The author | Xie Minghong
Editor| Li Chunhui
Compared with the female frequency drama, you see that the protagonist is Yang Mi or Zhao Liying, the IP is a fairy or the court, and there is a mold in the heart, and the after-broadcast is like that, at most, a sentence of "how is this again", the psychological expectations and the actual perception are usually not bad. Male frequency dramas are like blind boxes before they are taken apart.
The martial arts scene at the beginning of "The Sword In the Snow" is like "The Snow Novella of Never Expected" or "The Decisive Battle of the Love Apartment: The Forbidden Peak". The special effects were careful, and the Thunder People also made great efforts. The odd look and feel is that you wonder if it's a boutique spoof, but it seems to be a deliberate artistic effect.
On the night of the premiere, Yang 8's "Knife Line in the Snow" lost 1.5074% to Hunan TV's "Xiao Minjia" with a rating of 0.8744%. Here, the master played by Zhang Tianai clicked to cut the watermelon, but zhou xun on the other side hesitated to wash his son's pants.
The grand narrative of the jianghu court is certainly not a middle-aged romance that is naturally superior to Huang Lei Zhou Xun. Different ingredients have a typed approach, and the key is whether they can remember a certain taste when they are delivered to the audience and have a different meaning. "Knife Row in the Snow" is suspected not.
For the male frequency adaptation of the film that has not yet been fully typed, it seems that it is still relying on luck and hand feeling, and it is difficult to say that there is a set of process rules for film and television industrialization. But in fact, in detail, the success or failure of male frequency dramas is not less, its success has its own advantages, but the failure is highly similar.
The first independent director was Director Song Xiaofei of such a big project as "Knife Line in the Snow", hoping that the audience would "cultivate a little patience for watching the play" (this statement was actually a real interview and not the script arrangement in "Director Please Advise").
In the process of establishing the aesthetic paradigm of the male frequency, the creators can understand it even if they think of the kaishan school. However, some basic drama creation rules and audience viewing habits can still be seen clearly and should be respected.
Deeply trapped in the original, the main line is lost
As soon as "Sword Line in the Snow" came up, it set itself up as a powerful "opponent" like Yan Hexiang. Let's say that a drama with a martial arts fantasy theme is best to ask a professional martial arts instructor. Otherwise, your left hand and right hand are in slow motion, and the playing is not as wonderful as Lao Yan's commentary behind it.
The protagonist of the novel "Sword Line in the Snow" of the Princes of beacon drama has experienced three journeys before and after, and the original work has a deep intention for these three journeys. The first is to learn martial arts to avenge and raise wars with war; the second is to contact hidden chess pieces and veteran generals who have run away before for the future strategic layout of Northern Liang; the third is to personally walk the rivers and lakes, with such a master as Sword Jiuhuang and Li Chungang.
The "Jianghu Travel" type of male frequency novels, with complex structures and many characters, mostly because family changes or power struggles force the protagonist to embark on the road of travel. The creators mostly place the protagonist in a deep social context, and put the traveler's life experience and inner emotional changes as the core of the text structure, highlighting his spiritual growth in environmental conflicts.
Travel means "male frequency road film", on the basis of the lack of deep understanding of the protagonist, it is difficult for both the reader of the novel and the audience of the episode to empathize with the emotional changes of the protagonist in the early stage. The novel has more than four million words, of course, do not panic the reader's sense of substitution, but the episode of "Knife In the Snow" lacks a clear main line of action in the early stages, and it has to be said that it is a crime of blindly following the original book.
The return of the opening male protagonist and Lao Huang's journey makes people scratch their heads. Although it was later said that it was to evade the marriage contract, according to the means of the Northern Liang and Liyang royal families, did they really find a shizi without a shadow for 3 years? What is even more incomprehensible is that cracking the so-called reversal of the serial assassination bureau only makes people feel that they have obtained the second-hand script to kill the content.
The setting up must first give the audience a sense of urgency, and only after substitution can they experience the excitement and fun of reversal. If the audience is a bystander from beginning to end, and all the suspense is solved by watching Xu Fengnian, played by Zhang Ruoyun, pretending to sell cattle and selling Guanzi, it will be meaningless. Three assassinations are more than one child's play, and there is no backhand for failure. Of course, the audience was not nervous, and only a pretentious hehe smiled.
"Knife Line in the Snow" wants to quickly set up Xu Xiao's "scheming" played by Hu Jun, and the way it is presented is that each character is his dark line pawn. When Shu Shy said to Lin Tanhua, "Do you think you and I met outside Qingzhou City by chance", there was a fear that every character would reverse. But too many reversals lack of foreclosure, in fact, too much.
Although the drama was opposed by many original parties, Hard Candy Jun felt that the "In the Snow" episode inherited the advantages and disadvantages of the original work: the characters had an aura, the scene was artistic, and the filter was slightly sympathetic, but it was always almost impossible to fall into reality. Always in the modification, superposition and exaggeration of the pattern, many character arcs are circumvented and played with fiction.
Maybe even the creators didn't fully understand what route they wanted to take. It seems to be a light comedy, but it feels like it is playing a big game of chess. But everyone who has read the novel also knows that this drama cannot be purely comedic. But if you want to lean in the direction of power, then some plots should not be so nonsensical, and they do not need to be explained so clearly with the help of the character's mouth.
The "routine" of the male frequency
In "The Night", it is said: "The heavens do not give birth to a master, and eternity is like a long night." In "The Sword Line in the Snow", Li Chungang said: "Heaven does not give birth to me Li Chungang, and kendo is as ancient as a long night." "The depiction routine of male frequency novels always reveals what the author's bookshelf looks like. There are always masters such as Confucius and Li Chungang, who have a chance encounter with the protagonist and become an important step for him to reach the peak of his life.
Imaginative was originally one of the innovations and advantages of the male frequency, but due to a large number of convergent themes, it gradually lost its sharp edge. The protagonists come from ordinary or extraordinary backgrounds (depending on whether they are wasted firewood or geniuses), and because of the opportunities to gain abilities, they all have lofty ideals, fight against the dark fate for justice or faith, and eventually become heroes in the experience.
Xu Fengnian in "Sword Line in the Snow" has always been disgusted with practicing martial arts. However, after the blows of Lao Huang's death and his brother's departure, he just decided to learn martial arts at the beginning, and he obtained the "True Qi Gift Package" of the Great Yellow Court of Wang Chonglou, the head of Wudang. Li Chungang, the sword god of the previous generation, accompanied him and instructed Xu Fengnian all the way to the sword path. Passing by the Qingyang Sect Zoo, he took away his mother's sword and picked up two strange beasts and small tigers as equipment. In short, if you don't make a sound, you will already be a hit, and if you don't learn, you will go to Wudi City.
The jianghu is to pick up the gift bag explosion equipment, and the emotion is to open the harem to the end. Jiang Ni, played by Li Gengxi, was actually mistaken by Xu Fengnian's aunt for a room girl. At best, it is a fire burner, and there are no qualifications for placing it in the Grand View Garden to be close to Baoyu's body. Although the appearance is beautiful, it is too far away from the original country, and the acting method is also very modern and sweet (not even an ancient doll sweet pet).
Compared with "Will Night" which dropped "freedom and love" into the Tang Dynasty and Academy, "Qing Yu Nian" implanted the "enlightenment position" into the home country, and the adaptation of "Sword In the Snow" lacked the consistent "hard dish", that is, the core of the outline. This directly led to the loose structure of the episode, the vacuousness of the temperament, and the withering of the bones.
The famous director François Truffaut said: "If there is one thing I have learned in 25 years, it is that it is more difficult to adapt a novel into a screenplay than to write a screenplay myself. It is not difficult to see that in the leap from literary narrative to film and television narrative, it is necessary to deal with the problem of bridging content and form.
For the interpretation of the original text, it is necessary to make it easy for the audience to accept it, and it is also necessary to adhere to the principle of expression of practical significance, and the expression form and the text content must be deeply integrated. Also expressing the relationship between mother and child, "Qing Yu Nian" is more Fan Xian's exploration of Ye Qingmei's spiritual world, how his mother sees the world and how he changes the world. "Knife Line in the Snow" stays on Xu Fengnian's affectionate attachment to Wu Su, and the sentence "I can no longer find a woman as good as you" gives people the taste of Oedipus.
Also a master and a servant of the jianghu journey, "The Night" shows Ning Que's unswerving protection of Sangsang to death, even if he is an enemy of the world, he will not leave the other party. The prototype of the story of the chivalrous guest and the orphan girl has been extremely presented in the play;
In "The Sword In the Snow", Jiang Ni, as the princess of the fallen country, Ben and Xu Fengnian are in love and kill each other. But her playful assassination does not make the audience feel the psychological burden of her identity. The original delicate and tangled emotional line of the original work was finally processed into the third-rate sweet pet drama of the burning fire and the domineering young master.
Adaptation of dead and alive
Successful male novels have a complete "upgrade mechanism". Typical features are local repetition, overall rise. In the local plot, losing and losing, scattering and gathering, repeatedly appear in the order from lack to satisfaction, from higher scarcity to higher satisfaction; the step-by-step repetition of local plots eventually forms an upward trend of the overall structure.
This is contrary to the declining structure of classic literature, for example, the wealth of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is "from more to less", the characters are "from good to good", this process of continuous decline is the opposite of accumulation, is a kind of "dissipation tragedy". Therefore, the adaptation of male frequency dramas should pay attention to ensuring that the "upgrade mechanism" creates a sense of coolness while not being bored by the audience.
Often regarded as a successful male frequency drama, "Langya List", which is itself adapted from a female frequency novel, illustrates the innate dilemma of the male frequency. "Langya List" sets that there is no jiangzuo meilang in the human world, and this dissipated ending actually helps the story get rid of the "upgrade mechanism" of the male frequency. It seems that the protagonist took revenge and stabilized the court, but everything is a process of continuous collapse from the beginning.
When a male novel is handed over to the creator, the first thing to face is the problem of how to transfer the bone and change the marrow. The first, the deep restoration of the original, is like this in the snow, and the result inherits the shortcomings of the original book. Pursue the feeling of "beautiful", but lack the overall design of the world structure and story line;
The second is a graffiti adaptation, adding an emotional element that caters to female audiences and moderately reduces the pursuit of coolness. In this way, it became "Fighting to Break the Sky" and "Martial Qiankun".
"Qing Yu Nian" at that time Wang Ti did a lot of subtraction, the 9th episode of the public court confrontation, the original beating of Guo Baokun is to test the Fan family's forces, and in the TV series is for Teng Zijing, through this scene to show the intricate relationship between the various forces in Kyoto. This is undoubtedly a reasonable change, heavy themes sometimes need to be relaxed, complex plots need to be simplified.
The tolerance of male frequency texts is large, and it actually contains a variety of adaptation directions. "Langya List" and "Son-in-law", which also belong to the category of power plots, have completely chosen different theme positioning. Langya list positioning high-quality power plots, more in the direction of the main drama. "Son-in-law" positioned itself as a light comedy, diluted the plot of the struggle, added comedic elements such as parking spaces, takeaway services, franchisees, etc., and also found a market breakthrough.
In fact, viewers don't care what kind of novel the series is adapted from. "Night Heavenly Son" is known as a male frequency, but the audience portrait shows that there are not many female audiences (47%).
"Knife Line in the Snow" does make some typical mistakes in male frequency adaptations, such as unclear main lines, unsatisfactory martial arts, excessive pretense of male characters, and failure in female character shaping. However, if you jump out of the category of male and female frequencies, from the perspective of the "second generation of dramas" that have a certain continuity with a blockbuster drama, "Snow In the Sword Line" is to "Qing Yu Nian", much like "Ruyi Chuan" ("Mi Yue Zhuan") to "Zhen Huan Biography".
Because of one or two identical creators, the audience gave the same expectations for the new work as the previous work, which gave the new work an excellent viewing base, but it was also easier to collapse the reputation.
At the upstream production end, also because of the high expectations of the project, it is inevitable that all parties will be crowded and want to share a piece of the pie. The original creators tend to over-magnify their previously exaggerated advantages, and the results are too late (such as "In the Snow" is too dense and inappropriate humor). The new creators are eager to show their magic, only to wait for the episode to be broadcast to crown themselves (we don't say whether there are indiscriminate people who come in to mix up the drama qualifications).
For such a "second generation of drama", perhaps we should also think about how to avoid the pits of "the second generation and death".