Editor’s note
At present, the major collection areas of the China Science Fiction Conference Jiutian “Science Fiction and the Future” College Youth Innovation Collection have entered the work selection process. The list of winners will be announced at the 2024 China Science Fiction Conference Nine-Day “Science Fiction and the Future” Youth Innovation Night . Many science fiction celebrities will attend the award ceremony and present awards to the winners. As the organizer of this event, the Global Science Fiction Developers Conference invited many experts and scholars to participate in this event to talk about hot topics about science fiction , youth , and the future .
For today’s interview, we invited Mr. Sun Lijun, chairman of the Presidium of the Expert Organizing Committee of the Science Fiction Short Film Collection event , to talk about the relationship between science fiction culture and young talents.
Sun Lijun is currently the vice president, professor and doctoral supervisor of Beijing Film Academy. The main research directions are: research on the history of Chinese animation, research on the history of world animation, and research on contemporary art creation. He has written outstanding academic works such as “History of Chinese Animation”, “Dictionary of Animation Art” and “Modern Animation Design”, and directed many outstanding animation works such as “Happy Running”, “Little Soldier Zhang Ga” and “Fly to the Moon”. His contemporary art creations have participated in domestic and foreign competitions. exhibition.
Global Science Fiction Developers Conference: Hello, Mr. Sun, thank you for accepting our interview. As a final judge of science fiction short films, what are your expectations for the development and innovative results of this event?
Sun Lijun: Only by enhancing cultural consciousness, enhancing cultural self-confidence, and achieving cultural self-improvement can we achieve great development and prosperity of Chinese culture. What we call “culture”, in addition to traditional culture and Chinese studies, science fiction culture is also a part that needs great attention.
As any nation develops toward the future, its scientific spirit, scientific culture, and scientific literacy must develop simultaneously. Our traditional culture must be modernized and fashionable in order to be accepted and liked by young people and more people.
Different from ordinary activities, the Zhongguancun Science Fiction Industry Innovation Center holds the “Science Fiction and the Future” college youth innovation solicitation activity. With young people as the protagonists and using science fiction culture and science fiction themes to spread, it can better make young people pay attention to the future. In the era of AI and artificial intelligence, scientific literacy, science fiction awareness, and science fiction activities are all indispensable for China to not be absent or even lead the world in the rapidly developing future.
I very much hope that the event will become more popular and attract more potential and outstanding young people to join this science fiction event and be willing to “dazzle” and dare to “dazzle”.
Global Science Fiction Developers Conference: Cutting-edge technology updates are accelerating. How should we apply these technologies to film and television creation and production, and gradually achieve leadership?
Sun Lijun: After the advent of the AI era, I am not worried about the various difficulties and problems that some people may face, but I am very happy, excited, and full of curiosity. Humans have created AI, but its autonomous consciousness and all aspects may surpass humans. How can we humans continue to play the leading role we should have?
We should continue to learn and innovate. Human civilization has thousands of years of history. Now we should seize the opportunities brought by AI, learn from AI, and break through our original complacency or original model.
In the process of applying AI to create, my team and I increasingly discover the importance of our Chinese aesthetic. In the long history of world culture, whether it is ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon, or the Chinese civilization, as well as other ethnic civilizations, they have shown their own characteristics in the process of development. Civilization with Chinese characteristics or Chinese aesthetics has become increasingly valuable in the AI era. However, when we apply AI for secondary creation, we will find that the images generated by text input are based on the mainstream aesthetics of Europe, America and even Japan, and are not the Chinese aesthetics we want. The construction and development of modern cities cannot be one-size-fits-all, and the development of culture cannot be “calcium deficient” or “cartilage”. The context of Chinese civilization must be continued and spread! We need to put some basic aesthetic standards and materials in the treasure house of Chinese traditional art into a large international database, so that some keywords can express it more objectively and avoid confusion and wrong associations. If we do not pay attention to this issue, the right to speak will gradually weaken, and younger people, especially underage children, will be subtly affected in their learning.
I hope that everyone will stand more on our Chinese aesthetic consciousness, fully mobilize the high-quality and excellent technologies and tools in this AI era, and make our efforts to spread the excellent Chinese culture for us. Technology companies must first discover and focus on improving issues in this area.
Global Science Fiction Developers Conference: What does the Beijing Film Academy focus on most in terms of science fiction film and television creation and production talent training?
Sun Lijun: Beijing Film Academy is the largest film and television training base in Asia. In the field of science fiction film and television, talents such as Yang Lei, the TV series director of “The Three-Body Problem”, Guo Fan, the film director of “The Wandering Earth”, and Gong Ge, the screenwriter, have emerged.
Before cultivating talents, the first step is to select talents. These outstanding alumni have the opportunity to be selected into the Beijing Film Academy because they have fully demonstrated their artistic talent and artistic personality. This is very important.
When cultivating talents, Beijing Film Academy pays most attention to practical ability and innovation ability. In the early days, films were trained according to an industrial model, emphasizing both individual talent and industrial production standards and processes. Yang Lei, Guo Fan and others, including Zhang Yimou earlier, paid great attention to hands-on and practical abilities during school. The spirit of innovation runs through more than a hundred years of film history. Whether it is commercial films represented by Hollywood, or art films, and literary films, they are all the result of continuous innovation. The outstanding film talents that have emerged around the genre of science fiction have a spirit of constant innovation. For example, Gong Geer and Guo Fan are both versatile. Gong Geer majors in management and is also a rock music singer. Guo Fan’s cross-border catwalk show at Shanghai Fashion Week also caused quite a stir. Their hobbies and interests are very broad, which is also the comprehensive quality required by the movie.
In order to select top talents, in 2016 I started to implement the Ada Animation Experimental Class Program at Beijing Film Academy with undergraduate education as the main training goal. Last year, I won the National Teaching Achievement Award from the Ministry of Education. As a founder, I am very proud to be able to cultivate talents for the school before retiring, and to explore a successful model for cultivating outstanding talents in Chinese animation in the professional field in the future.
In this process, the phenomenon of “plateaus” and lack of “peaks” in Chinese films has become increasingly serious. Our annual movie box office has exceeded 60 billion yuan, but we lack a large number of outstanding works like the “fifth generation movies” that are influential on the world film stage. Against this background, I began to take charge of the experimental class for top graduate students. Starting from the first class in 2019, we first broke the stereotype of departmental tutors. Anyone from any department or major can apply to attend classes. The first year of postgraduate studies is mainly about comprehensive study and basic study of film. There are about 170 students attending the class. After gradual elimination, 40 to 50 people were selected. In principle, there should be no more than ten people in the third year of graduate school. The school’s special funds support creative teams headed by directors to carry out graduation creations. We will also invite a large number of outstanding international film professors, experts, well-known directors, photographers, screenwriters, and producers to teach. In May and June this year, I will go to the United States to receive on-site teaching in a Hollywood studio for about three weeks.
For such talent training, we can neither copy Western teaching, nor can we just follow our original conservative and even some outdated talent training models. We hope to cultivate top-notch talents who are innovative, thoughtful, sentimental, and leading.
In the AI era, we have to face new opportunities and challenges in future movies. The original movie concept, the original animated movie concept, may be broken in terms of academic theory. We must allow these outstanding creators to have a more international vision and play a leading role in the changes brought about by future technologies, especially artificial intelligence technology, rather than a supporting role.
Global Science Fiction Developers Conference: As the organizer of this event, the Global Science Fiction Developers Conference has been actively committed to building a science fiction exchange community for hard science fiction creation and hard technology innovation. What do you think should be done for the Global Science Fiction Developers Conference, which aims to build a science fiction communication community?
Sun Lijun: Whether it is the “Science Fiction and the Future” university youth innovation solicitation activity platform, the market-oriented operation platform of the Zhongguancun Science Fiction Industry Innovation Center, or the communication platform of the Global Science Fiction Developers Conference, the establishment of the platform is an amazing thing! It is particularly good because it provides more people with opportunities to learn and communicate.
I think it is particularly good. First of all, there is no threshold for the youth innovation solicitation activity in colleges and universities. All those in colleges and universities who love science fiction can join in and discuss the future creation of science fiction movies together, without any sectarian opinions. Second, our activity can discover more comprehensive talents. Science fiction enthusiasts, especially young people studying engineering, will have their own ideas after watching a large number of works, allowing their science fiction dreams and “wings” of science fiction imagination to grow, and discovering more composite talents is what we need now. Yes, this is a very important meaning of our activity.
To make more young people willing to participate, every contestant in the AI era should not be willing to play a supporting role. We must allow young people to dare to participate instead of retreating when difficulties arise. There seem to be too many young people lying flat nowadays. I think we need to stimulate their enthusiasm, even bloodiness, and give them the impulse to “show their swords” and the opportunity to dare to “show their swords”.
It is our responsibility as filmmakers and animators to promote their achievements. This is not just an event, it must be continuously promoted and shared with award-winning and outstanding achievements, so that more people know and love science fiction culture.
