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Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

New Weekly interviewed "The Long Season".

"The Long Season", which scored a high score of 9.4 by 650,000 viewers on Douban, is an unexpected surprise this spring day. At the end, the old Wang Xiang chased the train and said to the young Wang Xiang who was driving, "Look ahead, don't look back."

If something distant will eventually be shattered, then occasionally turning back makes sense. Today, let's look back at how this "Long Season" was made.

✎ Author | Zhong Yi

We haven't seen a drama like "The Long Season" for a long time, and 650,000 viewers on Douban scored a high score of 9.4.

Discussions about it are still lively today. Its plot, protagonist, era, music, performance, setting, color grading and lighting and other dimensions are carefully examined.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Fu Weijun and Shen Mo / "Long Season" stills.

In terms of plot, it is exquisite enough to save the audience to the end by relying on suspense. In terms of characterization, it is rich enough that everyone feels familiar.

In the scene, it is enough to restore, the pictures in the house, factory, and field can even drive our sense of smell and touch, we have seen, smelled, and touched those corners in the play.

As the poem in the play says, "The whole season makes it amber." We can be sure that many years from now, this amber will still be remembered and discussed.

The bygone years that give it its soul, the creators who conceived its silhouette and details, the vast film and television industry that produced it, and the audience who watched and discussed it are all part of this amber.

Snow and rivers

What makes "The Long Season" more like a novel is the snow.

The snow fell near the end of "The Long Season", and the train driver Wang Xiang raised his head and said to his youngest son Wang Bei: "This snow daddy has seen, this is from the past." ”

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Wang Xiang/"The Long Season" stills.

Then in the falling snowflakes, we saw the young Wang Xiang coming out of the dilapidated building, his wife and children sticking their heads out of the windows to greet him; The snow was still falling, and the young Gong Biao came out of the venue where he had just made a big fuss, sitting on the stairs with his head held high; The snow was still falling, and the young police officer Ma Desheng got out of the car and lit a cigarette; The snow was still falling, and the young Wang Yang pushed open the window; The snow was still falling, and the girl Shen Mo was sitting on the bank of the river...

Huang Liru, Li Qiaoyun, and Fu Weijun have all seen this snow. Of course, this snow has also seen the tears of all of them, and fate.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Li Qiaoyun / "The Long Season" stills.

The snow that fell on all the protagonists was "found" by director Xin Shuang and his team. He and screenwriter Pan still carefully communicated before filming what kind of design was needed to allow the protagonists' present and past to blend into the same set of shots.

Xin Shuang still remembers describing to Pan how he felt when he read Hesse's Siddhartha – that was before Fan Weijin set the makeup. In "Siddhartha", the protagonist Siddhartha came to the river after the ups and downs of fate and met the ferryman, and Siddhartha was finally "tamed" by fate, or enough to withdraw, and he became the ferryman's companion.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Siddhartha [de] by Hermann Hesse, translated by Yang Wuneng, Translin Press, 2022-8

They observe the river daily. Siddhartha finally learned the secret of time from the flowing river—that time does not exist.

Siddhartha writes of the river: "The river exists everywhere at the same time, at the source, at the estuary, in the waterfall, at the crossing, in the rapids, in the sea, in the mountain streams, everywhere, so that for it there is only the present, and there is no shadow of the future." ”

This set of heavy snow shots is the river that Xin Shuang wants.

Xin Shuang also likes the writer Ban Yu, and he still remembers the text on the cover of Ban Yu's "Winter Swimming" when it was published - people raise their faces from the water to bear the silent fall of fate.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

"Winter Swimming" by Ban Yu Ideal Republic | Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2018-9

The fate of the protagonists finally floats on countless screens, while also evoking countless discussions. There seems to be countless things to say about the plot, about the protagonist, about the age of the story. On Douban, 650,000 people have marked "seen" and scored a high score of 9.4 for this "Long Season".

When looking at those enthusiastic reviews, if you jump out of the labels of "Douban high score", "explosive", "suspense" and "northeast", as a bystander, or like Siddhartha watching the river, to watch the production of this drama.

It is not difficult to find that it does not have some explosive elements that we take for granted, such as a quick plot, having super traffic stars, and issues deeply bound to the current society.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Gong Biao / "The Long Season" stills.

At the same time, old cases are triggered by current events, boys and girls redeem each other, and fate turns over... These elements appear in countless literary works and have been repeatedly told.

"The Long Season" uses flashbacks, it uses three narrative lines, it is slow, it even has poetry recitations, and its ending is not complete - the show chooses an extremely difficult path.

Before the emergence of this drama, people may suspect that such a suspense short drama with a literary temperament that boldly expresses daily life in a literary way and goes against the trend is not accepted by the market and audience. But it proves the viability of such a path.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Shen Mo / "Long Season" stills.

How exactly does it do it?

Perhaps a more specific question can be, how did it complete a blockbuster drama with such a strong literary temperament? After all, the "explosive" and "literary temperament" of the series are so mutually exclusive.

Winter is fierce, and late autumn is long

Regarding the earliest version of this story, screenwriter Pan still describes it as "fierce". The prototype of the story came from screenwriter Yu Xiaoqian, who gave the original name of this story that took place in the northeast "Winter Blade".

There have been many literary and artistic works in the Northeast in recent years. Images such as "The Piano of Steel", "Daylight Fireworks", "Undocumented Crime", "Moses on the Plain", etc., writers such as Ban Yu, Shuang Xuetao, Zheng Zhi, Jia Xingjia and so on.

Freezing weather, huge factories, lost people, enigmatic cases, numb or hideous faces, it seems that this is a land suitable for growing "fierce stories".

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

A still from "The Long Season".

Pan still says that when she got the original script, the most attractive thing for her was that it took the protagonist eighteen years to deal with a "loss." Under the cloak of ferocity, this story is about universal problems, and its core can even be said to be soft.

Producer Lu Jing and director Xin Shuang also like this original story, because they both see the deeper part behind this story. But "Northeast crime stories" has become a kind of label, and producer Lu Jing has produced a similar "Undocumented Crime" - the team has no intention of repeating themselves, they want a "different Northeast story".

How can this story be different?

The first thing that makes it different from other Northeast stories is the season, it must not be a winter of slaughter, it cannot be violent. So the creators decided to schedule this story in the fall, it needs to be brilliant and gentle.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

A still from "The Long Season".

After traveling through several cities such as Anshan, Benxi and Shenyang, the creators found that the autumn in the northeast was short, and there was no way to support the filming time of the crew.

In the end, the art director of the episode suggested that it be better to go to a place with a long enough autumn, so the team came to Kunming. When Lu Jing first arrived in Kunming, she was moved by the feeling of vitality and warmth in the city, which is exactly what needs to be presented in the film.

They then found the Kunming Iron and Steel Plant, which was still operating. For Wang Xiang in the story, Birch Steel is brilliant and "Disney in the factory".

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Steel Mill / "The Long Season" stills.

Those flourishing flowers and plants on the southern railway tracks grow wantonly under the cold industrial machines, Wang Xiang, Gong Biao, Ma Desheng, Li Qiaoyun in the play... It's all like these flowers and plants.

But such a location also brings a number of difficulties, such as the old trains that are still in operation and the drivers who can control the trains, which are extremely difficult to find nationwide. Finally, the crew found it in Hubei, and they used three 19-meter-long trucks to transport it to Kunming.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

A still from "The Long Season".

Another obstacle to "making the northeast" in Kunming is that the landscape in subtropical cities is always different from the northeast land, so there is a lot of demand for special effects in this work.

For example, in Shen Mo's school, there are many tall broad-leaved vegetation next to it, which is far from the northern landscape, and the crew needs to use special effects to hide those trees or convert them into northern vegetation.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Steel Mill / "The Long Season" stills.

Although the final shooting was set in Yunnan, it does not mean that the scene ahead is in vain.

When the northeast scene was in the scene, the team's car broke down, and the main creators got out of the car, dragged their luggage out of the car, and waited for rescue. At that moment, the setting sun hung on the cornfield, and Xin Shuang took a picture of the team with the setting sun.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

The team broke down next to the cornfield while surveying, and Xin Shuang used his camera to freeze the moment.

Xin Shuang always remembered this cornfield in the sunset and wanted it to appear in the play. However, the climate in Kunming is not suitable for growing corn, and corn fields cannot be talked about. The cornfield that opens and ends in the play was filmed in Banna.

Even in Banna, there were almost no corn farmers, and the crew spent a long time, going door-to-door to persuade the farmers in the village to plant corn on their original crops. Before the start-up, the corn began to be planted, and near the end of the shooting, the planted corn matured, and the last few sets of shots were finally completed in the cornfield.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Cornfield / "The Long Season" stills.

Lu Jing used "half a meter off the ground" to describe the style of this drama. Every scene we see on the screen is familiar, but it has been discovered by the main creator to discover a special beauty, which is by no means "nostalgic" or "lighting and filtering" can be explained.

There are parts of it that are indescribable, such as the wind and heat from the south, the sunset hanging in the cornfields of the northeast, the weeds next to the steel mills... They melt into a northeast "half a meter above the ground".

The magician and the rabbit

People who have seen the play will not forget Wang Yang's recurring poem in the play:

"Snap your fingers," he said

We snap our fingers with a resonance

Distant things will be shattered

The people in front of him did not know at this time

Whistle, I said

You blow a slanted whistle

Like a piece of iron, then a needle

The arc of the magnetic pole flicks through the green glass

Have a glass of water and take a look at the river

Calm when calm, not calm

We missed a step

A small tear dripped on the stone

It will not dry up for a long time

It is amberized throughout the season

Lumpy flow, concrete light

Behind it is something far away."

Regarding this poem, Xin Shuang described it as "fate".

When the name of the story was not yet decided, Xin Shuang chatted with the literary planner of the play, Ban Yu. Xin Shuang said he wanted a title that would express a "sense of time." Ban Yu said he had just written a novel called "The Long Season."

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Shen Mo and Wang Yang / "Long Season" stills.

Xin Shuang felt that the name was consistent with the core of the story they wanted to make, so he "borrowed" the title.

Xin Shuang felt that the poem in Ban Yu's story "seems to be written for the story of the play", and Ban Yu seemed to use this poem to retell the story that Xin Shuang wanted to tell, "It is telling a change in time and space, a snap of fingers here, something collapses over there".

In a non-fiction work titled "The Flower of Modern Spirit: The Concrete and Abstract of a Northeast Industrial City", Xu Qianqian, a professor at the School of History and Culture of Northeast Normal University, begins by describing the Northeast and Northeast people he observed and understood:

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

"The Flower of Modern Spirit: The Concreteness and Abstraction of a Northeast Industrial City" by Xu Qianjin Shanghai Bookstore Press, 2023-1

This feeling is similar to low self-esteem in the individual sense, but it is more common than low self-esteem, as if it is everywhere. ...... Some people don't want to live in this state, so they find ways to leave. Some people still live here, fighting stillness or decline, while also waiting for the historical opportunity to come, and then the land becomes prosperous again. ”

Ban Yu is one of the Northeast writers who can best reproduce this feeling with words. In his works such as "Getaway", "Winter Swimming", "Two Rivers" and so on, those who have suffered the blows of fate, the hidden or revealed pain on their bodies is always delivered to the reader's eyes in the most appropriate way.

The critic Huang Ping once commented on Ban Yu's novel as "a kind of ruined novel" in his essay collection "Notes on the Northeast". His protagonist is a ruin, and the glory he once had can be glimpsed in the ruins, but it has forever become a "remnant".

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

"Out of the Northeast" by Huang Ping, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2021-12

Xin Shuang said that he may forget the plot of Ban Yu's novel, but he can always remember the characters and daily life he wrote. The main creators of the crew have all read Ban Yu's works and agree that if Ban Yu joins, he can consolidate the details of the characters. In this way, Ban Yu became the literary planner of this drama.

One of the important tasks of Ban Yu joining the crew is to chat with people. Screenwriter Pan still feels that Ban Yu's joining has given her a very good "first-hand stimulation". Because Ban Yu still lives in Shenyang, he was able to give the characters in the script a lot of rich details.

After Ban Yu joined, he gave Xin Shuang an outline, in which he extended the story line of Li Qiaoyun in the story from 1997 and 1998 to 2016, and Li Qiaoyun became an important character in the play.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Li Qiaoyun / "The Long Season" stills.

The "perspective of old age" of this drama has become clearer and more solid, and has become a more specific "perspective of a group of people from that era".

Li Qiaoyun encountered obstacles in retirement because he missed a stamp on the health book in the play - this is actually what happened to Ban Yu's family, and he put this matter on Li Qiaoyun.

Not only Li Qiaoyun's health care book, but also the daily meal of Wang Xiang and Luo Meisu, the poetry collection in Wang Yang's room... After these details are filled in, "The Long Season" has more and more novel texture.

Regarding the category of "Long Season", director Xin Shuang and producer Lu Jing repeatedly emphasized that it is first the plot, then the family, and finally the crime and suspense. In other interviews, they also said that "fate is the greatest suspense".

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

A still from "The Long Season".

Xin Shuang also talked about the metaphor mentioned in an interview during the promotion period of "Hidden Corner" many years ago. When a magician does magic, there must always be something in his hand, such as a piece of cloth, such as language, these are just ways to let the audience into the magician's narrative, and what really matters is the rabbit that comes out at the end.

Xin Shuang refuses to let the case be the core of the whole story, and also refuses to put the theme first. The case is just a way to unfold the characters and bring out the group portrait, but it is not the core of the story.

Xin Shuang wants to talk about people and fate, and he feels that the work is more important to arouse the emotional resonance of the audience, and he wants the "rabbit", not the "cloth". It turns out that Xinshuang does not even resonate, but the emotional tsunami of countless viewers.

Who is looking forward and who is looking back?

The more it resembles a novel, the more real people are needed, and the more complicated it is to make The Long Season.

"I don't think every thing that appears in a story that can be called a 'character' can be a piece of paper." Xin Shuang insists on making the characters in the play look like real people in life.

This also makes the entire drama have more than 30 characters with flesh and blood and backstories. During the casting phase of preparation, the walls of the office were plastered with pictures of the alternative actors, which also posed a challenge for the casting team.

Regarding casting, producer Lu Jing is often asked the question why a well-known actor like Qin Hao plays a slightly "wandering" role. Gong Biao, played by Qin Hao, seems to play a role more in showing daily life than promoting the development of the plot.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Gong Biao / "The Long Season" stills.

"He is definitely not a tool man, a supporting character or a clue, he is one of the soul figures, he represents the theme of this film - destiny. So I especially needed a famous actor to play this role so that people could focus more on the character than on the case itself. ”

Gong Biao is ordinary to the extreme, but he is one of the characters who condenses the most ingenuity of the main creator.

In the play, Gong Biao made a fuss for Huang Liru when he was young, which also accelerated his unemployment, and then there was the unreliable Gong Biao we saw at the beginning, and his ending may be the most memorable scene in domestic dramas in recent years.

Half of his life was trapped by money, and the moment he got it, he gained the ultimate happiness. We can't even imagine how happy he could be the moment he heard the winning numbers and got the lottery, but at the happiest moment he left.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

Gong Biao / "The Long Season" stills.

Not only Gong Biao, but also Fu Weijun, Li Qiaoyun, Luo Meisu, Huang Liru and every other character we define as a supporting role, there are highlight moments.

When choosing actors to play these roles, Lu Jing believes that it doesn't matter if everyone is unfamiliar with their faces, because the more strange they are, the more they can believe in the characters - even Qin Hao and Fan Wei use special effects makeup to make them strange.

It seems that we can understand that under the only protagonist "fate", everyone is a supporting role, or everyone becomes the protagonist.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

A still from "The Long Season".

Xin Shuang felt that depicting the fate of a group of people was a natural thing, not an ambition.

"The charm of 'The Long Season' lies in the 'time', in the fact that I have the opportunity to show more people and more aspects of life through such a time span, which cannot be called ambition. Because this matter is not particularly related to ambition. It does not mean that 'big' stories are powerful, small stories are not powerful, and small stories can also be done very exquisitely. He explained.

Three timelines in The Long Season, 1997, 1998 and 2016. Xin Shuang and his team did not choose to use a narrative method, but chose to let time and space merge at the moment when the final mystery was revealed.

In the final chapter, when the old Wang Xiang chases the train and says to the young Wang Xiang who is driving, "Look forward, don't look back", Wang Xiang's several weights of time finally fold up, and the weight of time on him is displayed in a more intuitive way.

Behind "The Long Season", none of the outings were accidental

A still from "The Long Season".

People who are trapped in the past, or who have been trapped in the past, will say:

"Look ahead, don't look back."

· END ·

Author丨Zhong Yi

Proofreading丨Xiangyang

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