Stills from the "Three-Body Problem" TV series.
The "Three-Body Problem" TV series began broadcasting on the evening of January 15, and the largest IP of Chinese science fiction began to come out. On the Internet, there are details control and sorting out the number of episodes that appear in famous scenes such as "Wang Miao's Ghost Countdown", "Ye Wenjie's Red Bank Base", "Three-Body Game" and "Operation Guzheng"; And the audience said, "This year's New Year will give "The Three-Body Problem", "Let me dehydrate, soon to start broadcasting", "Natural selection!" Forward four! ”...... Living up to expectations, the TV series jumped to the first place in Weibo's hot search and the first place in Douban's real-time popular TV list as soon as it was broadcast.
Liu Cixin, the original author of "The Three-Body Problem", said that imagination is an ability that human beings have that seems to belong only to God, and the meaning of its existence is far beyond our imagination. Some historians have said that the reason why humans were able to build civilization beyond other species on Earth was mainly because we were able to create things in our own brains that did not exist in reality.
Seventeen years have passed since the novel was serialized to the start of the TV series, and now we are at the beginning of the future tense described by The Three-Body Problem. Text allows readers to imagine the smile of characters in 100 ways and imagine the magnificence of the universe, while film and television allow the imagination in the brain to have a corresponding vision in front of their eyes. The audience is ready for a critical and longing gaze, is The Three-Body Problem ready?
The more real and close to real science, the more it will be like The Three-Body Problem
Most readers who have read the original book of "The Three-Body Problem" are very convinced that the novel itself already provides a complete structure and content, and it is superfluous to adapt it and do more embellishment. So, the main creative team invited Liu Cixin to participate in it, and screenwriter Tian Liangliang did more than a dozen versions of the script back and forth. In the creative process, the first element to consider is to be as close to the original as possible.
From director Yang Lei to visual director Lu Beike, to director of photography, many people in the team are fans of "The Three-Body Problem". They believe that there are certain challenges in creating "The Three-Body Problem", because it is different from the sci-fi themes filmed before, the so-called sci-fi elements or alien elements, do not appear directly in the picture, but just give people an idea, and the concept is the most difficult to express.
"The Three-Body Problem" is a wild science fiction novel, but the main creative team hopes to show the TV series in an extremely realistic way. As Yang Lei said, "The more real and close everything is to real science, the more it will be like The Three-Body Problem."
In order to make science fiction "land", the main creative team found many ways to narrow the distance between the audience and the work, and relayed the esoteric science fiction concepts in a language that is easier to understand. For example, "cosmic flickering" is a famous concept in the original work, and the play uses the relationship between a light bulb and an object to explain.
Yang Lei introduced that the play involves about 200 scenes, from the "Red Bank" in the sixties and seventies of the last century to Beijing in 2007, the time span is very large. The TV series basically restored all the scenes in the novel, and initially wanted to shoot all in real places, but it was difficult to achieve, and there were still sets.
Li Eryun, the chief producer of "The Three-Body Problem", said: "Ordinary scenes can be built, but some important scientific scenes in the play are difficult to restore by building, and the art team believes that it is an impossible task." There is only one way in front of us, that is, 'dead knock', with our professionalism and sincerity, to impress scientific research institutions. In the end, the crew waited for good news. Relevant scientific research units provided great support and realized real-life shooting in many scientific scenes, such as collision centers, national nanoscience centers, etc., which is also the first time that these places have welcomed TV drama crews.
"We could also solve it with special effects, but I didn't think it was real, I didn't believe it when it was shot, so I tried to use it everywhere. The realism of the scene can make the actors and producers have a sense of immersion, and the credibility will also be strengthened. Yang Lei said.
How to shoot "Operation Guzheng"?
The special effects of almost every sci-fi film and television work will receive special attention, and doing it well is to give the work a charm that goes beyond words, and vice versa. There are two parts to the special effects of "The Three-Body Problem", one is the special effects in the real shooting, such as the famous scene "Operation Guzheng" of cutting the ship with nanowires, and the other is the part of the game "The Three-Body Problem".
Yang Lei said that the biggest trouble with the "Guzheng Action" is that after cutting, there is no film or existing materials to refer to, "Every deformation of the hull after being cut is different, each piece must be designed separately, and there is no way to complete it in the way of traditional film art." It's not a pure rigid body, it's distorted, which is called 'dynamic model of a rigid body' in the special effects industry." Therefore, the main creative team can only use real steel, press into pieces, nest into a ship shape, and then use an extruder to squeeze piece by piece, and after squeezing, push it up and weld it into a boat.
If the difficulty of paragraphs such as "Operation Guzheng" is that the picture needs to be as realistic as possible; The "Three-Body Problem" game is a virtual scene, which requires more imagination.
Bai Yiqing, the chief producer of "The Three-Body Problem", said that after fully evaluating the technical details, time cost and finished product effect, the film team unanimously decided to use CG (the abbreviation of Computer Graphics, the general term for all graphics drawn by computer software - reporter's note) to produce. And this is also a fresh experience and challenge for the actors. "In the past, the requirements for actors were to really listen and see and feel, but surrounded by mo-cap suits and green screens, it tested the imagination and belief of actors."
He also revealed that the CG animation part of the "Three-Body Problem" game invited some fellow friends to provide faces as the faces of the game characters, such as Guo Jingyu, Liang Zhenhua, Ma Dong, Gao Yalin, Jiang Nan, Tang Jiasanshao, Hou Hongliang, Fei Zhenxiang... Interested viewers can look for the faces of these people in the play.
The actors also worked hard to tell this Chinese science fiction story well. Lin Yongjian, who plays Chang Weisi, said that this is the most challenging drama he has encountered in terms of lines since his career, "There is a lot of logic in it, because they are all physicists and they speak very carefully." Chen Jin, who plays the elderly Ye Wenjie, said: "There are many lines, and it is difficult to memorize, although I have understood its meaning, if I use my own words, it will still not be right." ”
Zhang Luyi plays physicist Wang Miao in the play, and before filming began, he began to search for all kinds of related knowledge, especially physics, "There are too many professional words and professional terms that are not involved in daily life in the play, ball lightning, macroatoms, orders of magnitude... While learning a lot of knowledge, I am also constantly breaking through myself, which has opened a door for my cognition of science fiction works."
Science fiction cannot rely only on Liu Cixin, let alone "The Three-Body Problem"
In the Spring Festival of 2019, the movie "The Wandering Earth", also adapted from Liu Cixin's novel, was released, triggering a movie-watching boom and ranking fifth in the Chinese film and television box office list so far. In the Spring Festival of 2023, "The Wandering Earth 2" will be released, and the pre-sale box office will be in the top three. The contradiction between the audience's love for sci-fi works and the quality and output of sci-fi works cannot meet the needs of the audience may be one of the biggest contradictions at this stage.
Science fiction cannot rely only on Liu Cixin, let alone "The Three-Body Problem", and the "landing" of science fiction film and television is even more difficult. To some extent, the long road of Chinese science fiction is still long, and "The Three-Body Problem" is just a slightly lonely forerunner. It even sometimes feels that if it doesn't get so much attention, it's a better time for Chinese science fiction.
From the first serialization of the "Three-Body Problem" novel in 2006 to the first announcement of film and television news in 2016, 10 years have passed since the real broadcast in 2023, and another 7 years have passed. In these seven years, we have experienced setbacks and sadness, but we have come a long way together.
The trailer says, "We don't know who the enemy is, what the enemy is like, or how the enemy exists. But one thing, facing enemies from beyond Earth, all of us, is the first time. The time has come for humanity to work together." "The trisolarans who see us humans as bugs forget the fact that bugs have never been defeated." The famous sentences in these novels have been restored in the play, and at this moment, I have more empathy.
Liu Cixin has always described the grandeur and wonder of the universe, described interstellar exploration, and described life and civilization in distant worlds. He believes that the boundless space is still the best orientation and destination of human imagination. 17 years have passed, and the future time in "The Three-Body Problem" has become a real time.
"The pace of human exploration will not stop, and every 17 years in the past, present and future will continue to challenge the unknown and uncertainty. Human beings may be small, but the tenacity and courage have made us that special accident in this vast universe. Liu Cixin said.
The universe is so big, we all want to see it.
Source: China Youth Daily