Text │ Crazy Rabbit
"In the workplace, in the hometown, these plots are also too real. I'm the same way, don't talk to me, please pretend not to see me, I don't like to be lively, don't party, don't be awkward, I just want to stay by myself. "The prince and the maiden, the girlfriend and the bodyguard, the spare tire and the dragon girl, all laugh, and the foot is funny and romantic." "At first, the first episode felt a bit nonsensical, but the development of the plot later was really both fantastic and funny, and there were a lot of solid and unexpected bridges."
Since its inception, the drama "My Babylonian Lovers" has been harvesting praise from different voices, which covers arguments such as "sand sculpture hilarious", "brain hole", "girl fantasy", "social fear real portrayal", "picture texture online", "plot logic self-consistency", "group portrait characters have their own characteristics" and other content from different angles, at the same time, the most intuitive evidence of public opinion is that less than a week after the broadcast, the episode Douban scored a good score of 7.7 points, and continued to maintain the second place in the TV hot list (the first place is "Squid Game"). ）。
From the perspective of story content, "My Babylon Lover" tells the fantasy story of the characters in the diary written by the heroine Chen Meiru primary school in real life and intersects with the characters in reality, and the producer Zhu Mo's positioning of this story is very clear, it is a fantasy love idol drama, and it is also the first female theme of Kung Fu Pictures.
Producer Zhu Mo
"From the perspective of story setting, the reason why I chose the carrier of the diary is that I don't want the story to be too far away from ordinary girls, because the diary is the closest thing to ordinary girls." From another point of view, the diary is a fantasy recording of two little girls, and these two girls reflect most of the girl group portraits, and based on the huge female audience base of the love drama, the original setting of the entire series has been accurately stepped on the audience's resonance point. However, if the story setting is not done well, it will often become an empty shell gimmick over the story, and the audience may open their eyes because of the novelty, but in the end, what can retain the audience is still a solid content foundation.
The sand sculptures burst into laughter and lightly rejoiced out of the circle
In the process of watching "My Babylonian Lover", there are "hahaha" bullet screens everywhere, "sand sculptures are hilarious" and "toe-toe" Behind the involuntary knee jumping reflex of the audience, is the laughter that the creative team has spent a lot of effort to lay.
"One of the core stems of the comedy line is 'go to Wushan together when the love is thick', which is a clever harmonic stem that director Zhou Nan came up with, the female protagonist Chen Meiru wrote this plot, the two little girls did not know that this sentence has a derivative meaning, so when the dead party Jiang Huizhen subconsciously asked 'why come to us Wushan', in fact, it was also for Chen Meiru, who grew up later, and the male protagonist Murong Jaylen really "when the love is thick", the two physically moved to Wushan again and again to pave the way. In this process, some funny plots will naturally collide, and these plots are also reflecting the process of heating up the feelings of the male and female protagonists. ”
In addition to the plot, the characters are also set with a natural sense of joy, because Chen Meiru was only twelve years old when she created Murong Jay Lun, Ouyang Wenshan, and the Nine Heavenly Dragon Girls. Therefore, when these three people appeared in the time and space where Chen Meiru lived, in addition to the misplaced thinking brought about by the growth environment, their bodies were also imprinted with Chen Meiru's naïve, secondary two, and embarrassing innocent thoughts. "From the diary itself, you can actually turn over a lot of interesting tricks, such as the male protagonist Murong Jaylen came to this world with the setting of 'Xiao Yong is good at war, handsome and wild', but he does not have the basic survival skills in this world, he does not understand the boundaries of human interaction, nor is he as rich as Ouyang Wenshan, and he also demolishes his home every day, causing Chen Meiru a lot of trouble."
In contrast, the character of Ouyang Wenshan is more capable of adapting to the new environment, which is also from Chen Meiru's "everything is understood, everything will be" set for him in his diary. "However, he still has places that do not match the world, such as he wants to buy the next place at every turn, and he gives others a gold nugget at every turn, and the way of thinking is still a bit simple and direct." The role of the Nine Heavenly Dragon Girl is the most real psychological reflection of the little girl, she has created a beautiful and flawless love enemy, and her position in the prince's heart has always been above such a perfect person, as if this can prove that she is very special. This kind of careful thinking is actually a little cute. ”
With the rise of short videos such as Douyin Kuaishou, funny content has also ushered in an explosive period, including the fact that many episodes will habitually mix the "light comedy" elements when creating, and we will also fall into another kind of thinking: When most comedy works can't make us laugh, is it that our stomach is raised and the laughter point becomes high? Or is the quality of comedy declining?
In response to this problem, producer Zhu Mo also gave her views. "I think the audience's requirements for comedy have always been very high, of course, the media form and the carrier we receive information are changing, but when we look back at the classic comedy works of the past, the reason why those contents will make the audience laugh on the spot and reminisce later is because they find a resonance point with the audience and poke the audience's heart." 」
Diverse eye-catching, extreme imagination
"In fact, I have always wanted to make an idol drama, which has a lot of choices in the theme, it can be a very realistic style, it can also be very suspended, "Babylon" We are the main fantasy love." 」
And Zhu Mo's so-called "fantasy" is the main plot source that has been rated by the audience as "brain hole".
"Director Zhou Nan and the creative team led by chief screenwriter Zhai Yiwei are really good at 'opening the brain', and such content is also very suitable for everyone's creative style." Of course, as a complete story, in addition to the brain hole, there needs to be enough self-consistent internal logic, so that the audience does not play, there needs to be enough storyline to be used as a content support after the fresh setting, these diary characters appear in the real world, how they speak and act may initially be based on the way the diary content provides, but after that? ”
Zhu Mo said that in the first half of the diary and the real people in the relationship may have some natural funny plots, but has been funny is not able to survive the 24 collective volume of the story, in the whole play creation process, Director Chen Guofu (founder of Kung Fu Pictures) as our most powerful backup, has been repeatedly reminding this matter - all plots must be around the core of the diary. We have to think, behind the "sand sculpture, secondary two", there is a bigger proposition waiting for the protagonist group, that is, will these people who come out of the diary one day leave? Will they gradually develop their own subjective consciousness? What kind of subtle effects will what happens in this world have on them?
In addition to these brain-opening plots, the ancient Babylonian-style graphics are also one of the distinctive features of the series My Babylonian Lovers. Zhu Mo described it as "a serious nonsense about falling in love, and using the practice of large production to complete a light theme." ”
"While our original vision of the story differed from the actual results of the episode, it did achieve the texture we had been insisting on making, and even some parts of it would be beyond imagination."
In order to make the plot of the ancient Babylon part more substitutionary, the main creative team carried out a pre-preparatory work of up to several months, and the work of the art team was placed in advance for eight months, and everyone carried out a lot of data collection and historical research work, and also went to Morocco and Paris in advance to investigate the scene, "When the first creator gathered, we gave director Chen Guofu a project report, the first draft PPT prepared by the team was more than 400 pages, and we streamlined it for a long time, only to delete more than 200 pages..."
Art concept map
"My Babylonian Lover" also carried out "trial shooting" work before the official establishment of the group, which is almost rare in China.
Try to shoot the footage
"Three months before the official start-up, we built a small group in Beijing, rented the machine, and the main creators of various important positions were all in place, and for three consecutive days of trial shooting, we sent an official notice to the actors, when Xiao Yue, Xiao Bu, and Manz all came." Through this trial shoot, the director and the main creator carried out the first run-in, found some deficiencies in advance, and can be warned in advance for adjustment. Of course, the initial effect was also very surprising to us, especially the passage from ancient Babylon, director Zhou Nan and the main creators such as cinematographer Yu Mingyuan, art Chen Weiren, modeling Tan Xiaoshi, executive producer Zhao Peng and other main creators worked together to make a very good visual texture. ”
From left: Chen Weiren, Yu Mingyuan, Zhu Mo, Zhou Nan
The reason why he chose to spend a lot of budget to restore the ancient Babylon scenes, which account for only about two episodes of the overall episode, is because Zhu Mo felt that these scenes had a very important mission of "picture immersion". "If this part is not filmed well, the overall style of the picture will be very cheap and low, then our drama will really become a pure sand sculpture drama, and even everyone's sense of resonance with the fantasy part of the little girl will be weakened."
The topic is front-oriented, and the content is finely polished
"My Babylon lovers" project began in 16 years of pre-development, 18 years into filming, has been more than five years, and in these five years, the drama market has also undergone earth-shaking changes, with the flow of social issues, women's theme dramas have attracted much attention, focusing on contemporary women's survival, workplace, marriage and love and other works from different perspectives to refresh the audience's expectations, and for "My Babylonian Lovers", the broadcast time front is extended, from a certain point of view, it seems to be a windfall.
"I used to do film marketing, and in the experience of working on dozens of films, we will find that there are individual works that are released at that time, it will be a little 'early', the content is good, but the social issues have not yet developed to that stage, which will lead to many audiences not being able to empathize." Judging from the public opinion of "My Babylonian Lover", the audience is driven by laughter and has a deep sense of empathy for the fear and fantasy of the heroine, and the views to be conveyed by the series are broadcast at this point at the right time.
"In fact, in the long post-process, we have been very anxious, I hope that this play can be seen by the audience as soon as possible, but anxiety is useless, we can only do our best to complete the established story, do every detail well, and look forward to it when facing the audience, the story logic is complete, and the production texture is guaranteed." Looking at the audience's reaction now, I feel very relieved that people do not think that this is a work shot a few years ago, but they think it is still very fresh, which shows that our editorial team is very forward-looking. ”
Of course, the so-called forward-looking perspective is only the window for the series to receive attention, and the main creative team's meticulous polishing of the series and story can truly make the audience feel the sincerity of the creators. In the process of polishing, this young production team also encountered many difficulties.
"The biggest difficulty in the early stages was script writing, and both the director and the screenwriter were challenging such a large project for the first time, so we spent a lot of time in the development phase. It took two years to write the script, and many partners contributed. Careful viewers have found that there are two of us in the script planning, Lin Meiru and Zhang Zhen, whose names are the source of the names of the two female characters in the play, and they have paid a lot in the pre-planning of the script. Another planner, Li Wen, is a post-90s generation, she joined from the pre-planning, followed the entire post-production, and accompanied the project for the longest time. Chief screenwriter Zhai Yiwei and two co-screenwriters Yang Yifan and Song Kemin fought the hard battle of the 24-episode script, which was very hard. The whole script creation process, thanks to director Chen's help to young creators, he not only participated in every important script meeting of ours, checked and guided the script of each episode, but also gave us a strong sense of faith, supporting everyone to believe that they can complete the task. ”
Zhu Mo said, "Our play was started in September 2018, when all the actors entered the group 40 days in advance, which is still a pioneering event, and this is still in 2018 when the industry is still extremely hot, the schedule of all the actors is very tight, we are very grateful for the trust of the six leading actors and the agency team." In more than a month of training, we rehearsed every day's course for the actors, including Xiaoyue, Wei Ning, Ruichang's Akadian learning, ancient Babylonian etiquette training, Manzi's Sichuan opera and dance training, Xiaoyue, Zhou You, Ruichang's movement training (Xiaobu also had to practice how to protect himself from injury in action scenes), and the role rehearsals of all the starring actors. This laid a good foundation for months-long shooting. ”
"Now, I'm really happy and proud to see a lot of audiences praising the acting skills and the sense of conviction of these actors. The memory of the first meeting with everyone when I was first casting is still very clear, and I also witnessed the sincere and hard work of the six leading actors in the crew to complete the role. As the audience said, each character in the play is very difficult to perform, and the final result is perfect. ”
The biggest difficulty in the shooting stage, the first is how to allocate the budget reasonably, Zhu Mo's team must ensure the texture of some large scenes, but also have no way to invest uncontrollably, which will inevitably face a cut. The second is the shooting cycle problem, for the young creative team, it is difficult to complete 8-9 pages of shooting per day, in the first month of shooting, the team can only complete an average of 3-4 pages per day, everyone is anxious enough. "So we started preparing for Group B in the second month, and in the final stages of shooting, at most there were four groups shooting at the same time. Here I would also like to thank director Huang Changzuo for his assistance at that time. ”
The biggest difficulty in post-production is editing, "The style of this play is very different, there is no ready-made sample on the market, we are indeed feeling the stones across the river, in the end how to find out the tune that is exclusive to it, can only rely on continuous attempts." After the end of the first round of editing, we are not very satisfied, but do not know where the direction is, at this time or Director Chen immediately decided, suggested that we cut again, this decision is not put forward by him, others do not dare to mention, there is no way to make a decision, because this directly means the increase in budget, the time in the later stage will be dragged out longer, uncontrollable factors will increase a lot ..."
It turned out that the team's decision was very correct, "after the second round of drastic editing changes, under the supervision and guidance of Director Chen, the series took on its current appearance." Looking back now, I am really grateful for the consistently high requirements for the quality of creation in the past few years, and his decades of experience are a huge treasure for us. ”
In addition to the fun and beauty presented in the picture, through the work "My Babylonian Lover", Zhu Mo has one thing he wants to share with the audience the most: every girl is very precious, don't give up your initial imagination of love, don't be forced by social pressure to compromise and make up because you haven't met a satisfactory person for a while. If we haven't met him yet, we can live our lives first. May every girl be cherished, realize her dreams, and meet the person she truly loves.