Author: Dorothy
The variety show "Dance Millennium" has been broadcast to the sixth episode this Saturday (December 11), but Jiang Xiaowei is still a little nervous, and even has a feeling of dreaming back to before the first episode of the show, "The program model is too new, I have no bottom in my heart, and I dare not think too much." ”
This is the norm after he became the producer of the B Station Variety Center and served as the general director of "Dance Millennium".
The night before the sixth program was launched, Jiang Xiaowei was in the late stage of supervision and completed the film at five o'clock in the morning. He was worried about the ballet "Dunhuang" in this episode. This work uses ballet to interpret Dunhuang Feitian and shows traditional Chinese art with Western dance, which is very different from the "Dunhuang Dance" in the public impression, and he does not know how such a Chinese and Western audience will react.
It should also be noted that before the official appearance of the dance section of "Dunhuang Feitian", "Dance Millennium" added a love story between a musician and a Dunhuang mural restorer to this dance as a prelude to the content. Jiang Xiaowei is also worried about whether this story is well connected to the dance and whether it can help the audience understand the dance.
"'Dance Millennium' is a cultural drama dance variety show", Jiang Xiaowei introduced. From the official positioning of this program, it is not difficult to detect the multiplicity of the program model.
The program first set up a main line plot of recommending dances with "Twelve Winds Dance Chronicle", Qiao Zhenyu, Zhang Xiaolong, Hua Xiaoyi, Xu Minghao, Hu Yang and other stars and dance guests were divided into two factions, jumping in various dynastic backgrounds, taking turns to recommend dances, forming a confrontation mode of red and white song clubs; and then in the main line plot, a plot story was installed for each dance, and the story behind the dance was explained with the plot, creating a special form between film and television dramas and variety shows.
The two are combined, and each episode shows the content with one main line dance and three drama dances.
Such a program setting, in today's "reality show + competition" can summarize most of the programs in the variety market, whether it is explained or understood, it requires a certain amount of patience.
So Jiang Xiaowei's nervousness as a program director is not difficult to understand. "There is no benchmarking type in the variety market, we don't know if the program form can be accepted, the main line plot will be too embarrassing, and the dance innovation and setting story will not be criticized."
Even though "Dance Millennium" has been broadcast to the sixth issue and the stage is nearing the end, as long as a new dance appears, the tension caused by the unknown can never be dissipated.
The birth of "Dancing Millennium"
"I was as nervous as I was doing a show for the first time."
Jiang Xiaowei can still accurately recall her inner feelings in the whole process from the planning of the "Dance Millennium" program, finalizing the dance troupe, filming, post-production to the first broadcast - expectation, excitement and trepidation.
Time back to 6 months ago, when the news that Station B and Henan Satellite TV will jointly create a dance variety show has just spilled over. On the one hand, it is the most active young community in China, and on the other hand, in recent years, with the "Tang Palace Night Banquet", "Prayer" and other programs to play traditional culture out of the flower satellite TV, the two joined forces, the audience market immediately classified this variety show as a "dream linkage must produce fine products" type.
But at that time, in fact, no one knew what form this variety show would be launched, including Jiang Xiaowei and Feng Zheng of Henan Satellite TV, Xu Peng, and the other two general directors of the program.
At the beginning, everyone's idea was very simple, just create a small studio variety show, invite a dance troupe to perform in each session, and then share the story behind the dance in the form of a studio interview.
But the plan was quickly overturned. "In the process of contacting the dance company, we found that there are a large number of classic works and professional dancers in China, so the good content is shelved there, the lack of stage, this is a treasure."
Dance performances + in-studio interviews do not fully accommodate this treasure. Since Station B and Henan Satellite TV must join hands to do things, let's do a big vote. "Simply integrate the local song and dance troupes to have a 'fairy fight.'"
This plan is perhaps the most in line with the direction of the public's imagination, the dance troupes compete in competition, dance, special effects, art settings to the pinnacle, as if to create an upgraded version of the extended version of Henan Satellite TV "Wonderful Tour".
But the plan also did not work. "Henan Satellite TV's 'Fantastic Tour' series has played cultural dance and special effects to the extreme, and it is indeed the safest to follow this route, but dance competition, fighting culture, fighting wonders, and fighting special effects, the ceiling of this model can already be predicted." Jiang Xiaowei explained.
Once a creator wants to pursue something better, all ideas have room to be repaired. In the following months, this dance variety show entered a desperate state of reincarnation, and the director team constantly proposed new plans and then repeatedly overturned and restarted.
The turning point came from a video on Station B. By chance, someone in the director's group discovered the Guqin version of "International Song" jointly released by the Guangdong Communist Youth League, the ZideQin Society, and the Guqin Clinic. The video introduces ancient paintings with a small plot of the Republic of China period, and then introduces the "International Song" played by folk music through ancient paintings, and the modern "Internationale" is perfectly integrated with traditional classical folk music.
The team got a glimmer of inspiration, and the plot seemed to be a new fulcrum.
"Why not give each dance a story that can help explain the dance and convey cultural information, or simply play bigger, throw away everything familiar to the variety market, take away the stage, take away the reality show, and make a real 'full script' show."
The plan was made, a new variety show model was born, culture + plot + dance, using dance to tell Chinese stories, no variety show has done this before.
At this moment, Jiang Xiaowei was excited. Before "Dance Millennium", Jiang Xiaowei has already worked on popular variety shows such as "The Name of the Teenager" and "Creation 101", he is familiar with the success code in the variety market, and he once wrote an oil poem when he joked, "The market blank finds pain points, the model is clear and bright, the story hits the CCP situation point, if you want to succeed, look at the candidate."
"I saw a whole new treasure that a lot of producers dream of. Find the market gaps and pain points, if the method is right, you can make good works in this field. ”
"Dancing Millennium" is like a seed with infinite possibilities at this moment, and it is possible to grow flowers that have never been seen in the variety market.
Only soon, Jiang Xiaowei realized that the "new" trait is a double-edged sword, and from "Dance Millennium" to this seed grows to sprout and blossom, the wind and waves to be experienced are greater than expected. The biggest problem is that the model of "Dance Millennium" is destined to be a fusion between variety shows and film and television dramas, which requires a lot of plot shooting.
"We are all doing variety shows, but "Dance Millennium" is going to do film and television, and everyone is very dazed."
So "Dance Millennium" can only increase labor costs. The director group invited 13 dance troupes, the team divided into 5 groups of executive teams, 4 groups of executive director team, mainly live shooting, each group is responsible for 6 dances and plots, and at the same time set up a special team to be responsible for the main line plot and dance shooting.
At the same time, he spent a lot of time writing scripts. "It's a lot harder than we thought. The main script of "Dance Millennium" was written for two months and changed drafts countless times. Film and television + variety show, what kind of script is appropriate, this balance is difficult to master. Pay attention to the shaping of the character, the script will be too complicated, but the story is too simple, and there is a lack of conflict and contradiction. And the length of the program left for the plot is actually very short, and a complete story must be told in a few minutes, which needs to make the script interesting and ensure that the structure of the variety show is clear, which is a very painful process. ”
When "Dance Millennium" was only 10 days away from recording, the plot script of the show was still being overturned and restarted.
What makes people panic is that Jiang Xiaowei, as a director, sometimes can't say what project he is creating in the face of "Dance Millennium".
"At that time, the most common sentence we said when we reported on the project was, 'I don't know what kind of variety show this is', I often joked with Feng Zheng and Xu Peng, this time I bet on my entire career in doing shows, if the audience can't accept it, I really have to resign."
On November 6, "Dance Millennium" was finally launched on the B station, Qiao Zhenyu played two roles alone, with a wordless "Twelve Winds Dance Chronicle" to kick off the program, "Confucius", "Fire", "Xianghe Song" three dances came out.
Jiang Xiaowei acted like a novice in variety shows. He lost sleep the night before the show went live, and he deliberately waited 20 minutes after the show went live to observe the audience's feedback. Perhaps the kung fu pays off, the score of the B station of "Dance Millennium" reached 9.9 points, and the bullet screen sighed, "It is a big production!" ”
The director group temporarily put their minds at ease, "The model of plot + dance is feasible. ”
Can the new story of "Dancing Millennium" be accepted?
But the story has only just begun.
"Dance Millennium" has a total of eight programs, each program is about 55 minutes long, compared to other one- or two-hour reality shows on the market, "Dance Millennium" takes the "small and beautiful" light volume route, but in terms of information output, the density of "Dance Millennium" has not decreased.
Up to now, "Dance Millennium" has updated six programs, from the main plot to dance performances, the program has traveled through the three dynasties of Han, Tang and Song, and recommended 18 dances through the mouths of historical figures such as Sima Yi, Yang Xiu, Di Renjie, Shangguan Wan'er, Su Shi, Wang Runzhi and other well-known historical figures.
Some of them are works with great cultural color and historical heritage, and the dance itself has been recognized in the professional field, and the program has choreographed new stories and extended dance. For example, the "Xianghe Song" that appeared in the first issue, in conjunction with the story of the girl temple festival to welcome the spring god and miss the beloved, showed the encouragement of the Chinese Han Dynasty, the dancers wore lotus powder and song to raise the sleeves and drums; the second program used the ancient Shangwei Festival girls and the ancient Chinese dance "Stepping Song" with a thousand years of history, and the girls shook their water sleeves in the green mountains and clear waters.
Some of them are works with dance drama content as the basis, and the public has a certain perception of dance content and emotional expression, and it is relatively easier to understand. For example, in the second issue, "Zhaojun Out of the Plug", which summarizes Zhaojun's life experience, in the fifth issue, "Zhao's Orphan", which tells the story of Cheng Baozi's rescue of orphans, and "Guan Gong", which shows Guan Yu's hero's death in the last hundred battles, etc.
In fact, if "Dance Millennium" only has these two types of dance, has a clear history and culture and dance drama prototype as a support, and does its best to exude the atmosphere of "cultural self-confidence" and "immortal fighting", with the new model of "plot + dance" of the program, "Dance Millennium" can comfortably enter the camp of "elegant art" in the variety market, and become a work of some audiences in first- and second-tier cities to flaunt their own aesthetics.
But the purpose of "Dancing Millennium" is not only that, it is always telling some unexpected stories.
In the third program, "Dance Millennium" shows the classic Chinese national dance drama "Silk Road Flower Rain", which has been performed in various theaters for 42 years and is regarded as a model of national dance drama.
There are too many pearls and jade, and the space that "Dance Millennium" can play is very limited. "The director's team was under a lot of pressure when shooting this work, because it was too classic and too heavy."
But it seems that the more stressful it is, the more it takes. "Dance Millennium" takes an unexpected form of performance, the program arranges a small story according to the original story of the "Silk Road Flower Rain" dance drama, but boldly imitates the style of the 1986 version of "Journey to the West", making the dance scenes, dancer costumes, etc., and presenting the classic solo dance "rebound pipa" with seemingly outdated special effects and atmosphere.
"The background of 'Silk Road Flower Rain' is actually a KT board, and even the flowers in the foreground are specially bought plastic fake flowers."
This design is somewhat novel, classic reproduction, but also with a little deconstructive color, the slightest carelessness will be criticized.
"We chose the retro style, with anti-special effects, anti-visual stacking ideas, to restore the 80s people's imagination of the Heavenly Palace, but this form, once not well controlled, it is easy to appear inferior."
Jiang Xiaowei was also a little nervous. It's like a game with the audience, who knows that such an unusual way of acting is at risk of controversy, but at the same time he loves this unusual ingenuity and hopes that the audience will appreciate the fun of this reverse thinking.
Before the program was broadcast, Jiang Xiaowei subconsciously wanted to pave a little step for "Silk Road Flower Rain", and in his live broadcast promotion with Feng Zheng and Xu Peng, he specifically reminded the audience that "Silk Road Flower Rain" was paying tribute to "Journey to the West". "I'm afraid the audience won't appreciate this retro style, saying how this special effect is so bad, how this stage is so simple."
And it turns out that the audience is smarter and more patient than Jiang Xiaowei expected. "Everything we did was understood, and many viewers immediately understood this style, and even the gansu provincial officials and many official media also recognized the "Silk Road Flower Rain" version of "Dance Millennium"."
This dance has also become Jiang Xiaowei's favorite work among the current 18 dances.
In the show, this unusual way of acting out is more than once. In the fourth issue, "Dance Millennium" combines the elements of science fiction in the last days and performs a classical dance "Phantom King Kong". The work is a total of 14 minutes, "Dance Millennium" took nearly 10 minutes to create a very sci-fi and cyber sense of the apocalyptic world, and then told a story of heroes sacrificing themselves to save others with the theme of environmental protection, and the last 5 minutes led to the King Kong Dunhuang Dance.
The mix and match between the end of science fiction and classical dance has a strong sense of impact and division. "What we want to convey is a spirit that is immutable and transcends time and space. Vajrapani is the guardian of the world, it represents bravery and justice, and these qualities are applicable in any era. ”
But not every innovative interpretation can be accepted by the audience. For some viewers, "Magic King Kong" is not an innovation, but a failed product of the forced grafting of popular culture and classical dance, which seems to be different, and the plot choreography and special effects design of "Magic King Kong" have encountered polarized evaluation.
This may be a blur that allows "Dancing Millennium" to perceive a certain line in the audience market. On the one hand, the audience is inclusive, they are willing to accept new types and content, but on the other hand, the audience's aesthetic is differentiated, the more obvious the innovative style of things, the more likely it is to face multiple feedback, which in itself is not high or low.
For "Dance Millennium", every time an innovative program is a game, the audience can enjoy the fun, determine the success or failure of the program.
As of the time of writing, the Douban score of "Dancing Millennium" reached 8.7 points, which was slightly slipped compared with the initial opening score. Director Jiang Xiaowei's feedback after waiting for the sixth "Dunhuang" ballet appeared, just like he waited for the first episode to be launched.