April 9, 2023 | Issue 3200 in total
"Dark Fire" is a love story with a sense of suspense, the story takes place in Qingshui Town around 2000, Nanya and Zhou Luo are a beautiful woman who was abused by domestic violence, and a genius teenager who dropped out of school.
None of them belong here, but they are stuck here today and want to leave together.
Although it tells the story of the post-80s, the love relationship and values of Nanya and Zhou Luo are actually very modern, and "Dark Fire" is also a personal expression of director Yao Xiaofeng in recent years.
Sibling love is popular in domestic dramas. It captures the emotional gaps in the social fabric and also conveys progressive narratives from a female perspective.
In the same type of drama to be broadcast, "Dark Fire" starring Tong Yao and Zhang Xincheng is a very anticipated one that netizens are looking forward to. It is sibling love, and it is not only sibling love.
Nanya, a beautiful woman played by Tong Yao, suffers from domestic violence; And the genius teenager Zhou Luo played by Zhang Xincheng is smart and infatuated. Such a hero and heroine character allows the audience to smell a hint of redemption, and also makes people perceive the strong tension and resistance between the two siblings.
Resistance comes from the "inopportune time" of their feelings. The story of "Dark Fire" takes place around the millennium, and the male and female protagonists live in a small town, you can imagine how much social customs and public opinion violence they have to endure under the human society. Moreover, the relationship between Nanya and Zhou Luo is also mixed with murder.
Sibling love dramas with such a style of painting can hardly find benchmark works on the market, "but it is such a special story that ignites director Yao Xiaofeng's desire to create." Chief producer Zhang Shuwei said.
At present, "Dimly Fire" is in post-production, and the film and television monologue has watched some episodes in advance. Unlike expectations, this story carries more abundant and complex things outside the siblings and within the town, about female resistance, about the growth of teenagers, about escaping the small town, and more about courage.
The following is Zhang Shuwei's narration.
Tong Yao + Zhang Xincheng, interpreting "Torn Love"
The story of "Dark Fire" takes place in Qingshui Town around 2000, the town is not very developed, and there is only a waterway to enter the town outside, and Nanya and Zhou Luo actually do not belong to the town.
Zhou Luo loves Nanya by sex. At first, I thought this woman was beautiful and had a sexual impulse, and then slowly understood the poems she wrote, to understand her, and found that the two were spiritually connected, and later they wanted to escape here. But on the eve of leaving, there was a murder case, the two people did not make it, and the police opened up their stories little by little in the process of solving the case.
Director Yao Xiaofeng
The director personally likes this story, he feels that many teenagers may have experienced such a mental journey, but some have become love, and some are a secret love. At the end of 2021, we set off from Beijing to see the scenery in many places, including Jiangsu, Anhui, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and later came to Wuyuan, and the director liked this place.
He wanted to photograph the primitive state of life in 2000 when people walked and bicycled, Wuyuan was relatively isolated from the world, and there were mountain roads, the houses were staggered, and whoever went to visit the door had to climb up, and the shooting was very three-dimensional, and then we decided to shoot there.
The male and female protagonists were determined in the process of preparing for the scouting.
At that time, Tong Yao's "Home of the Heart" had just been completed, and after returning to Beijing, I made an appointment with the director for tea in our company, and we settled this matter while drinking tea.
Nanya is a multi-faceted character with many personalities, by no means a simple wife and mother, and Tong Yao felt that such a role was very attractive to her at that time. In addition, she has actually acted in costume dramas, period dramas and urban dramas, and has not yet taken over suspense love, so she took it.
Tong Yao acting in this drama, I think it is a bold attempt, "Dark Fire" to change which actress to shoot, there is a lot of pressure. Because the filming process is actually quite destructive, whether it is the filming of domestic violence, or the tearing love between the heroine and the teenager, the scale is very large, plus the filming is winter, wet and cold, as soon as she turns on she begins to be allergic, it is really not easy to shoot, but Tong Yao has always been very cooperative with us in shooting.
Zhang Xincheng showed him the script a long time ago, and the feedback he gave me was very fond.
Before this, I didn't know Zhang Xincheng very well, but a friend introduced me that this actor play is very good. One of the things that attracted me to Zhang Xincheng at that time was that there was something in his eyes that was beyond a teenager, which would make people feel a sense of secret, because Zhou Luo was a teenager with a heavy heart, looking smart, bold, and thoughtful, and I felt that Zhang Xincheng had it all.
When we filmed this drama, we were in a very closed environment, and the actors did not ask for leave, and everyone was afraid to jump out and come back, which was not the state of 2000. And the director is more strict with the actors, don't act, come really, we basically immerse ourselves in filming, and the actors get along very well.
Suspense shell, small town ecology
"Dark Fire" is a love story with a bit of suspense, the love story of the male and female protagonists is presented to the audience through the policeman played by Ye Zuxin, and the heroine has an intricate character relationship, involving more than one murder.
When we made the script, we thought about what to use to support the audience to watch it.
The earliest directors wanted a script structure like Rashomon, interrogating each episode at the beginning, looking at "What happened on the night of the killing?" from the perspective of different people. Some people tell the truth, some tell lies, some hide things for their own family, and some people participate in the case, and every family in the town is entangled.
But the difference in the structure of Rashomon is in the subtleties, and it is difficult to understand. If the general environment has not changed, if you keep repeating this night, it may make the audience tired, so we made relatively large structural adjustments in the later stage.
Yao Xiaofeng was at the scene
Secondly, the ecology of the town is what we want to present, and we added a lot of small town fireworks to this story. For example, the small-town police are eating breakfast while solving cases, and the police are actually ordinary people who live an ordinary life every day.
Tian Xiaojie played the policeman Lao Chen is the epitome of the ecology of the town, his daughter was once the heroine's best friend, loves melon seeds, very good at cooking, the best food in Qingshui Town is in Lao Chen's house, he often carries a chicken and buys a vegetable after work, the news of this street inquires, which family knows what happened, he belongs to this town. And Tian Xiaojie is from Jiangxi, he is very comfortable on the set, it can be said that he is completely integrated.
When filming this drama, the director spent a lot of energy on "making love complete and moving", although Zhou Luo is a teenager, his emotional outlook is quite mature. We filmed for four months, which was time-consuming, and the script had a lot of montages to show the soul collision between the male and female protagonists.
Although there is a suspenseful shell, we will not want to darken the color in the later stage, and will try to adjust the bright feeling, such as the feeling that we want the summer sunlight to spill from the gaps in the branches, and hope that no matter what the male and female protagonists have experienced, their hearts have always been sunny, and they have always had love.
The story of the old world, the courage of the present
"None of us belong here, but we're stuck here today, and then we're going to leave together."
This is the emotional link between the male and female protagonists. The town we were looking for was surrounded by water and had little connection with the outside world, and the tone of the story of "Dimly Fire" required us to shoot its sense of isolation.
The little policeman played by Ye Zuxin and the teenager Zhou Luo are actually top students, who have returned after leaving the town, and there is a set of mirror relationships.
The former is a very painful character, he and the heroine were classmates when they were teenagers, and then the heroine went to the factory and did not go to college. He himself went to the provincial capital in college, chose a good girlfriend to become the son-in-law of the golden turtle, and returned to the town to solve the case when the future was good. In the process of solving this case, he found that he had courage as a teenager, just like Zhou Luo, but then he lost it and chose a very safe and stable life, and now Zhou Luo let him see him.
Nanya is incompatible with Qingshui Town, so she wants to divorce and leave. Even though she suffered a lot of criticism, she did not endure it. It's just that she hasn't seen the outside world, Zhou Luo went to Beijing for an interview, and brought her a lot of photos when she went back, and she yearned for it very much.
Now there is no such thing, there is no small town that cannot escape, you can buy a ticket and leave, it takes a lot of determination to get out of the town back then, especially if a woman divorces with a child and wants to leave, it is difficult.
We chose the time to solve the case in the millennium, on the one hand, we need the audience to return to the social atmosphere at that time to understand the feelings and courage of the male and female protagonists, on the other hand, this is a very ceremonial time node.
At the dawn of the new century, people have to make wishes to welcome a new life, and the wish of the male and female protagonists is to leave the town, and as a result, one person dies, and it is not done. This day is more meaningful than all the time.
Although it tells the story of the post-80s generation, the relationship and values between Nanya and Zhou Luo are actually quite modern. Over the years, director Yao Xiaofeng has made a lot of family ethics dramas, rarely telling about love, and this "Dark Fire" is a time when the director's personal expression is relatively full.
Zhang Shuwei (second from right) at the scene
Now the market environment is becoming more and more stringent, especially for copyright dramas. I hope "Dimly Fire" airs well, but in terms of the volume of broadcasts, I don't set expectations. We are a very rational team, shoot well, and do a solid job of content, but the beautiful mentality that the male and female protagonists have courage no matter what situation they are in is what we want to pass on to the audience.
【Text/Flying Fish】