In recent days, "Beginnings" has caught fire.
This is an unlimited streaming network drama, starring Bai Jingting and Zhao Jinmai, and broadcast exclusively by Tencent Video. It tells the story of the explosion of a No. 45 bus, the male and female protagonists enter the time loop, return to the bus before the accident again and again, and gradually find out the truth. The infinite stream theme has been seen in many classic overseas films, such as "Groundhog Day", "Source Code", "Horror Cruise", etc., but rarely appears in domestic film and television dramas.
On January 11, "The Beginning" officially began broadcasting, and in the following week, it quickly came out of the circle with a relatively novel setting, a compact and gripping plot, and a full performance in place. From the first day of broadcasting, "Beginning" has ranked first in the real-time popular books and videos of Douban; as word of mouth continues to ferment, on the fourth day of broadcasting, it has strongly topped the Maoyan network drama popularity list and won the first place, and has risen to the second place in the whole network drama list, second only to "Ace Troop"; on the fifth day of broadcasting, the number of episodes played exceeded 300 million, and Douban even scored a high score of 8.2. It can be said that "Beginning" has achieved a double harvest of popularity and word of mouth, and has become a good "beginning" for the film and television drama queue in 2022.
The popularity of "Beginning" also made the audience's eyes once again focus on its producer - the noonday sun. Founded in 2011, this film and television company has successively produced a series of blockbuster and even phenomenon-level film and television dramas such as "Langya List", "Pretender", "Ode to Joy", "Do you know if it should be green fat red skinny", "All is good", "Big Rivers", "Mountains and Seas", etc., and is called "National Drama Door Face" by netizens, which once again proves other powerful creative capabilities. As many netizens said: "Noonday sun yyds".
Behind the stable output level of the noonday sun is their adherence to content and insight into the audience and the market. Their experience is both a valuable value and a feasible methodology for the domestic film and television drama industry.
1
The script is first, and the ingenuity is polished
Literary IP film and television is the mainstream of current film and television drama creation, and the noonday sun has not been "exempt from vulgarity". However, unlike the general producer, who completes the adaptation in about half a year in order to take advantage of the popularity of the work to transform as soon as possible, Noonday Sun is very willing to spend time polishing the script.
For example, "Langya list" is adapted from the novel of the same name, but even if the original author Haiyan himself is invited to work on it, it still takes three years to deliberate on the script, from 2011 to 2014; then, another costume drama adapted from the novel of the same name, "Do you know if it should be green fat red skinny", started preparations, also took three years, and did not officially start filming until the autumn of 2017; "Dajiang Dahe" was adapted from the novel "Dajiang Dong go", and the adaptation cycle was three years; even "The Beginning" Such a small web series with only 15 episodes also asked the original author to pray that Jun spent more than a year adapting. Slow work has become the fundamental guarantee for the quality of the noonday sun drama.
It can be found that the works of the noonday sun sometimes invite the original author to adapt, and sometimes use other screenwriters, and the judgment is still based on the quality of the script. In Hou Hongliang's description, they will give priority to whether the original author has the ability to adapt, and if not, they will change people. Lu Wei, a literary curator at Noonday Sun, once said: "Our criteria for selecting screenwriters are very simple, not to look at the finished products he has shot in the past, but to see his recently completed scripts." The first cooperation, especially if the other party has no previous screenwriting experience, usually let the screenwriter try to write one to three episodes first, and feel that OK can cooperate. Like "Langya List", when we first hired the novel author Hai Yan as a screenwriter to write an episode, she herself can convert it, and we also recognize the quality of this episode. ”
There are also some details that can also reflect the importance that the noonday sun attaches to the script. Pray Jun said bluntly to his readers: "The noonday sun should be the kind of film and television company that every screenwriter yearns for the most." He said that the project team taught him how to screenwriting hand in hand, arranged for him to write scripts in a five-star hotel, and the team worked in a small hotel, and that there was no arrears in the cost of screenwriting — even if this seemed "abnormal" to his fellow screenwriters. Respect is reciprocal, and Pray Jun also fully cooperates during the writing of the script, in his words, "cut off all social networks and concentrate on this one thing".
2
Content is king, artists give in
On September 15, 2017, Noonday Sunshine made a major decision - announced the cancellation of the artist agency business, which means that its popular Wang Kai, Jin Dong, Liu Mintao and other head actors will "leave" from the company. In the announcement, Noonday Sun explained: "In the face of the increasingly demanding requirements of the market and the increasing expectations of the audience, we realized that we needed to devote more, or even all of our energy, to content creation. Hou Hongliang also put forward his famous "longboard theory" during this period: "In the barrel theory, the shortest barrel determines the shape of the company, but I think the longboard determines the position of a company in the market." Our longboard is the content, and everything in the noonday sun is focused on the content. ”
The abolition of artist management and the focus on content production are not only limited in energy, but also because there are differences in business ideas and profit models between the two. Being an artist agent requires raising the artist's salary and increasing the income of the artist; while doing content creation is to reduce the cost of the artist and set aside funds for the film, and the noonday sun chose the latter. At the beginning of 2020, after the outbreak of the Zheng Shuang incident, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a salary restriction order, requiring that "the total remuneration of all actors in each TV series network drama shall not exceed 40% of the total production cost", and the noonday sun has always been like this. They have always controlled the proportion of actors' salaries below 50%, even as low as 30%, and invested more in the scenery and costumes that have always been praised.
The control of artists' costs also comes from the casting of the noonday sun to a certain extent. They do not rely on the "big IP + small fresh meat" model to lay the traffic foundation for a work like most producers at present, so they want to invite those hot popular idols at a high price. Some time ago, "Noonday Sunshine Little White Universe" appeared on the hot search, the reason is that the starring actors of several dramas in the Noonday Sun are surnamed Bai: Bai Yu in "Children of the Qiao Family", Bai Jingting in "The Beginning", Bai Baihe and Bai Yufan in "Welcome", these four "Xiao Bai" Although the popularity is different, but they all have considerable acting skills; the actors who have cooperated with noonday sun for many times: Wang Kai, Liu Mintao, Guo Jingfei, Yao Chen, Liu Tao, Huang Jue, etc., are all powerful factions without exception; and Hu Ge and "Mountains and Seas" in "Langya List" before that, "Mountains and Seas" ReIza in Li and Ni Dahong in "All Is Good" have contributed textbook-level acting skills that are worth savoring repeatedly.
Whether it is the abdication of artist agents in the company's business, or the concession of artists' salaries and popularity in the creation of works, it is essentially the idea of "content is king". At present, the mainstream trend in the market is to calculate the number of IP fans, celebrity fans and other related factors before the start of filming, and conduct a rating assessment to resist market risks, when asked whether such calculations will be made, Hou Hongliang replied emphatically: "We don't count." Our biggest risk is that the work is not well filmed. ”
3
The team is the core, and it is continuously cultivated
The "Iron Triangle" team of Noonday Sun has always been talked about, and they are the three core figures of the company's initial creation to the present: Kong Sheng, Li Xue, and Hou Hongliang. Kong Sheng initially worked at the Shandong Film and Television Drama Production Center (referred to as "Mountain Shadow"), started as a photographer, transformed into a director in the late 1990s, and later directed or participated in the directing of "Breaking into the Guandong", "Wenzhou Family", "Battle Changsha", "Peking No War" and other high-national masterpieces. Li Xue's experience is very similar, he joined the "Mountain Shadow" after following Kong Sheng to engage in video work, and then transformed, such as "Wenzhou Family" and "No War in Peking" are the works he and Kong Sheng co-directed. In 2011, the two left the "old owner' house" and founded Noonday Sunshine. Since then, the two "Langya List" have been jointly directed by the two people, and behind "Wenzhou Two Families", "Pretender", "Ode to Joy", "The Spirit of the Ghost Blowing Lanterns in the Ancient City", "Great Rivers and Rivers", and "Mountains and Seas" is one of them participating in directing. Hou Hongliang also joined "Mountain Shadow" as a cameraman, but soon transformed into a producer and officially joined the Noonday Sun in 2014.
From left to right: Kong Sheng, Li Xue, Hou Hongliang
The "Iron Triangle" and the team inside and outside the company with it as the core form a close and long-term connection, with a high degree of aesthetic consistency, which ensures the smooth output of his works. However, it is clear that the sustainability of the company cannot rely on three veterans alone. In recent years, in the works of the noonday sun, the names of second-generation directors such as Zhang Kaizhou, Sun Molong, and Jian Chuanyi appear frequently, and most of them have experienced the training process from co-directing to independent directing. Although their output is not always satisfactory, especially the "Ode to Joy 2" douban score of 5.4 co-directed by Jian Chuan and Zhang Kaizhou, which can be said to be the biggest "overturning case" in the noonday sun, but it can also be seen from the gradual maturity of works such as "Do you know if it should be green fat red skinny", "All is good", "Qiao Family's Children" and other works.
In September 2021, Noonday Sunshine released the "Photosynthetic" Film and Television Talent Dream Realization Plan, which is essentially a film and television script competition. Individuals or teams can submit scripts and project overviews, the winning project has the opportunity to receive investment in the noonday sun, and the outstanding contestants have the opportunity to participate in the creation of their film and television projects. In this plan, the "Iron Triangle" and three second-generation directors will jointly serve as creative directors. It seems that the noonday sun will discover and cultivate the third generation of talents, and it is also on the agenda.
4
Spirit for the soul, trust the audience
The reason why the noonday sun is praised as the "face of the national opera door" is not only due to the artistic standard of his works, but also because the theme of the works has a unique temperament of the times. In the market where costume idol dramas, urban romance dramas, Andome adaptations and other genre dramas are at war with each other, the repertoire of the noonday sun is "opening up the pattern" as netizens often say.
The same as the costume drama, "Langya List" filmed a lying salary to punish evil and promote good, protect the homeland to revitalize the rivers and mountains; the same urban drama, "Ode to Joy" uses five parallel ways to show the life story of urban women, refracting all aspects of Chinese cities; even the same suspense drama, "Beginning" adds a lot of realistic depictions to portray the character group portraits of ordinary people. Needless to say, such as "Great Rivers and Great Rivers" and "Mountains and Seas", which write major historical memories and carry forward the main theme of the times, needless to say.
Hou Hongliang has a very important point of view is "don't fool the audience, there are really masters in the audience." Perhaps it is this trust in the audience that supports them to do a clear stream. When other film and television dramas are still busy rubbing hot spots and speculating on CP to attract attention, noonday sunshine chooses to conquer the audience's heart with works that may be low topicality, but high quality and high intentions. They prove with actions that as long as the story is told well, the mainstream values of patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendliness can also win the general favor of the audience, and even many times, these contents are what the audience prefers and can empathize with.
The success of the noonday sun reflects that a film and television drama market in which good money drives out bad money is gradually taking shape. And this status quo also reminds, or warns film and television producers, do not fool the audience. Traffic should not be calculated in advance, but should be won by works, deep cultivation of content, building brands is not only the prospect that we expect the market to enter, but also more and more become the real law that film and television companies want to survive.