Scheduling, Copies, Translation, Cinemas…

Scheduling, Copies, Translation, Cinemas…

Multi-dimensional Decryption: the Story behind the 1,200 Shows during the Shanghai International Film Festival

1,200 (estimated) shows at 45 cinemas of the whole city during the festival…with the approaching of the Opening Ceremony of the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival, the annual carnival for filmgoers has come onto the stage in stealth, and the hot sale at the box office has further verified the position of this carnival in the hearts of the filmgoers. The journalist recently visited the organizing committee and relevant staff to explore stories about such people’s efforts and contributions to the festival behind the 1,200 shows throughout processes from scheduling, copy and key collection, script translation and cinema coordination. As for rarely known such stories filled with smiles and sweat, all such “staff of the festival” who have been busying working around the clock for months said that good stories are the most charming scenery of Shanghai in this June.

Wang Jiayan, the “Old Master” of Scheduling:

“Effective scheduling is the first step to present a real festival to filmgoers!”

22:00, June 4, the first screening schedule of the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival was released on the official site of the festival, which immediately became a hot topic among filmgoers on social network sites. Wang Jiayan (Weibo:@四眼老王), the scheduler who is affably called “Uncle Wang” by filmgoers, posted a tweet as follows:“Hope you can see films you like. Shanghai is so charming in June”.

Yes, Shanghai is so charming in June, especially in this year.“This year’s Shanghai International Film Festival is record-breaking in terms of the quantity of films, the number of silver screens, cinemas and shows, which really makes us under great pressure.” Wang Jiayan, who has been working for this festival for over 10 years since the 1990s, is recognized as an “Old Master of Scheduling”. After the films were selected, he began the life between his home and the office for half a month. 6:00 in the morning, he would go to work on the bus, which is called the “super-size private car” by him, and start the 15-hour work in his small office filled with labels in various colors indicating conditions of the cinemas.“I’m either working on the schedule, or on the way to do it” said he.

So how can one complete the schedule of over 1,200 shows? It’s never as simple as filling in the blanks, instead, it’s more like a grand event of the “Palace of Memory” in Wang Jiayan’s mind, where information about cinemas and films collide with each other and form systematic combinations. According to Wang Jiayan, it’s not difficult to just work out a schedule, but it’s always difficult to taking various factors into consideration as a whole.“The first principle is to make arrangements according to the actual situation. There are so many cinemas, and you must match the films to the halls according to the size, equipment and geographic location. Technical concerns are also involved, 4K, film, digital copies…you need to consider halls that can meet the respective requirements. For Golden Goblet Award Competition Films, you also need to consider geographic locations of cinemas so as to meet the requirements of the producers for time and environment. In addition, films to be shown at different cinema should be relatively even and diversified, it is not rational if one cinema only shows Japanese films and another only films of Hollywood.”

All episodes of Star Wars will be shown during this year’s event, and what’s more, there will also be 7-hour trilogy-package shows, an arrangement that has made filmgoers excited. The arrangement has been revised for 4 or 5 times,“when the first draft was worked out, the producer made adjustments to the cinemas and environment, so I had to start over.” According to Wang Jiayan, sudden adjustments is very common for scheduling, and in such cases, he pays more attention to copies and facilities, and sometimes, he had to screen out some cinemas with more seats,“I cannot arrange films to cinemas with copies or security measures not in position. Several days ago, it is said that a cinema to show Ken Takakura’s films told me that they had problems with the machine, I immediately changed it, well, the machine might be fixed, but what will it be if it’s not fixed? This is about out credit for filmgoers”.

Therefore, Wang always makes 4 to 5 drafts of the screening schedule each year before the official sale of tickets begins, and proofreading alone will take him over half a day. However, every update from the first draft to the final schedule embodies his consideration and concern about the filmgoers. He said because the Shanghai International Film Festival radiates out to the whole country and many filmgoers from other places specially come to Shanghai for it, he should also consider facilitating the filmgoers to see what they need.“I prefer to arrange a film on several days so that filmgoers will have the opportunity to see it on Wednesday or Friday if they have missed it on Monday; besides, the distance of a cinema from peripheral cinemas is also a concern. Can they catch the next film shown on a nearby cinema after finishing the previous one? Is the distance convenient for them? Two films of the same film master cannot be arranged in succession, otherwise, his fans may be tired out from running about; when there’re some scenes not suitable for children, I would try to hold the pass and arrange them at night, thus avoiding parents who do not know this carrying their children inside…”

Yan Qi, Official in Charge of Copies and Keys

“We should make enough preparation rather than be in a panic in the face of emergencies”

If film selection and scheduling require the “brains” of the staff of the organizing committee, to collect all copies of near 400 films located in different places of the world requires perfect collaboration of all necessary conditions; therefore, every member of the Copy Group of the festival is almost a “superman with three heads and six arms”: liaison with producers, coordinating copies and scheduling, collecting key information and communicating with the Monitoring Group…They are seen almost everywhere in every process of the festival from the arrival of a film in Shanghai to its showing.

“Now we’re not easily taken back after experiencing emergencies every year,” said Yan Qi, official in charge of copies and keys at the festival. According to Yan Qi, this year’s copy collection is relatively smooth, compared to previous years, and by the beginning of June, they have collected 70 more copies than that in the same period of last year, besides, only one copy is detected to be unreadable,“every year, there would be several file problems after detecting hundreds of copies; in such cases, reallocation is always required, which will usually take 3-4 days for mailing, and after that, there will be several days for customs clearance and taking delivery.” Lately, a participating Indian film was wrongly addressed to the Consulate of India and nearly failed to be collected from the customs, which spent them a lot of time coordinating.“Out import and export rights are temporary every year, and sometimes when the copies are sent by the producers earlier than we’re entitled to the import, we can do nothing but waiting. In the case of this film, we immediately asked the producer to give a written clarification to change the addressee once we got the authorization from the customs, and then we asked the Consulate of India to send a letter certifying that this film was to participate in the festival, and then proceed with all subsequent formalities”.

However, collecting the copies is just the first step in the long march. This year, there are near 370 films adopting digital copies which involve DCP detection, key making and other professional follow-up processes that will have direct impact on the screening of the films. It is introduced that over the recent 5 years, the number of digital copies has been grown rapidly while that of film copies has been reduced from the share of about 50% to near zero.“We are facing over one hundred producers in the world that make copies and keys in different ways. According to conservative estimate, about 1,100 shows among all 1,200 may be of digital copies, which need keys, and keys are most likely to make troubles. In addition, generally, we can not notify the producer to make the key before we get the copy, which means the time for making the key is highly limited and we need to work 24 hours a day continuously for coordination.” Yan Qi introduced that the organizing committee adopts triple inspection to avoid problems such as invalid keys or incompatible servers of cinemas.“When the copy and key of a film reach Shanghai, we will organize a test to see whether the files can be uploaded to the test server successfully. When the uploading is guarantees, we will ask the producer to make special keys for the test and see about 15-30 minutes of the film to check the colors and sounds. After that, we will send the copy to the cinema, which will carry out a third test for compatibility”.

However, despite such a precise testing procedure, there’s still probability of error. On June 7, the copy of a Thai film titled Call Me Bad Girl, which was to be shown on June 13, was found broken. It was impossible for it to catch the show time following the regular procedure, which would need resending, customs clearance, delivery taking and testing, uploading, and there was a risk of breach of faith. After emergent coordination, Yan Qi booked the flight ticket and flew to Thailand on the same day,“we contacted the producer to make two copies for double insurance.” On June 8, two copies of the film made by the copyright owner that very night was delivered to Yan Qi, who immediately returned by air and finished the unusual tour of 24-hour cross-border “personal express delivery”.

“Every year we would encounter various emergencies, including such cases as servers of the same model with different compatibility with the same film, some fails to display the subtitle, for instance; keys that passed the test but fail to work during official screening because of ignorance of the time difference.” Therefore, the testers have summarized a “Book of Experience” over years,“for example, if we encounter compatibility problem for a certain type of copies in some cinemas, we will avoid it this year. Some problems that cannot be solved technically can only be overcome with experience”.

Another thing that is worth noting is to find suitable cinematographs because alternative copy versions like HD-CAM and BETA always come out every years although there’s uniform technical standard of the festival for copy format. The “Retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard” launched in this year is the first event in Mainland China to show masterpieces of Godard, the great master of film, in different periods, and the most eye-catching work Histoire(s) du cinéma: Chapter 1A is only available in BETA tape of NTSC format, and it is almost impossible to find the equipment capable of showing it on the market,“finally we found a company engaged in renting projectors. In fact, it was already very lucky to find this film, but we never thought that the only version the copyright owner had provided was a tape. We were in a dilemma because the effect of a tape is surely inferior to that of film, but it is absolutely a pity if Histoire(s) du cinéma: Chapter 1A is missing at the Retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard”.

Yuan Ting, in charge of the script translation and subtitling team:

“Thank you for your tolerance for our difficulties in building the language bridge.”

“For every movie in a lesser-known language, I must stare at the English subtitle on the screen while ‘banging’ the Chinese characters. I sincerely need your great tolerance for the errors occurred!” This subtitle volunteers’ answer to the questions online during the Shanghai Film Festival last year enlightened a lot of people that translation and subtitling are not as simple as it appears to be. When hundreds of movies from tens of different countries and regions come to the screen in all the different languages, totally correct subtitles can make everybody happy; meanwhile, the slightest error can damage the audience’s experience.

For this very reason, during each festival, Yuan Ting in charge of the translator group of the festival becomes rather cautious. According to her, every year before the festival, movie producers will mail the samples to the Organizing Committee beforehand, and the festival will translate the subtitle as per the samples. However, of all the samples the festival receives, a large part of them lack the corresponding script.“There are a rather large number of movies to put on show this year, where movies without scripts mount up to about 40 or 50. In many of these movies, many roles slur their words or talk in heavily accented English or many different lesser-known languages.” Under the circumstance, translation volunteers can only listen to the samples first,“and translate with, usually, the records of my listening comprehension and my understanding on the movies.”

Besides, the large quantity of special vocabulary and conception in art films is added to the difficulties of the translation. The large number of terms from the social change research and the science of law in the Serbian movie The Man Who Defended Gavrilo Princip drove the translation team to seek help from Zhang Keping, the well-seasoned translator with disabilities who has always been a part of the script translation for the festival for many years. The presently 53-year-old Zhang Keping takes pride from translating for the movies on the festival. Recently, suffering from the high-level paraplegia, he even needs to tie up both of his legs on his sick bed and bind his hand to the pen in order to work against all the hardship. The German movie Kafka’s Burrow readapted from Franz Kafka’s novel The Burrow possesses extremely rich literariness and imagination. So, volunteers in charge of the primary translation dedicated themselves to reading the original work several times for the profound meaning inside before they started to translate. The movie of Jean-Luc Godard’s epitome, History of Cinema, filmed between 1988 and 1998, with a length of 266 minutes involves countless knowledge and jargon on the movie, making it quite a tough puzzle to crack.“Some versions of the subtitle for ‘History of Cinema’ available today are not quite ideal and not so suitable for reference. Besides, the lengthy duration of this movie makes the translation process quite hard.”

Yuan Ting said the translation starts from May every year. Because the number of movies on show this year is the largest one of all years, this year sees an increase of translation volunteers.“The pre-stage of script translation involves 60 people from the English-language department and the translation department of the Fudan University, as well as another 20 from the China Normal University and other academies.” After the primary outputs of these volunteers, the staff will also send the samples and the subtitles to companies with the expertise for proofreading, in the second line of quality control. And this year, the Shanghai Film Festival adds the third line to the quality control, where they invite the top translation companies into the processes for the translation for the competition films that pursue the Golden Goblet Award and the review of the translation for the films on exhibition.

However, even the translation finished with high quality is still far from what it takes for a perfect show on the screen. The global convention forbids any unauthorized changes and copies, and thus usually hinders the committee from copying the subtitle into the translation, forcing the field subtitling operators to “bang” them out sentence by sentence. This year, almost 160 volunteers will participate in the process, who will probably have to embrace themselves for all kinds of accidents.“Sometimes, retardation or omission may happen in the subtitling machine of the cinema. Sometimes, the final copies from film producers may vary from the previous versions of translation, causing the translation to mismatch with the screen and become elusive after a single mistake….” However, in Yuan Ting’s opinion, recently, the audience starts to understand what’s going on behind the subtitling of the film festival and thus become more tolerant, and this is somehow a comfort to the subtitle team, but “we will also do our best on the pre-training and hope that we can achieve the best results this year for our audience.”

Ju Li – in charge of cinema coordination

“In these nine days, we’ve come closer to the hearts of the movie fans!”

From 35 cinemas in the past year to 45 that covers 17 districts and counties today, the minor numeric change has brought the Shanghai Film Festival even closer to the citizen of Shanghai. Even those far away on Chongming Island can also enjoy the splendor of the flow of light and shadow.

“The greatest difficulty of this year is probably the greenness of some 10 cinemas, as their lack of experience from the film festival required them to make some effort to adapt.” Ju Li in charge of the coordination of the cinemas said due to the difference of the film festival from ordinary commercial film shows, the cost of production and labor must be higher to some degree to cinemas, because “the subtitling machine and LED equipment required in the newly added cinemas are rarely used in ordinary commercial film shows, so the cost of screen show will climb if they are needed in less rounds in each cinema for the film festival. Besides, in ordinary commercial film shows, only one film is played every week, but during the film festival, two different films are needed to be arranged for every day, which will involve the detection against copying, the upload of encrypted key, and many manual handling processes.”

Due to all the difficulties, suburban cinemas with less flow of viewers once had some unspoken worries,“Is this nine days projection for this film festival going to be an arduous but fruitless task for more complaints than we can ever take?” But Ju Li wasn’t surprised by these worries.“Cinemas like those on Chongming are very far away from urban areas, and it takes a whole day just to deliver the copies around, quite some heavy burdens on these cinemas.” As a result, one month before the opening of the film festival, Ju Li spent almost every day on the “psychological tug of war” again and again, trying to persuade them in the diehard way, by “calling them like an air raid every day to explain to the cinemas the benefits and significance in working with the film festival, and solving the problems coordinately.” What’s exciting to him, despite the pressure of cost and the difficulties in operation, an increasing number of good cinemas still took fancy from the good reputation of Shanghai International Film Festival.“A growing number of managers of their cinemas told me that the nine days film festival gave them the best popularity because the on-line and off-line interactions could bring them closer to their movie fans, and they could even enhance their peripheral environments to develop frequent viewers, and so they are very cooperative.”

In addition to those green-hand cinemas, the main fronts like Shanghai Film Arts Center, Shanghai Ever Shining Circuit Co., Ltd., and Peace Cinema have been greatly challenged in the nine-day operation. According to the past experience, the main venue, Shanghai Film Arts Center, had to virtually work around the clock during the film festival, so “in terms of digital copy, if the ratio between the duration to upload to the server and the length of the original movie is 1:1, a movie of 1.5 hours will require at least 1.5 to 2 hours to upload, so if seven movies are needed to be played in one cinema per day, it has to work incessantly, and the movies for the next day even have to be uploaded as well.” However, the bursting popularity in the box offices for days gives the cinemas in the film festival full confidence. And eager to the projection to come, they are even well prepared beforehand. After all, to movie fans or to cinemas, the film festival is a rare opportunity that comes only once every year, so it can’t be too passionate or too patient for it, so “of the 365 days a year, we spend these nine days to come closer to the movie fans.”