| One real
Mango TV and Hunan Satellite TV's "Monsoon Theater" led the "Wolf Hunter" on May 24, with two episodes per week and members one week in advance. Because there are only eight episodes in the series, it means that on June 1, members will be able to reach the finale through advanced on-demand.
No way, the short drama theater is mostly like this, and the first wave of winds really came and went quickly.
The Douban opening score of the drama 8.2 has dropped slightly to 8.0, which belongs to the upper grade of the national drama, but in the eyes of the reader, the overall feeling is "pity". "Wolf Hunter" is a work with more prominent advantages and disadvantages, as a new concept drama with a lot of innovation in the theme and shooting method, "Wolf Hunter" undertakes the task of making a good start for the "Monsoon Theater" and building a brand, but at present, the marketing seems to be not in place, the discussion is flat, the playback heat can only be said to be moderate, and the reputation is also so close to the door - compared with the two benchmarks of the Mist Theater last year, "The Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth", or compared with the director's last work , " Compared with "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", "Wolf Hunter" is still a "level" overall.
Readers want to talk about two perspectives on this - from the perspective of the viewing experience, what are the advantages and disadvantages of "Wolf Hunter", and what kind of future "Monsoon Theater" faces.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > "Yu" in Wolf Hunter</h1>
In a nutshell, the advantages of "Wolf Hunter" are that the theme is fresh, the camera scheduling has aesthetics and texture, the various fights and picture framing are real in place, the actors are also in line with the human setting, and the overall is a short drama that is ahead of the domestic conventional level in terms of picture and performance texture.
The main story line of "Wolf Hunter" is that the rangers and forest police hunt down the poacher "Wolf Son", Wei Jiang played by Qin Hao and Qin Chuan played by Yin Fang formed a classic combination of "Decadent Former Policeman in the Past" + "Stunned Young And Hot-Blooded Little Policeman", and the cause of the conflict in the script is also very "conventional" - because five years ago, the hunt for a group of wolves went deep alone, Wei Jiang's comrade-in-arms Zhao Cheng was brutally killed by the wolf, Wei Jiang resigned with guilt and drank alcohol every day while seeking revenge, until the wolf appeared again. The wolf's den also has its own contradictions, and they have a feeling between them that is similar to the beginning of the "Dark Knight" when the clown robs the bank, which is very rare and has great potential.
In terms of actors, the double male protagonist composed of Qin Hao and Yin Fang has the heaviest role, Qin Hao once again played a breakthrough role like "The Hidden Corner", and the image of the unkempt "Plateau Sharp Brother" is very into the play, and the performance is quite a bit of a realm of ease. Yin Fang's role is the groove point of the first few episodes, but Reading Yujun believes that this is not a problem of actor performance, which will be highlighted below.
In addition to the two male protagonists, director Cao Dun also brought many interesting supporting roles in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" in "Wolf Hunter". "Right Phase" Yin Zhusheng plays the villain Poison Harrier, "Yuan Zai" Yu Haolei plays the wolf Zhou Jiao, "Xu Bin" plays the wolf knife, "Right Brake" Qu Gao plays the police station chief... These actors may not be familiar or not "old drama bones", but it can be said that most of the points of "Wolf Hunter" are supported, especially the fierceness, viciousness and conspiracy of this nest of wolves in the play.
The outstanding performance of "Wolf Hunter" is very similar to Cao Dun's "Twelve Hours of Chang'an" and even earlier "Muyun on the Sea" - the latter two works also have good pictures, shots and good actor performances, but there are always some grooves in the viewing experience that make the audience uncomfortable. The stunning opening of Chang'an City in "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", there are also many high-burning plot sections in the middle, but the length of the whole drama to 48 episodes has led to a lot of plot dragging, forcing, and not in line with common sense logic; "The Tale of Muyun on the Sea" has become a representative of the water injection drama, resulting in the drama's aesthetic breakthrough being completely covered up.
This has led to the audience's expectations for Cao Dun's director's works are mostly technical aspects such as photography, and there is not much hope for the rhythm of the story. But the number of episodes of "Wolf Hunter" is very short, so some Douban netizens said before the broadcast: "Fortunately, there are only eight episodes, look forward to it."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > the "flaw" of Wolf Hunter</h1>
From the above evaluation, it is not difficult to find that the reader believes that "Wolf Hunter" is in line with the "high concept" and "high quality" positioning of monsoon theater in many aspects.
But unfortunately, although there are only eight episodes, the story of this drama is still a bit "bad".
Qin Chuan, played by Yin Fang, is the most prominent point of the problem - he did not take the gun into the mountain alone to encounter the wolf hunting goats and was kidnapped, Wei Jiang had a hard time saving him, he was not willing to go back to call for support but insisted on continuing to follow the wolf, don't ask, ask is "Then watch the wolf hunt wild goats?" The result followed up directly "sending".
The audience is actually very willing to understand that qin Chuan's role is designed to be "hot-blooded" and "impulsive", from this point of view, Yin Fang's degree of completion is very high, and the performance can actually score full marks. But this does not mean that people can be brainless, brainless impulses, logic does not make sense, after all, Qin Chuan is not a wild child but a serious policeman, should have basic professional qualities, but the play relies on the brainless actions of this character to promote the plot, resulting in too many unreasonable and groove points -
Is there nothing wrong with you wanting to catch a wolf, but is there a better chance of going back to a large number of teammates to catch a wolf, or is it a better chance of catching a wolf with your bare hands? Doesn't going back to call for support mean that you won't catch wolves? If you don't bring a gun up the mountain, you've already been caught once and you don't have a gun, why do you go and catch the wolf? You just follow, you can't go back alone, a person all the way to the mark, do you have to rush in front of the trap?
The audience will involuntarily think about these questions. Considering that Qin Chuan is a policeman, there is only one reasonable premise for this kind of "looking for death" people - this role has enough reasons to "find death", world-weary? No, there is private hatred? None of that was Wei Jiang's business. The result was that Qin Chuan immediately did not "send him to death" when he really encountered the wolf, Wei Jiang wanted to fight with the gangsters and he dissuaded him, and finally Qin Chuan gave the gun to himself to hide and "did not fire a shot" and was rescued.
The role of Qin Chuan was complained about, and it was the problem of the script or editing that caused the audience to feel "unreasonable". But under the same person setting, there are actually many ways to tell the story more reasonably - such as emphasizing distance, search difficulty, highlighting contradictions and conflicts and choices on the issue of "chasing or not chasing"; for example, adjusting the strength of the enemy and us, so that the audience thinks that Qin Chuan is not 100% sent to death but has a certain opportunity; for example, adding some background people to Qin Chuan to make his personality more rational...
Of course, the follow-up plot will definitely find some problems in the human setting, but the first episode of this contradictory way is really not a "high-level technique", but the impact of persuasion is a little more likely.
The same is true of the plot of the knife being caught and escaping, facing a murderer-level criminal, the police are escorted by a small van, and the footcuffs are not on the police rope, and finally the criminal overturns the car and escapes, this kind of bridge section makes people feel deliberate and forced.
It is said that the early version of "Wolf Hunter" was twice as many episodes as now, so the reader does not know whether the plot problem is to blame the deletion or the script. Anyway, from the look and feel point of view, the plot experience of "Wolf Hunter" has greatly dragged its feet, and it is more like a two-hour movie that was forcibly cut to 8 episodes and 400 minutes.
Compared with the presentation of shots and scenes and actors, this drama actually lacks texture in the details of the plot. Of course, in the context of national drama, "Wolf Hunter" as a whole is still "flawed", but behind this evaluation is regret than encouragement, because from the perspective of theme, lens, actors, etc., it has the potential to become a complete sense of the fine.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > Mango TV must do "monsoon theater"</h1>
Mango TV's "Monsoon Theater" was prepared from last year, and in September 2020, Hunan Satellite TV announced at the China Merchants Association that the "Monsoon Theater" will replace the previous "Youth In Progress" as a new weekly theater, and the cycle continues throughout the year, and the satellite TV end and the Mango TV side are synchronized. In addition to the "Wolf Hunter" that has been broadcast, "Monsoon Theater" also includes suspense dramas "Sea Anemone", "Jiangzhao Dawn", "Sleeping Garden", urban dramas, family dramas "I am good in other places", "Mother-in-law's bracelet", "Gifts", etc., which are basically seeking innovation in subdivided themes in genre themes.
This direction is the response of Mango TV and Hunan Satellite TV under the trend of "short dramas". From the perspective of satellite TV and Mango TV, this is what has to be done in accordance with the trend, Hunan Satellite TV weekly broadcast theater "youth in progress" performance has not been ideal, the entire 2020 broadcast is almost all "Ancient Secret Covenant", "I am not a shopaholic", "love switch", "Thunder Warrior" This Kind of Douban 2, 3 points or so of "bad drama", "youth in progress" Weekly theater has no reputation or brand to speak of, it is inevitable to overturn and start over.
For Mango TV, the biggest significance of "Monsoon Theater" may carry the platform's expectations for "breaking the circle". Mango TV has been working in the long video industry for a long time, and although the earnings of financial reports have repeatedly become a bright spot, from the platform level, Mango TV has never gone up to a higher level in scale. In addition to themselves, Tencent Video and iQiyi have long touched the industry "ceiling" of hundreds of millions of paid members, and although this "super scale" has not made the two major platforms profitable, it also has the advantage of scale -
The relatively small scale of Mango TV greatly limits the direct coverage breadth of content, and at the same time means that the demand for content quality and marketing investment is higher, so it in turn limits Mango TV's solo high-cost self-made dramas, and its head dramas should also consider simulcasting with other platforms to share the backflow pressure. Mango TV has always focused on the content tone of "youth and women", in fact, it avoids a more positive "confrontation".
In terms of network dramas, Mango TV does not have an advantage, Tencent Video covers 19 of the top 30 of the 2020 Annual Broadcast Index of Yien Data, 15 of iQiyi, and only 8 of Mango TV, and the top 20 miles of the effective broadcast list of Yunhe Data in 2020 series Mango TV not only appears the least, but also has no solo drama on the list.
Mango TV certainly wants to break its own bottleneck. Hunan Satellite TV's content support has reduced the content cost of Mango TV, which actually gave Mango TV a great boost to profitability, but as the content production focus of Hunan Radio and Television Department gradually shifted to the network platform, this advantage will inevitably not be a bowl of rice that can be eaten forever - Mango TV must become a larger and more mainstream platform to compete with Youaiteng on a scale level.
Therefore, when iQIYI realizes theater brand operation through the Mist Theater, word-of-mouth fermentation, and continuous topic heat is pushed up, Mango TV must be more anxious. In the field of dramas, Mango TV must quickly and effectively enhance its brand image in the minds of users, and produce more and more diverse audiences and broader works, rather than continuing to eat the bowl of "delicious and delicious" rice of youth and love themes unchanged. Therefore, the short episodes and high-investment content of the Monsoon Theater are now the "pioneers" in the field of drama for Mango TV.
The weekly theater simulcast with Hunan Satellite TV has alleviated the cost problem in a certain sense, but it will also bring new problems - the star drama will still face different scales in content censorship, and this is not good news for the monsoon theater, which emphasizes innovation and conceptual experimentation.
Of course, this does not prevent Mango TV from continuing to invest in the "Monsoon Theater". The impact does not affect, the success of the theatricalization is not successful, or it depends on the performance of each specific work - if you can come up with two phenomenal-level dramas like the Mist Theater, the establishment of the reputation of the monsoon theater is only a matter of a moment, which requires subsequent works to be one level higher than "Wolf Hunter".
*Original article, reprinted with attribution indicated