April 30, 2023 | Issue 3221
Recently, Zibo barbecue has completely caught fire. There are reports that this May Day holiday Zibo will flood with 120,000 tourists. Zibo is a relatively unfamiliar place name. The last time I had an impression was the third season of "A String of Life". Counting further, I am afraid that it will be traced back to those historical dramas that show the "Jixia School Palace".
In fact, compared to Zibo, it is Qingdao that habitually represents the image of Shandong on the screen.
Especially after the completion of the West Coast Oriental Film Capital, many popular movies and dramas chose to shoot in the Oriental Film Capital. For example, the movie "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Walking on the Moon Alone", the just-completed drama "South to North" and so on.
Of course, looking at the whole country, the most "circle-breaking" city on the screen this year is Dali.
A "Go to a Windy Place" made the city with a gentle spring breeze once again reflect the public's field of vision. With the blessing of the series, this city, which already has the attribute of "Internet celebrity", has been hyped even more.
But works like "To a Windy Place" that directly express the filming location are still a minority. In order to explore the main filming locations of domestic dramas, the film and television monologue specially sorted out the story locations and main filming locations of popular dramas in the past two years, and came to the conclusion that urban dramas are fashionable and modern, suspense dramas are divided between north and south, and spy war dramas are all set the tone.
If you don't know where to go, these seven cities that are famous for their film and television filming can be considered nearby: Jiangmen, Chongqing, Xiamen, Hohhot, Haikou, Changchun, Dali. Searching for the plot ruins is a pleasure.
01
The popular urban dramas in recent years are often linked to love and entrepreneurship. And these elements often occur in big cities. Love in a small town will not be put on the screen in the form of an urban drama.
It is either like Zhuang Dezeng (played by Dong Baobao) and Fu Dongxin (played by Haiqing) in "Moses on the Plain", which are classified as suspense dramas; Or like Wang Mani (played by Jiang Shuying) and Director Xiao Zhang (played by Wang Zijian) in "Thirty Only", it belongs to the "idle chapter" of the opening of a sum and cannot be classified in the main line.
Therefore, the filming location of "War of the Roses" was selected as Beijing, Hangzhou was chosen for the filming location of "Even with the Wind", Wuxi was selected for the filming location of "The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise", and Xiamen was selected for the filming location of "Walking to the Wind".
Why are urban dramas filmed in big cities? Because only in prosperous places will different stories be staged day and night. In the small county town in Jia Zhangke's movie, as soon as the sun sets, the only ways of entertainment are Internet bars, barbecues and foot washing. The story of being sold by his girlfriend commercially cannot happen in Ivory Mountain.
"To the Windy Place" presents a different style. It is aimed at precisely those who have spent enough time in the big cities. This is not a propositional essay from Dali, but it was involuntarily made into a "propaganda film". If you want to make such a drama, you have to find those cities that are popular and not so popular, but you can't find them. The popular movie "Changsha Nightlife" is also a bit like Changsha's promotional film. This is the same path.
02
Dragon City is another exception. Since its broadcast, many people have complained about this drama. Some people say that Ma Yili's styling is "non-mainstream", while others say that the bloody narrative is outdated. But the focus of today's discussion is on where it was filmed. "Dragon City" can be regarded as a typical "negative teaching material" in the choice of filming location.
Those who have read Di'an's original book know that the story of the "Dragon City Trilogy" takes place in Taiyuan. Dragon City is also another name for Taiyuan. But the series chose the filming location in Chongqing. Chongqing and Taiyuan are two completely different styles.
The taste of Chongqing is too rich. Its jurisdiction covers an area of 82,400 square kilometers; Taiyuan's jurisdiction area is only 6,988 square kilometers, and if only urban areas are included, this figure will be reduced to 1,460 square kilometers.
What is the concept of 6988 square kilometers? There are 11 prefecture-level cities in Shanxi, of which Taiyuan is the second to last in area, and only Yangquan City, which has a jurisdiction area of 4,451 square kilometers, is smaller than it. The total area of Shanxi Province is 156,700 square kilometers. In other words, the area of two Chongqings added up is equal to one Shanxi.
Big has big fun, small has little rules. The place is small enough for the rules to be the rules. Huo Qubing led his army to attack the Xiongnu, and if he followed the territory of Dongsheng Shenzhou, he would not be able to drink Ma Hanhai when he was eighty years old. Di'an's "Dragon City Trilogy" doesn't necessarily have to take place in Taiyuan, but it does have to happen in a small place. Only in small places where entertainment is boring and nightlife is lacking, private gossip becomes a chew after tea.
As Douban netizens said, "Where is the madness in ethics?" In the environment monotonous, in almost nothing. People have nothing to do, so they have to hurt each other, explore people and hurt people in different ways, which makes these decades a little tasteful. ”
03
Compared with urban dramas that occasionally appear real place names, the place name fiction of domestic suspense dramas is more thorough. In 2020, iQIYI Misty Theater broadcast 5 dramas, 3 of which were filmed in Chongqing - "The Silent Truth", "In Calamity" and "Very Witnessed", and the play became three names: Jiangtan City, Luteng City, and Wujiang City.
Chongqing was once the favorite city for domestic suspense dramas. On the one hand, as mentioned earlier, it is big enough, although they are all filmed in Chongqing, they are all suspense dramas, but you are in Wushan, I am in Fengjie, they are completely two different scenes, even if they can't be clearly distinguished, the audience can see the difference.
On the other hand, Chongqing's regional characteristics make it a natural hotbed for suspense stories to hide, with perennial fog, gloomy, humid and rainy, and a depressing atmosphere anytime and anywhere. Coupled with the labyrinthine terrain of "the first floor down is the eighth floor", it has become the best window for homicide. Not to mention, those old cities that are in ruins, and half-renovated buildings.
Among the popular suspense dramas in the past two years, there is only one work "Thirteen Years of Dust" that filmed Chongqing.
First of all, too many Chongqing scenes were filmed in the first two years, not only the audience's aesthetic fatigue, it is estimated that the main creator and the platform are a little tired. Secondly, filming under the shroud of the epidemic, the focus is not where to go, but where to successfully complete the filming of this drama.
04
Replacing Chongqing as the popular location is Hainan and Xiamen. "Crime Hunting Guide" was filmed in Xiamen, and the filming location of "The Beginning" is also Xiamen; "Punishment" was launched in Haikou, and "Echo" was also stationed in Hainan throughout the process.
These two cities are similar in that they are close to the sea, and you can smell the fishy sea breeze by walking a few steps. Perhaps their temperament is not as treacherous as Chongqing, but coastal cities still have more freedom and unrestrained than inland cities.
If the audience observes carefully, they will find that most of the filming locations of domestic suspense dramas are selected in the south.
The reason is simple, because the south is rainy and humid enough. It rains a lot, the sun does not come out, and there is always a musty smell on the clothes that do not dry. More water means developed transportation, developed transportation is often economically developed, even small cities, there will be more strangers than inland. They are all acquaintances, and the case can be solved by the neighborhood committee.
05
It is also not a domestic suspense drama located in the north, and such works are often set in the northeast.
The northeast presented on the screen usually has two faces. First, it is the comedy style of the TV series era jointly generated by "Northeast Family", "Ma Dashuai" and "Country Love". The second is the coldness of the era of movies and online dramas, such as "Daylight Fireworks", "Undocumented Crime", "Coward" and so on. Although the faces are different, the core is actually the same: the northeast wave of layoffs. The economy is down, life is miserable, some people are cornered, and some people are desperate.
"Coward"
Filming suspense dramas in the northeast often shoots the cruelty in the ice and snow. In "Undocumented Crime", "ice and snow" runs through the whole drama, quite like the flavor of the American drama "Ice and Blood Storm". "Coward" begins with a robbery and murder case that happened in the ice and snow. The snowstorm covered the sky, and all sins seemed to be buried.
"Moses on the Plain"
The story in the original book of "Moses on the Plain" also takes place in the northeast, but director Zhang Dalei feels that Shenyang is a big city, with an industrial base and a larger scale of the city, and it is difficult to restore the old feeling in the novel, so he set the filming location in his hometown of Hohhot. From the perspective of jurisdictional area, Hohhot is obviously larger than Shenyang, but from the perspective of economic development, Shenyang is undoubtedly a well-deserved "big brother" than Hohhot.
06
The suspense drama chose the location to meet the audience's urban imagination.
Urban dramas take place in first-tier big cities, because the audience has an impulse to rush to them, and the days of North Drift, Shanghai Drift and Deep Drift are indeed unhappy, but what big cities give them is a kind of freedom that small counties cannot give.
The same is true for suspense dramas. Only in a small coastal city like Zhanjiang can the story of "Hidden Corner" occur. In Beijing, no matter how smart three children are, they can't make a play. You can't climb Jingshan Mountain.
The suspense drama is filmed in a small place, which itself bears the imprint of the other on the edge of the center.
"Hidden Corner"
First, the popular suspense dramas in recent years, the stories mostly take place in the 90s of the last century. China has changed too fast over the past three decades. To find a geographical location that can present the appearance of more than ten or twenty years ago without too much transformation, small cities are obviously more suitable for this condition.
Second, small cities can provide a sense of strangeness compared to big cities. It can bring a kind of location blessing to the series. To give an off-topic example, the same barbecue, how much is the difference between Zibo and local? But this May Day holiday, outsiders are still rushing towards Zibo.
07
Last month, two spy war dramas, "Thin Ice" and "Infernal", fought on the same stage. In the geographical location map of domestic dramas, spy war dramas are the most conventional and boring. Generally speaking, there is only one filming location for spy war dramas: Hengdian. There is the largest scenic spot in the Republic of China in the country, and the crew does not even need to move the nest, you can use it directly.
"Thin Ice"
Spy war dramas are also the only genre dramas that fully show real place names.
On the one hand, it is based on real history, and almost all the stories take place in the lively cities - Shanghai, Chongqing, Beiping, Harbin, Nanjing, Hong Kong and Tianjin. "Infernal" revolves around Shanghai, and the story of "Thin Ice" takes place in Shanghai in the early stage, and follows the protagonist to Chongqing in the second half.
Harbin is the spy capital of the Far East, Shanghai is the most prosperous city in China at that time, Tianjin is an important commercial port city, and Hong Kong needless to say, these four cities are the four "spy war capitals" in the modern history of the mainland. Chongqing was the capital during the Anti-Japanese War, Nanjing was the former capital of the Republic of China, and although the status of Beiping is not as good as the first two, there are also many stories.
On the other hand, it doesn't need to be circumvented. Why do cities in domestic dramas tend to have virtual names? Essentially to accompany fictional stories. Putting a fictional story in a real city will always face more or less subjective gazes. It's good that a life drama like "Go to a Windy Place" shows beautiful scenery, and a suspense drama like "Thirteen Years in the Dust" and "Who Is He" that has been dragged on for many years, is too real to have the meaning of "smearing".
"Crazy"
Actually, fictional cities are no big deal. As long as the background is solid and the story is told well, the audience will take the initiative to act as the "tap water" to discover the scenery in the play. "Crazy" exploded, and many people went to Jiangmen to check in sausage flour and pork foot rice; After "The World" "broke the circle", Jilin also poured in many foreign tourists.
【Text/Ma II】