570,000 people scored, half a month after the end of "The Long Season", the Douban score was stable at 9.4.
This 12-episode short drama eventually became the "benchmark of divine dramas" in 2023 and even in the past decade.
Director Xin Shuang, after creating "Hidden Corner" three years ago, once again "sealed the gods", laying his well-deserved "top position" in the field of life suspense dramas.
However, Xin Shuang does not consider himself a "successful director" and even somewhat rejects the title. "Successful director" sounds like it's going beyond the creation itself, and the motivation becomes "I create because I want to be a very successful director" – so the thing itself is problematic and a distraction.
He just wants to be himself.
This is what Xin Shuang said in an exclusive interview with Tencent News' "Where to Start" video program. In the interview, Xin Shuang spread out what should be said, what can be said, and what he wants to say.
Not only hearty, but also full of golden sentences.
"Death is always sudden, it never notifies you in advance that it is coming." When talking about the death of Gong Biao (played by Qin Hao), he said so.
He added, "Time leaves a mark, but it also slowly erases the trace." ”
When asked what methodology there is for directing two dramas that have become hits, Xin Shuang confessed that "no". If I had a trick, he laughed, "I might sell it on the fish, which should be able to sell for a lot of money." ”
But if he had to sum up any truth, he felt that there was only one -
Respect the audience.
Xin Shuang wants to maximize the level of the audience, not condescending, nor stooped.
He never felt that the audience was aesthetically poor, or that the director was smarter than the audience, and if a creator thinks so, it can only mean that "he is arrogant".
Refreshing means – never underestimate the audience.
Even if a large number of viewers feedback that "The Long Season" is incomprehensible and slow-paced, Xin Shuang can also understand: "After the work is online, it actually belongs to the audience, it no longer belongs to the creator." We as creators need to have a very open mind to whatever the audience has to say. ”
He believes that one day, "[my] expressions will resonate wonderfully with the audience, and I will look forward to that moment." ”
At the end of the interview, Xin Shuang said that he just wants to be a person who "pushes stones", no matter what the result of pushing, "I am pushing." ”
The allusion to "pushing stones" comes from the Greek mythological character Sisyphus, a "great bull" who once kidnapped the god of death so that there was no more death in the world, but also angered the gods, so he was punished - pushed a boulder to the top of the mountain, but the stone was too heavy, and every time it reached the top of the mountain, it would roll down, and the previous achievements were lost. As a result, Sisyphus could only "push stones" over and over again.
In fact, Xin Shuang is not Sisyphus, who has long "pushed the stone of "Hidden Corner" to the top of the mountain, and this time, he arrived at another mountain top with "The Long Season". He was certainly different from Sisyphus – at least not in vain, but his intentions were also clear: to persistently push the stone to the next higher mountaintop.
And this is also what many fans expect from him.
The following is the content of Director Xin's self-statement——
-Shot-
The eve of the opening of "The Long Season" Douban was my most stressful few days.
On the day of the split, producer Lu Jing called me, I haven't gotten up yet, she said 9.0... I lay there and cried to myself for half an hour. It's ridiculous, lying there, really can't say anything, the brain is blank.
After all, it was three years (filming and production), and everyone on the team except myself made a lot of effort and effort for this show, including the actors. They all hope that the project they participate in is a good work that is recognized by the audience.
In fact, what I am most worried about is to disappoint them, afraid that the people on the team will feel that these three years are not worth it for them, and that is my most stressful person.
Filming this drama, I thought it would be better mentally, but when I actually operated it, I found that it didn't, and it was still the same (as filming "Hidden Corner"). The process of creation has to face all kinds of pain, which may be the fate of the creator.
I don't know of any way to avoid the painful process in my creation.
Sometimes, it feels like you've reached your physical limit. 107 days of shooting is very much like the most tiring day imaginable in life multiplied by 107, and it is continuous. There is no day to escape, only a brief moment of relaxation.
After we finished filming a scene, we would play very dry music in my tent during lunch meal, and when I listened to particularly dry music, it calmed me down.
Xin Shuang and producer Lu Jing on the set.
The amount of material in "The Long Season" is close to double that of "Hidden Corner", but in fact, we did not double the shooting time. "Hidden Corner" has about 100 scenes, because "The Long Season" is a story with a large span, so it needs more scenes, and the three timelines each have their own aesthetics, about 200 scenes.
During the filming process, there were constantly new scenes, which was very difficult for me. As a director, when doing desk work in the early stage, I will go through the scheduling of each scene in my mind in advance, but if there is a (temporary scene change) situation, it will take a short time to deal with it, and the team must also cooperate with the adjustment.
It's a lot of pressure, but everyone is watching you and you have to make a decision because that's the director's job and nobody can make that decision for you.
We were filming in Kunming, Yunnan, where there was some vegetation that didn't look like the north, so we had to wrap it in blue cloth on site and use special effects to make it look like northern plants. A lot of details, it seems that the picture does not have any special effects, but in fact, we did a lot of post-special effects work in this show.
The corn plants in Kunming are relatively small, and we need the height of the corn to be able to hide a person, so this becomes a big problem. We decided to shoot the cornfield scene at the end, and we also changed from Kunming to Xishuangbanna (where it is hotter), the production team talked about a large piece of land, the art team went to plant a corn, and the shooting time was set for the last scene of the entire show.
In this work, I have something I want to communicate with the audience, and I want to convey content, in fact, this desire to express has always supported me, and it is also my greatest spiritual strength to complete the creation.
I think one day, these expressions will resonate wonderfully with the audience, and I will look forward to that moment.
-Northeast-
An elderly taxi driver who has to solve a problem in his life, the premise of "The Long Season" is quite interesting, and it moves me.
At that time (reading the script), what impressed me more was that Wang Xiang came home from the night shift, took a bag of fritters, and when he entered the house, he saw Luo Meisu boiling medicine, and he could intuitively feel the daily life of the Northeast couple.
The quality of life of the script is well written.
Those things, in fact, I can grasp.
There are some details of life that I am familiar with, and those plays will form pictures directly in my head, and for me, they are things that attract me to create.
My parents are civil servants. The community where our family lives is called the family building of the transportation management office, and we go downstairs every day to play, a society of acquaintances, which is very similar to some aspects presented in the script.
One childhood image that I can concretely recall now is that of going to my grandmother's house with my parents on the weekend, the two of them riding in front, I chasing behind, the sun is golden, hitting a large green cornfield. I remember wearing a snowflake jeans that resembled Wang Yang, the air was fresh and the wind was warm.
The northeast is not all icy and snowy, it has a refreshing autumn air, and it also has four distinct seasons. Autumn in Tohoku is particularly beautiful, the color is yellow and green, the weather is very comfortable, this is another way to open Tohoku.
For the Northeast, I have my own understanding. Usually when I go home, my friends, including relatives, I see that they are actually very optimistic and positive. Northeasterners have a characteristic - that is, very heavy things, everyone will use a joke or two, with a little humor unique to the Northeast language, the heaviness is quickly dissolved.
I hope to present such a Northeasterner who is positive and optimistic.
TV series are always literary works, it is not a documentary, so this time we have been talking about four words in the creative process, called "half a meter above the ground". What we are looking for is not photorealism, not to restore anything, it is more like impressionism: it seems that many things are right, but there are many things that are blurred, and that blur is actually space for our creators.
In fact, all literary and artistic creations are subjective, describing the understanding of anything in their minds, and presenting the Northeast as a stage. At least I hope that the presentation of Tohoku is not a blow, but a comfort, like the theme of the play, "Look Forward, Don't Look Back".
When doing "Hidden Corner", there is actually a very good perspective, a very natural perspective, that is, three children, which makes the perspective of storytelling very special. In the process of writing the script of "The Long Season", in fact, we have been looking for this perspective, at the beginning, I don't know what the perspective is, and later, as mentioned earlier, the image of an elderly taxi driver appears, which I think is a good perspective for storytelling.
To say that someone is qualified to look back on his life, the elderly person is qualified to look back on his life because he really lived his life.
There's one thing I don't want to mention right now because I'm afraid of misunderstanding for the audience – during filming, one of my closest people passed away, my father. The reason I don't want to bring it up is because I'm worried that people will think I'm using this kind of family relationship propaganda and selling misery, and I don't want everyone to feel that way.
This happened during the script writing process, about a month, and when I came home, it was only a month between my father's illness and I saw him off.
The second reason is that I was worried that the audience would understand that I was going to actively express something more than the story in this play. Actually, no, as a professional director, I may use some feelings in the creative process, but the death of my father is not something I want to use, it is very personal for me.
A director's expression must be expressed on the basis of the story, and cannot exist more than the expression of the story, so in my opinion, it is called "self-drowning" - too much emphasis on self-expression, unless the feeling is matched by the story.
In fact, not only this thing, but everything you experience in life, the sum of all is yourself. In the creative process, the sum of all these experiences is mobilized. When communicating with the screenwriter, I will give them examples, such as what my father said to me at that time, what kind of feeling might be conveyed, and whether it is similar to the feeling between some father and son in the play. If they find it useful, it may be right, it is helpful to create, and they will use it in the creation of the story.
If we want to talk about life, we will talk about a complete life, and a complete life contains life and death.
Like Gong Biao's death, many people say that Gong Biao is so miserable, why is his death so sudden, in fact, this is the proposition of the whole story, death is always sudden, it never notifies you in advance "it is coming".
The story I'm going to tell is actually a reality you'll see—something that doesn't happen if you don't want to avoid talking about it.
-Time-
Time is a fair thing, it may have been called "change", but we called it "time" instead. Time passes through people, and as it passes through, it leaves a trace, but it also slowly smooths out this trace.
Tell a group of people for a generation, what happened in their lives, time is a very important concept. How did time pass through these people, how did it leave marks on them, and how did it smooth them out?
In terms of styling, what we pursue is not a simple "old", it needs to assume the narrative function. In the volume of 12 episodes, how to tell what happened to each character in these 20 years, you need to find a way - as soon as the styling comes out, the audience can roughly know what happened in these 20 years.
A more typical example is Huang Liru, Gong Biao's lover. On Huang Liru's face, we are not "old", Huang Liru's face has actually done a lot of traces of medical beauty. For example, I padded my nose, padded my chin, and made eyebrow lines and lip lines. When she was young, she was a person who loved beauty, the most beautiful person in the factory, liked to wear red shoes and floral skirts, and after 20 years, this characteristic has not changed. The things on her face actually continue this character.
However, Shen Mo's role is more special.
Whether Wang Xiang, Gong Biao, Ma Desheng, Xing San, Huang Liru, these people, in fact, I hope that the audience can see the changes 20 years ago and 20 years later, and have a feeling of being both strange and familiar with them.
Shen Mo's role is different, the moment she cuts off her finger, when she wants to become another person to live in this world, I hope the audience will see that she is completely unfamiliar after 20 years, she is another person. Because you can't imagine what circumstances she has had in the past 20 years, what kind of spiritual world she has lived with.
So, I want her to be someone else.
The middle-aged Shen Mo in the play is played by Zhang Jingchu.
"Ma Dashuai" and "Hidden Corner" are directly related to the story of "The Long Season". But it's my principle, it's to serve the narrative, it has to make the narrative more attractive, it has to make the narrative more malleable.
Let's first talk about the example of "Ma Dashuai", there is a scene that many audiences prefer, Wang Xiang saw the doorman in "Ma Dashuai" at the door of "Victoria", and the two had a short dialogue. As you can see, the doorman was a young man in "Ma Dashuai", and now he has become middle-aged, time has changed, and time has left its mark on him.
This scene is about the change of time. I want to convey the concept of time in a variety of ways, both inside and outside the play.
The snow at the end of the TV series, I think the audience can understand its meaning, that snow represents something is comfort, it integrates the past, present, future, all time in that moment, rather than the empty concept of lip service, it becomes a concrete thing that the audience can see.
In fact, the intention of snow comes from the writer Ban Yu's first book "Winter Swimming". There is a sentence on the cover of "Winter Swimming" to the effect that people raise their faces from the water and carry the silent fall of fate.
It inspires me.
I told Ban Yu that I decided to use snow to connect all the time together and comfort everyone in every time and space.
However, later, Ban Yu said that the sentence on the cover was not written by him, but added by the editor.
-Music-
I don't know if it's because I used to be a musician - it's hard for me to tell myself - but in the editing process, by the end of each episode, there would always be a piece of music in my head. Quite naturally, it has even become muscle memory, or physiological reaction—you have to let the emotions spread for a while, you have to have to have something like that.
The most impressive is the song "Blue Danube" at the end of episode 10.
The snapping fingers were snapped at that moment, and the fate of all men clicked together at that moment. It was a very important ending, but I never found a particularly suitable music that could take on the role, and it was very troubled every day.
One day I was editing, as if I was looking for my son to say something, he had a children's watch, I called his watch, and his ringtone was "Blue Danube". At that time, a grand voice of a space roaming sounded in my head, completely intertwined with the picture. It must be this! This piece is definitely the most appropriate place here.
I put it on and tried it, and sure enough, it had that effect.
At the end of episode ten, Shen Mo cut off her finger, and at that moment everyone's fate changed. "Blue Danube" is neither sad nor happy, it is very objective, it does not render anything.
Fate is always very objective, it does not render anything.
Also, why did you choose the song "Little Star"?
At that time, when we were filming the scene where Mr. Hou Yansong (who played Shen Mo's uncle Shen Dongliang) cut his nails, the two of them sat on the edge of the bed, and in the first few times, Mr. Hou Yansong did not sing, and in the last one, he suddenly improvised this song. I caught it in the monitor headset, and I felt that "Little Star" would be very contrasting in such a scene.
At the end of that episode, Shen Dongliang stood at the door of the cinema, his shadow - a huge shadow shrouded Shen Mo's body, I think the song "Little Star" sounded very naturally, and seemed to see what kind of situation Shen Mo lived in from childhood to adulthood. It expands the narrative space and becomes an association.
At the end of the whole play, the song "Looking Back" is not actually for the characters in the play, not for Wang Xiang, because at that moment Wang Xiang was shouting "Look forward and don't look back", and the young Wang Xiang played the whistle and told him "I know, I hear it, I resonate", and at that moment Wang Xiang's story has ended.
"Looking Back" is actually for the audience, for myself, and for all creators. At that moment, the song sounded to comfort all such emotions - there will be no more old dreams tonight.
Because the whole show has ended, tonight everyone will no longer worry about these characters, we have to return to our real life, and then suddenly like a dream - these 12 episodes are also like a dream. My heart is still the same, I still have to return to my real life and think about how to face life better.
-Appraise-
After the work is online, it actually belongs to the audience, it no longer belongs to the creator. We, as creators, don't dwell on those things anymore, we need to look at any evaluation of the audience with a very open attitude.
Any questions from the audience are their right.
Before, I saw a comment from an audience member of "Hidden Corner", who gave "Secret" a star and said that it was "not scary at all". Actually, I can't say he's wrong, I can only say that we didn't resonate spiritually at the right moment. It's a shame, maybe he'll like it in ten years.
As for the slow pace of some audience feedback on "The Long Season", I will give a scene as an example -
In the second episode, Wang Xiang hangs on the wall the photo of the factory director visiting him in the hospital, representing his honor, and in that scene, except for some humorous language and very wonderful performances, this clip seems to have little help to the narrative.
But in fact, in the twelfth episode, Wang Xiang took off the photo and hung up the portrait of his son. At that moment, I believe that as an audience you will see that it is not an idle pen, it is actually a huge foreshadowing.
If the creator has an attitude of "the audience is not as smart as you, the audience is not as good as you, the audience will not accept new things", it means that the creator is very arrogant: because you have been underestimating the audience.
There will definitely be a part of the audience who did not watch the finished film, and brushed a certain clip on the short video platform, which may also have a wonderful resonance, and this resonance may attract him to watch the entire drama - even if he may misinterpret the plot.
Being misinterpreted is the fate of all works of art.
Many things will be deformed in the process of transmission, and this deformation will also produce a new sense of beauty.
I hope that the audience, not pay too much attention to the creator itself, pay attention to the work, because the work is something that brings value. I want to hide behind the work and keep some space with the audience. That space is beautiful, something that resonates.
In the past, I always said that I was "young and frivolous, and my body was flawed", but now it seems that I don't even have a young age, only frivolity. But there is a phrase that I have always adopted as my motto - "Man can travel the world in vain, but he can harm him." (from "Zhuangzi Shanmu") That is, you don't think so much of yourself.
To be honest, I want to be myself, not the so-called "successful director".
"Successful director" sounds like it transcends the creation itself and becomes "I create because I want to be a very successful director", so there is a problem with this thing itself, and if the matter of "very successful director" becomes the purpose of creation, it becomes a distraction. In creating, the most terrible thing is distraction—not doing it for the sake of the creation itself, but doing it for some purpose.
I'm an existentialist and enjoy the (Sisyphean process) of "pushing stones," but no matter how I push, I'm pushing. Especially like my current state, my job is actually to "push stones".
I feel a lot like the old Wang Xiang who chases the train at the end of the play, and at that moment he becomes an existentialist. There are many absurdities in life, so what kind of posture to face it?
No matter what the point of pushing stones, you recognize the absurdity, but you are still willing to raise your head and live your life.
The so-called "blockbuster drama" methodology, I don't think so. If I had the know-how, I might have sold it on the fish, which should be able to sell for a lot of money.
If I have to summarize a method, it should be -
Respect the audience.