The Paper's reporter Yang Kaiting
In October 2019, director Liu Jiang received a task from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to make a major revolutionary historical drama that pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, from "One Great" to the "War to Build the Nation" of "Resisting US Aggression and Aiding Korea", and the protagonist is mainly the party's leading figures: "With Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other leading figures as the protagonists, their personal struggle and the party's struggle process overlap to a large extent. From their contact with communist ideas, to the slow growth of communist fighters, members of the early organization of the Chinese Communist Party, and embarking on the revolutionary road, this thread unfolds. ”
At that time, the play did not have a name, until the creative process, a planner proposed two words to summarize the story, the main creative team felt very appropriate, in this regard, the name of the play has: "Glory and Dreams".
Poster of Glory and Dreams
In an exclusive interview with The Paper, Liu Jiang said that the filming process of "Glory and Dreams" is also the process of his study of party history, "I am truly infected by our revolutionaries, that fearless spirit, and that kind of personality charm." China has today, it is absolutely the inevitability of history, it is the people who have chosen the Communist Party, history has chosen the Communist Party, I think so from the bottom of my heart, so I can really invest my emotions in this work. ”
"It's a story without a main scene"
Recently, "Glory and Dreams" is being broadcast on major platforms, and it is one of the most well-produced TV series with the theme of the main theme in recent years. However, Liu Jiang looks back on its creative process, which is full of hardships and challenges.
From the "birth of the party" to the "War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea", the time span of more than thirty years has intertwined countless historical events and historical figures, and from the perspective of script creation, its difficulty can make most screenwriters' scalps tingle. The early creation of "Glory and Dreams" was not smooth, and the screenwriter was changed several times in the middle before the current screenwriter Zhao Ningyu was decided. Liu Jiang said that this is also a coincidence, "At the beginning, Teacher Zhao Ningyu did not have time to write, and as a result, due to the epidemic situation, he 'yellowed' the things behind him, and only then did he have time to create this play." ”
Liu Jiang (left) on the set of "Glory and Dreams"
However, the project is tight and urgent, and is scheduled to be broadcast around the "July 1st" in 2021, "If you push it backwards, we must start the 'July 1st' in 2020, but Zhao Ningyu entered this team, it is already February 2020." The creative time is very tight, but it is very fortunate that he is very familiar with the history of the party and has written related works, so he can wander freely in the sea of party history. In order to complete this script on time and with good quality, Zhao Ningyu lost more than a dozen pounds during the intensive creative period.
Script writing is no longer easy, and actual shooting is even more difficult. First of all, the story spans more than thirty years, involving countless scene scheduling. "There are too many scenes in the whole drama, like a big 'road movie'. It's a story without a main scene. Liu Jiang said, "Generally speaking, 40 episodes or so of drama, more than 200 scenes is a very suitable amount of scenes." And our play has more than 900 scenes. From Changsha all the way to Beijing and Shanghai, along with the growth process of the characters, through most of China, and finally to Zhongnanhai, Tiananmen, and later to North Korea. ”
Stills from Glory and Dreams
At the same time, anti-seasonal shooting is also "particularly deadly". "Glory and Dreams" started in July 2020, it is the hottest time in Hengdian, a large number of scenes in the play are based on winter as the background, according to Liu Jiang, during the filming, every day there are people with heat stroke, "The production team specially arranged several people, responsible for sending people to the hospital every day." "Due to the huge production, three groups were filmed, and the crew reached more than 1,600 people, not counting the extras." The production is extremely difficult, we can only use more manpower and material resources, professional skills and wisdom to overcome these difficulties. ”
But these are not the biggest difficulties for Liu Jiang. In his view, the biggest difficulty in the creation process of "Glory and Dreams" is the relationship between the story and the history of the party. "It's a question that I've been thinking about over and over again from pre-production all the way through to post-production to the final revision, and it's always dictated my creation. This is actually one of the most core problems in our creations - the relationship between art and life. ”
"We have been thinking: In the history of the Party, where are the 'people'?" Liu Jiang expressed the problem he began to consider as soon as he received the project: "When a period of history is too grand, when the events are too complicated, it is easy to drown 'people'. Once the 'person' is submerged, its viewability is affected from a dramatic point of view. Because of this, our script often makes changes during filming, including when reviewing later, which is also the most difficult point. Liu Jiang believes that practical problems can be overcome in various ways. But the way of thinking, the principle of creation is to be repeatedly explored, "This is the most brain-draining, I made this drama a lot of gray hair." How can it be poetic, how can it be 'people'? This aspect is the most difficult point. ”
"Art comes from life, but it is higher than life. Sometimes, the 'virtual' of art precisely reflects the 'reality' of the essence of life, which is the so-called truth of art. Sometimes it takes some deformation to reflect the essence of life. Liu Jiang said frankly, "Then these great figures in our party history, do they have something alive and living in ordinary people, and how should this be expressed?" This kind of virtual reality is difficult to grasp. ”
"Big things are not vain, small things are not informal"
The film and television creation of major revolutionary history has always had a fixed tone - "big things are not vain, small things are not informal", "but it is only a principle, the boundary in the middle is very vague, and the grasp of degree is very difficult." For me, I can only collide, and I can only use the 'virtual' of art to run into the 'reality' of history. ”
"First of all I know very well what I'm doing – we're making feature films. If we make a feature film, the material we have must have the characteristics of the story and must be done according to the laws of the story. In this way, there is a framework, and we must find events that match the characteristics of the story in the sea of party history to carry out the portrayal. Under this principle, there will be many fewer detours. ”
"Another principle, the story is to portray the characters, we have to follow each character. So we are a 'dot line surface + unit' combined structure to carry out the narrative. ”
In the end, the main creative team reached an agreement: to expand the emotional world of the characters in the history of the party and narrow the distance between them and the audience. For example, when Yang Kaihui left the child and walked to the execution ground, of course, she was righteous, but was she heartbroken? She must be heartbroken, normal people will be heartbroken, then we have to let the audience see this side of her heartbreak. ”
For the audience, chai rice oil and salt is a big thing, showing this side of the life of great people, can quickly establish an incomparably intimate connection with the audience. "This story has made some breakthroughs in this regard as much as possible, including Yang Kaihui's busyness with the child, and Mao Zedong also helping to take the child, so that some scenes will also appear in our story."
Liu Jiang hopes that the grand "glory and dream" can be illuminated in this play into the "one vegetable and one meal" that the audience cares about most, because the most remarkable "glorious dream" is to let generations of ordinary people live a life of eating and dreaming.
Stills from "Glory and Dreams", Mao Zedong and Yang Kaihui
"We are not trying to dwarf great men, but to make the audience understand them better, that is, they are the same people as us, each of us cherishes life and loves life, but why can they ignore life and death? Can you throw your head and blood for the ideal? The reason they are not afraid of death is because there is something more important than life, which is ideals and beliefs, and the meaning of their life is not only to live, but to live 'truly'. ”
"Let people see where they are really great"
When greatness is no longer a slogan, a simple concept, can the audience really read the greatness of great people. "What we call 'mortalization' is actually to make people see where their true greatness lies." Glory and Dreams seeks to establish a link between past history and present life that viewers can perceive. Liu Jiang tries to express a true, "foot on the ground" realism.
In the first episode of "Glory and Dreams", which begins in 1982, when the people were repairing Yang Kaihui's former residence, they found some documents that the martyr Yang Kaihui had never been discovered before. "It was overcast and windy, and the cold was deep into the bones. Reading the distant pedestrians, the flat waves suddenly rise and fall..." Yang Kaihui's poem "Even Feeling" as a narrator opens the whole story. Generally speaking, a huge production such as "Glory and Dreams" will have a grand beginning of "outline and collar", but I did not expect it to be idle, from a small poem, a personal emotion, as the beginning.
In this regard, Liu Jiang said that he hopes to let people see the emotional world of communists. "In addition to being martyrs, revolutionaries, they are also husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers. Such an emotional world, I think, has to be reflected through the structure and relationships of a family. ”
Throughout the play, the creative team designed a main line of Mao's family to express the emotional world of communists. "The comb that Mao Zedong took out of the box in the first episode was the comb that his wife gave to her husband, the watch was a relic of his son who died in North Korea, and Mao Zedong's tears were tears as a father and husband. But the music that sounded was the Internationale, because they made such sacrifices for the cause of mankind, for the cause of the people and the nation. ”
In the interview, Liu Jiang specifically mentioned his gratitude to the experts in party history research. In the process of creating "Glory and Dreams", "most of the opinions put forward by experts are about the accuracy of historical details, and I think they should be changed, because it is true that historical wounds cannot be left in a story based on the history of the Party. And some of the things that I want to express the most, some aspects of my artistic creation, have basically been recognized by all parties and have been protected, so what I present is a work that I am very satisfied with. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe
Proofreader: Ding Xiao