Industry dramas have always been the highland of Chinese film and television creation, and since the birth of this genre, they have been loved by the audience, including many masterpieces such as "Dulara Promotion", but there are also many industry dramas, which have also been criticized for "falling in love under the guise of the workplace". In recent years, with the changes in the social development situation and the improvement of the aesthetic level of the audience group, as well as the increase in the scale and professional development of the workplace population, the industry drama has a new trend today.
"Top-down" guidance and support of national departments
The subject of public prosecution and law leads the way, followed by cutting-edge professions
When it comes to the mainstream of industry dramas, many users' first reaction is to create industry dramas with the public prosecution and law profession as the creative background.
As a "hard dish" in the film and television market, representative works of this theme emerge every once in a while.
At the beginning of 2023, "Crazy", which has high ratings and goes crazy, takes the normalization of anti-gang crime and the rectification of political and legal system education as the policy background, directly faces the dark side of society, and verifies the enduring attractiveness of the theme of public prosecution and law with large-scale truth.
In 2022, high-quality dramas of this theme will continue to dominate the screen. The first "Bottom Line" to show the latest achievements of the judicial system reform of the people's courts takes contemporary people's judges as the prototype of creation, showing the spiritual outlook of the people's court team in the new era of justice for the people. The TV series "Police Glory", which focuses on the police in the police station, uses light comedy to express to the public the ordinary but great daily work of grassroots police officers day after day.
In addition to the hit TV series, 2022 is also a harvest year for the theme of public prosecution and law. "Circuit Inspection Group" won the 33rd TV series "Feitian Award" Outstanding TV Series Award. "Trident", "Fox Hunting", "Black Storm", "Criminal Police Overseas Action" and so on have also been shortlisted for the 33rd TV series "Flying Award".
The "evergreen" screen of TV dramas themed on the public prosecution law is inseparable from the "top-down" strong support of government departments. Public prosecution and law dramas play an irreplaceable role in the social function of popularizing the law among the whole people, punishing evil and promoting good, sweeping away evil and eliminating evil, eliminating violence and safety, and creating a clean and healthy social environment, so they have received special attention from relevant departments.
For example, "The Bottom Line" was created under the guidance of the Supreme People's Court, the Propaganda Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Hunan Radio and Television Bureau; The Information Bureau of the Supreme People's Court and the Case Registration Division of the Supreme People's Court are supervising producers, and the "behind-the-scenes team" lineup is luxurious. "Crazy" is directed and produced by the Propaganda and Education Bureau of the Central Political and Legal Commission and the Information Center for Comprehensive Management of Political and Legal Affairs of the Central Political and Legal Commission, both of which are the main theme of "seal identification".
How to break the cognitive barriers with young people is a difficult problem in many industries that are not well known to the public. When the theme of public prosecution and law shines on the screen, many national cutting-edge professional industries have also seen the great help of film and television dramas to the industry.
High-quality film and television dramas can enable the audience to have an intuitive and three-dimensional understanding of the industry, "refresh" the social favorability of the industry, and invisibly attract more high-quality young people to enter the industry, with various advantages.
"Song of Lushan Mountain", which is based on the story of Hunan equipment manufacturing industry from the trough to the top, was born in this context. Guided by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and produced by CCTV, the Propaganda Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Hunan Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, Hunan Radio, Film and Television Group, Happy Sunshine and Golden Light, this TV series fondly praises China's intelligent manufacturing in the new era, guides the audience to discover the beauty of modern industrial technology, factory, machinery and intelligent manufacturing, and presents the impression of re-establishing China's heavy industry in the hearts of the younger generation of Chinese people through film and television.
The previously concluded "Lights of Ten Thousand Homes" was jointly produced by China National Nuclear Corporation, based on the birth process of China's completely independent intellectual property rights of the third-generation nuclear power technology "Hualong No. 1". The passionate collision of unpopular cutting-edge professions and the film and television industry with a wide audience has become a successful attempt by the pillar industry of the industry to lift the mystery and consciously and spontaneously enter the young audience.
"Chasing Dreams and Blue Sky" produced by Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the Industrial Culture Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Propaganda and Cultural Center of the Political Work Department of the Air Force; The major cultural boutique projects of the Propaganda Department of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee, and the "Boiling Life" based on Shaanxi Automobile, etc., are also the products of this creative style.
The cutting-edge professional field film and television theme masterpieces on the screen not only reflect the changes of the times, but also reveal that more and more national cutting-edge professional field pillar industries attach importance to the role of film and television publicity, which will further broaden the theme content of industry dramas.
Precise "feeding" from film and television companies
Doctors and lawyers occupy half of the country, and diversified industries are showing their edge
In addition to industry dramas led by government departments, with a certain degree of publicity and popularization. The strong demand for watching movies by the audience has also spawned the birth of a large number of industry dramas, especially doctors, lawyers and other professions with high national popularity and a certain elite color. Not only domestically, but also globally, "The Good Wife" and "Grey's Anatomy" are all the same.
However, objectively speaking, doctors and lawyers themselves have a high professional threshold, and production teams without relevant experience have difficulty in controlling this theme, so the quality of such dramas is often uneven.
In addition, social issues such as doctor-patient relationships and legal cases that have their own story characteristics and give industry drama characteristics often have their own sensitive colors, and for film and television companies that have no experience, insufficient understanding of the censorship system, and asymmetric information, this film and television "flashpoint" is also a "minefield" of review, and the slightest mistake will need to be repeatedly revised due to censorship and other issues, and the production cost is high.
Therefore, in addition to the industry dramas represented by doctors and lawyers, in recent years, more and more film and television companies have opened up the "wide angle" of creation, and are more keen to open up new and professional industries, such as translators, cost engineers, psychologists, public relations teams, funeral directors, etc., bringing the audience a "freshness" in the workplace.
Whether it is "Ideal City", which focuses on the cost engineer industry, or "Great Rivers" that tells the story of the pioneers of reform and opening up, or "The Wind Blows Half Summer" with the color of "breaking through" in the 90s, or "Sanyue Has a New Job", which uses funerals as a prism of life and death, they all jump out of the occupational category of traditional industries.
Looking at the big society from a small post, the prosperity of these industry dramas is not limited to unveiling the mystery of the industry and satisfying the curiosity of the audience, but also synchronizes with the improvement of the audience's aesthetic needs.
More and more mature people in the workplace hope to see the real workplace ecology on the screen, absorb the industry experience and wisdom embedded in the series, and feel the professional spirit characteristics that resonate with real life from a typical character image. Even if the jobs are different, the pursuit of unremitting struggle in the face of various challenges in the workplace is the same.
It can be said that a good industry drama must not only have a "skin phase" that restores the real industry but also a "bone phase" that reflects the spirit of the times and social styles.
Taking "The Wind Blows Half Summer" as an example, the era touched by this industry drama actually has a lot of distance from today. The "steel triangle" composed of Xu Banxia, who dares to think and fight, Tong Xiaoqi, who is heavy on love, and Chen Universe, who is honest and loyal, the "Binhai Boss Group" composed of the shrewd Zhao Lei, the "big patriarch" Wu Jianjian, the Buddhist Feng Yu, the "bad" Qiu Bizheng, and the "unprofitable" Guo Qidong, these characters are all various images of private entrepreneurs in the 90s of last century.
However, the rich group portraits of characters are combined together, and what is connected is the "creative energy" of that generation who dares to be the first in the world and step by step towards their dreams. This spiritual power in the bones accurately stepped on the aesthetics of young people, and finally drove young mature professionals to empathize with that booming era.
"Real" has become the keyword of industry drama creation
Non-full-time screenwriters with industry backgrounds are more popular
Whether it is an industry drama that the superior department gives to the audience "from top to bottom", or an industry drama filmed by a film and television company that "spontaneously captures" the needs of the audience, in essence, the rise of these industry dramas is not unrelated to the fact that more and more women are entering the workplace. As the mainstream viewing group of film and television dramas, women's aesthetic preferences greatly affect the creative trend of film and television dramas.
Once upon a time, the screen dominated urban life dramas and emotional dramas, and "mother-in-law and mother" were popular. With the influx of Kochi women into all walks of life, the spirit of professional independence is highlighted, and they will unconsciously choose industry dramas that resonate more in their choice of dramas.
At the same time, their pursuit of industry dramas does not stop at the description of the industry with dragonflies and water, but focuses more on the pursuit of the authenticity of the series. For the Kochi group with certain workplace work experience, "industry" is not a simple story "background board", but the key to the entire drama. If the "industry" in the work cannot stand, the whole work is water without source and wood without root.
One of the more interesting phenomena is that in recent years, the ratings of documentaries oriented towards objective documentaries have gradually increased. In a sense, this is also evidence that users' demand for realistic image presentation is rising. At the moment when medical dramas were released last year, many medical dramas invited medical experts to sit. "All About Dr. Tang" even invited Wang Zi, who graduated from Wuhan University with a major in clinical medicine, as a screenwriter to avoid common sense mistakes and easy to step on minefields.
Therefore, industry dramas that fully implement and adhere to the realistic line, and interpret cutting-edge professional fields, technical interpretation, and workplace competition from a unique and professional perspective, are ushering in promising development space under the change of the audience's aesthetic needs.
In the long run, changes in market demand will also give rise to upstream changes in the film and television creation industry.
At present, the creative team with screenwriters as the core is getting younger and younger, "interlaced like a mountain", if there is no reporter's eyesight, expert vision and long-term immersion in a certain industry, I am afraid that "building a car behind closed doors" may be quite difficult, the work is very easy to levitate, and naturally it is contrary to the audience's aesthetic-oriented needs for chasing dramas with "real". But from another point of view, this also provides an opportunity for professionals who have been deeply engaged in a certain industry for a long time and have a certain desire and ability to express words in the context of the continuous refinement of professional division of labor.
The screenwriter Anai, whose works have been adapted into many popular works such as "Ode to Joy", "Great Rivers" and "Half Summer Blown by the Wind", is the most typical example.
"Wind Blowing Half Summer" is adapted from Anai's novel "No Death" completed in 2006, the content is completely based on the author's own background and work experience, Anai through the perspective of Xu Banxia, the survival of various groups of Chinese enterprises, private enterprises and private enterprises in the steel industry, how they embrace opportunities and meet changes, their kind of painful struggle, and strive for progress, are particularly thorough. This is an advantage that screenwriters who enter the film and television industry as soon as they graduate and lack life experience in other industries cannot match.
In order to better embrace the industry to catch the wind, we also suggest that more young screenwriters can sink down, go into the world, better observe life, and create scripts with more depth and experience.
"Sanyue Has a New Job" can poke the resonance of young audiences, and it is inseparable from the early accumulation of screenwriter You Xiaoying. Before writing the script, You Xiaoying went to Chengdu Funeral Home for a period of internship. There, she met Siyuan, a post-90s boy, and the words of the aunt in the play, "When you meet people who want to die, take them to the funeral home, and promise to live well", came from the boy's mouth. The observation in the play that "the mourning of the world may not tear the heart and lungs" is also obtained from those days.
High-quality industry dramas can integrate professional characteristics, industry characteristics, and artistic characteristics into a drama. The current industry dramas, in the creative orientation of taking reality as the aesthetic, are exploring a new realm of "telling the industry without distortion, portraying characters without losing focus, and gaining insight into the format without losing speech", and completing the display of the industry's personality in the commonality of art. And more and more screenwriters with professional backgrounds will also further enrich the "kaleidoscope" phenomenon of the industry bureau. Needless to say, the colorful spring of industry dramas is coming.