By filming documentary after documentary, they preserve the memory of this era through images, yet also imperceptibly change their own angle on the world.

　　There is a group of college students who choose to observe the world and record life through the lens, restoring the "real" stories they see and hear. By filming documentary after documentary, they preserve the memory of this era through images, yet also imperceptibly change their own angle on the world. Recently, several college students who make documentaries were interviewed by reporters from China Youth Daily · China Youth Network. The reporters sought to get close to them, to understand how those stories are unearthed, told, and presented, and to understand the meaning and possibilities that documentaries bring to their lives.

　　"If I were to shoot it, would I do it a bit better?"

　　Zhu Fangzheng is a student at the School of Journalism and Communication of South China University of Technology, majoring in Communication with a focus on audiovisual studies. Due to the characteristics of the major, there were already some related courses requiring documentary filming. He began creating works from his freshman year; what truly made him want to direct documentaries himself was his time as a student judge at the China International College Student Documentary Competition. As a staff member, he needed to review student documentary submissions daily, and by studying and watching college students' documentaries, he also conceived the idea of making documentaries.

　　"If I were to shoot it, would I do it a bit better? Perhaps this counts as a bit of small ambition." Zhu Fangzheng felt that perhaps it was his long-term study and accumulation, or perhaps the support of this bit of ambition, that led him to begin his first documentary as a director. "Filming is not something achieved overnight; courage is cultivated step by step."

　　Wang Xunan, a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, studied at the Academy of Film of Hong Kong Baptist University for his undergraduate degree. He has a deeper understanding of documentaries, and his start in documentary filming originated from a course selection during his undergraduate years. In this documentary course, he learned that documentary creation involves selecting and observing from what already exists and editing it, organizing content observed from one's own perspective. In addition, Wang Xunan mentioned the importance of the keyword "truth" in his beginning to shoot documentaries: "Everyone generally believes that documentaries should record the truth, but after I came into contact with documentaries, I found that the boundary of truth seems to be blurred."

　　"This kind of truth is the greatest power of documentaries"

　　In his first documentary shoot, Wang Xunan began his pursuit and exploration of "truth." In the documentary "Not Going Home to Visit," he selected a group of Hong Kong drifters unable to return home for the New Year as subjects, handing the camera to the subjects and letting them record their own lives, attempting thereby to reflect their real living conditions more objectively. He said that a rather important question in documentaries is how you can ensure that the characters you film present the truth in front of the camera. At the time, he tried to do so by handing the camera to the subjects, but in reality the presence of the camera interferes with the whole event, and some subjects always had a feeling of performing for the camera.

　　Zeng Qianzhi, a student majoring in Radio and Television Studies at the School of Journalism and Communication of Jinan University, encountered the same problem in the filming of the documentary "'Deep' Life Unending — A Documentary of the Ten-Yuan Haircut Street at Xixiang Interchange in Shenzhen." She noticed the stories of these street barbers on the ten-yuan haircut street who had left their hometowns, hoping to record the mutual sympathy among ordinary people behind the street's undiminished vitality. But during filming, she found that "when we were shooting, we hoped not to greatly affect their normal life and work, so we seized every opportunity to interview and film. However, the presence of equipment still interferes with the subjects' daily life and expression, and what appears in front of the camera may be what they hope to show."

　　After finishing his first documentary, Wang Xunan began to think about the issue of the camera's presence and how to handle the relationship with subjects. Thus, in another of his documentaries, "I Graduated," Wang Xunan chose to focus the filming on recording the relationship between himself and the Hong Kong classmates he filmed. They also grew close from an ordinary classmate relationship at the start of filming, and Wang Xunan gained a deeper understanding of truth.

　　In Wang Xunan's view, so-called traditional documentaries are all about filming a certain person, as if the director has nothing to do with him, but the real situation is that the director is always present and communicating with the subject at all times, and this relationship exists throughout the entire documentary. He said that at first he very much wanted to know what truth actually is, but later found that truth is not observing something as true from a single viewpoint, but rather that the "relationship" within it is the most real: "This kind of truth is the greatest power of documentaries."

　　Through the power of documentaries, returning to the real world

　　Speaking of what documentaries mean to him, Zhu Fangzheng mentioned that the most important thing is actually that you experience a life you have never come into contact with, and in this process discover some people and things worth recording, and then record them. Zhu Fangzheng's desire to record was stimulated when he saw these people and things, and this desire drove him to shoot, to dig, to seek. "Recording itself is meaningful, especially for such a group of young people in such an era."

　　"We can see different people, they have different lives, and I can feel these different lives." Speaking of the influence of documentaries on herself, Zeng Qianzhi said it is more about experiencing different lives—and even the different outlooks on life and values contained behind them—through interviewing, recording, and understanding. She mentioned that as a student group not yet deeply involved in the operation of society as a whole, one's personal cognition has certain limitations; through communication with subjects, one can experience different people's thoughts and perceptions and expand one's imagination.

　　"In fact, every life state and every profession has its necessity and value; we cannot limit ourselves to our own cognition." Zeng Qianzhi said that in filming the street barbers, she found that although the barber's profession seems ordinary, they also have their own thinking, positive mindset, and expectations for the future. Zeng Qianzhi also expanded more new possibilities for her own future—perhaps success does not necessarily mean becoming a white-collar worker in a high-rise building; there are still many things in life worth trying.

　　"What really matters is those real things that happen in life." Wang Xunan mentioned that his teacher once said that as a documentary filmmaker one needs to go to the actual site to observe, to understand the real world that may have been separated by images, and through the power of documentaries, return to that real world. At the same time, what matters more is what a documentary may bring you, or what it has influenced, and what it is when returning to life itself. He admitted that because of the documentary "I Graduated," he and that Hong Kong classmate became friends, and the feeling of finally returning to life was wonderful. Therefore, documentaries taught him to return to the truths in life.

　　To present another world, another possibility of life

　　Zeng Qianzhi stated, "Through our filming and recording, more people can understand more aspects and diverse possibilities of society." And whether it is a social problem or an objective social phenomenon, in her view, it is worth recording.

　　Zhu Fangzheng's first documentary is called "Long Moments." He filmed Sam, a teacher in a theater experience class, who through the form of memory theater used seven moments as sources of inspiration to create seven segments that penetrate the mind and time; in the memory theater, Sam captured and stimulated students' emotions through games and other methods. In this process, Zhu Fangzheng found that during filming, students continuously broke down and cried because of these training games, thereby sharing their true inner feelings and thoughts.

　　Zhu Fangzheng stated that the theme of the documentary itself was to explore these new-generation artists' views on society, but in the process many stories belonging to themselves were unearthed. Contemporary young people are under pressure; whether from family environment or educational experience and various other aspects, armor is put on them, so when showing their true selves everyone can be so relaxed, which gives them an opportunity to release themselves or reconcile with their past selves.

　　Wang Xunan observed that the reason people in two different places develop mutual suspicion and misunderstanding may be seeing more and more negative news, or receiving more negative videos on short-video platforms, but in fact this is people in both places watching virtual images—a product of the era. "Real communication is important, and documentaries can serve as a very good language." Wang Xunan stated that dialect differences in different places may lead to mutual misunderstanding, but documentaries with subtitles can break down language barriers and enable better understanding between each other; at the same time, documentaries are also a kind of image, and images as language can enable both sides to understand the original appearance of events more truthfully, which perhaps also promotes understanding and mutual trust between different regions on another level.

　　The future of documentaries has infinite possibilities; it can present another world, or another possibility of life, and with technology, documentaries may enter an even newer stage of development, but the pursuit of "truth" will never change.

　　And these college students who make documentaries also have infinite possibilities in their future. They will continue to persist in exploring and moving forward on the path of documentaries, or switch life tracks to seek more things worth trying, but this documentary journey in pursuit of truth and self will surely leave a deep mark on their lives. Whether for audiences or for those who make documentaries, they are all looking forward to more stories and possibilities.