23 October 2014
As part of the Smart Talk Program of the British Consulate-General in Shanghai, Sir David Puttnam’s lecture was held at the Shanghai Film Museum in the afternoon of 22 October. The lecture was sponsored by the Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate-General in Shanghai and co-organized by the Shanghai Film Museum and Shanghai Theatre Academy. The theme of the lecture was "Film Music and Film Production”. The lecture introduced the importance of the film music and, at the same time, discussed a series of questions involved in the film production such as “story line” and "character identity”, bringing an incomparable visual and audio feast to the audience in the elegant sound of piano.
At the beginning of the lecture, Sir David show a short movie “100 Anniversary of British Film”, which enabled the audience to experience the charm of British films with the edited clips of more than 400 films.
Sir David expanded from his own experience as a cartoon lover in his childhood and elaborated in detail the regular pattern of the formation of a story. He took himself as an example to demonstrate to the audience the formation of a story line which is to “develop a small idea into a story”. Sir David believed that a good film should let the audience see himself in it and feel the experience of life and that a good story should be establish on a story line that is based on the experience of life.
With regard to the characters in the film, Sir David emphasized the important of “identity confirmation” in displaying the characters. He believed that the identity confirmation of the main character should be based on the consistency between the identity of the creator and that of the main character and that the actors, as a part of the film, should be in conformity with the characters they play, thereby, achieving resonance between the characters and audience.
During the lecture, Sir David worked together with his son Sacha Puttnam to include music in each and every part of the lecture, which enabled the audience to sense the importance of music to film through the emotional feelings in the beautiful music.
For the large number of students attending the lecture, Sir David encouraged them to “make sure that the core purpose of whatever they do is to create something nice. With reference to President Xi Jinping’s speech “Culture Should not Compromise with the Market” discussed before the start of the lecture, he pointed out that “the responsibility of film is to change the people”. At the same time, with his own experience of life, Sir David suggested that the students of film should cultivate a good habit of "getting ready and being self-reflective”.
