Interview with the main creative team of "National Treasure Exhibition Season": National Treasure Universe, Joint Growth
Original2021-12-13 22:41 · Reading entertainment
Wen | Ruogu
"In the past three years, "National Treasures" has crossed the Green Ridge, the East Sea, Ling Changbai, and the Nansha, gathered Kyushu artifacts, traced the roots of Huaxia, and today's original intention has not changed, and all the museums that have cooperated with "National Treasures" have jointly created a special exhibition of cultural relics." With the broadcast of the new form of derivative program "National Treasure Exhibition Season", "National Treasure" takes the offline cultural relics special exhibition as the carrier, and has taken another big step in IP development.
Behind the unprecedented mobilization of nearly 30 museum resources and the creation of offline physical special exhibitions of cultural relics, it relies on the main creative team to spend nearly four years to carefully manage the program IP and up to one year to coordinate and carefully prepare. In this regard, Yu Lei, the founder of "National Treasure", said: "Since the birth of "National Treasure", offline exhibitions have been brewing in our hearts. It is actually a concept of symbiosis with the show, and it is one of the earliest and most direct derivative ideas of the "National Treasure" IP. This year, we're finally resilient enough to make it a reality. This is also the original intention. ”
Returning to the conventional program content, "National Treasure Exhibition Season" continues the past methodology of the program, and is extremely ingenious and patient in polishing the content, and the time taken to create a single exhibition program is "not the longest, only longer".
In terms of pre-creation, the creation and performance works customized for the program such as "Heavenly Eye", "New Salt Yard Trumpet" and nursery rhyme "Who Says Porcelain Mother Is Impossible" require one to two months of pre-planning and rehearsal, and even 28 versions of the song have been modified before and after, until there is no time to change it again.
In the studio recording, "National Treasures Exhibition Season" uses XR technology throughout the whole process, and strives to achieve industry leadership in the visual presentation of "literature and art + technology" again, so the on-site shooting of just a few minutes is often four or five hours, and "Wind Forest Volcano" only took nearly 9 hours to walk on the stage; the visual team responsible for "Wei Fengyin" spent a whole week conducting preliminary testing to achieve the possibility of a shot to the end in XR technology.
It is no exaggeration to say that every wonderful moment in the "National Treasures Exhibition Season" program is inseparable from the creative team to use 200% of the efforts to carefully polish. Here, from the perspective of the main creative team, this article dissects the problem-breaking ideas of "National Treasures Exhibition season" in the form of text and the strong trend of "National Treasures" evolving towards the IP universe.
Born for special exhibitions
At the content level, the "National Treasure Exhibition Season" born for the special exhibition first breaks the underlying logic of the program. Indeed, the exhibition season does not introduce the past and present lives of cultural relics as relatively rationally as the regular program, but invites guests to choose one of the 81 national treasures in the three seasons for literary and artistic performances, "unveiling the commander".
In the end, creators from all walks of life should seize the cultural cognition of the national treasure to stimulate the creative impulse, use different forms of literary and artistic works to present the blood essence of the national treasure, and tell the story behind their association with the national treasure and artistic creation, reduce the concentration of knowledge and enhance the concentration of emotion at the content level, so sensibility is the content background of the exhibition season, which also points out the direction for the division of the theme.
At the beginning of the program planning, the main creative team selected 9 from the dozens of themes listed, not only to take into account the 25 museums that have cooperated since the three seasons, each museum has at least one cultural relics appearing in the exhibition season; but also to "three points into a face" theme output, each theme is interpreted through three national treasures and related exhibition programs, thus presenting various aspects of Chinese civilization.
Specifically, echoing the values of "China's five-thousand-year civilization, returning from a five-thousand-year trip still like a teenager", from the 81 national treasures selected 3 national treasures related to 18-year-old teenagers, there is a theme of "teenagers eighteen years old"; based on the organic integration of existing guest resources, Zhang Guoguo, the No. 001 docent who played Ji Xiaolan, met Wang Gang, who played Hezhen and cooperated as early as the first season, and it is most appropriate to talk about Qianlong, and there is the theme of "Qianlong Qianlong".
The establishment of the theme of a single issue can be said to involve the whole body. Gu Zhigang, the general director who joined the "National Treasure" team due to the exhibition season, said with deep feeling: "Formulating the theme is a very difficult overall planning process, and the collective combat effectiveness of the "National Treasure" team is also reflected here. After several months of consultation, the small partners up and down coordinated back and forth until they finally found the best solution in theme expression, literary performance, and character matching that could reach a collective consensus. ”
Around different single-issue themes, "National Treasures · Exhibition Season" in the content creation of aesthetic self-upgrading, on the basis of inviting 27 groups of aesthetic online exhibitors, the main creative team through visual, music, stage and other dimensions of the synergy of efforts, explore the cutting-edge technology for the visual empowerment of variety shows, and finally triggered a good response among the audience group, # This wave of CCTV aesthetics in the atmosphere # This topic has aroused heated discussion.
The aesthetic upgrade and tone of the program benefit from the ingenuity of the main creative team. On the one hand, derived from the high aesthetics of the content of the exhibition program itself, the right to reshape the statue adds the sound of the pulsar to the music with a song "Heavenly Eye", and the history of human development is composed into the music, and the rationality of the universe and the sensibility of human beings are perfectly integrated, completing the cosmic ensemble;
On the other hand, it comes from the innovative creation of the sense of atmosphere of the program. Taking the caprice "Tribute to Mr. Nie Er" as an example, at the end of the performance, the violin replica was quietly placed on the stage, showing the breathing sense of the violin through the lighting effect, followed by a melody of the national anthem, pulling a sense of atmosphere of tribute, and successfully grasping people's hearts by washing away the lead and the avenue to simplicity. "At one point during the creative process, I was a little worried about whether the show would be high and low. After watching the bullet screen, I found that the ideas and designs were supported and moved by netizens, indicating that we still did the right thing. Executive Director Bi Bo said.
In addition, the "National Treasures Exhibition Season" fully applies XR technology to the program, so that the imagination of creation has been infinitely extended, the visual effects have been fully upgraded, and it is also an important manifestation of the aesthetic upgrading of the program. The price to be paid to achieve this goal is that the creative difficulty of the visual team is infinitely expanded. "Visual presentation is one of the most important IP features of our National Treasure, each season of the show is trying to have a new point of view, this choice of the whole process of using XR technology, the workload that needs to be explored and run-in, is really an unprecedented challenge," visual director Jiang Yuhao said, "We basically have no time to sleep." ”
For the main creative team, the difficulty is mainly to make trade-offs and balances in the mutually influencing light presentation and XR presentation. Taking the fragment of the "Five Stars Out of the East" dance drama that almost let the lighting teacher and the visual teacher "play" up as an example, the visual group hopes to use XR technology to immerse itself in creating a desert scene atmosphere, and with the change of the dancer's formation and the change of mood, it will bring about a change in the scene; and the lighting group believes that such a wonderful dance must use lighting to shape the character image and formation, and the visual background light and shade should be pulled apart, making it deep to facilitate the lighting to shape the shadows and layers.
In the end, the main creative team took the program sample, analyzed it a little bit, and judged from it, and finally achieved both the visual wonders of the desert and the laying of the lighting atmosphere, which highlighted the characters and presented the beauty of the dance itself, but also showed the details and charm of the cultural relics, which is also a major symbol of the program's aesthetic in the atmosphere.
From the perceptual content logic to the diversified and youthful theme selection, to the program's aesthetic upgrade to the atmosphere, all of them release the "Exhibition Season" born for the special exhibition from the IP of national treasures, but not stuck to the shackles of content, there is great room for innovation in content creation, laying the groundwork for the diversified output of content.
Explore the "Culture + X" model in diversity
In addition to exhibiting three national treasures in each issue, the cultural performances created around the national treasures are also a major focus. Backed by this demand, the main creative team will think deeply for a long time, on the one hand, they will absorb fresh opinions in chat with various people, and even see art forms that they have never thought of, thus activating creative inspiration, and finally proposing a general formula for exploring "culture + X".
From "Culture + Dance" and "Only This Green" to "Wei Feng yin" of "Culture + Song", from "Culture + Musical" and "Vicissitudes of the Sea" to "Culture + Pioneer Music" and "Heavenly Eye", from "Culture + Chinese Music" of "Stepping On Song Line", to "Wind Forest Volcano" of "Culture + Acrobatics", from "Qin Junjun Song" of "Culture + Symphony" to "Drama DreamLand" of "Culture + Opera", it can be seen that the exhibition and performance program takes national treasures as the core, and the unlimited X elements have various possibilities.
Behind the creative formula of "Culture + X", the way the program team develops the program is different, of which a small number of exhibition works are derived from the existing literary and artistic works. It is reported that inspired and influenced by the purpose of the past seasons of "National Treasure", Beijing Performing Arts Group launched the "Five Stars Out of the East" dance drama, and the Oriental Performing Arts Group created a dance poetry drama of "Only This Green" based on Wang Ximeng's "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", which coincided with the program logic of this exhibition season, and finally successfully entered the program and produced a good response.
More or rely on the list of recruits, the main creative team and guests together to customize the exhibition program, in the specific way also have their own advantages. Or looking for the commonality between guests and national treasures, Liu Jia, a dancer from the literary and artistic soldiers, has always been very concerned about "National Treasures", and also has a very deep affection for the troops, and finally chose the original music of "National Treasures" "Tianmalai", which expressed his inner understanding of copper galloping horses and warriors in the form of singing and dancing.
Or in the repeated collision of the second creation, such as the Xi'an Warrior Battle Flag Acrobatic Troupe "Wind Forest Volcano" and "New Salt Field Trumpet" and other programs are typical representatives. The exhibition program "Wind Forest Volcano", which was created by "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and "Sun Zhen Art of War" Han Jian as the national treasure, was originally found to be a military-themed acrobatic drama with "Sun Tzu's Art of War" selected paragraphs related to "Sun Tzu's Art of War", after sharing the relevant information of the national treasure, the two sides collided together with the concept of "Wind Forest Volcano", plus the characteristics of the war miscellaneous are shaking bars, and finally the bamboo bar analogous to the bamboo Jane makes the program achieve the point; and the "New Salt Field Trumpet" is to restructure and combine the inherited salt field trumpets and match the actions , let the audience intuitively understand the whole process of artificial salt making.
In addition, the main creative team will also actively seek cooperation objects according to the desired performance form. In the middle and late stages of the creation of the show, the main creative team set their sights on ballet dance. Among the national treasures selected in the exhibition season, there is a JiaHu bone flute made of crane wing bones, and coincidentally, the Central Ballet of China has created the "Crane Soul" with Chinese characteristics with oriental vocabulary, dance vocabulary and ballet vocabulary. With the crane as the medium, the main creative team and the National Ballet of China are also in agreement, focusing on the national treasure of Jia Fake Lake Bone Flute, and specially customized a dance fairy tale.
As the show aired, comments poured in. Wang Yunyi, the executive director of the scene, said that the most impressive thing was "Wind Forest Volcano", after the broadcast, the official military accounts such as the Central Theater pushed and forwarded it for the first time, expressing their affirmation of the program; the leaders of the Rocket Army Cultural and Industrial Corps, the Armed Police Cultural and Industrial Corps, the Xi'an Fire Brigade, and friends of the major units also sent feedback, saying that "this program integrates acrobatics, military travel and national treasures, which is a particularly special thing that makes people open their minds and make sense"; there are also hot comments from the vast number of viewers, netizens said: I didn't expect to be completely broken by an acrobatic show this year. ”
"We are very happy and fulfilled to be recognized in so many ways, and we feel that we have indeed done a very meaningful thing." Wang Yuyi's feelings are the common voice of the main creative team.
A special exhibition grand finale that goes beyond the show
A series of exhibition works frequently out of the circle, is only the "National Treasures · Exhibition season" chic prelude, by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage as the guiding unit, the Central Radio and Television Station and the Palace Museum co-sponsored, the joint three seasons of nearly 30 museums to participate in the special exhibition of cultural relics, is the "National Treasures" IP universe under the end of 2021 finale drama.
As early as the first season, some netizens looked forward to the offline exhibition of the same name of the show to land. "We've always had a desire to really do this for everyone." Zhou Xiaomin, project coordinator, said. Indeed, in order to fulfill its promise to the audience, the "National Treasures Exhibition and Performance Season" has gathered all the resources of museums and cultural and cultural circles in the past three seasons and held a special exhibition of physical cultural relics offline, which is a grand event-level existence for the cultural and cultural variety circles.
As one of the organizers, the Palace Museum's Cultural Relics Management Office, Artifacts Department, Exhibition Department and other departments have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to operate this offline special exhibition of cultural relics, after complex communication and preparation, the current cooperation with major museums is gradually getting better. "Mobilizing so many treasures of the town hall originally seemed like an impossible thing to accomplish, and the curatorial team of the Forbidden City was also worried about the difficulty of follow-up implementation." But as soon as we docked with various museums, everyone was enthusiastic about this special exhibition! This makes our team's friends very warm and happy, this support is the unparalleled IP value of "National Treasure", and we also deeply feel that we are a special member of the museum world. Zhou Yuchen, coordinator of the special exhibition, said.
Forbidden City Jianting Square "National Treasures" Season 2 Visual Art Cultural Relics Special Exhibition "Kyushu Magic Square"
In addition to the Palace Museum and major museums, in the preparatory process, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, as the guiding unit, gave the "National Treasure" as the same support as ever. In addition to participating in the guidance and formulation of the exhibition outline, the Department of Museum and Social Cultural Relics also helped coordinate and mobilize the cultural relics of many first-level, provincial and municipal museums across the country to participate in the special exhibition, and also gave many constructive suggestions. Jin Ruiguo, deputy director of the Department of Museums and Social Cultural Relics of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said: "We must be worthy of these national treasures who have come from afar, worthy of the audience who came to see the exhibition, and this exhibition must be done well." These words boosted the confidence of the entire creative team to run the special exhibition well, and also made the reader yujun can't help but look forward to the moment when the exhibition kicked off.
A national treasure of the universe that grows jointly
Four years ago, the birth of "National Treasure" set off a wave of cultural fever in the variety industry, and this heat continues to this day. During the broadcast of the "National Treasures Exhibition season", a number of new forms of traditional cultural programs emerged, which also released the signal of intensification of cultural variety shows, and how to break through the national treasures of the "N generation" and how to develop the program IP also followed.
For Yu Lei, the leader of the "National Treasure" team, the topic of cultural variety shows has long been an "old question" that has been repeatedly asked and talked about in recent years, and her answer seems to be the same as always, "Let wenbo and history, be able to live and fire, is our original intention, but also the needs and calls of this big era." As media workers and literary and artistic creators, we have the responsibility and obligation to use our efforts to make valuable content shine out of this era. Nowadays, everyone has seen the value of culture and history and culture, and they have all thrown themselves into this vast blue ocean, which is the original intention of the entire team of "National Treasure", and we are actually very pleased. ”
The original intention of the main creative team was to make the cultural museum and museum come alive in the form of variety shows, and the emergence of innovative programs such as "National Treasure" made the industry realize the value of cultural resources and attracted more people to put in the production of new content, thus revitalizing the field of cultural variety shows and forming a positive and positive leadership. Of course, in the face of the piling up of similar programs, the main creative team will also have pressure, and the only way to eliminate the pressure is to continuously innovate and upgrade in content creation, thus promoting the continuous development of the IP of "National Treasure".
Returning to "National Treasure" itself, it is indeed a phenomenon-level IP that can only be achieved by occupying the advantages of time, place, people and multiple advantages. As Yu Lei said, "First of all, we are grateful to our ancestors for leaving us such a blue ocean that has accumulated for 5,000 years; secondly, when we caught up with the day of 'great changes that have not occurred in a hundred years', which is the opportunity and responsibility entrusted to us by this era; based on the national media flagship of the general station, with the mission and ability to lead cultural expression, this is geographical advantage; coupled with the unity of our entire team and the efforts to overcome all difficulties, this is the people; all of this is combined into one, which has achieved the "National Treasure", which is known as "National Treasure", which is known as 'National Treasure'. YYDS's IP. ”
At present, the development of the IP universe is a major trend in the media industry on a global scale. For the "National Treasure" IP, as early as the second season, the main creative team had relevant ideas and made some innovative attempts.
From video programs to audio programs, from digital exhibitions to offline exhibition space, the potential of the IP of "National Treasure" is gradually being developed, which not only continues the original intention of IP to wenbo, but also has innovation tailored around the theme, it can be seen that the IP of "national treasure" still has a lot of imagination space in the depth of the theme and the breadth of content, not only can continue to deepen in the field of culture and culture, but also continue to expand in the form of content, which makes the opening of the program more possible, for the "comprehensive N generation" This proposition also has more solutions.
In addition, there are external film and television IP that have issued the intention of in-depth cooperation. In this regard, Yu Lei said: "We cherish National Treasure very much, so we also hope that every step of the growth of this IP is healthy and stable. Relying on the development pattern of the Central Radio and Television Corporation, we hope to gradually expand the extension and creation of movies, TV series, tours, offline performances, interactive exhibitions and other fields in the future, and hope that "National Treasure" can become an IP universe and cultural symbol belonging to China and accompanying generations of people to grow up. ”
"The story of five thousand years cannot be told, as long as we are willing to persevere and continue to tell it in a down-to-earth manner." Yu Lei said. As for how large-scale it can be talked about, the main creative team is still gradually exploring, but it is certain that in the process of landing the offline exhibition, the "National Treasure Universe" is growing.
*Original article, reprinted with attribution indicated