Text | Yu Yu
Edit | Lu Leng
Produced by | Tencent News Lichun Studio
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The last stage of "The Thorny Brother" is when the brothers sing "Toast Song". Prior to this, the show's music director, Chan Wai Lun, had been troubled by the selection of songs for this last stage for a long time - a large chorus of songs was needed, but what kind of tracks could end this months of the journey? He hopes that the tone of the song is, "don't cry and cry, and don't want to say how brilliant it will be after the group, so that everyone can look forward to it." Fortunately, the director team selected Rainbow Choir's "Toast Song", which made him feel that everything was right, "I am glad that there is just such a song", "Today will end here, we will see you another day, this is very brother".
This chorus begins with "Respect for Friendship / Respect for Impermanence / Respect for Every Separation in Life", and after honoring lies, vows, order, offense, it is finally "respecting yourself" and "respecting yourself in order / slightly changing yourself". In a way, the lyrics represent the ideal masculine temperament that the program team is trying to present. On the final stage, the male artists, dressed in black, sang the song softly—they smiled, looked at each other, tearfully, looked, and moved themselves. In fact, even rapper Ouyang Jing, when he watched the final reaction of the show live, he also had to hold back tears at this paragraph, he said, "You can understand it as a fairy tale ending."
All the brothers sang "Toast Song" on the final stage
The reason why the guests are also so emotional outside the show is probably because the program team provides other emotional satisfaction in addition to providing variety exposure - these are composed of details similar to choosing "Toast Song" for my brother as the ending stage. In the anticipation of launching this male variety show after the success of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", the first problem that the program team has to face is not the pressure of broadcast volume, but about the values: what kind of male image do we want to show?
This problem has plagued them for more than a year. And now, the whole team is relieved. In fact, after the end of "Brother", whether the group is formed or not, the participants have more opportunities, they frequently appear in various shows, and receive more variety show invitations than ever before. The new variety show "Night in Greater Wanchai", which was regularly guestd by Chen Xiaochun, Zhang Zhilin, Xie Tianhua, Lin Xiaofeng and Liang Hanwen, five brothers in the Greater Bay Area, won the first place in the same period in the first broadcast rating, and the live broadcast rating of the 7-minute live broadcast exceeded 0.8. Another derivative variety show, "Our Piping Hot Life", was also launched on December 10.
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With the brilliant record of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", it is natural that "Brother Who Cut Through Thorns" came out.
Doing it is of course to be done, which is a consensus at Mango TV. As early as the end of the first season of "Sister", on June 19, 2020, at the mango TV strategic conference held in Shanghai, Zhou Shan, vice president in charge of the variety show, announced the S+ level project of "Brother Who Cut Through Thorns". "Sister" has helped the company's market value exceed 100 billion, and investors have reason to look forward to the next new IP that can detonate the stock price.
Zhou Shan, Vice President of Mango TV
Investors of Mango Super Media also posted in the stock bar every three to five to ask about the progress of the program planning.
The market is holding its breath, and what investors don't expect is that this wait is a whole year. In the meantime, the competitor platform even launched a program with the same theme, which triggered a hot discussion, but Mango TV could not make up its mind internally - they could not find the emotional point of being a "brother". "We looked at at least 100 projects, including all the producers, all the studios, and the innovation and development department, all of which were working on the project. But I never figured out what to do. Zhou Shan said.
The so-called emotional point can be roughly understood as the core value of a show. This is very obvious when doing "Sister". The topic of middle-aged women has been discussed in countless film and television works and social issues, and public views tend to be consistent. Therefore, the intention of doing "Sister" is "the awakening of the independent consciousness of 30+ women".
But what about men? "Sister", which successfully highlights the beauty of women, is in front; and the brother and sister series is a variety show that mainly faces female audiences, and the public opinion criticism of "greasy men" and "puxin men" can resonate quite well. How can male beauty be found and presented in the increasingly fierce male-female debate? Or what should a recognized and admired man look like?
Everyone can only do their own questions.
In half a year, "Brother" has become a monthly variety show proposal meeting, and the project with the highest mention rate - two-thirds of the production team of the platform is proposing. Zhou Shan told "Your Circle" that Mango TV has tried a different management model over the years: all projects, each team can come up with ideas, each team can bid, and each team can integrate new ideas.
"Every version is mentioned, and everyone thinks it's not bad, but it doesn't seem right." Executive Director Guo Guo and the team have submitted more than a dozen versions of the plan, repeatedly thinking about "what should "Brother" look like". She told "Your Circle" that at that time, everyone was caught in a tangled and tortured mood, especially in the days after the proposal meeting, it was often a state of "sad clouds and bleakness".
Zhou Shan was also anxious. He is 42 years old this year, and single-handedly assembled the variety show team of this young platform. Because the stage of his life is similar to that of his "brothers", he also sees the show as a sorting out and expression of values, the one who can best perceive the subtle difference between "not bad, not quite right" and "finally right".
No one knows the answer. Everyone can only continue to do the problem while asking for help from the outside. The team found men of different ages and occupations and talked to them about "what it looks like to be a man." Guo Guo "talked about dozens of people" and listened to them describe what the "brother" in his heart should look like.
In addition, Shen Yifei, associate professor of the Department of Sociology of Fudan University, was also invited to give several lessons to the program group. She mentioned that the social distinction between gender even goes back to primitive society, with women gathering more and men hunting in groups. The division of labor is different, resulting in different ways of expression between the sexes. This difference is engraved in the genes, passed down from generation to generation, and has developed to the present, women like to look inward, and men are in the emotional atmosphere of expansion and home and country.
These understandings of gender issues were later presented in the format design of the show - completely different from the gameplay of the previous two seasons of "Sister", "Brother" introduced the concept of tribe, family, and alliance, and each stage was constantly expanding and reorganizing.
The tribal "street office Hood" headed by Zhao Wenzhuo
There is more attention, and the director's understanding of men is gradually increasing. But the distance is broken, still separated by a layer of window paper.
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On the fifth day of the Chinese New Year in 2021, Zhou Shan came to the office alone, flipped through the submitted plans, and suddenly thought of a sentence from Takeshi Kitano - "Although it is hard, I will still choose that kind of hot life." He was struck by the word "piping hot," "I know how to make Brother." ”
On the seventh day of the Chinese New Year, the first working day after the Spring Festival holiday, Zhou Shan immediately convened a mobilization meeting, and all the producers came to participate. Guo Guo remembers that Zhou Shan was particularly excited that day, "smiling very happily and looking full of confidence." How to observe and present the passionate growth of the characters constitutes the core program clue of the whole reality show. Wu Mengzhi, Zhou Shan's old partner and director of the first season of "Sister", took over this "piping hot" mission — her understanding of the word is to reactivate their enthusiasm.
In 2020, the first season of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" was broadcast, setting off a "she variety" boom
Different from the traditional variety shows with a single model as the main framework, in order to fully present the growth of the brothers and take into account the watchability, "Brothers" should present three program forms at the same time: stage performance, reality show and outdoor games. Guo Guo introduced, "Basically according to the volume of three programs, one is a studio competition, one is an observation reality show, and there is an outdoor game challenge." ”
A huge S+ project like this, even if the general director is determined, it still needs to be combined with 5 other teams to form the core basic part of the content production team.
The Guoguo team that created "Youth Mango Night" is responsible for the presentation part of the stage performance. Ling Sheng's team, who did "Flowers and Youth" before, has experience in creating textured reality shows and undertakes the part of shooting life scenes. There is also a team specializing in stage CNC machinery, a team with new technology applications... In the end, this program gathered more than 30 artists, mobilized the six major teams of Mango TV, dispatched more than 1,000 people, and there were more than 100 people in the core director group alone, which is the highest number of platform projects. Producers have a division of labor, cooperation, mutual help, and at the same time compete with each other. Such a large team working together requires an overall plan to integrate everyone together, and the requirements for managers are very high.
Before coming to Mango TV, Wu Mengzhi's most famous identity was the "God of Copywriting", and Hunan Satellite TV's "Flowers and Youth" was her famous work. "The biggest change Mango has made to Mengzhi is that she has changed from a good TV person to an excellent manager and producer." Zhou Shan said that in the past, Wu Mengzhi was an excellent copywriter and an excellent chief screenwriter, and now, in addition to what she is good at, she also has to learn how to manage the team, "So many teams to run such a big project, she is the general director." This is a qualitative leap. ”
How to innovate and how to find perspectives that have not been expressed before is an eternal challenge for content creators. The brother and sister series is exactly like this for Wu Mengzhi. In an interview with People, she mentioned, "I am a person who is very obsessed with innovation, and I am particularly reluctant to do repetitive things. If you see repetition, there is definitely no way, that is, within the limited time and financial range, compromise. But if it can be different, I am different. ”
"In the past, when I did a draft, it was 'what is a dream', and today you will not casually use the expression 'dream'. Including after doing "Sister", I will also feel that the concept is still being updated, and the plight of girls is different. This stuff is always being updated. So to do "Brother", from the first day we said, please take away all the "Sister" things. I want completely new rules, new formats, new characters, and I want the ending to be all different. Wu Mengzhi said.
In the selection of songs, "Brother with Thorns" adopted a new bidding method
At the platform management level, Zhou Shan is also thinking about the problem of innovation. When he began to form the content system of Mango TV five or six years ago, he had a very clear principle: use new people, use young people, use people who are persistent about content, and use people with excellent professional ability.
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Regarding attachment, Guoguo gives an example. "Friends Please Listen", which was released in early 2020, is a reality show about radio cooperated by He Jiong and Yi Qianxi. During the preparations, the director team competed with the single-sided mirror glass in the camera channel - they ran all over the country, finding more than 30 pieces of single-sided glass, studying their respective brightness, reflectivity, and whether the characters in the past of the camera would have slight deformation. "After running glass factories across the country, I found more than 30 pieces of single-sided glass, and at different prices, we took one by one to shoot and study what kind of texture each presented." Guoguo said, "I think these details are very important. ”
Guo Guo said that here only need to consider the content, the other parts have someone to do. "If the content is done well, the returns in all aspects will be good." So everyone is willing to keep proposing and doing a good show. Speaking with the show, this is very important, people are willing to fight hard. ”
Gorgeous stage effects in "The Thorny Brother"
"Content is a creative job, and if you ask him to do something, how much he is asked to do, how many cases he is required to propose, this is worthless and meaningless." Zhou Shan believes that a good incentive system is often more important than KPIs, "The real driving force is actually the embodiment of personal value." ”
The average age of Mango TV employees is 28 years old. In the content talent system they have built, the super studio has independent management space and financial space, forming a relationship similar to "partner" with the company; further up, there is an opportunity to form an independent subsidiary. The younger regular studios have a company pocket for daily operations, provide basic personnel and property protection, and the studio receives incentive income according to the project. In addition, there are training programs for young people, and the company will provide some post-90s and even post-95 teams with exercise opportunities in the mode of sample and small program production, so that they can accumulate experience in actual combat.
In 2021, all Internet platforms are seizing user time, and the dispute between long and short videos has always been the focus of the industry's attention - the scale of users cannot continue to expand, and the time of each user is limited. "Watching long videos is a very ritualistic thing. Without being greatly mentally prepared, I was afraid to look at something because I was worried that I wouldn't have time to watch it. Zhou Shan is very clear about the current challenges facing long videos, but when it comes to how to deal with them, the confidence of content creators in him has suddenly emerged: "We will definitely have some changes in the future." However, with enough gold content and good enough content, we may still make it a little longer. ”
"A little longer" is not only the length of a single program, but also the determination to cultivate a track over the years - such as the "emotional series" of "Wife's Romantic Trip" and "Daughters' Love", to "New Life Diary", "21 Days Before Marriage", "Goodbye Lover", and such as the "Brother and Sister Series" that rides the wind and waves and cuts through thorns. In his view, a track, to do a good job, must not simply rely on a program, it should be large-scale, serialized, "on the basis of respecting the user experience, should have its own way of presenting content."
(Source: Tencent News)
* Some of the pictures are provided by the interviewee, and some pictures are from the Internet