remember the director pointed at a terrain/slope in the scenic area and said: "Look, do people need rescuing at a place like this? They could climb out themselves." Therefore, based on this request, we started looking for alternative shooting locations deeper into the forest, diving into places where there was nobody. It happened to be during the hot summer days, and there were lots of mosquitoes, ants, and a kinds of bugs. We eventually confirmed the shooting location on a steep hill, which is more than 3 km walking distance (via mountain trails) from the nearest parking spot. On the day of shooting, the production crew temporarily added 80 staff to only focus on moving all the machines and equipments (on foot). We even specifically hired a local person experienced in catching snakes, in charge of handling all the poisonous snakes in the shooting area the entire time.
We all knew the original story this scene was based on. We also wanted to make more people understand the difficulties of the firefighters through this scene. Not only do firefighters need to endure lots of physical pain and pressure from the difficult rescue tasks, but they also need more understanding and care. After all, they are also just ordinary people like us, and they also need to be protected and loved.
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The shooting of the earthquake rescue mission started just these two days. This is going to be a climax point in this drama. The difficulty in shooting earthquake rescue scenes is very high. It requires a large amount of ruins of collapsed walls and single layer or multiple story buildings. It was almost impossible to complete all the scenes at one location. So, the director grouped the earthquake scenes into several parts at the beginning. I will talk about each part in the followings.
The first part was the roads to enter WangXiang (the city where the epicenter of the earthquake was). The difficulty here was, first of all, it must be a normal road open to traffic, because fire trucks had to come here, and theoretically, all traffic must go through this road to get to WangXiang. Secondly, the road had to collapse (duh!). It was not hard to find a road, but the difficulty was to make it collapse. Making it collapse means that we had to close the road, and both sides must have the right condition for a collapse to happen. With all these constraints, we spent two months looking and still couldn't find anything. But just when we almost gave up hope, one time when we were seeking for shooting locations for other scenes, our artistic group staff found unexpectedly a road that was under construction. It was originally just a slope on the side of a hill, but the local government had planned a road connecting both sides of the mountain. The road happened to be in the 2nd or 3rd stage of construction! There are even some gravels spread on the road!!! "By chance" couldn't even describe our feelings at that time. It could only be explained as "Heaven helps those who help themselves!" And the local government and construction team also supported our shooting a lot. They were even willing to stop their work for 3 days to facilitate our shooting. Moreover, they even specifically sent some workers to help us complete/perfect the "collapse" using an excavator. I want to sincerely and serious say thank you to all these friends who supported our shooting. Thank you for all your help!
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According to our plans, everybody attaches great importance to the fried chicken shop scene, being the first scene the male lead films after joined the group. The artistic group was so meticulous about the set that they even repeatedly check and confirm the color of every pot of flower. Because we were filming on an old street, and it was a one way, we also specifically reported to various local government departments. Here, I must mention a very important objective factor during the shooting period: masks. There were still occasional confirmed cases of COVID in Ningbo at that time. There was even a COVID test station less than 20m away from the fried chicken shop. In order to film, we even coordinated with the street area representative to move the test station a bit further (it was almost impossible at that time). And in order to minimize the impact on the old city area residents' traffic, we parked all the big vehicles near the fried chicken shop one night before shooting for fear of congestion at the shooting site the next day. But even if we all felt we were well prepared, there were still problems that came up during shooting. Because of the gathering of shooting staff, onlookers, fans...etc., we were reported by the local people. The old town district leader was also very concerned and came to the site immediately. After a series of discussion and negotiation, the drama group decided to give up all the effort and film the scene in the studio. I believe everybody there were not reconciled, but it was really helpless. When everybody was packing up and clearing out the area, the director sat in the fried chicken shop pondering on something. Then, he asked me how to avoid similar situation from happening? I said we could only reduce the number of staff in every department. The director said with resolution then: "Then, reduce! Reduce the number of staff in every department. Reduce to the minimum required number of people!!
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Story behind FOMH -- Fried Chicken Shop (part 1) <-- maybe the one above is part 2?
Finding this fried chicken shop was actually by accident. I took the director and art director to check out the location for the WuFang Street fire scene shown in the 1st episode that day. The director suggested walking around the area, and we happened to walked past this Xiao Yuan Jia Dessert Shop. It was a low hut with white walls, creating a strong contrast with the grayish tone of the old streets. Director Muge immediately felt interested. He walked back and forth to look at it for a long time, and quickly overturn the fried chicken shop setting in the original plan. He felt it would be more interesting to film in such small shop, and he even explained his vision to us excitedly -- after putting out a big fire overnight, just when the city was about to wake up, a group of firefighters in their fighting gears, dusty and dirty, sitting outside this tiny shop looking really tired, but happily enjoying the fried chicken. When I saw the completed scene shown in front of the viewers, I couldn't help but admired the director. He really know how to shoot it beautifully.
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They really put in a lot of work and thoughts into this drama. I hope, from my translation, more people can see the "sparks" of all the hardworking members in this drama group behind the scene! I really appreciate their hard work! There was another related article I translated previously. See link below.
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