How did "Picasso in Uniform" come about?

Propaganda poster for the Book of Hunting Crimes. The image originates from the internet

■ Editor's Note

The scholar Jiang Bing's commentary article published in the headlines of the last issue of literary and art criticism was "Where did the 'Guangshen Story' on the screen go?" (See the 07 edition on March 27, 2022 for details) Since its publication in the newspaper, it has aroused great concern from all walks of life, and it has continued to set off heated discussions in the local cultural circles. As emphasized in the article, in the context of the era of globalization, re-examining, understanding and interpreting the local culture of Lingnan and telling the story of Guangdong well is an inevitable "export" of Guangdong's literary and artistic creation, and it is also an important task facing the cultural construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area today. Zhang Yiwu, winner of the Guangdong Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature and Art and a famous writer, responded to this article and expressed wonderful views.

In order to better implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions and solidly promote the construction of Guangdong as a culturally strong province, the literary and art commentary edition will open a column entitled "Building a Culturally Strong Province, Everyone Talks" starting from this issue, inviting literary and artistic celebrities and people from all walks of life to participate in discussions, and contributing wisdom around the issues of inheriting and promoting Lingnan culture, promoting the joint construction of humanities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and further polishing Guangdong's characteristic cultural brands. In this issue, the famous scholar Chen Pingyuan is invited to give suggestions and suggestions for the cultural construction of Guangdong.

This issue of Literary and Art Review also invited Wu Yao, the chief screenwriter of the popular suspense unit drama "Crime Hunting Atlas", to share his creative experience, and talked about how the drama took "simulated portrait artist" as the core and combined with social hot phenomena to achieve innovative breakthroughs in original criminal investigation dramas. In addition, this issue also includes a book review by Jiang Shuzhuo, chairman of the Guangdong Writers Association, for Zeng Pingbiao's reportage work "Born to Die".

● Wu Yao

The profession of "simulated portrait painter" is not particularly mysterious, and before the "Crime Hunting Atlas", there have been many literary and artistic works involved and shown. The most difficult thing about this drama is to open up the boundary between art and reality, organically combine the romantic arbitrariness of art and the rigor of public security work, and present it through the role of Shen Yi. The creative process is steep, swaying, and uncertain, and although the play has been written for two years, every time I look back, I still have a feeling of being surrounded by the sound of the wind and the sound of flying.

In my opinion, the essence of the artistic image of the detective on the screen is that of a thinking artist—deeply interested in the peak state of human emotions, and probing endlessly. Some people asked, why is Shen Yi, as a painter, obviously able to make more money, but he wants to become a policeman? It can only be said that each of us has our own way of interacting and talking with the world. Shen Yi is an artist who is born with a special interest in cases, and as soon as he heard that the criminal police team had the job of simulated portrait artist, he did not hesitate to resign from the teaching position of the Academy of Fine Arts and tried his best to win this job. For him, finding the truth and presenting the most extreme emotions is his way.

The motivation for the creation of "Crime Hunting Picture Book" is to write for beauty, the picture should be ethereal and freehand, and the characters should be concise and clear, with modernity. From the beginning, we set ourselves the goal: to explore the possibilities of visualization. The script of the classical era is enough to achieve a good story and good characters, but in today's rapid development of the film and television industry, there must be a good picture, otherwise it will lose its foothold in the film and television industry system.

Therefore, from the perspective of the screenwriter, we focus on the whole play on the painting, and use the painting method to understand and complete all the problems in the face of the problem, so as to create a flesh-and-blood "uniformed Picasso" and an image of an artist detective. Shen Yi is gentle and humble on the outside, but in his bones he has the arrogance of an artist and the sensitivity and persistence of a detective. In the play, he not only shows superb skills such as "painting old people at the age of three", "white bone portraits" and "microscopic color discrimination", but also has the insight and empathy of "portraying people's hearts". Fortunately, the dramatic temperament that we initially pursued in the stage of script creation has been well preserved and presented in the series, and the degree of reduction has reached more than 80%.

Since the launch of "Crime Hunting Atlas", it has received various comments, some of which are positive and negative, and the praise part of it is mainly that in the successive cases, many social hot phenomena that attract people's attention have been introduced, such as facial anxiety, school bullying, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, information security and new types of crimes. To a certain extent, the plot trend also represents our thinking and prediction of these social issues, such as the AI face swap fraud case in the play, which contains concerns about the excessive proliferation of artificial intelligence technology and the leakage of personal information.

Although most of the cases in the play have real case archetypes, we are not "looking for pictures with cases", but "looking for cases with pictures", so that Shen Yi can use the corresponding painting thinking to complete the reasoning of solving the case. That's where we spend the most effort — to have art, crime, and reasoning look for each other, a process that's a bit like fate, and the crowd looks for him for thousands of degrees until it comes to fruition.

It is very happy that the "protagonist group" represented by Shen Yi and Du Cheng, the professional spirit, professional self-confidence, and the spiritual outlook of young public security cadres and policemen, have won the recognition of many audiences from the public security system. This also makes us more confident in the creative path of the new mainstream web drama - the basis of realism, romantic expression.

By the way, many creators think that the small screen of the mobile phone is not suitable for the theme of art, but my opinion is just the opposite - the small screen is convenient for screenshots, but also convenient for the interaction of the bullet screen, so that the screenwriter can bury as many "stems" as possible in the plot picture - for example, the anecdotes and knowledge about the world famous paintings such as "Avignon Girl", from the visual to the rhythm, have left a lot of creative space. The amount of information buried in the picture has become a playground for creators and audiences to interact, similar to a game of "treasure hunting" and "treasure hunting", which is also an exploration of our creation - the audience in the Internet era is willing to resonate with the creator, and the audience is the final finisher of a work.

(The author is a teacher and famous screenwriter of communication university of China, and his representative works include "Hunting Crime Illustrated Book", "The Sound of the Wind", "If Life Meets At first", etc.)