Text/Grand Entertainer
Probably no one could have imagined that the drama version of "Moses on the Plain" would meet the audience earlier than the movie version, and what was more unexpected was that the original 6-episode suspense miniseries of "Theater of the Mist" gave people the illusion of a seven-and-a-half-hour "author's movie".
Although many viewers feel that the pace of this drama is too slow and the sense of suspense is not enough to be put into the "Misty Theater", almost no one can deny the unique lens language and scene restoration of this work, and the audiovisual experience of photography, editing, sound effects and other elements built together, making the play present a film texture that is rare in domestic dramas.
In the past, domestic dramas loved to pursue the so-called "American drama texture", that is, fast-paced storytelling. As more and more film directors participate in streaming online dramas, "cinematic" has become a new standard that major platforms are self-evidently longing for.
However, after so many years, it is not difficult for the directors to put down their bodies to shoot online dramas, whether it is Guan Hu, Feng Xiaogang or Wang Xiaoshuai, and even Zhang Yimou, who advised Zhang Ziyi not to make money in the early years, also officially announced that he wanted to make online dramas, but the difficulty is how to really let these film directors bring a sense of cinema to online dramas.
Feng Xiaogang's new drama "Echo"
From this perspective alone, "Moses on the Plain", directed by Zhang Dalei and produced by Diao Yinan, is one of the very few works that has successfully done so.
In fact, it is not only "Moses on the Plain", in the past two or three months of works with topical voices, "The Three-Body Problem" and "Who Is He" have also been more or less praised for having a "cinematic" presence in some specific scenes.
Of course, from some dimensions, blindly emphasizing the sense of cinema seems to have become a euphemism for a work with no other merits, thus making the "cinematic sense" a subtle existence, only suitable for decorating the façade, but not making a hit.
However, content creation may not be based on the premise of "creating a blockbuster", with today's long-form video streaming media has a near-monopoly on film and television content, the continuous exploration and boundary expansion in genre and style is more important than in the past.
The so-called pursuit of cinematic sense is not only to create publicity gimmicks for the platform, but also to create continuous adventures in content.
Compared with algorithmic recommended content that always keeps people in their comfort zone, long videos still retain the space for creators to exert their creativity, and creators with personal styles can finally bring the differentiation that the platform craves, and the latter is obviously a scarce product of the current era of content explosion.
The possibility of "alternative online dramas" is precious
Changes in the long-form video content market have been discussed too many times in the past two years, and the so-called "cost reduction and efficiency increase" is actually very simple, by streamlining the amount of content to maximize the quality of content.
Although the relationship between the two is not a logical relationship between the two trade-offs, from the final performance, there has indeed been an increase in the number of well-known works in the content market in the past two years, and more importantly, even if they are not works, they can become popular as they wish, and the platform's ability to produce works above the passing line has also been significantly improved.
Of course, in addition to annual topical masterpieces such as "Menghualu" and "Crazy", the attempt of long video on the content side is actually far more than improving quality and reducing quantity, multi-oriented drama works have begun to appear, and meeting diversified needs is not only staying in genre creation, but beginning to further extend to the stylization and authorship level.
"Menghualu" stills
Therefore, no matter from which angle you look at it, the drama version of "Moses on the Plain" can be called an "alternative online drama", not only anti-genre but even anti-trend.
In terms of form, a total of six episodes, a single episode is about 70 minutes long, which may not be a new thing for audiences accustomed to watching British and American miniseries, but it poses a very challenge to the viewing habits of mainstream audiences of domestic online dramas.
In terms of content, this suspense drama labeled as "Misty Theater" also runs counter to the strong plot, fast pace, extreme characters, dense reversal and other modes emphasized by most of the popular domestic suspense online dramas in the past few years.
In "Moses on the Plain", there is no such ups and downs, such as the first episode of the real murder has come to the last few minutes, and there are not even positive and negative characters in the traditional sense, the protagonist and supporting roles have been blurred like never before in this drama, and many passers-by will be taken care of by the director's generous shots. It can be said that the core element of the entire series is a long and slow life, paired with a constantly changing external era.
Not surprisingly, the appearance of such a work is destined to cause great controversy, while breaking the expectations of the audience for "Misty Theater", director Zhang Dalei's undisguised personal style display also makes this series show another possibility of current online dramas - aesthetics and style first rather than blindly emphasizing strong narrative and fast pace.
The outside world's emphasis on the "cinematic sense" of the play is actually somewhat inseparable from this "alternative" that attaches importance to personal style and visual aesthetics.
In fact, cinematic sense is a very difficult indicator to define, from the earlier "River God", "Undocumented Crime" to "White Night Chase" to "Hidden Corner", these dramas have been successively titled with American drama texture or cinematic sense. Digging deeper, the core elements are actually more use of complex shot scheduling, fast-paced multi-line narrative, and more detailed post-grading and soundtrack use.
A still from "Chasing the Murderer in the White Night"
Some of these elements undoubtedly appear in "Moses on the Plain", and the producer of this series, Qi Kang, has actually been involved in the creation of "Undocumented Crime" before.
The core configuration of the creative team of "Moses on the Plain" can almost be said to be no less than many domestic films, not only the high participation of director Zhang Dalei himself, Diao Yinan, who is the producer, but also added director of photography Lu Songye, editing director Liao Qingsong, sound director Hao Gang, music director Yoshihiro Hanno and other Golden Horse Award regulars.
The deep participation of these senior filmmakers has indeed given "Moses on the Plain" a far better image and sound texture than ordinary domestic online dramas, a large number of directors have long been familiar with long-shot scheduling and third-person perspective narrative, very restrained but appropriate soundtrack selection, and relying on art settings to shape the sense of age and restore life scenes.
A still from "Moses on the Plain"
At the same time, the whole drama does not actually pursue a strong narrative that cannot be separated from genre works, and each single episode no longer relies on setting suspense as a plot drive to attract the audience, and the entire six-episode story is more like a three-act drama structure in the classic sense. Therefore, the cinematic sense of this drama no longer just relies on the existence of a certain imitation movie element, but more like because the creator has been making movies from the beginning, but it was eventually broken down into 6 episodes of online dramas.
It is understandable that many audiences are dissatisfied with the narrative rhythm or story arrangement of "Moses on the Plain", especially in the sequence of "Theater of the Mist", which strengthens people's expectations of seeing a fast-paced suspense story. However, for today's domestic dramas, it is actually far more valuable to be able to break the audience's original expectations in the form of positive feedback, thereby further expanding the image aesthetics of online dramas than trying to replicate the success of "Hidden Corner" or "The Silent Truth".
Next episode competition tiebreaker:
Expand aesthetic thresholds
In fact, the cinematic sense brought by "Moses on the Plain" is more derived from the intuitive comparison of more traditional film and television content and online audiovisual products, even if more and more boutique dramas have gradually made up for the shortcomings in narrative, but in terms of image style or audiovisual language, these contents are actually not much new, which has a certain degree of dislocation with the continuous production level of the long video platform and the platform's audio and video specifications.
As mentioned earlier, in the past, it was often difficult for film directors to "deign" to make online dramas to really bring the audiovisual language of the film into the series, and many times the participation of the directors was more like a name, and the style of their previous films could not be found at all from the final product.
Among them, there is not only the problem of insufficient participation of the director himself, but also the platform obviously does not give enough resources to give him enough space to play.
This is clearly different from Martin Scorsese's "Atlantic Empire" for HBO, David Fincher's "House of Cards" and "Mind Hunter" directed by Netflix, and Park Chan-wook's "Female Drummer" for the BBC, in these series, the director's personal film style accumulated over the years can almost be vividly displayed.
A still from "House of Cards (Season 1)"
And David Fincher, who is deeply bound to Netflix, because of his preference for RED 4K cameras and his signature "frigid" color grading style, has become almost a core element of some Netflix technical standards, affecting all subsequent Netflix original works. This stylized learning actually lays the cornerstone of streaming media creation.
Although Zhang Dalei is far less famous than many film directors who have also participated in online dramas, what is valuable is that he has established his personal image style and aesthetic expression in film creation early, and has really injected this style into the series, whether it is the purification of life scenes in the original novel, or the display of the life state of the characters, it shows a strong image style and aesthetic choices different from ordinary online dramas, such as almost no narration and subtitles to explain the time and space background. Rely entirely on the language of the lens to show change.
This is actually the value of the cinematic sense of "Moses on the Plain", which is no longer a simple stacking of genre elements or a blockbuster formula imitation, but a natural expression of the creator's style. From the final Douban evaluation and score, 7.7 points can now be ranked in the top five of 13 "Misty Theaters", which indirectly proves that today's long-form video audiences are not without the aesthetic needs of film and television.
Screenshot of Douban
Today's platforms understand that the quality of content has become the core of competition, which is why major platforms continue to advocate the industrialization of film and television, hoping to achieve sustainable supply of high-quality content with more scientific investment.
But if the platform only formulaically shoots the so-called "popular genre", like the endless suspense dramas in the past two years, sooner or later the audience will still have aesthetic fatigue, just like the fantasy traffic ancient puppet dramas in the past.
The most serious result of this is that the entire industry will return to the previous boring involution - constantly looking for the most inverted suspense stories, inviting several middle-generation actors and big directors, investing a lot of money, and finally shooting extremely mediocre things.
In order to get out of this situation, what platforms need is to constantly find differentiation in the industrialization model, stay competitive and eventually establish platform characteristics.
At this stage, the mechanism of creation needs to begin to be artistically oriented. Boldly give power to directors who really have creative desires and personal style, rather than just looking for someone to go through the scene, but cannot really inject personal style into the work.
This is actually why HBO finally stood out from the golden age of the last wave of American dramas.
Compared with film studios caught in the IP competition, the producers of series are more open to the needs of creators. It is not difficult to understand why more and more film directors have moved closer to American dramas in the past decade. Martin Scorsese told a friend while working on the pilot episode of Atlantic Empire for HBO: "I feel like I'm back in the 1970s and doing what I love in my own style. ”
A still from "Atlantic Empire (Season 1)"
Just like any content product that has been popular for a while but has gradually stagnated, China's long-form video has actually reached a moment when it needs to start thinking about how to go further in creation.
Whether to repeatedly create industrialized content that the audience cannot see, or to create new and imaginative works. This is actually the real meaning of adventure - it cannot be accurately calculated, and it can be converted into box office or popularity manufacturing on the basis of data research, but there may be no next adventure this time.
Youai Tengmang is obviously in action, just as another 6-episode online drama "My Altay" is about to start, what kind of artistic configuration is needed to adapt the online drama of the essay collection, the shooting time of two months, plus the filmmaker combination such as producer Dapeng and director Teng Congcong, what kind of new aesthetic will be brought about.
What we really need to encourage is not simply the "cinematic sense" that can be seen on the surface, but the long video as the source of creation of current mainstream film and television works, no longer just to create blockbusters as the only task, but also gradually prove its ability to express the artistry of online dramas.
Source: Network
While giving the audience almost unlimited choices, it can also give expressive creators more room to play.
After all, the upgrading of the entire industry is not only about hardware, and the final industrialization is actually to serve the arts, and the latter has irreplaceable value at all times.