On November 30, 2022, Beijing time, the Shenzhou 15 astronauts successfully entered the Chinese space station, and the Shenzhou 14 astronauts achieved the "space division" for the first time, which is the first time in the history of China's manned spaceflight to realize the rotation of astronaut crews in orbit, which has since opened the era of long-term manned residence on the Chinese space station.
Looking up at the sky, the Chinese people have been devoting themselves to space exploration and have achieved a qualitative leap in manned space engineering from scratch to quality in 30 years. Let the idea go further, in literature, film and television and other cultural fields, people's imagination about the universe has never stopped, the charm of "science fiction" is that it is based on reality and transcends the constraints of technology, and unfolds the wonderful conjecture of the universe. In 2019, the movie "The Wandering Earth", adapted from Liu Cixin's novel of the same name, was released, which is considered to be the beginning of the first year of Chinese science fiction; At the beginning of 2023, a week before the release of the movie "The Wandering Earth 2", the TV series "Three-Body Problem", which was also adapted from Liu Cixin's novel of the same name, was officially launched, and for a time, two highly anticipated sci-fi giants resonated with the "screen", fully igniting the Chinese sci-fi fever.
As China's first live-action hard science fiction drama, the production quality of "The Three-Body Problem" lived up to expectations, won an unprecedented high reputation and high popularity of Chinese science fiction dramas, officially opened up a new track for Chinese TV dramas to enter the field of science fiction, and also added a strong stroke to China's science fiction film and television production, and its milestone significance is self-evident.
With the 2023 domestic TV series distribution license No. 001 "net label", on January 15, "The Three-Body Problem" was broadcast for 1 hour, and the popularity on Tencent Video Station exceeded 25,000, becoming the fastest drama to break 20,000; In early February, with the opening of the finale, when the drama unveiled the mystery of the famous scene of the original "Guzheng Action", the shocking film and television restoration made the audience angrily hit five stars, and the Douban score of the drama rose all the way from 8.1 to 8.3, putting it all the world, which is a phenomenon that film and television works often appear with the phenomenon that the reputation of the series is gradually declining, "The Three-Body Problem" has become a phenomenal work based on quality, and this "underestimated" strength drama is also being seen by more audiences.
Ingenuity, 7 years of death
Create local Chinese hard science fiction
The sci-fi genre is difficult to navigate, and works on this theme have always been extremely niche in the Chinese market. Behind the milestone turning point of Chinese science fiction is the 7-year "dead" effort, which has finally allowed China's local hard science fiction dramas to be born.
In 2006, the first "Three-Body Problem" began to be serialized in "Science Fiction World" magazine, and countless science fiction fans like director Yang Lei chased this extremely imaginative and so true story at that time; In 2015, "The Three-Body Problem" won the 73rd Hugo Award for Best Long Story, which was the first time an Asian won the award, and for a time, Chinese science fiction ushered in a highlight moment on the world stage, and the film and television of "The Three-Body Problem" also attracted global attention. A year later, Tencent Video Film and Television Annual Conference announced the news that the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" will be produced, how many thousands of expectations, how many doubts, in the current Chinese hard science fiction works that have not yet succeeded, the film and television development of "The Three-Body Problem" is like a military order, this pathfinder, must be done.
Since 2016, the production team of Tencent Video's "Three-Body Problem" has begun a 7-year preparation and dormancy. In 2017, the movie "The Wandering Earth" announced the project, these two sci-fi seeds have experienced the test of China's film and television industrialization level together, reflecting each other in the two fields of drama and film, experiencing storms and tempering, and finally ushered in a breakthrough.
After 4 years of script polishing, in June 2020, "The Three-Body Problem" officially started. In terms of adaptation, for the three main time and space of the real scene in 2007, the game world and the Red Bank base in the 70s in the original work, the drama version of "The Three-Body Problem" has rebalanced the proportions, adjusted the narrative rhythm, and added the life details of characters such as Wang Miao and Shi Qiang, so that the main characters and the secondary characters have complete character personalities. In terms of shooting methods, for sci-fi themes, the series still chooses to shoot with realistic techniques, the more realistic the details, the more credible, under the production principle of faithful to the original, "The Three-Body Problem" breaks through the traditional "scenery + studio shooting" creation mode, and sets the main tone of "can use real scenes and never build".
Yang Lei said frankly, "You can't do science fiction with a sci-fi heart, but do sci-fi with a realistic heart", under extremely cold conditions of minus 30 degrees, the team filmed the Red Bank base part in Heilongjiang; Going deep into the National Nanoscience Center, Beijing Positron Collider National Laboratory, Astronomical Observation Base, etc., scientific research bases that have never been opened to the public for shooting have appeared in the series, and the irreplaceable realism brought by the live shooting has become the background color of "The Three-Body Problem", and the famous scenes that occurred in the past, present, and future three major time and space are truly restored one by one, and the series has exchanged death and ingenuity for a perfect visual presentation.
In terms of narrative rhythm, "The Three-Body Problem" pays more attention to atmosphere creation and psychological portrayal of characters, and the literary drama of self-analysis of group portrait characters is intertwined with the highlight of science fiction imagination, and the idealistic color that is in the same vein as the original work brings a rare realistic temperament to science fiction dramas. At the beginning of the series, there are only 20 pages of story in the novel, "The Three-Body Problem" is carefully laid out with a large proportion of 4 episodes of 180 minutes, why physicists commit suicide because "physics does not exist", this huge question mark runs through the play, thereby rationalizing the suspense narrative clues hidden in "The Three-Body Problem" and launching a journey of searching for the truth across time and space.
Combination of virtual and real, industrialization relay
Visualize highly reproduction of famous scenes
The live-action shooting laid the magnificent tone for "The Three-Body Problem", and the three-body game and special effects display parts that appeared in a large part of the series are a same-screen relay of the industrialization of Chinese dramas.
CG special effects are the top priority of the "Three-Body Problem" series, the total length of more than 100 minutes of three-body game content, covering a large time and geographical span, Qin Shi Huang, Copernicus, Newton and other historical characters appeared one after another, its production volume has been equivalent to an animated movie, this part, the team took more than two years to produce.
On the innovation track, Tencent Video continues to improve and produce, trying and promoting the use and popularization of new technologies in the film and television industry, and the realization of large-scale CG special effects in "The Three-Body Problem" is closely related to Tencent Video's e-sports drama "Full-time Master" broadcast in 2019. As the first film and television drama in China to use motion capture technology on a large scale in filming, the production experience of "Full-time Master" was borrowed and used in "Three-Body Problem", and this technology was optimized and upgraded, and the shocking three-body game scene came from this. It is worth mentioning that the production of this scene also brought together many industry celebrities to participate, Guo Jingyu as King Jun, Jiang Nan as Fuxi, Hou Hongliang as Confucius, Tang Jiasan Shao as Qin Taishiling, Ma Dong as Qin Signal Officer... The polishing of sci-fi masterpieces is inseparable from the industry's bricks, and it is precisely because of the passion for exploring sci-fi that "The Three-Body Problem" can come out of the text and attract more people into the imaginary world of Chinese sci-fi with three-dimensional visual scenes.
The technical breakthrough of "The Three-Body Problem" is not only the visual creation of the three-body game, but also many heavy scenes that need to be integrated into the production of CG special effects. The combination of virtual and real filming and production technologies such as the twinkle of the universe that puzzles the scientific community, the panoramic view of radar peaks and bases covering the four seasons, and the "Guzheng Operation" that destroys large ships with nanotechnology, have made all kinds of seemingly impossible sci-fi imaginations a reality.
According to reports, the difficulty in the special effects production of the "Guzheng Action" part is that no ready-made dynamic data of large steel ships after being cut can be found, and there is no ready-made data analysis of the stress deformation produced by the combination of this comprehensive metal and a variety of different materials, and what kind of result will be formed in the end. From the half-year scene, going to universities to learn ship design theory, to the real simulation of metal stress deformation, the shock of "Guzheng Action" comes from the fact that the physical logic of the real scene shooting echoes the unrealistic imagination, behind the rigorous scientific theory and hand-polished texture, the team has put years of hard work.
Live up to idealism
Be the next enlightenment of Chinese science fiction
"Bugs have never been truly defeated" "Let's maintain a heart for the pursuit of truth and never give up", as a science fiction theme, "The Three-Body Problem" on the basis of expanding the cosmic imagination and technical feasibility deduction, and integrating idealistic sustenance, various ingenious intertexts between reality and technology, leading people beyond impossible boundaries to re-examine the relationship between the future and current life, which is the humanistic core of Chinese science fiction.
At present, Tencent Video has almost become the only Chinese video platform that has invested a large proportion in the sci-fi drama track and continues to invest in it, previously, "Crossfire" and "The Beginning" and other "science fiction +" works continue to stimulate the audience's enthusiasm for watching science fiction works, on February 3, Tencent Video officially announced the list of seven reserved sci-fi films on the occasion of the broadcast of "The Three-Body Problem", including not only the "Three-Body Problem" series "Three-Body Problem II: Dark Forest", the IP-derived extra-drama "Three-Body Problem: Great History", but also won the Nebula Award for Best Long Feature, "Stars", which reveals the secret of space signals, was created by Fu Qiang, a doctor of the Department of Physics of Peking University, "The Abyss of Time" with the infinite flow of Mobius, cracking the code of time and space, and high-concept original masterpieces "Yuandu", "Binary" and "Perfect Body" that show the arc of human nature.
The impact of the successful broadcast of "The Three-Body Problem" is far more than the development of the science fiction track itself, which not only injects strength into the continuous development of Chinese science fiction works, but also brings new science fiction enlightenment to the young generation with high-quality content.
In the long creative process, only enough love can inspire enough courage. Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent and CEO of Tencent Online Video, is a heavy science fiction fan, he is a treasure of many science fiction masterpieces, when he decided to make "The Three-Body Problem", he said that he wanted to make something different from the commercial works of the past, "this is a story led by Chinese and affects all mankind and the universe"; Chief director Yang Lei has been a sci-fi fan since he was a child, and he has been chasing "Science Fiction World" since junior high school, and during the preparation of "The Three-Body Problem", he said that he felt like he was back in his student days and made a bunch of thick notes; Visual director Lu Beike is a science hero who also loves science fiction, and this special effects expert converts the physics knowledge in the book into a visual setting, and fights with an old friend for the science fiction literature he loves.
Inspired by science fiction in his youth, and continued to write science fiction romance with idealistic feelings, the polishing of the "Three-Body Problem" drama version is based on the relay of generations of science fiction dreams, and now, this drama will continue to inspire a new generation of young people, looking forward to Chinese science fiction, which can truly become the norm in the near future.