Author/Li Mu
"The Three-Body Problem" has a stunning start.
The popularity of the station exceeded 25,000 within 1 hour of broadcasting, breaking the highest popularity value of Tencent Video on the first day, and it was also the fastest work with a popularity value of more than 20,000; The whole network hot search 150+, Douban real-time double list TOP1, Maoyan the whole network popularity list TOP1.
From the data dimension, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" has indeed made a good start.
But "The Three-Body Problem" is more than that, as a sci-fi IP that has attracted worldwide attention, every step of its filmization is forward in the eyes of "judgment".
Passers-by asked book fans after reading it: It's very good-looking, but don't you know that the degree of restoration is high?
Someone replied: I picked the book and took it.
That's it.
Respect and restore the original
Science fiction is to literature, "The Three-Body Problem" is to science fiction, it is the spire of the pyramid, the jewel in the crown.
Readers or viewers may not know much about the story, but they are familiar with the names of "The Three-Body Problem" and "Da Liu" (by Liu Cixin).
"Three-Body Problem" tells the story of the abnormal disturbance of basic scientific research on the earth, causing panic and turmoil in the scientific community, nanophysicist Wang Miao and criminal police Shi Qiang joined forces to investigate, jointly unveiled the mystery of the unknown civilization "three-body" world of the extraterrestrial civilization, and played with all mankind with the three-body people who are about to invade.
For such a work whose content and audience base are very solid in themselves, "restoration" is a creative standard that the creative team should not practice.
This poster fully exposes the detailed control of the creative team, and is enough to make book fans excited:
In the lower left corner is obviously the back of young Ye Wenjie; In front of the huge radar in the center, there are several hair-thin lines horizontally, which should be the key to the "Guzheng operation", cutting the nanomaterial "flying blade" of the giant ship; If you are not mistaken, the projection overlapping on Wang Miao's chest and at the top of the boulder should be Wang Miao's ID "Sea Man" in the "Three-Body Problem" game, and the villain in the lower right is Wang Miao's appearance when he enters the "Three-Body Problem" game.
The quality of almost all IP adaptations depends on details, not to mention the "Three-Body Problem", which is supported by details.
In addition to the official release of the material everywhere through a high degree of restoration of the original work, there is already an urgency at the beginning of the main film, such as the popular line "don't answer";
Wang Miao washed photos in the darkroom and found the countdown;
Radars belonging to the Red Bank base.
Although these details are inconspicuous, they are the key clues to promote the development of the plot and build the "famous scene", especially in the process of imaging, once missing, it means that the entire clue chain is broken, which will inevitably lead to the incoherence of the plot. From the current point of view, the creative team has thoroughly eaten the original book and brought it to the screen in the appropriate audiovisual language.
In addition, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" opens with a sense of suspense, introducing mysterious scientific boundary organizations through the death of physicist Yang Dong, and the prediction of the future that "physics does not exist".
Then the police represented by Shi Qiang were ordered to investigate the case, find Wang Miao, and investigate around Yang Dong's mother Ye Wenjie, lover Ding Yi, Shen Yufei and others within the "Scientific Boundary" organization, the atmosphere of the suspense itself to some extent dissolved the viewing threshold brought by a large number of professional physics academic terms, and even allowed the audience to temporarily know nothing about it, only regarded it as a piece of evidence or fragmented clues of the case, which not only retained the essence of the original work, but also made the development of the plot silky and smooth.
After the broadcast of "The Three-Body Problem", book fans were excited to follow the original work, and a small number of viewers were dissuaded by the threshold of "watching dramas", so whether to be loyal to the original work is to follow the rules or should be, and the audience's different reactions have also given the industry to re-examine the meaning and trade-offs of "literary classic adaptation" at the moment - in fact, this issue is accompanied by the development history of literary classic adaptation, and it has been fermented in the exploration of famous book adaptation, which has always been a topic that creators think about in the first place.
As a science fiction work, the original work of "The Three-Body Problem" itself has rich dramatic elements, as the main creative team said, the difficulty of the film and television adaptation of "The Three-Body Problem" is to use audiovisual language to support the expression of words, transform the dramatic elements of literature into audio-visual dramatic elements suitable for TV series works, and solve the problem of "Three-Body Problem", which can almost be said to provide an effective creative strategy for the film and television adaptation of science fiction.
Both "retreat" and "pragmatism" have a landing point
As mentioned earlier, if you look at the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" as a "fan film" and think that this is a kind of carnival of enclosure, you obviously think of this work as small. The drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" respects book fans and does not forget ordinary audiences; It retains the essence of the original work and follows the rules of film and television creation.
The creative team also said several times here that the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" follows a realistic creative method, and the realism here does not blindly emphasize the truth of reality, but also the reality of science fiction, so that the virtual and the real have a fall, so that there is a watchable and highly immersive complete story structure.
"The Three-Body Problem" is very much in need of atmosphere and image, and the environment is like an actor's "rival actor", which is particularly important.
One of the famous scenes in the play, "Operation Guzheng" brings the biggest problem to the creative team is what the ship will break into after being cut by nanomaterials, and there has been no film and existing materials as a reference before. Every deformation after cutting the hull is different, and each piece must be designed individually, and there is no way to complete it in the way of traditional film art. It is not a pure rigid body, but also distorts and deforms, which is called "dynamic simulation of rigid body" in the special effects industry. In the end, the main creative team can only use real steel, press it into pieces, nest it into a ship shape, and then squeeze it piece by piece with an extruder, and then push it up and weld it into a boat.
And the upcoming "Three-Body Problem" game has also become a point of attention and curiosity for the audience, not to mention the disorderly changes of the constant era and the chaotic era, just what kind of visual spectacle is the process of "dehydration" and "immersion", which has whetted the audience's appetite.
In addition to presenting magnificent and fantastic imagination, the creative team of the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" is also trying to solve complex and professional physics knowledge with simpler and intuitive images, such as "cosmic scintillation", the main creative team uses the relationship between a light bulb and an object as an example to narrow the distance between the audience and the character and physics knowledge.
In addition, "The Three-Body Problem" takes characters and era as the landing point and finds a basis for realism. Whether it is the imminent convening of the Beijing Olympics or the image reproduction in the fifties and sixties of the last century, a distinct "sense of presence" is formed in the play. There are also "Easter eggs" such as "Zhizi Road" and "Skora Alley 4-2", which are both original cadenza and regional characteristics, allowing the audience to calmly enter the story setting of the three-body problem and find the grip of reality.
Let the audience enter not only the environment, but also the characters. Zhang Luyi, who plays Wang Miao, Yu Hewei of Shi Qiang, Chen Jin of the elderly Ye Wenjie, Wang Ziwen of the young Ye Wenjie, Lin Yongjian of Chang Weisi, Li Xiaoran of Shen Yufei and other actors are almost integrated with the characters. Book fans have found the corresponding face for the "paper man", and ordinary audiences can quickly grasp the essence of the character along with the role presented by the actor.
For example, Shi Qiang, played by Yu Hewei, in addition to the old policeman being thick and thin, also has a calmness that the sky is falling and does not take it seriously, and his big and chemical character also contributed to the laughter of the first few episodes.
In this scene, the young Ye Wenjie and the old Ye Wenjie are in the same frame, and their different expressions reveal the image and grinding of a person by the unbearable past. From youthful enthusiasm to old age alienation, Ye Wenjie's experience injects a realistic foundation into science fiction.
Last night, the emotional terriers belonging to the main creators in the play were also discovered by the audience.
In this long list of actors, the audience found the creators behind the "mix": director Guo Jingyu, Liang Zhenhua, Ma Dong, Gao Yalin, Jiang Nan, Tang Jiasanshao, Hou Hongliang, Fei Zhenxiang, etc., and wondered for a while "Can anyone tell me what they play?" In fact, this "team building" is also to provide a facial modeling basis for the CG animation part of the "Three-Body Problem" game, and producers, directors and writers have supported and witnessed the important step of domestic sci-fi TV series in their own ways.
Tencent Video's sincerity: seven years to sharpen a sword
Different from the "Trisolarans" and alien civilizations born in the sky, the drama version of "Three-Body Problem" is polished out little by little: from the first appearance in the 2016 Tencent Video Film and Television Annual Release and the announcement of the news of film and television, to the launch of the series to meet the audience, the whole process took 7 years.
Prior to this, from "Full-time Master" to "Crossfire" to "The Beginning", Tencent Video has made considerable layout and accumulation in the horizontal and vertical coordinate system of domestic sci-fi dramas, and has also made attempts from shallow to deep, constantly exploring the delicate balance between sci-fi stories, audience acceptance and image expression.
Why The Three-Body Problem?
Because if "The Three-Body Problem" can be done well, it will represent that China's production level can reach another level.
Even now, this degree is looming.