Text │ Crazy Rabbit
"Simple and elegant, ancient style and ancient charm". This is the first impression of many people after seeing the ancient wind and strange short drama "Strange Things in the Mountains".
Even if you can see at a glance that the production funds of the series are limited, you can still see the classical beauty that the main creative team tries to restore and create in the limited budget, and the so-called "small and beautiful" production is closely related to the aesthetic ability of the main creative team. The poetry-style Zhiwei story brings another sense of surprise in the high-concept, fast-paced, and strong plot of the neat narrative.
In the impression of director Zhang Heng, Shandong people have a part of their interest in Zhiwei stories, as a Shandong person, he will listen to his hometown people, including his mother, tell some folk Zhiwei stories since he was a child, and under the atmosphere infection, he has also cultivated an interest in Zhiwei stories.
The cooperation with Tuhu Culture is based on the layout of Tuhu Culture for the ancient style series, and it began by chance. According to Zhang Heng's recollection, once he returned to his hometown in Shandong, wandered on the road at night, and when he came back, he saw a cat, which crossed the horse from his family community and disappeared into the bamboo forest opposite. Zhang Heng was inspired by this and wrote a hundred-word short story called "Bamboo Forest", the founder of Rabbit Culture, Yuan Zhe, the producer of Busi Strange, and his colleagues in the company felt very interesting after watching it, and at the same time they felt that the company's series of costume series exploration could be excavated in the direction of Gu Fengzhiwei, and the two sides hit it off, so "Strange Things in the Mountains" was put on the preparatory schedule.
Whether it is the story content or the picture presentation, this collection of ancient style short dramas adapted from the ancient Zhiwei story has its small but beautiful highlights. In the narration of director Zhang Heng and producer Yuan Zhe, various human emotions in the story of the mountain spirit monster are told.
Poetry selection style Chi Weird story
In the early stages of creation, the creative team will go through three screenings of ancient zhiwei stories. First of all, the editor-in-chief of the long-term cooperation and specializing in the study of classical Zhiwei stories selects hundreds of stories from the ancient Zhiwei stories, and then selects twenty or thirty of them to show to the director according to the set standards by the company and the producer, and finally the director selects thirteen stories according to his own aesthetic standards and preferences to form the "Yamano" series.
In the story screening work of the supervising producer Yuan Zhe and the team of Rabbit Culture Company, whether the story itself has a classical charm, whether the story concept is fresh and interesting, and whether the storyline is twisted and turned are the three criteria that need to be considered first. As for director Zhang Heng, he is more concerned about whether these ancient stories can be understood by the current audience and have a certain sense of substitution, such as when watching the story of "Si Fan", he first thought of the current pig killing plate; secondly, his aesthetic preferences, such as the story of "Revenge" because of the comedic factor, so it gave him a bright feeling, and the story was thus retained.
Unlike the current story, which has a rich plot of ups and downs, most ancient Zhiwei stories are straightforward narratives, and the plot is short, and even some stories only have three or five sentences, which not only will not lay the foreshadowing, but also tell the audience the results at the beginning. Yuan Zhe feels that since some story climaxes and mainstream story creation are reversed, it is better to shoot the protagonist's momentary state, and relying on the protagonist's reaction to push back the event is also a way. For example, the ending of the story of "Night Road" falls into the reaction of the heroine: what did she think of after seeing her mother? Why did she cry? And why do you laugh? Is the ending of the story happy or sad? These viewers can think according to the ancient text in the film and combine the story.
In the visual adaptation of the ancient Zhiwei story, it is sometimes necessary to make appropriate additions, such as the story of "SiFan" originally did not have the character of the little nun, and did not give the host a definite ending, in order to enrich the plot and make the plot more complete, the main creative team added the character of the little nun in the creation, which played a role in promoting the host and cheating with the male protagonist.
But sometimes some subtraction is also needed.
For example, the story of "Repaying Grace", the main creative team only filmed the first half of the content, the back story is that the husband finally decided to kill his benefactor, but this matter was heard by one of their slaves and secretly told the benefactor, the benefactor escaped on horseback all night, stayed in a hotel in the middle of the night, the manager asked him so late, there may be wild beasts on the road, why do you want to run out so risky, the benefactor told the original of this matter to the store, and then immediately jumped from the beam of a thief, the thief said to the benefactor" This is so hateful that I must do you justice", and the next day when the benefactor went out, he found the couple's heads appear in front of the inn. In Zhang Heng's view, this story has already ushered in a climax at the moment when the husband's killing intentions, and it is not necessary to present a retribution and obvious result, and the appropriate blank space is not only to play the afterglow and thinking of the story, but also to respect the audience's interpretation of the story from different perspectives.
As the first costume zhiwei work of Rabbit Culture, Yuan Zhe said that the company and the director are in a process of exploration, and in the creation of "Strange Things in the Mountains", the main creative team has also done a lot of exploration contrary to the mainstream creative mode, such as reducing the drama of the story to create immersion, such as abandoning reversal and plot design, focusing on portraying the psychological state of the characters.
Small production, high aesthetic
Rabbit Culture originally wanted to create the ancient style series "No Wonder: Mountains and Wild", but because the inherent impression left by "Don't Think Strange" to the audience is already "suspenseful horror", in order not to cause conceptual preconceptions about the new costume story, the team renamed it "Strange Things in the Mountains".
Yuan Zhe feels that China is an agricultural culture, mountains and fields are unchanged imagery for thousands of years, and concepts such as "wise people looking at mountains and empty mountains aesthetics" will also convey a metaphysical philosophy, so the fit and adaptation of the name "Strange Things in the Mountains" and the story of Zhiwei is very worth chewing. Of course, another very important reason is that it does not cost money to shoot mountains and forests. As a small-scale production web drama, the team of "Strange Things in the Mountains" did not have enough funds to set up their own scenes, so they had to make appropriate arrangements and make more considerations in the selection of scenes.
Like most costume dramas, "Strange Things in the Mountains" is also filmed in Hengdian, and there are even some scenes that are particularly popular in Hengdian, but the creative team will deliberately choose different perspectives to shoot these scenes. Although in order to present a more realistic ancient feeling, the main creative team at the beginning thought of going to the ancient cities that were well preserved, but after walking around, they found that these ancient cities were mixed with a lot of modern things and were no longer suitable for shooting.
The scene is limited, and the creative team can only make more efforts in modeling and composition. For example, the stylist of the crew is Ye Jintian's assistant, she was still in graduate school at the Costume Academy when filming, and the clothes worn by the female pig demon in "One Thought" are her graduation works. In addition, in order to focus on the characters and present the picture texture in limited conditions, the shots in the play are mostly small scenes, not only rarely appear large panoramas, but even small panoramic shots are not used in large quantities.
Of course, the crew also attaches great importance to the importance of lighting, but the lighting effect of "Strange Things in the Mountains" is often the opposite of the mainstream web drama creation style. For example, most episodes will play blue cold light at night, but the outdoor light of "Reward" chooses green light, and "Night Road" uses the 12 head lamp sunset light that is generally used during the day, although the lighting effect is slightly prominent, but in order to show the warmth and beauty of the "divine light" brought by the mother in despair, it also presents the stage sense of the scene and the dreamy sense of the picture, so in the eyes of the main creative team, this light is just right.
The diversified exploration of micro-short dramas
As an early entry into the field of micro-short dramas and has successfully created a well-known label "No Wonder" series of production companies, Yuan Zhe, the executive producer of Rabbit Culture, told Bone Duo that Rabbit Culture does have plans to gradually lengthen the length of the episodes, from the initial "Don't Think Strange" series of 2 to 10 minutes of short stories, to the 5 to 15 minutes of story volume of "Strange Things in the Mountains", and then to the 10 to 20 minutes of an episode in a new project, Rabbit Culture is gradually expanding the volume of the story.
In addition, for some episodes with good audience response, the company will also consider supplementing the second half of the story, and even consider making the Yamano series into a yamano universe, but for now, even if it is necessary to make some of the larger stories, the company will also take 3-4 episodes of a story, each story does not exceed 35 minutes to present. The persistence of rabbit culture to micro-short dramas is not only due to the company's aesthetic preferences, but also the small volume characteristics of micro-short dramas are more conducive to the company's exploration and control of new content, compared with long content, micro-content innovation space is greater.
In terms of genre, the plan of Rabbit Culture is to do suspense, science fiction, costumes and other types of dramas around the unthinkable label, such as the project being produced, "No Wonder: Mystery Network" is a soft science fiction story in which the online image enters the real world to break the balance of the real life of the characters, "Although it is difficult to eat, but to live" is a dark cooking story with realistic themes, and "The New Girl Saves the Daily Life of the Crew" is a workplace drama.
Compared with long dramas, due to the innate influence brought about by the tonality of platform style, most of the micro-short dramas on the market at present show the characteristics of high entertainment, and the word "suspension" has become an unresolved topic hanging on the heads of many micro-short dramas. In Yuan Zhe's view, this is due to the fact that some episodes want to embed content in the public aesthetic framework, whether it is emotional content or reality-oriented episodes, "Once the three axes of idol dramas are applied, it is difficult not to levitate." And "Strange Things in the Mountains" wants to do not levitate, the most important way is to achieve "restoring the story.".
But at the same time, the main creative team is not worried that the character shaping in "Strange Things in the Mountains" will be misaligned with the current aesthetic trends. In the character shaping, the team first considers whether the character's emotions are real, whether the fate has the motivation, and whether the character is pleasing is not an important factor. So we can see that the heroine in the story of "Si Fan" has some "love brain", and the swing of the male protagonist of "Suspicion" is even a little off-line.
In the eyes of the creator of "Strange Things in the Mountains", although the story is based on the ancient Zhiwei story as a template, the emotions and complexity of "people" are not divided into eras, whether it is the maternal love in "Night Road" and "Tanuki", or the expectation of love in "Sifan" is a factor that we can reach a dialogue with the ancients across time and space, and it is also an important reason why the story can resonate with the current audience.