When we saw the head of celebrity-actor Huang Bo in a stop motion animation for WWF, it caught our eyes. It’s Stink‘s latest commercial, directed by Nieto, a Colombia-born Paris-based artist who works as a painter, musician, performer, filmmaker, and a stage visual director for operas. His work can be disturbing and surreal, often involving experiments with animals, dead or alive.
近日，著名演员黄渤的脑袋出现在一部世界自然基金会WWF的定格动画中，这部Stink Films制作，由Nieto执导的新片，一下就吸引了我们的关注。导演Nieto是一位出生在哥伦比亚，现居巴黎的多栖艺术家；他是画家，音乐家，表演者，电影制作人，也是一位歌剧舞台视觉导演。他的作品往往荒诞离奇，还常常有活着或死去的动物出镜。
Nieto
As a film director, Nieto was responsible for some of the most daring and artistically absurd commercials that we have seen in China. Fluorescent singing beans flying around a stage, half-naked athletic men with silly white cone-shaped hats against fine-painted landscapes, and the talking head of a major celebrity in a puppet body riding a shopping cart are just a few examples of his fantastical oeuvre.
作为电影导演，Nieto为中国的我们带来了很多非常大胆，审美极度离奇古怪的广告片。比如闪着荧光在舞台上唱着歌飞舞的豆子；比如头戴沙雕尖帽，身材健美在宛若油画的背景下游走的半裸男子；以及头部是名人，坐在购物车里滔滔不绝的玩偶，这些只是他众多奇妙作品中的几个例子。
With Stink Films, Nieto first came to China to shoot a commercial series for BMW featuring Olympic athletes in surreal stages talking about their lives. It was an instant attraction. “I felt very comfortable straight away because everything was so random,” Nieto says. “Even though communication was difficult, my production team was always willing to try new things, and in a very rough way. For me, that was perfect because that’s how I like to work.”
受Stink Film的邀请，Nieto一开始来中国是拍摄BMW的系列广告片，片中奥运会的运动员们在离奇荒诞的舞台上讲述着自己生活。这次经历让Nieto对中国一见倾心。“我有一种宾至如归的感觉，这里的所有事情都是随机的，”Nieto说到。“虽然沟通上很有挑战，但我的制片团队不怕困难，也愿意去尝试新事物。对我个人来说，这很完美，因为我就喜欢这种工作方式。”
When Nieto compares the Chinese working style to what’s usual in the United States and Europe, he finds that the latter is more squared and unexciting. Nieto is inspired by the Chinese chaos, as he puts it, and he believes it often yields more artistic results. He also thinks it could be a natural inclination from his side, given his Latin American background. “Maybe it’s because I’m Colombian, and things are also very random there, similar to China. I feel it’s the same world. When I talk to someone from Denmark or Germany, that’s another world,” he says. “Desmond, my executive producer from Stink, says that I may have been Chinese in a past life. It’s possible. Who knows?” He laughs.
Nieto对比了中国，美国和欧洲的工作方式，他觉得后者有更多的条条框框，没什么吸引力。Nieto说：中国热闹复杂的环境正好给了我灵感，而我也因此常常能创作出更有艺术感的作品。同时作为拉美人，他还认为这是他骨子里的一种偏好。“可能是因为我的哥伦比亚背景，哥伦比亚人做事也是比较随机，跟中国很像，我感觉我们是一国人。但当我和来自丹麦或是德国的人沟通时，我感觉他们是另一国的人，”他说到。“我之前Stink的监制Desmond就跟我说，觉得我上辈子可能是中国人。这有可能啊，谁知道呢？”Nieto笑着说。
As far as inspiration goes, Nieto tends to disregard the contemporary world. He muses on the ancient, citing Petronius’ Satyricon, a Roman satire, and Greek mythology and tragedies. He believes that by borrowing elements from these rich cultures from the past and applying them to a contemporary background, one can create the unexpected. “In a way, I’m trying to get away from the trends and from whatever happens today. I’m never in search of it. I still use an old Nokia phone,” he laughs. “I get inspiration from the past. I think that the future is in the past, not in the present.” Nieto also bets on multidisciplinarity, blending different media to achieve something original.
至于灵感来源，Nieto对现代社会兴趣寥寥，他的缪斯来自古代，源自彼得罗纽斯（Petronius）的《爱情神话》（Satyricon），一位罗马的讽刺文人和古希腊的神话与悲剧。他相信从这些古老而丰沃文化中采集元素，将它们用在现代的背景下，就能创作出人意料的作品。“从某种意义上来讲，我是在逃离潮流，逃开当下的林林总总。我从来不当什么‘弄潮儿’，我到现在还在使用一款老旧的诺基亚手机，”他笑着说。“我的灵感来自过去。我认为未来就在过去，而非现在。”Nieto还喜欢跨界混搭，将不同的媒介领域融合成原创的作品。
It’s with the galloping rhythm of The March of the Swiss Soldiers, from Rossini’s opera William Tell, that Nieto sets the pace for To Bean or Not to Bean, a snack commercial for Gan Yuan Foods featuring Huang Xiaoming. Huang enters a stage for what seems to be an audition, and when told to do whatever he wants, he sings Rossini’s overture finale but saying the word “bean,” or “豆” in Chinese, to the unmistakable beat of the song. As Huang sings, different colors and shapes of beans fly into the room, circling, dancing around him, and even crashing him at some point with a giant green pea. “Because he is so handsome, I asked him to put his best cool attitude while looking at the camera. Simultaneously, the whole situation is so silly that it creates a fun contrast,” said Nieto. The film also exemplifies his tendency to juxtapose the old and the new in ingenious ways.
罗西尼的歌剧《威廉退尔》选段《威廉退尔序曲》响起，在激烈有节奏的音乐中，Nieto的作品《甘源豆: 好吃的节奏》开场，这是一部为甘源豆打造的零食广告，由黄晓明领衔主演。影片一开始，黄晓明走进一次试镜现场，开始按要求即兴表演，他随即开始演唱罗西尼的《威廉退尔序曲》，但却用“豆”作为填词来演唱这一经典选段。伴随着他的歌声，形色各异的豆子突然空降现场，飞舞着，跳跃着，旋转围绕着他，甚至有一颗巨型豌豆还和他对撞了一下。“因为他长得很帅，我就让他拿出最酷的态度，盯着镜头。与此同时，房间里的情况又是那么怪诞可笑，这么一来就形成了鲜明有趣的对比，”Nieto说到。这部广告片也刚好印证了，Nieto就是这么一位喜欢古新对碰的奇才。
Gan Yuan Foods｜《甘源豆: 好吃的节奏》
Nieto chose to pay homage to the traditional zongzi, or sticky rice, for the time-honored brand Wu Fang Zhai with a more dazzling look and a tragicomic style. For most of the three-minute-long story, the viewer is oblivious to the meaning of it all; the explanation only comes at the end. Actors that represent grains of rice have to endure the hazards of weather as if being harvested. Only the strongest make it to the end when they finally get wrapped in a green reed leaf to be served and devoured. “When I saw the script, I thought it was exactly the kind of film I wanted to have in my reel. Any producer or director would think the same. But it was also ambitious, so I had to imagine a way to make it happen,” he says. Nieto then decided to shoot everything against a blue screen and used landscape paintings by a Parisian artist as a background, creating an immersive and whimsical feel.
Nieto还为经典品牌五芳斋打造了一部华丽的悲喜剧，向中国传统的粽子（糯米）致敬。在这部长达3分钟的广告片中，观众们一路雾里看花，直到最后才反应过来影片在讲什么。由演员扮演的粒粒稻米，需要经历各种雨雪风霜才能迎来收割。只有强者才能坚持到最后，被翠绿的粽叶包裹，呈现给食客，完成自己的使命。“ 当我看到剧本的时候，我就觉得这种影片正是我想要拍摄的类型。任何制片人或导演肯定也会这么觉得。但同时，这又充满挑战，所以我得想个法子，去实现它，”他说到。Nieto随后决定所有拍摄都在蓝幕前进行，然后采用一位巴黎艺术家的画作作为背景，营造一种沉浸式的，古怪的感觉。
Wu Fang Zhai 五芳斋
Recently released, WWF‘s spot was made in times of Covid-19. It was initially conceived as a simple in-camera talking celebrity film with an underwhelming budget. When Sally Shi from Stinky films sent the script proposal to Nieto, he was surprised by its simplicity. She explained that he was the right director to develop new ideas that would make it more interesting.
而最近才开始放送的世界自然基金会WWF的宣传片，则是在新冠时期拍摄完成的。这部短片最初的设想比较简单，以名人对着镜头讲话的形式拍摄，预算也比较有限。当Stink Film的Sally Shi将剧本简报发给Nieto看时，他觉得很意外，这样也太普通了。她随即解释，正因如此才找到Nieto，希望他能为这部影片带来新的想法，使它变得更有趣。
Coming up with new ideas is Nieto’s cup of tea. He quickly devised an alternative to the concept: to shoot most of it in stop motion in Paris and integrate Huang Bo’s head into it afterward. It was not easy to persuade the client and the celebrity team involved as to what the final result would be. Hence, Nieto made almost a perfect previsualization of what it would look like. It didn’t just eliminate the smallest hint of doubt that anyone may have had about his vision, but it also got the multiple teams involved even more excited about the film.
这对Nieto来说是正中下怀，他最喜欢脑洞大开了。很快，他就在原概念的基础上，设计了新的创意：在巴黎拍摄大部分的内容，采用定格动画的形式，最后把黄渤的脑袋加上去。因为谁也说不准最终的效果如何，说服相关的艺人团队花费了好一番功夫。因此，Nieto制作了近乎完美的视觉预览效果给相关人士参考。这不仅消除了大家所有的顾虑，还让不同的相关团队更加期待这部影片了。
But his solution presented yet another challenge since, not surprisingly, stop motion is an incredibly tricky and lengthy process. A four-second video usually takes an entire day of shooting, making it particularly challenging in commercial filmmaking. Once more, Nieto had to come up with a solution. “We had to imagine it with 12 frames per second, instead of the usual 24. It cut the time in half and added a nice texture to the film, working well with the integration of Huang Bo’s head,” he explains.
但他的方案也带来了另一种挑战，众所周知，拍摄定格动画耗时耗力。4秒钟的内容，往往得拍摄一天，这使得拍摄定格动画风格的商业片愈发充满挑战。Nieto因此又得拿出一个解决方案。“我们必须给画面减帧，将通常的24帧每秒，改为12帧每秒。这样不仅能节省一半的时间，还能让影片的质地显得更加别具一格，同时还便于在后期将黄渤的脑袋对接上去，”他解释到。
It turned out that most of the movie was made in Paris, except for a couple of hours of studio shooting with Huang Bo in China. Since it was a low budget production, Nieto had to bring in help from friends he has in the art community. Ironically, the pandemic scenario helped. “I invited a few artist friends to work on it with me, and, because of the pandemic, everybody was available, with not much to do, so they were happy to get involved even if the budget was super low.”
最终，大部分的制片工作在巴黎完成，而黄渤在中国拍摄的部分只占了几小时。由于该片的预算有限，Nieto还动员了自己艺术圈的友人。令人哭笑不得的是新冠疫情居然还帮了忙。“我邀请了一些朋友来帮忙，因为疫情，大家都赋闲在家，所以即便赚不了多少钱，也都乐意参与制作。”
The challenges of the production were also a catalyst. “With scripts like this one, I always think of an idea that’s interesting for everybody involved, something challenging in terms of production, direction, and creative vision. I’m always trying to do things that I didn’t do before,” Nieto says. Nieto knows his work principles well; he trusts his long time producers almost blindly to hand him the right projects. That makes it very rare for him to refuse anything proposed, even if it’s not an exact match initially. “In a similar way to what happened with WWF, my producers are always competent in seeing the potential these projects have in my hands.”
制片的挑战，也成了一种催化剂。“像这种剧本，我一般都会想法子让所有参与人士都觉得有意思，我的创意得让制片，导演和创意视野都觉得有所挑战。我常常会去尝试我没做过的事情，”Nieto说到。他对自己的工作原则了然于胸；无条件地信任自己的长期制片人，坚信他们能为他找到最适合的项目。因此他很少拒绝项目，即便是一开始不太符合预期的项目。“这跟WWF这部片子的情况很像，我的制片人都很善于发掘，能看出项目到我手里后的潜力。”
The truth is that Nieto indulges in the necessity of creative exchange with people from different spheres such as film, advertising, and art, to always come up with something cutting-edge and original. He admits that he doesn’t have extravagant goals; he’s happy to pursue the fine little points in life, bouncing from one challenge to the other, and seizing every opportunity to create something new. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, and, when asked how he would like to be known in China, Nieto gently says, “The Clown Director.” Clowns are enigmatic figures, creepy and funny at the same time. Indeed, in his commercials as in his art, Nieto’s output is often similarly ambiguous; you don’t understand if it’s a joke or not, or if it’s fake or real. But you feel their long-lasting effect powered precisely by his eccentric and deliciously irreverent humor.
事情真相则是Nieto乐于跨界交流，常常和来自于不同领域的创意人士合作，比如电影，广告，艺术等等，他也因此往往有先锋且原创的产出。他承认他并没有宏大的目标；他乐于追求生活中细小的东西，从一个挑战跳跃到另一个挑战，抓住所有能创新的机遇。Nieto为人十分平易近人接地气，当我们问他想要在中国获得什么样的称号时，Nieto温柔又谦虚地说，“小丑导演”。小丑是神秘的存在，时而吓人，时而搞笑。的确如此，Nieto的商业电影和他的艺术作品一样，都是那么神秘；你拿不准他到底是不是在开玩笑，是真的还是假的。而Nieto这种古怪，迷人，又无厘头的幽默，却令人念念不忘，久久地影响着我们。
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