Intern journalist | Cui Shuo
Edit the | Ye Yuchen
This Spring Festival, "science fiction" is an important keyword. "The Wandering Earth 2", adapted from Liu Cixin's work, was released in the Spring Festival file, and received 3.3 billion box office in 15 days of release, while gaining a good reputation. The "Three-Body Problem" TV series, which has always attracted much attention, finally obtained a distribution license, and the broadcast of the episode on January 15 quickly aroused widespread curiosity and discussion, breaking the record for the popularity value of Tencent video dramas on the first day as soon as it was launched.
A still from the TV series "The Three-Body Problem".
The slow-paced scheduling makes "The Three-Body Problem" slightly less popular than the hit drama "Crazy" at the beginning of the year. Following the end of "Crazy", on the evening of February 3, "The Three-Body Problem" released the full episode in one breath, and by purchasing the "Three-Body Problem" finale screening gift, the audience can watch the 22-30 episodes of "The Three-Body Problem" in advance, and the perfect restoration of the famous scene "Guzheng Action" surprised the audience, and the current Douban score remained at 8.2 points.
For a long time, the road to the film and television of "The Three-Body Problem" has not been smooth. In 2014, Youzu Pictures, the predecessor of the three-body universe, announced that it would cooperate with director Zhang Fanfan to shoot the "Three-Body Problem" movie, starring Feng Shaofeng, Zhang Jingchu and Wu Gang. The film was originally scheduled to be released in 2016, but it was finally skipped due to the director's lack of shooting experience and the difficulty of filling the pit in the post-production special effects. In June 2020, October Culture, held by Tian Xiaopeng, the director of "The Return of the Great Sage", announced that it had obtained the production of the live-action version of the "Three-Body Problem" theatrical film, and "The Three-Body Problem" will also become October Culture's first live-action theatrical film. In terms of animation, the fan-made animated drama "My Three-Body Problem" trilogy has given a good adaptation demonstration, and the "Three-Body Problem" animation launched at the end of last year put the three-body adaptation on the cusp.
In 2016, Tencent Video decided to buy the copyright of the "Three-Body Problem" TV series, and then began to invest in the filming of "The Three-Body Problem". In the past two years, Tencent Video has asked the industry's well-known directors and emerging director teams once, "No one dares to easily take over this hot potato." Wang Tixian, producer of Tencent Online Video, Film and Television Content Production Department and Tencent Video of "The Three-Body Problem", recalled to YiMagazine of CBN. The current chief director Yang Lei has become a die-hard fan since 2006 when "The Three-Body Problem" was serialized in "Science Fiction World", and he used a cover letter and platform to share his ideas, and finally won the position of chief director. His partner, Lu Beike, visual director of "The Three-Body Problem", is also a fan of "The Three-Body Problem" and has 24 years of experience in special effects production.
Yang Lei, the general director of the TV series "Three-Body Problem"
Script creation has always been regarded as the biggest difficulty in the film and television adaptation of "The Three-Body Problem", especially the first part tells the story from the 1970s to the early 21st century, a large number of cross-era scenes interspersed with a lot of astronomy and physics knowledge, including a large number of abstract descriptions of the three-body game and content completed by atmosphere. "All the evaluation systems we used before, the methods of optimizing the script, were completely inapplicable in this project." Wang said. Before the adaptation, Tencent Video conducted a survey on users, clarified that the main audience of "The Three-Body Problem" is core book fans, and decided to serve the core book fans first, and then spread to peripheral science fiction fans, Kochi groups and more TV series viewers through the core book fans. From the final presentation effect, the most praised thing about the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" is also the faithful restoration of the original work.
On the first day that chief director Yang Lei joined the group's meeting, the first thing he said to the team was: "Friends, we must temporarily forget that we are shooting a science fiction masterpiece, and we must do this with a realistic attitude." "In his opinion, "The Three-Body Problem" is a very Chinese story, and the basis for shooting "The Three-Body Problem" is to make the audience believe that this is a story that may happen in our world, and the first thing you need to think about is not special effects and science fiction genres." Don't toldly enlarge the word science fiction, I hope that the science fiction of "The Three-Body Problem" is revealed little by little. Yang Lei told YiMagazine.
Reality also means the true restoration of the scene. From the beginning, the series depicts Beijing in 2007 extensively, and the preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games are repeatedly broadcast on the radio, and various electrical appliances and props are restored to the objects of that year. In order to cater to the time background in the original "Three-Body Problem", the three-body game is designed to be similar to the 2007 triple-A game masterpiece, and the animated 3D effect in the game must be achievable in 2007, and there is no more advanced technology in pursuit of the coolness of the animation effect. "This not only reduces the production cost and cycle, but also avoids the uncanny valley effect, and we are worried that after achieving extreme realism, it is inconsistent with the three-body game temperament to be presented in the show." Wang said.
The graphics quality of the game in the TV series "The Three-Body Problem" is deliberately close to the production level of 2007.
When preparing scientific props, the team also did a lot of discussions with scientists, and real photography is always the first choice. High-energy particle accelerators and Wang Miao's nanomaterial experiments are shooting opportunities obtained by the prop team after many attempts to compete for the research center, and this kind of live-action shooting also greatly limits the shooting position, shooting time, and shooting cycle. The shooting scene of the particle accelerator can only be used by the crew to use a few hours of maintenance time per week to complete the shooting, and each time it is necessary to coordinate the actors and relevant production departments according to the time of the venue, which virtually increases the difficulty of shooting.
The Liangxiang particle acceleration collider in the play is a real scientific research equipment.
The long production cycle of science fiction works and the slow return of funds are extremely testing the degree of film and television industrialization, and one of the signs of film and television industrialization is whether the problem can be put forward and prepared before filming. In the preparatory stage before the start of filming, the "Three-Body Problem" crew spent nearly a year combing through all the details in the script and preparing the content that needed to be filmed in advance.
The three-body game is an important "prop" to help Wang Miao understand the operation law of the three-body planet, and the relevant content is more than 100 minutes in the play, which is comparable to an animated movie. Since 2018's "Full-Time Master", Tencent Video has tried to use motion capture + CG shooting in the field of TV dramas, which also provides technical accumulation for the production of the three-body game, but for many actors who are exposed to CG shooting for the first time, they still need to adapt and run-in. Visual director Lu Beike made a preview animation in advance, "When we tell the actor, we have a script on the one hand and a preview animation on the other, telling him what the environment around where he stands in this scene is. Wang said.
After the 15th episode of Qin Shi Huangren was broadcast on the computer, the entry "Three-Body Problem Episode 15 Feng Shen" on Weibo appeared on the hot search.
The highly anticipated "Guzheng Action" in "The Three-Body Problem" also made a 30-minute complete animation from storyboard to dynamic rehearsal to soundtrack before the actual shooting. "All the staff were holding this cartoon, shooting this big scene one shot at a time." Yang Lei said.
Among them, the cutting of the main Panamax boat is the most difficult to achieve. In order to restore the flakes of the hull after being cut by the "flying edge", it is necessary to find the kinetic data of the large steel ship after it is cut for testing, but the existing research has not analyzed the final result of stress deformation after putting metal and a variety of materials together, Lu Beike can only use the computer over and over again for dynamic testing, simplify the material level of the ship's steel body, highlight the gravity of the ship and the excitement of distortion, and finally simulate a good picture effect. This "Guzheng Action" scene ended up in less than half an hour in the finished film, but the team prepared for nearly 4 months and filmed for 27 days.
In addition, in Liu Cixin's writing, the Red Bank Base is built along the mountain, and the mountains are far away, and it is difficult to find a scene in the real world that can fully present the location relationship in the novel. The crew eventually divided the mountains into 7-8 exterior locations and a dozen interior scenes, building a smaller scale of the base interior and exterior. The difficulty of this operation lies in how to integrate the interior and exterior scenes scattered in Miyun, Northeast Heihe and other places without traces. To this end, the crew produced a preview animation in advance, shooting and scanning the digital data of many mountain peaks in late summer, early autumn and winter, shooting the shots of the giant parabolic antenna strictly according to the preview animation, and finally synthesizing the antenna made by special effects into each mountain peak shot.
The Red Bank base in the TV series "The Three-Body Problem".
Tencent Video also matched the most luxurious promotional resources for "The Three-Body Problem". In order to promote "The Three-Body Problem", Tencent Video designed the "Goose Factory Science Fiction Season" feature, integrating the four channels of TV series, movies, animation, and documentaries with knowledge paid sci-fi-related content, and also launched the personalized skin function of the bottom page on the platform for the first time, as long as you open the "Three-Body Problem" interface of Tencent Video, you can see the bottom page different from other TV series. As a sci-fi drama with a high viewing threshold, in order to reduce the difficulty of users understanding the plot of "The Three-Body Problem", Tencent Video, Tencent News, WeChat and other platforms launched manuscript solicitation activities, and cooperated with multiple reading platforms to attract traffic, promoting the output of multi-dimensional short video content such as plot analysis and character history.
In addition, throughout the Spring Festival, the broadcast of "The Three-Body Problem" and the release of the movie "The Wandering Earth 2" drove the popularity of Chinese science fiction content. "From the background, you can also see that the content related to the sci-fi season has increased exponentially compared to before." Sun Hongzhi, head of the TV drama IP operation center of Tencent's online video platform operation department, said.
Judging from the current reputation, the first part of "The Three-Body Problem" is successful, but the special effects shots involved in the latter two and the difficulty of production far exceed the first, which also means a longer development cycle. On February 3, at the finale screening of "The Three-Body Problem", Tencent officially announced that it would continue to produce the second season of the "Three-Body Problem" TV series "Dark Forest", and launched a separate side story for the well-received role of the history. In addition, Tencent also officially announced the sci-fi drama matrix, in addition to "The Three-Body Problem", it will also develop sci-fi projects such as "Stars" and "The Abyss of Time" in July.
"In this long cycle, if you want to maintain this popularity, continuous long-term operation is the key." Sun Hongzhi said. In the future long-term operation, on the one hand, Tencent Video will carry out pre-marketing of the development of the entire project, and continuously release important time nodes such as the preparation process, the role lineup of the next film, start-up, and finalization to meet the expectations of the audience. On the other hand, after the end of the series, it will continue to release undisclosed tidbits and documentaries and other in-depth interpretation content, and continue to provide more information to users who care about "The Three-Body Problem" by operating IP-related short video platform accounts and holding activities such as crew reunions at the right time. Related IP-derived content such as peripherals and knowledge payment will also be launched one after another, giving users more consumption choices.
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