Introduction: "Henan Tai killed crazy! With the dragon boat wonderful tour out of the circle, Henan Radio and Television Station once again detonated public opinion during this Dragon Boat Festival: marvel at the wonderful beauty of the underwater dance "Roselle Water Endowment", touched by the "Lanling King's Entry Song", and be impressed by the exquisite conception of the whole program... How to create such a huge visual feast in 20 days? How to turn the traditional Chinese festivals we are accustomed to into a new IP? "Roselle Water Endowment" was praised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and what new ideas have been brought to the dissemination of our traditional culture? In this regard, Chen Jia, the general director of Henan Radio and Television Station's "Dragon Boat Wonderful Tour", introduced the story in detail in front of the stage and behind the scenes in the media interview, and finally accepted a supplementary interview with the Observer Network.
Chen Jia, chief director of Henan Radio and Television Station's "Dragon Boat Wonderful Tour"
【Interview/Observer Network Xiaoting】
Observer Network: How did the idea of this Dragon Boat Festival come about? You said in an interview that the preparation time is only more than 20 days, how can you perfectly present the program of each unit to the audience in such a short period of time?
Jia Chen: When I received this show, it was really only 20 days, so the time was really very short, and I thought about how I could do it differently. At that time, because the time was very short, the particularly complex plot was too late to design and shoot, so it used the perspective of four Tang Xiaomei to pull out four parallel and interlaced story lines to tell the story of the prequel to the Tang Palace Night Banquet, which was also easier to operate in a short period of time.
The full name of the Dragon Boat Festival is the prequel to the Dragon Boat Festival's "Tang Palace Night Banquet", which tells the story of four Tang Xiaomei, and also highlights two characters in the design and weakens the other two characters, so that everyone can remember some of them more clearly, and maybe we will talk about other characters in future sequels to continue this series. If the four characters are told in parallel, the plot will not fluctuate, and everyone's memory points will be scattered.
We use the form of network drama + network synthesis, first set the plot well, and then according to the plot and then do the network variety show, that is, this plot is here, there should be such a program, we then design this program how to do, we can effectively connect the plot and the program, let the audience feel less embarrassed, in the middle of this use of comics this two-dimensional way, will also alleviate the connection conflict between some programs and plots. Here I think the combination is better than Tang Xiaozhu's "Medical Saint Descendants", Tang Xiaoke's "Zongheng Side", as well as "Tang Yin" and "Li Renxing", all of which belong to directly cutting the plot into it, which looks very comfortable.
"Sunshine Youth Daily": Why did the Dragon Boat Festival think of "reproducing Roselle"? Was Feitian's creativity the inspiration for the Luoyang Longmen Grottoes? How did you come up with the idea of using underwater dance to represent flying?
Chen Jia: We have the Yellow River culture in Henan, which has the image of Luoshen, and many of Qu Yuan's works also mentioned Luoshen, in Chinese pre-Qin mythology, Luoshen is the local water god of the Luohe River, so it was decided to use the image of Luoshen to do such a program.
The creativity of Feitian is actually not entirely inspired by the Luoyang Longmen Grottoes, because we wanted to show the image of Roselle in the ancient Yellow River culture at that time, but whether it is the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" or "Tianwen", including Cao Zhi's "Luoshen Fu", Gu Kaizhi's "Luoshen Futu", Luoshen wears a lot of clothes, which will restrict the dancers to show the beauty of their limbs under the water and affect the creation of dance, so I think in this regard, we don't have to be too entangled, we use different forms to re-innovate the culture, That in itself is what a director should do.
Gu Kaizhi's "Roselle Futu" (partial)
In fact, we are not using underwater dance to show the flying sky, but to show our imaginary Roselle, which is what we want to express, and I think this also reflects a kind of cultural self-confidence. As you can see, we have abandoned some small movements in dance design, and most of them are more powerful and powerful, opening and closing movements, so that such a dance movement is more consistent with the image of Roselle that we want to express.
Observer Network: Four unit stories, very rich in content. Like "Lanling King Entry Song", there is not only the Lanling King Entry Song shown by the pipa, but also the family affection of thinking about relatives every festive season, and the grand historical background of Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges. Other programs are similar, including dragon boat customs, Chinese medicine culture and so on. When planning, what ideas does the program team want to convey to the audience? What other details of the design were not discovered by the audience?
Chen Jia: "Lanling King's Entry Song" was originally designed with the theme of cultural output, using two lines of light and dark. The bright line is Tang Xiaocai. The plot highlights the emotional contradictions, because there are contradictions and conflicts to look good, so tang Xiaocai and his mother's quarrel is designed in front. Her mother, because of her separation from her father, prevented her from learning the lute. In another space-time line, there is Tang Xiaocai's thoughts about her father, recalling the scene when she was with her father when she was a child, and then playing the pipa with her father at the same time in different time and space.
On the subtitle, I quoted Bai Juyi's poem "Night Rain". In fact, Bai Juyi has a very great influence on Japanese culture, basically yyds, at that time many people were iron fans of Bai Juyi, and there were as many as one or two hundred poems quoted by Bai Juyi in the "Tale of Genji", so I used Bai Juyi's poems, and the night rain itself also expressed our longing for the country and our thoughts about traditional culture.
The dark line is actually about the Lanling King's entry into the battle, because this song took place in Luoyang Mountain, and I also wanted to borrow this song to let everyone know the relevant historical stories. The whole story is to express that the Dragon Boat Festival is our traditional festival, and to express the national cultural self-confidence of our traditional Chinese culture radiating throughout the Asian circle.
In addition, from the perspective of the creative rhythm of the whole party, to this point I also want to have an emotional treatment, especially the creation of the evening program, but also pay attention to the inheritance and transition, pay attention to contrast and rhythm, so in this place I want to have a deep emotional expression.
"The Transmission of the Holy Spirit of Medicine" is related to the culture of Chinese medicine. And just in May, General Secretary Xi Jinping came to nanyang and also mentioned the culture of traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, when we designed the characters, we designed Tang Xiaozhu as a chinese medicine successor, cleverly recommended the traditional Chinese medicine in Nanyang, Henan Province, and introduced our profound Chinese medicine culture. But later I found that netizens were particularly powerful, and also helped us interpret the cultural dross of passing on children and not women, and thanked us for using this show to pay tribute to our white soldiers and so on. Later, some medical media also strongly recommended this program, including many doctors and friends have also forwarded it, I think it is good to do something for everyone.
In fact, when doing this show, I wanted to use modern methods to package, and also designed some comics in the middle, including the funny plot of Shennong tasting the grass and turning green, going to the mountain to pick herbs and falling down, but then after deliberation and deliberation, our executive director said "Chen Dao you are too nonsensical", and finally decided to respect the overall program feeling, more picturesque, so I removed these shots.
Observer Network: You revealed in an interview that the four Tang Xiaomei are open-ended and starred by ordinary people. Want to know how these four Tang Xiaomei were selected, are they all lovers of Hanfu and traditional culture?
Chen Jia: We are all openly recruiting and selecting actors, Director Wang Renhai loosened the shackles of the crew at the beginning of the creation, let us adopt an open production mentality, let more netizens participate in the interaction, so the next day we contacted the elephant client to publicize, let netizens name Tang Xiaomei, issued a summons order, looked for Tang Xiaomei's ordinary actors, and played a good warm-up effect in the early stage, so that more people have a sense of expectation for the Dragon Boat Festival.
The four Tang Xiaomei are all vegetarians
Observer Network: The four Tang sisters are young and beautiful and have won a lot of praise. There is a bullet screen that impressed me deeply: Tang Xiaomei fully demonstrated her respect for women and showed the beauty of women rather than charm. How do you understand the display of women's classical and traditional beauty in the show? How to understand this era of looking at faces, everyone's love for beautiful little sisters?
Chen Jia: In fact, as for how to choose the four Tang Xiaomei, how to understand beauty and charm, at that time did not think too much, the time was really tight, I basically chose people according to the personality characteristics of the four characters, such as Tang Xiaocai, who needed a girl with a slight personality, "The Legend of the Doctor" Tang Xiaozhu wanted to find a gentle girl, Tang Xiaozhu was the kind of personality who was cheerful and lively, so I chose a cute girl with sweet dimples.
Every dynasty and every period has different definitions of beauty, and there are different needs, such as the Han Dynasty thinks that thin girls are good-looking, and the Tang Dynasty likes to be slightly fat. We do this program for modern people to see, modern people also have their own understanding and standards of aesthetics, so although we are doing Tang Dynasty programs, but also can not blindly choose the plump type, and modern people's aesthetics are contrary to the harmony.
Observer Network: Like "Tang Palace Night Feast", "Dragon Boat Wonderful Tour" also has the use of new stage technologies, including the linkage with Sword Net 3. From the perspective of two practices, how do you see the empowerment of traditional culture by new stage technologies? How do we grasp this degree so that technology serves content, rather than being counterproductive?
Chen Jia: With the development of science and technology, the audience's aesthetics of audiovisual art are constantly improving, so this kind of stage technology, including post-AR packaging, will not actually have the effect of dominating, and technology is serving content. Every time we do a show, we first determine the content and the cultural points we want to express, and then the visual director proposes a packaging plan to sublimate the content, so the two are complementary, not for showmanship, so that the program lacks connotation and meaning, and will not win everyone's recognition.
Observer Network: "Dragon Boat Journey" has anime pictures in each story. Is this design out of production cost considerations or is it from the perspective of program effect to bring the younger audience closer? How to achieve an organic combination of the two and appear less abrupt?
Chen Jia: There are actually two reasons for doing this, one is because the time is too tight, there are some grand scenes in the middle of the plot and the program, I don't have time to shoot, I can only use animation as a clever connection between the two, and the second is that there is indeed a production cost consideration, after all, Henan Radio and Television Station is not so rich.
As a result, these illustrations have become a brilliant point for us, the illustration design Su Mingbo is quite powerful, the painting is particularly good-looking, the plot before and after can be connected, it will not be so abrupt. I think it's still logical, doing the show your logic is right, naturally it's right.
The clever use of illustrations adds a lot to the show
Cover news: "Out of the circle" and "big explosion" is actually not what the audience sees overnight, behind it is definitely a number of years of quantitative changes, for you and Henan Radio and Television Station, so what is the process? Is it more painful?
Chen Jia: In these 20 days, my biggest anxiety is that the show I created, this style is the first in China at present, and I don't know how the audience's acceptance is. In addition, the time is particularly tight, I thought about how to complete such a project in a very short period of time, and our people are particularly small, the core main force is only four people, so how to efficiently coordinate the completion of seven programs plus a plot such a big project, this is actually my focus, the others can not be taken care of.
As for whether it is out of the circle, in fact, from the director's point of view, I have never thought about it, because maybe these programs are all made by me, I thought in my heart that the audience should not scold me, or scold a little less, and now this program is made, everyone thinks that they can still see it, which is the biggest affirmation for me.
Beijing News Broadcasting: Does Henan Radio and Television Station have unified creative standards or style control for the three evenings of spring festival, lantern festival and dragon boat festival? Are you worried that the same type of program will be imitated by other satellite televisions, and after "copying the homework", it will lose its uniqueness and competitiveness?
Chen Jia: Our three evenings are actually created by three directors' teams, and there is no unified creative standard and style between them, but these three evenings are attributed to our Henan Radio and Television Station Chinese Traditional Festival Series. The leadership gave each of our directorial teams a lot of free creative space, and they had a lot of trust and support for our directors, which really touched us.
After the Spring Festival Gala "Tang Palace Night Banquet" broke the circle, our station adjusted its strategy in time, this year we set a special program of the Chinese festival series such a creative series, and also opened a creative summit, invited many experts to discuss how to carry forward traditional culture, tell the story of the Yellow River, and take the Chinese traditional festival as a starting point to create the IP of Chinese festivals.
It is hoped that through the traditional Chinese festivals contained in the year, it will be possible to continuously carry out theme planning to form a series, excavate the cultural connotation of traditional Chinese festivals, achieve media dissemination in the form of audio-visual literary and artistic works, and maximize the promotion of excellent traditional culture. I think I may be luckier, because like the Spring Festival, Lantern programs do more, but the performance of the Dragon Boat Festival is relatively less, just after I did it this time, it is easier to be concerned.
I don't know what other directors think, but from my point of view, I haven't worried about similar programs being emulated by other satellite televisions, nor have I thought that we will lose our uniqueness and competitiveness. Even with the same theme, each director's ideas and plans are different, and they will present different faces and different works. In fact, there is nothing to emulate and not to emulate, you see the Spring Festival Gala all the stations are doing, are they all imitating? So there is nothing, I think a hundred flowers bloom is what we need, there are more people with this kind of cultural self-confidence, and then promote our traditional Chinese culture to the world, I think it is very good.
On June 13, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying tweeted praise for "Roselle Water Endowment" on her personal Twitter account.
Observer Network: I noticed that the special acknowledgement at the end of the film was: "Netizens, viewers and lovely fans across the country." Why do you do such a "special thanks"? In the face of the more confident younger generation, what problems should we pay attention to in cultural dissemination?
Chen Jia: Because every time our program is broadcast on Station B and on major online video platforms, there are many viewers, netizens, and fans who support us and give us a lot of praise. Without their support, I don't think we would have insisted on going on like this, so we would have to express our sincere gratitude to them in particular. Every time I see them give us a thumbs up, I feel that although the process is very difficult, what we have experienced is nothing, in fact, we are very happy.
Today's younger generation, some people will think that they are very nonsensical, do not understand how they talk like that, but in fact, they have their own logic, and they also have their own understanding of our culture. In the past, it would be said that the post-80s and post-90s generations were the "Beat generation", but now they have become responsible. Today's young people are particularly confident in our culture, and as our country becomes stronger, I believe that traditional Chinese culture will be passed on better and better, and I have great confidence in them.
Taking advantage of this wave of national trends, Henan Radio and Television Station has continuously innovated and produced several new programs.
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