May 18, 2023 | Issue 3239
When a warrior can't do martial arts, how should he walk the rivers and lakes? Most of the audiences who have just watched "The Legend of Yunxiang" enter with this question.
So, we saw a wise man different from traditional martial arts - Yun Xiang (played by Chen Xiao) appeared, he floated on the lake with water vapor, looking like a scholar, but he had a fierce tiger in his heart, good at strategy and games, like a revenge AI, treating everyone as a pawn, and the most capable warriors were used by him, and he was a chess player.
The rivers and lakes in "The Legend of Yunxiang" are a fusion of old and new, layered and layered, not only the dispute between Yuntai and Lingyuan, but also the real-world business logic, and the artistic conception of traditional Chinese culture. When people are in the rivers and lakes, they can't be all by themselves, and revenge is like Pandora's box, making the rivers and lakes chaotic.
Yunxiang, who has fallen into the wrong path, sees all living beings, sees heaven and earth, and also sees himself.
Gradually, the AI Yunxiang, who played with human nature in the dice and account books, was replaced by the "awakened" Yunxiang who listened to the rain in the bamboo forest. Such an "anti-martial arts" character and subtraction growth path doomed "The Legend of Yunxiang" to take an unusual path.
Chief producer Liang Zhenhua said frankly, "This drama has no coordinate system to refer to. ”
Liang Zhenhua
Especially today, when the more galloping fairy tales occupy the extreme of romanticism, martial arts has become "realism in romanticism". "The Legend of Yunxiang" is a conscious attempt to "shoot romanticism with realistic methods". Up to now, "The Legend of Yunxiang" has topped the broadcast lists of major dramas for many consecutive days, and 53,000 people have scored this drama 7.4 points on Douban.
At the end of the eight episodes, we talked to Liang Zhenhua, the chief producer and chief screenwriter of "The Legend of Yunxiang", and listened to him talk about this creative road full of feelings and intentions.
Here's what he has to say.
Find the coordinates
I am a person with a martial arts complex, I read a lot of Jin Yong's novels in junior high school and high school, and after teaching at university, I also studied martial arts for a period of time, and after reading Chen Pingyuan's "The Dream of the Ancient Literati" and Yan Jiayan's "Jin Yong's Novel Essay", I became interested in martial arts again. It's strange that none of the projects that have sought me out for so many years are martial arts, but I really want to make a martial arts thing in my bones.
In 2018, I was very touched after seeing this series of novels by Mr. Fang Baiyu. First, its sense of happy revenge is very strong, satisfying my love for rivers and lakes and martial arts, on the other hand, the novel itself has genre innovation within martial arts, he wrote a wise man, with literature to resist martial arts, relying on strategic IQ to calm the turmoil in the rivers and lakes, and using the heart and confidence of a literati to solve disputes in the rivers and lakes.
Script development began in 2019, and script development took three years. I didn't hesitate to do projects before, but this time is different, "The Legend of Yunxiang" has no frame of reference, we consider when looking for direction: how big is the element of wisdom, how big is the element of martial arts, and the things of traditional Chinese culture are put into it, these proportions are constantly pondering, and the platform was also pondering with us at that time. However, the concept of outwitting us has always attracted us, and after much deliberation, at the beginning of 2020, we and iQIYI finally determined the main direction of development together.
Now martial arts has really reached a bottleneck, because there are too many classic works and the audience's familiarity is too high, if you still stick to the traditional martial arts in this, the freshness to the audience may not be enough. I'm just thinking about what kind of positioning to say, "The Legend of Yunxiang" is martial arts, will the audience feel a little misplaced, after all, the protagonist Yunxiang will not martial arts.
There are wise heroes and martial arts in the rivers and lakes, including Wen and Wu, and the biggest feature of "The Legend of Yunxiang" is strategy, after thinking for a long time, I feel that the positioning of the jianghu conspiracy and the tonality of this play are the most matched, it has rivers and lakes, strategy, and a little mystery and suspense, which should be fresh for the audience.
From Ethereum AI to people
In my opinion, Yunxiang is more like a combination of Wei Xiaobao, Yang Guo and Ling Hu Chong. Yang Guo and Ling Hu Chong are people who travel among the various martial arts factions in the rivers and lakes, and Yun Xiang, like them, is facing all kinds of supreme martial arts masters, living in the real logic of the rivers and lakes.
In addition, Yun Xiang entered the rivers and lakes as an amateur for revenge, and I don't want him to appear from beginning to end with a bitter vendetta, so he has some seemingly cynical looks and some witty joy in the early stage, which is related to his mysterious identity and personality, and also comes from his vigilance to the real order. But as the story progresses to the second half, this joy gradually fades as the inner pressure increases and the characters grow.
When Yunxiang's family was destroyed, he was still a teenager and was taken to Yuntai for fifteen years, and what he learned was Yuntai's thousand arts, and the only reason to survive was revenge. He has hardly felt the warmth and love of the world, and when he is always calculating and gaming, he finds that reality and the world give him not only-for-tat calculation, but also affection, righteousness, love and care beyond personal interests.
I buried a lot of things in Yunxiang's growth line, step by step to let his compassion germinate, and later I will find that it is his friends around him who are waiting for his growth with sincerity and sincerity. The climax of Yun Xiang's growth is in the last ten episodes, and many things that he once did not care about have become inseparable things in his life.
At first, Yunxiang calculates all the people in the world, is a benefit animal, like an AI with accurate calculation, now it is to let an AI slowly return to human nature and slowly learn how to be a sentient and righteous person. His chivalrous personality is grown, not his appearance.
"The Legend of Yunxiang" portrays the group portraits of rivers and lakes, and we try to respect everyone who has a story when shaping characters, and there are fewer face-painted and stereotyped tendencies. The first protagonist is naturally Yun Xiang, and the most important spiritual core of the whole play should be said to be Yun Xiang's growth in heart and human nature.
He is constantly evolving as a person, and this growth is a very decisive growth in which external things act on the inside. From the first day down the mountain to the end, his changes, we use comprehensive methods such as costumes, hairstyles, and performance methods, so that the audience can see Yunxiang's transformation and growth at different stages, from a revenge machine to a real person with a child's heart, feelings and righteousness.
Shoot at the eye
"The Legend of Yunxiang" began filming in September 2021, when director You Dazhi told me as soon as he came up to "shoot in front of the eyes".
Yun Xiang does not know martial arts, and to show his resourcefulness, eyes are undoubtedly the key. It can be seen that the director used a lot of unconventional TV series composition and a lot of light and shadow to present Yunxiang's thinking.
In all martial arts dramas, style is very important. If you use a particularly simple shooting method, you can't present the poetry and beauty of the rivers and lakes. We all know that You Da is determined to image in the galaxy, is a director known for style, has filmed "Dark Flower" and "Very Suddenly", and then filmed "Three Kingdoms Secrets: The Hidden Dragon in the Abyss", "Weird Man Yizhimei", "Mekong River Case" and other dramas, and has a lot of experience in capturing the psychology of male characters and creating atmosphere. In this drama, the tour director plays well the characteristics of the film director's imagery and stylization.
To play Yunxiang, I think you must first have a pair of particularly deep eyes, and a person's strategic wisdom can only look at his eyes. Chen Xiao's eyes are rich in content, and his acting skills are also recognized as excellent, I hope that the role of Yunxiang can give him more room to gallop. His spirit, depth and affection are fully expressed in this drama. Yunxiang is a character that Chen Xiao is very immersed in, and with his dedicated interpretation of Yunxiang, this project has laid the most solid foundation.
This time, he didn't need to fight when shooting martial arts dramas, so he focused on his heart and constantly analyzed Yun Xiang's inner world. It can be seen that Chen Xiao's revelation of Yunxiang's psychological world, from emotions to life and mission, dug deep step by step. In addition, the reason why he is so immersed is also related to the presentation of the emotional relationship between Yunxiang and Shu Yanan (played by Mao Xiaotong). He told me that "when I saw the script, I was scared by this unique relationship".
Yun Xiang and Shu Yanan concealed each other's identities for their respective missions, and in the mutual spying and tearing and entanglement, they developed feelings that could not be stopped. We wanted to portray the emotional relationship between mature men and women.
At first, Yun Xiang watched Shu Yanan fight in the gambling house "love at first sight", to some extent it was an "illusion", he found that this chess piece could be used by me; But at the same time, did Yun Xiang have feelings for Shu Yanan? We didn't give a clear answer.
I think there is a lot of logic in the world that is paradoxical, he is certainly not pure love at first sight, he has a strong scheming.
Including the plot of Shu Yanan's costume change, Yun Xiang suddenly had the intention to risk being killed to help her buy a set of women's clothing, you can also say that he is emotional, you can also say that he is buying favors in this way, he wants to cheat a relationship.
Yunxiang and Shu Yanan, everyone is saying that women are strong and men are weak, but in fact, they are both strong, women are strong in force, and men are strong in strategy and the overall situation. Of course, Shu Yanan's IQ is also very high, she is actually Ling Yuan's person, the woman Yun Xiang loves deceived him, this is the biggest reversal I buried, it seems that she is used by you, in fact, Shu Yanan is also using Yun Xiang.
From left: You Dazhi, Mao Xiaotong, Chen Xiao, Liang Zhenhua
Classical reality and poetry
I insist that martial arts must have its market, and we have completed a collision with the existing confinement through the warrior, realizing a dream that cannot be realized in real life. People want to be able to punish evil and promote good, and this mentality is common in any era.
Even if the Internet age has made everything light, just as the realistic creative method is reviving, can we retreat to the martial arts world, and use realistic creation methods to portray a down-to-earth warrior culture, which is related to our traditional culture and real situation.
There are many business war dramas in "The Legend of Yunxiang", such as buying land and stir-frying raw silk, and today everyone lives in a commercial society, but these "human experiences" are rarely talked about in costume dramas. This drama wants Yun Xiang to express his ability in a seemingly static plot, and we choose business warfare. On the one hand, in the original novel, business war is a strong stroke, on the other hand, martial arts dramas have shopping mall logic in addition to the logic of rivers and lakes, not to mention that in the Ming Dynasty, commercial germination has been produced.
Therefore, to try to be realistic in this play, I discussed with the entire main creative team as soon as I came up, and we don't have to shoot the rivers and lakes in that ethereal way.
We operate almost the whole 3 groups, one of which is the drama group, filming for 120 days, playing for nearly 100 days, and there are very few people in this play who simply compare scenes, which are basically large-scale fights. Like the first episode of the fight scene in the water, it took three big nights to finish filming, and it took six or seven minutes to edit it. There are a lot of scenes of this magnitude in the whole play, and the audience should be able to see it.
Including the use of language this time, it is divided into Yayan and colloquialisms, Jin Shiliang (played by Liu Guanlin) and other martial artists and civilians speak colloquialisms, but Yun Xiang, Su Huairou (played by Qin Lan), Nangong Fang (played by Ran Xu) These people speak Yayan, a bit of ancient rhyme. In ancient China, there was a difference between intellectuals and ordinary people and wufu, and the discourse system.
At the same time, there must be poetry in China's classical reality. In the later stage, we did it for nearly a year, in fact, the amount of CG is not large, but we try to make it more refined so that the cooperation between traditional aesthetics and CG is more in line with the traditional aesthetic mood.
For example, Yun Xiang and Mo Ye (played by Bloomberg) were resting in the mountains, and it was raining at this time, and a woodcutter led a donkey over to read Su Dongpo's "Fixing the Wind and Waves"; For example, Su Huairou and Yunxiang tasted "Han Xizai's Night Banquet Map", the two were talking about painting, but they were actually negotiating with an alliance, hiding a lot of subtext. There are many such plots in the film, and we convey the ancient meaning and ancient style that Chinese costume dramas should have through classical poetry and also through poetic and romantic image language.
The heart of "The Legend of Yunxiang" can be seen by the audience
"Yunxiang Chuan" has been broadcast on dual platforms so far, the popularity has exceeded expectations, and all the main creators are very excited. In terms of word of mouth, I am also constantly paying attention to feedback from all sides, and I have a feeling that today's audience pays more attention to the details of the work than we imagined.
Netizens are controversial about the plot of Ke Menglan burning pariah documents, I saw it. In the specific social system, the untouchable document divides the good people and the untouchables, and the denaturalization document has always been something she has in her heart, and when she gets it, she can turn into a good citizen and marry Su Mingyu (played by Tang Xiaotian), which was a long-cherished wish of Menglan at the beginning.
Later, a stroke was added to the script, and she suddenly found that what she was pursuing in her heart was like a paper yoke, and her independent life and relationship with Su Mingyu did not need to be based on this paper document. So it burned. Many viewers don't understand it, but our idea is that what Ke Menglan really wants to fight against is the stereotypical system of that era.
Today's audience, aesthetic and cognitive levels are rapidly improving, and we cannot have perfunctory and future ideas. Judging from the feedback of the audience, the efforts we put into the details of the literary texts and images are visible and enthusiastically supported by the audience who watch the drama attentively. It's a great incentive for us.
Now the problem encountered by martial arts dramas is within the genre, to mix and match and intervene in some fresh elements, my attempt in "The Legend of Yunxiang" is to put wisdom, light joy, business war, character growth and other things in, and use wisdom to break martial arts. Seeing the reaction of the audience, I think that most of the audience accepts our attempt. But its relationship with martial arts in the traditional sense may need to be reviewed and discussed together.
Qin Lan, Liang Zhenhua
I position "The Legend of Yunxiang" as a quack drama, which is my understanding. Our original intention is to carry out an innovation on the basis of martial arts. If the audience can see that martial arts culture and martial arts works still have their life space today, and everyone is still willing to appreciate and appraise, then it is the greatest satisfaction for us.
【Text/Flying Fish】