Author / Zheng Yonghe
Editor / Zhu Ting
Operations / Cookies
Douban score 9.0, 9.1, 9.2!
Directed by Xin Shuang, the suspense drama "Long Season" starring Fan Wei, Qin Hao, Chen Minghao and Li Gengxi has exploded in word of mouth. The opening score was 9.0, which rose to 9.1 after the sixth episode update, and quickly appreciated 9.2 after the seventh episode update last night, ranking first on the Douban real-time hot list, becoming the highest-rated domestic drama on Douban so far in 2023.
"The Long Season" tells a series of unexpected stories about several families in a small northern city "Birch Forest" that spans nearly 20 years of history.
There are no gray and cold color filters, no eerie and inexplicable soundtracks, and no startling close-up shots. The overall plot rhythm is soothing, and the style is very life-flowing, but the background is set in the era of the laid-off tide, and the calmest brushstrokes are used to depict "a person, a group of people, a generation, how time and that era drove by them, and what kind of traces were left on them." "Solving the case is a shell, and after prying open, it is a personal fission.
In the past two years, suspense dramas have bombarded wildly but have not produced works that surpass "The Silent Truth" and "Hidden Corner", and three years later, "The Long Season" tells the creators of suspense dramas with a score of 9.2 (which will continue to rise by sight), whether you are Benge reasoning, social or Hitchcockian, what the audience really cares about is the story itself.
Xin Shuang, who is also the director of "Hidden Corner", handed over his masterpiece "Long Season" after nearly three years to achieve self-transcendence. On the day of the latter's opening, he wrote the four words "Thank you to the audience" on Weibo. To borrow the words of the fans of the circle of friends: "The awesome director is still thanking the audience for making a great work, and the stupid director is still scolding the audience when he makes a stupid scene, can you copy a few more?!" ”
Douban 9.2, the long northeast past
"The Long Season" is not a strong suspense work, and even the suspense of the main line is far less touching than "Hidden Corner". But I have to say that Xin Shuang's grasp of the details of the era atmosphere and life flow of the series is indeed in place.
The story begins with a deck case, in 2016, Gong Biao, played by Qin Hao, spent his savings and bought a taxi car with fraudulent license plates, the vehicle was involved in an accident, and there was a case of injury, and the identity information of the person hit was unknown. The vehicle was detained by the police, and Gong Biao had to find a way on his own. Brother-in-law Wang Xiang (played by Fan Wei) actively helps Gong Biao find a car to find someone, and in the process meets the deaf and mute man related to his son many years ago.
So, in 1997, 1998 and 2016, three timelines, three story lines, two eras were connected.
On one side are the lost father, the dead lover, the reunited old friend; On the other side, there is a wave of layoffs, social unrest, corpse crushing, sexual assault, and missing girls, and three story lines are interspersed back and forth.
Featuring a prominent sense of formal music design, a group of powerful actors, and no violent marketing, the advantages of "The Long Season" breaking out are actually very prominent.
The first is narrative differentiation.
The series focuses on the three old detective lines, without deliberately spending pen and ink to tell the changes of the times, nor any narration assistance that treats the audience as fools. But as the story progresses, related characters gradually appear, and the unknown sad past behind it gradually emerges.
Yes, "The Long Season" constructed a soothing and calm daily life style suspense drama, and it succeeded.
This is not an easy decision to make.
Life flow narrative means that the overall story will not advance too fast, and it needs to rely on a large number of character plot details to advance, so that the style will naturally not have too much so-called dramatic reversal design.
But metaphysically, in the first quarter of 2023 and the past two years, after all kinds of mysterious and doubtful arrays to blow up large-scale suspense dramas, compared with the operation that the bugs behind the early stage of constantly raising expectations but could not be filled, the choice of "The Long Season" made it play a differentiated card.
The second is the differentiation of style.
Like many crime suspense films in recent years, "The Long Season" is set in the northeast of the last century. The difference is that the director did not choose to use the cold environment of the murder case to amplify the heaviness brought by the murder case and disappearance like Northeast suspense dramas such as "Double Detective" and "Moses on the Plain". Instead, he chose to use bright warm colors to present the rough waves behind the seemingly calm life on the surface.
The environment is bright, but the story is grim and chilling, the deck case, the shredding case, the sexual assault case, the wave of layoffs, the mystery of the death of the son... The pace of the story seems slow, but halfway through the 7 episodes, almost all the clues that emerge have emerged.
Cornfield planted by the crew
The main story line of the first episode emerged: Many years ago, Wang Xiang's son Wang Yang was involved in the corpse crushing case and died.
In the second, third and fourth episodes, Hualin Steel Mill faced bankruptcy in 98, and Wang Xiang, the technical backbone of 98, was also in a difficult situation, his wife's heart stent reimbursement was delayed, and the wave of layoffs was coming, and at the same time the corpse shredding case occurred; Gong Biao's life was not satisfactory, and the horse policeman became the king of dance and Wang Xiang, who was obsessed with finding the truth of his son's case, and the three gathered.
In this process, fragments of the corpse continued to appear, and all the clues pointed to the fact that the case of dividing the corpse was related to Shen Mo. Wang Yang, Shen Mo, deaf and dumb teenagers, the trend of this group of relationships has become the biggest case eye so far.
Then there's the differentiation of the perspective of entry.
"Hidden Corner" is 3 "bad boys", and "Long Season" is cut from the story of 3 old men, Qin Hao who wears special effects makeup, Chen Minghao who wears old people's makeup, and Fan Wei who feels like walking with gray hair.
But the story is not an old urchin angle like "Trident".
Xin Shuang cuts in with a group of elderly people to tell the story of how a generation is aging. In the life of small talk and gags, times go away, buildings collapse, they are old, they are alive, they are trapped. Director Xin Shuang said in an interview, "The northeast can also be colorful, the sky can be very sunny, and everyone is actively living", but the giant ship of the times has run over, and no one can not leave scars.
Finally, there is the most important point, the composition of small characters, is the biggest shining point of this play.
In the sixth episode where the rating rises from 9.0 to 9.1, Xing San'er tricks Wang Yang into entering the finance room, and slanders Wang Yang for stealing, using Wang Yang's future as a threat to humiliate Wang Xiang. One second it also made people itch their teeth, applauding Wang Yang's national essence, and the next second, in 2016, the aging Xing San, with a urine bag on his body, a worn and gray coat, holding an egg to find Wang Yang, the scene was very sad.
Especially when he looked at Wang Xiang and asked, "Still stay here", Wang Xiang replied "I am afraid that Wang Yang will not find a home when he comes back", why this season is so long, it seems that there is an explanation at once.
When everyone thought that the sixth episode was a god, the seventh episode was even better, and the Douban score rose to 9.2.
X theater, theater can not be supported by a single type?
Say the important thing three times, this is not a theater of the fog! This is not a theater of the mist! This is not a theater of the mist!
In 2020, Xin Shuang became famous with "Hidden Corner". After 3 years of silence, this year returned with "The Long Season" and handed over another representative work with 9.2 points.
On the same day that the score of the play rose to 9.1, Tencent announced the launch of X Theater, a cluster theater of Chinese short dramas. It will include a variety of high-quality short dramas such as realistic suspense, era legends, and costume detectives. Not divided by type, bounded by short.
Xin Shuang + Theater, which is inevitably reminiscent of the Misty Theater that has been gone for three years.
In 2020, "Hidden Corner" and "The Silent Truth" erected signboards for the first season of the Mist Theater, which was also at the peak of iQiyi's market value. According to the 2020 iQIYI Annual Report, a total of 68 million members watched the Mist Theater, accounting for 66.8% of the subscription members that year. In 2021, the reputation of "Misty Theater" was almost completely destroyed, but the overall advertising revenue doubled compared with last year.
To some extent, this is the effect brought by the peak of the first season, and it also reflects the effectiveness of the theater's brand operation. It doesn't last, but it works.
In 2022, major video platforms will continue to bet on suspense dramas, and according to Yien data, suspense dramas accounted for 9.7% of the drama genre in 2021 and rose to 12.6% in 2022.
This year, the Mist Theater, which is at the forefront, has entered the third season, except for "Thirteen Years of Dust" has retained its reputation, branding perspective, and has not yet created a Disney-like IP that can achieve long-term monetization. Even when it was new, the platform itself did not shout loudly.
But the original theatrical operation still wants to solve the problem - how to retain paying users and advertisers in the long term.
The Theater of the Mist was trapped in a fog.
The Youku Suspense Theater, which fought vigorously back then, was also ruthless, and took out the series "The Gate of Rebirth", "Ice Rain and Fire" starring Chen Xiaowang Yibo, "Cloister Pavilion" adapted from Keigo Higashino's novel, and the two-unit drama "Outside the Court" with parallel narrative in space and space. The series received mixed reviews, and the theater brand was almost completely unformed.
Mango has also long made the Monsoon Theater a distribution center for experimental dramas, and is comfortable cramming all kinds of dramas into this category.
Suspense dramas are strong genres, and the most important thing is the solidity of the script. This kind of emphasis means that this type of work cannot be used to whitewash the shortcomings of the script with whether the actor is famous, whether the director is famous, and whether the starring actor has traffic. The Misty Theater tossed for three years, and the peak was still stuck in its initial beginning.
Strong genres are attractive, but they're also really hard to do.
Now, Tencent has lifted up to X theater after the hit of "The Long Season", but not just for suspense. Aiyoutengmang, the theater brand has been engaged for three years, and the operation of suspense theater has become more and more difficult, and now in this situation, the choice of video platforms for theatrical projects will inevitably expand the type.
"The Long Season" is a good demonstration for suspense +.
This story, finished in October 2021, the script was polished for half a year, the 12-episode story was filmed for 107 days, and it took half a year to edit 5 versions, and another half a year to complete the period, color grading, recording, soundtrack, and then online.
The long season, the completion process is also really long, and this long is so scarce in this era of pursuit of shortness and excitement.
It is difficult to equate this long patience and polishing with the relationship between high-quality finished products, but just like Mango TV's experience in writing over and over again in the field of variety shows: in the content industry, what cannot be replicated is never the model and concept, but the people and the content itself.
Reference: T Chinese edition: "Xin Shuang pushes stones up the mountain for the second time";
Images: Douban, Weibo, Tencent Video.