Per reporter: Bi Yuanyuan Per editor: Dong Xingsheng
When it comes to the Tang Dynasty, when it comes to Chang'an, every Chinese has a picture scroll in his mind.
If expressed in Tang poetry, it can be "Dapeng rises with the wind in one day and soars up to 90,000 li", it can be "you don't see the water of the Yellow River coming up in the sky, rushing to the sea and never returning", it can be "the long wind is tens of thousands of li, blowing the jade gate closed"...
Under the bright moon, above the Milky Way, Li Bai, Gao Shi, Du Fu, and Cen Fuzi sat on the ground, and Li Bai, who was drunk and hazy, toasted and drank with the immortals in the sky, and a song "Will Enter Wine" chanted out, fast and light, and the waves were magnificent. This is a magnificent scene in the animated movie "Chang'an 30,000 Li".
A total of 48 poems, transformed from words, depict the bright stars of the Tang Dynasty.
Image source: Photo courtesy of the film
According to the real-time data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, as of 12:30 on July 22, the box office of the film "Chang'an 30,000 Li" exceeded 1 billion. As of 11:54 on the 22nd, the total box office (including pre-sales) of the 2023 summer file (June 1-August 31) has exceeded 10 billion, and "Chang'an 30,000 Li" ranks third. On the occasion of the movie's hot screening, Yu Zhou, producer of "Chang'an 30,000 Li" and president of Chasing Light Animation, was interviewed by a reporter from "Daily Economic News".
"Poets regard Chang'an as an ideal place, and 30,000 li can be understood as Gao Shi, Li Bai, and Du Fu's journey to Chang'an to pursue an ideal life, which is also quite interesting." When talking about the title of "Chang'an 30,000 Li", Yu Zhou said. In addition to the box office, what makes him even happier is that the cultural influence of this film has broken the circle, and the team spent three years to create, evoking the audience's common memory of Chinese Tang poetry.
Yu Zhou Image source: Courtesy of the company
"Tang poetry is not a literary form 1,000 years ago, but a living being"
The total box office (including pre-sales) of "Chang'an 30,000 Li" exceeded 1 billion, breaking into the top ten of the box office list of Chinese animated films. The score of 8.2 on Douban also makes the film the highest-rated movie among the 8 feature films of Chasing Light Animation.
From the beginning of the century to the Anshi chaos, the film takes the audience through thousands of years from the perspective of the poet Gao Shi, feeling a splendid Tang Dynasty style. Some viewers commented that the film "can be called the most brilliant poem in domestic animation, and the scene of "Will Enter Wine" alone satisfies all my imagination of the 'romanticism' of the Tang Dynasty."
Li Bai, Gao Shi, Du Fu, Wang Wei... Familiar names and characters appear on the big screen. Through this film, we see that "Chang'an looks back embroidered in piles" and "spends a spring in Chang'an".
Image source: Photo courtesy of the film
Seeing the overwhelming discussion and praise, Yu Zhou said frankly that there were surprises. "We expect the box office to be higher, but we prefer that the film has a good cultural influence."
A total of 48 verses appear in "Chang'an 30,000 Li", which appear naturally and blend in with the plot and characters. Immersive viewing of the movie, let Tang Shi out of the textbook.
In the past few days when the movie was hot, Yu Zhou received messages from some overseas friends, saying that he wanted to see the film as soon as possible. "Shengtang culture has a very broad and strong foundation in China. People who grew up under the influence of Chinese culture, both at home and abroad, began to recite Tang poems from the moment they spoke. Tang poetry is not a literary form more than 1,000 years ago, but a kind of existence full of vitality and vitality. ”
After the movie was released, Yu Zhou observed that there were both young people in the cinema to watch, as well as three generations of grandchildren, and middle-aged people who brought their children to watch it after watching it. "All this makes us feel happy, the audience base of "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is very large, and the feelings after watching it are different for different age groups."
Taking Gao Shi as an example, his perspective ranges from 8 to 60 years old, accompanied by decades of friendship with Li Bai, and is free to sing about wine. The film does not present the frustrated Du Fu in his later years, which is well known to the audience, but allows everyone to see the appearance of Shi Sheng's youth. After watching the movie, the audience has a new understanding of the poets, immortals, and poets.
Young Du Fu Image source: Photo courtesy of the film
This magnificent Tang group portrait is not easy to do, Yu Zhou said, chasing light animation for three years. "'30,000 Li of Chang'an' is a major national historical film, and experts and historical researchers of the Academy of Social Sciences intervened from an early stage to review the script from a literary perspective." Not only that, the main creator also visited well-known scholars, consulted a large number of Tang Dynasty books, and went to Shaanxi History Museum, Tongguan and other places to collect styles.
This is not only a new attempt to chase light animation, put it in the entire animation industry, and there is no movie like "Chang'an 30,000 Li", which praises Tang culture with the magnificence of poetry. In this regard, Yu Zhou summarized the key words of this film with four words: "poetic", "Tang style", "magnificent" and "exquisite".
To say that the biggest challenge in the production process, Yu Zhou said after thinking about it, it is the artistic conception of Tang poetry. "There are a few poems, such as 'Yan Ge Xing' and 'Will Enter Wine', and the audience sees the brilliance, but it took us a year and a half to two years to complete this production. Tang poetry is not only words, we want to give the audience a more three-dimensional, vivid and full feeling through innovation. ”
Three animations scroll at the same time, revealing the ambition of chasing the light "summer file"
With a three-year production cycle, the input of nearly 300 staff members, and the support of nearly 1,000 people, "Chang'an 30,000 Li" surprised this year's summer file.
The first time "Chang'an 30,000 Li" revealed its mysterious face was in the ending Easter egg of "New God List: Yang Jian" released in the summer of 2022. Following the "New Legend" series "White Snake: Origin" and "White Snake 2: The Green Snake Robbery", the "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" and "New God List: Yang Jian" of the "New God List" series, Chasing Light Animation opened the "New Culture" series with "Chang'an 30,000 Li".
"What we want to do is to use animated films to present the shining characters of traditional Chinese culture and recreate their stories." As a filmmaker, Yu Zhou is reluctant to use popular Internet words to briefly summarize "Chang'an 30,000 Li", such as "labeling" and "playing the cultural card". "It's not a game, we never think of it that way."
After accumulating one film after another, the chasing animation finally broke the curse of "500 million box office", allowing "Chang'an 30,000 Li" to go for 1.5 billion yuan.
Chasing Light Animation was founded in 2013, but from the beginning, Chasing Light Animation chose one of the most crowded and difficult creative paths: targeting family-oriented audiences and making completely original animated films. Of course, judging by commercial value, this road chasing animation did not go through.
In the sixth year of the company's establishment, "White Snake: Origin", which presents the traditional oriental narrative, was released, and the audience was surprised by the delicate expression of oriental aesthetics in the film, and every frame of the film was like a poetic ink painting. Chasing light animation has thus found a unique artistic expression style, a road of innovative expression of traditional culture that belongs to the Chinese market.
"White Snake: Origin" stills Image source: Cat's Eye Pro
According to Yu Zhou, chasing light animation has formed a creative process of three works rolling at the same time, and the time consumption of each work is stable at a 3-year cycle. Every year, a work is created, and after post-publicity, it is released in the summer.
"Animated films are most suitable for release in the summer, with a long schedule and many young groups, which is conducive to word-of-mouth fermentation." Starting from "White Snake: Origin", the chasing light animation adjusted the audience of the work to be young, but it is also suitable for children and a family of three. "Young audiences are the mainstream audience of films, and the average age of the film market (mainstream audiences) in any country is 24 years old, and they are the mainstream voice group." Yu Zhou said.
The surging Tang Dynasty has been put on the big screen, so is the next part of the "New Culture" series a timeless Song Dynasty? Yu Zhou said that this may be a reasonable guess, but what the team is currently producing is the third installment in the "New Legend" series, "White Snake: Floating Life". "Shining characters and classics of Chinese culture, including the four masterpieces and even modern works, may be created in the 'New Culture' series."
Four consecutive works were profitable, and employees returned from the game industry with "salary cuts"
Coming to Chasing Light Animation, three factory buildings of nearly 5,000 square meters contain a complete chain of animation creation.
"There are a small number of outsourced people, but it can be said that the creation of an animated film can be born 100% from this building." Yu Zhou said. At present, there are nearly 300 people in chasing light animation, production personnel account for about 90%, and personnel administrative staff is less than 10 people.
"Since 'Little Door God', we have built an industrialized system. Through the continuous iteration cycle of one movie after another, like a production line, continuous maintenance and optimization, we completed this very difficult system. ”
The ten years since the establishment of Chasing Light Animation has flourished with Chinese animated films. In the past ten years, Chasing Light Animation has cultivated a group of local animation talents. Xie Junwei, director of "Chang'an 30,000 Li", confessed that he was not from an animation class, but grew from an ordinary animator to an animation team leader and animation director in Chasing Light Animation, and finally served as the director of "Chang'an 30,000 Li". His own story is also a realistic version of "Chasing Dreams of Chang'an".
This can also be interpreted from another angle, why "Chang'an 30,000 Li" cuts into the perspective of high adaptability. "Li Bai is an immortal, no audience can substitute Li Bai, but Gao Shi can. Their friendships are touching and they all have great ambitions. ”
Gao Shi Image source: Photo courtesy of the film
Yu Zhou feels that "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is a movie worth brushing, and he believes that the audience will have a new experience every time he watches it. For example, in the panorama of Chang'an City, more than 10,000 small characters appear at the same time, and it is difficult to observe these details without looking at them many times.
"The feature film was longer than that, there was a 180-minute version, and finally the feature film was reduced to 160 minutes. "Chang'an 30,000 Li" is an epic film. "Faced with the question of the length of the movie, Yu Zhou responded calmly." It's normal, some people feel long, others feel unfinished. ”
Wen has no first, Wu has no second. Yu Zhou said that animated films are difficult to compare with Hollywood like hard technology, but the aesthetic level of the audience has become higher and higher. Compared to Pixar's 1,200 creative staff, the number of employees in chasing light animation is much more "refined". But similar is creative efficiency, Pixar has released 25 films in its 27 years since its establishment, an average of one a year; The filmmaking of Chasing Light has also maintained the efficiency of one a year.
"We are very efficient, but we are going with Chinese characteristics. For example, in our works, you can see the flying dance, and the streamers of ancient costumes are very complicated. "Why the replay of the chasing light animation can be a blockbuster through "White Snake: Origin", Yu Zhou concluded that this is the restraint and implicit expression unique to Chinese. In addition to an expression, eyes, and movement, there is also white space and artistic conception.
Premiere Image source: Courtesy of the film
In addition, animation talents who were poached by game companies with high salaries in the previous two years are also gradually returning. Yu Zhou introduced that many employees of Chasing Light Animation have joined the company since its inception, "together for many years, even the administrative and financial personnel love animation from the bottom of their hearts." Not long ago, some employees preferred to take a pay cut and return to the company from the gaming industry.
In the three years of the epidemic, although the film industry has been hit hard, Chasing Light Animation has maintained a profitable state for every film since "White Snake: Origin". Yu Zhou said that chasing light animation will have many innovations, but what is certain is that the company will only make movies, and will not consider other industries such as dramas and games.
"We have new works pushing and will try some other genres. The audience will always see something new, and we will never have the day to eat the old book in place. ”
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