"The Long Season" is over, but the stamina is great, there are still a large number of viewers chasing the drama while discussing, on Douban, the score of this drama has risen from 9.1 at the beginning to 9.5 after the finale, more than 190,000 viewers, 78.6% of which scored five-star praise.
Why does "The Long Season" have such a high score? Not only far more than director Xin Shuang's last hit "Hidden Corner", but even more than the audience's recognized classic "The Legend of Zhen Huan", behind such a high rating, what has happened in the creative process?
The reason why the Douban score of "The Long Season" did not fall but rose in the end is because compared with "Crazy" and "Who is He" and other TV series of the same theme, this one did not end badly, but brought a successful end to the story, and all the foreshadowing buried in the early stage was revealed one by one, although it was not a HE ending, it also ended with warmth and met the audience's expectations, which is very difficult.
Secondly, "The Long Season" successfully uses contrast to bring the audience an unexpected and extremely unique look and feel, creating the unique tonality of this show. With warm tones throughout the process, it tells a cold story, combines with crime and suspense themes with a soothing and poetic rhythm, and also adds humor to life throughout the process, and the slow pace will not make the audience feel bored.
And, of course, the wonderful performances of the actors. The three actors, Fan Wei, Qin Hao and Chen Minghao, all have youth dramas and old dramas of different eras. After the success of "Hidden Corner", perhaps director Xin Shuang felt that such a combination of protagonists could be copied, so he replaced the three children in "Hidden Corner" with the three old men in "The Long Season".
Behind the high score of 9.5, in Fan Wei's view, it is serious, slow work, and life.
Talk about elderly makeup: I started to have no bottom in my heart, and I got up at four-thirty every day
Wang Xiang, played by Fan Wei, is the protagonist of this drama, and the reason why Fan Wei can portray this role so wonderfully is because the frustrated northeast man after being laid off, Fan Wei is very familiar, his father, brother, and neighbors in the hutong have similar experiences.
Fan Wei revealed in an interview that Xin Shuang found Fan Wei in the summer of 2021, and the story he showed him at that time was called "Winter Blade", the story is that the father is looking for the real murderer for his son in winter, a very smooth and tragic story, but then Xin Shuang decided to shoot the opposite.
In Fan Wei's opinion, the more difficult thing to shoot this drama is the elderly makeup, which will make him feel a little bottomless, his first scene of elderly makeup was the scene with Wang Bei in the supermarket, when the two people pranked in the supermarket, and only after they came out did they say the father-son relationship. Although the whole scene is very cheerful, after watching it, the director said that it was distressing, and this evaluation made Fan Wei more bottomed, because if it does not reach the distressing feeling, it is not quite right.
In addition to the difficulty of performance, elderly makeup is also difficult, at the beginning of 5 hours of makeup a day, Fan Wei has to get up at four o'clock in the morning, so that he can catch up with the shooting, the speed is faster, four and a half hours can be completed, Fan Wei and the staff get up at five o'clock, it is too sleepy, he will sleep while making up, and wake up when he needs to cooperate.
Talk about the ending: It is the meeting of old age and youth
Like "Hidden Corner", "The Long Season" also has an open ending, and an important scene in the play is the elderly Li Xiang, who meets the young train driving Li Xiang, and shouts "Look forward, don't look back". Many viewers felt that Li Xiang actually died when he had a heart attack.
But in Fan Wei's view, the "long season" refers to autumn, Li Xiang became helpless and desolate after being laid off, and the destruction of the family behind was not unrelated to his anxiety, and until he met his younger self in the cornfield, said "look forward, don't look back", he really walked out of this season.
Talking about shooting: The whole crew is desperate
"Long Season" tells the story of what happened in the northeast, but because the autumn in the northeast is short and not enough to shoot the whole drama, the filming location was chosen in Kunming, and the cornfield that appeared several times in the play was planted in advance in Xishuangbanna, and the steel plant in the play is Kungang, which is also very similar to the northeast. It can be seen that a lot of preliminary preparations have indeed been made for the filming of this drama.
Normally, the shooting speed of TV series is very fast, because it is necessary to accommodate the actor schedule and catch up with the schedule, "The Long Season" has only 12 episodes, and it has been filmed for more than three months, and each episode is finely polished.
In addition to the aforementioned mention that Fan Wei got up at four o'clock in the morning to make up, the whole crew is very hard. Fan Wei revealed that in the process of filming, the main creators always maintained a state of excitement, and they couldn't sleep for half a day after finishing work, and they got up again without waiting for anything, and from the beginning of the script creation stage, the director was as cool as a dish, and the actors and photography were very competitive, and Fan Wei felt that the drama was "a good thing" at that time. Interestingly, because the TV series is not filmed sequentially, and the ending has not been written during the filming process, after the TV series started, Fan Wei himself did not know who the last real murderer was.
Today, Fan Wei, who won the actor, has become a recognized powerful and good actor, and he also encouraged young people in interviews: "I think whether you are a smart actor or not so smart actor, don't worry, don't worry, if you are in a hurry, you will be ridiculous." Focus on one thing, grind slowly, and in the end it is really possible that the result is good. ”