The box office of Feng Shen exceeded 500 million in 6 days, and the investment of 3 films exceeded 3 billion in 10 years, can it return the cost?

Produced 丨Tencent News Q&A White Paper

Written by丨Exhibition exhibition

For nearly 10 years, Wuershan has been doing one thing: preparing and shooting the Fengshen series of movies.

10 years, sounds like a gimmick. But considering these numbers, everything becomes understandable again: the shooting cycle is 18 months, there are more than 8,000 staff members in the group, 15,000 casting materials, 21 interviews, 3 consecutive films... He divided the past 10 years into several stages: pre-development, mainly script creation, about four or five years; Preparation and establishment of creation, 2 years; filming for a year and a half; Later, from 2020 to 2023.

Why spend 10 years doing such a thing? It was a long time ago. He later told the media that the earliest can be traced back to when he was a child, when he liked to read the villain book "Romance of the Gods", and he could always think of many pictures when reading books. When I grew up, I studied fine arts, and I was exposed to a large number of books, paintings, and artworks in art history, anthropology, and religion, and I especially imagined the fantastic and magnificent mythological world.

But in addition, there is probably his pursuit of genre films and film industrialization. Since the filming of the first independent film "Soap Opera" in 2004, the director's film works can be counted on one hand: "Knife Laughter", "Painted Skin II", "Ghost Blowing Lantern Dragon Hunting", plus "Fengshen Part 1", which is currently in theaters.

That's all, it's not hard to see from it that he wants to make genre films, and the bigger he shoots. When filming "Painted Skin II" in 2011, Wuershan revealed that he wanted to shoot "Fengsheng". In 2015, "Finding the Dragon" was released, and he felt that it was time to create a bigger dream: sooner or later, someone would make a movie in the "Fengsheng" series, and he happened to like the mythological epic genre. He was 43 years old, in what he saw as a period of physical and creative energy, "I wanted to put my time between the ages of 40 and 50 on one of the hardest projects." ”

When a person decides to devote 10 years to something, what does he need to prepare? Wuershan made sufficient realistic considerations: he went for a full physical examination; Informed his wife of the decision along with the risk, and if this failed, perhaps they would need to pay off the debt for the next 10 years, and he had his wife's support; He bought medical insurance for himself, his wife and children, and took his parents to live in the same community so that they could be taken care of nearby.

Then, he began this adventure.

1. Give mythological stories a contemporary perspective

Why is it "Fengsheng"?

After the film was released, this question was asked countless times by Urshan . At the end of the day, it's a story that's been told for hundreds of years. Since the 90s of the last century, there have been TV series adapted from it, and the interpretation of it has never been interrupted. In Wuershan's view, myth is closer to psychology and far from history, myth is always contemporary, and it can travel through time, of course, because it contains immutable truths. The truth that Urshan found is justice, goodness and the radiance of humanity.

("Fengshen Part 1" movie poster)

"Fengshen Part 1" tells such a story: "Fengshen Part 1" tells the story of Shang Wang Yin Shou colluding with fox demons to Daji, tyranny and ruthlessness, causing heavenly punishment. Kunlun immortal Jiang Ziya went down the mountain with the "God Sealing List" to find the co-lord of the world to save Cangsheng. Ji Fa, the son of Xibohou, gradually discovered Yin Shou's true face and turned against the dynasty. The undercurrent of forces of all parties is surging, and the beginning of changes is beginning to appear...

This is a classic story structure: confused young people experience conflict, awakening and growth as times change. What moved Wuershan were the two father and son in the story: Yin Shou and Yin Jiao; Ji Chang and Ji Fa. In the former relationship, Yin Jiao both loved his father Yin Shou and was beheaded by his father, and his love evolved into violent hatred; In the latter relationship, Ji Fa regarded Yin Shou as his spiritual father and ignored his ethical father Ji Chang, but he gradually discovered his father's firmness and greatness and awakened. The story begins with a son who is rejected by his father, who chooses to end his life, and the theme is thrown out just like that. It ends with a son who once left his hometown and returns to his father.

"From a theatrical point of view, if it is to explore the emotional relationship between human beings, these two families are very meaningful, and they are also very suitable for making a very dramatic story, which is also what movies are good at." Urshan said. As a son and as a father, he resonated strongly with it, and he affirmed the core of this narrative, "I would rather make an uncanny version of the Romance of the Gods, and I would also keep these two families as the core of the entire narrative." ”

After the core is established, the architecture script is still difficult. From the beginning, he decided to shoot the trilogy in a row. This means that the scripts of the three films must be independent of each other, but also complete enough to be connected together, with characters and conflicts throughout. The difficulty of writing is much greater than writing three scripts alone, the stories have to be related back and forth, write one, think of the development of three, three have changes, you must go back and revise the script of one.

The script for the first part was written 19 drafts. In addition to the independence and integrity of the script, he put forward additional requirements for screenwriters: the script must be fresh, unfamiliar, and young. To write for a young audience.

One of the reasons, of course, is that moviegoers are mainly made up of young people, "which we have to strive for". In addition, in his view, "Fengshen " is a myth at the national level, and it is necessary for generations to re-recognize it, understand it, and rediscover the contemporary meaning in the story and its relationship with everyone.

To a certain extent, this ancient story is very "contemporary", "human upbringing experience is very similar, when do we learn to walk, when to go to school, when to be independent from the family", people will have different relationships with the family, sometimes confrontation, sometimes alienation, intimacy or something, "we finally re-recognize the meaning of family in the process of independent living, re-recognize the emotional value of father and mother, and then become a mature person and form our own family, Re-educate the next generation of the family. Urshan said.

But some of the plots in this story are not "contemporary" enough, and modifications are necessary. For example, in the original work, Ji Chang was imprisoned, and Bo Yi Kao came to Chaoga to save his father, and his body was made into meatloaf and given to Ji Chang to eat. In order to survive, Ji Chang endured tears with grief and tears, eating meatloaf and not daring to make a sound.

Wu Ershan felt that Ji Chang in the original work was a little cunning and not enough to move him. He made a change so that Ji Chang ate meatloaf, not to survive, but to protect his second son, Ji Fa, for which he had to endure great grief. "This is probably what a better father does, and this father-son relationship touches me more."

For example, Urshan readjusted the setting of Sudaji. "I hate the setting of red face and misfortune very much", he said bluntly, in the original work, Daji was blamed twice, as if all the bad things in the world were instigated by women, and Yin Shou was just a love brain, innocently seduced by a banshee. But this is often not the case, "These careerists, these tyrants because they are evil in their hearts, just shift the blame on women, which is not fair to women." ”

So, in the movie, the fox who entered the world only accidentally possessed Su Daji, and it happened that Su Daji was a beautiful woman, but the fox itself has no concept of beauty and ugliness, let alone other subjective goals of doing good and evil, she just wants to live and give back to someone who helped her unlock the seal.

She must be like a fox and not a vixen. Therefore, she is not charming, she is intelligent, sensitive, and at the same time timid and self-protective. Wuershan picked the actor Naran, "she always has a kind of ignorant look." When the film was filmed, Na Ran often watched Wu Ershan talking to others, and her reaction was different from ordinary people, "like a small animal, observing from afar", the feeling of strangeness and alienation is what Su Daji looked like in Wuershan's imagination: full of curiosity about the human world, but full of puzzlement.

2. Reclamation

The production process of the Fengshen trilogy is like a "land reclamation".

This can be called a large-scale experiment in the history of the Chinese series: the shooting period is 18 months, and the staff of the group has exceeded 8,000...

Prior to this, Wuershan had filmed the longest film "Finding the Dragon", which was filmed for 5 months and had a production team of more than 2,000 people. The industry sees "Finding the Dragon" as a successful exploration of the industrialization of Chinese films: to understand the needs of the audience, the genre positioning of the film, and to figure out what basic structures and themes need to be set up in the film in order to achieve this genre. Afterwards, Wuershan seriously wrote a "

By the time of "Fengshen Trilogy", the shooting cycle was 18 months, which was more than 3 times more than "Dragon Hunting". The crew and personnel are complex and long, and he told the assistant in advance to prepare the recliner, in case it didn't work, he fell on the recliner to shoot. But the process went more smoothly than he expected, and instead of falling, he was healthier than before. Because the crew's work rhythm is arranged scientifically and reasonably, shooting 10 hours a day, shooting 6 days and resting for 1 day. He wakes up every morning at 8 a.m. and finishes work at about 12 a.m.

(Shooting scene of "Fengshen Trilogy")

The pre-set-up took a lot of time. This is a classic Chinese mythological epic, so it must have a sense of classicism, and Wuershan knows that the aesthetic system it presents must not be current and fashionable. But at the same time, "Romance of the Gods" was written in the Ming Dynasty, hundreds of years ago, and tells the story of the Yin Shang period, which was more than 3,000 years ago.

Wu Ershan took the screenwriter and visual effects director on a trip to Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan. Art director Tim Yip took art and costume designers to go again. Everyone came back to discuss and unanimously agreed that it is not valid for the "Fengshen Trilogy" to take the route of historical realism, and it is necessary to find a basis from the perspective of mythology. Therefore, they extracted elements from the Taoist art of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the bronze culture of the Zhou Dynasty, and the water and land paintings of the Song Dynasty, the three most representative aesthetic forms in the history of Chinese art, and then artistically combined these elements to make the reconstituted object look like a cultural relic but not a relic of any specific era.

VFX is also a "land reclamation". Lei Zhenzi, Mo Qilin, Nine-tailed Fox, and Dragon Beard Tiger are all digital creatures. In addition, thousands of people greeting the triumphal troops, thousands of slaves under the altar are purely digital shots, "I can't find so many slaves, and I can't build such a large altar", for which Wuershan set up a visual effects company to serve the project. The company was responsible for the entire process, including the development and creation of the most important digital characters, overseeing and managing post-production, and subcontracting the project, as one company could not complete such a complex production, and the company needed to subcontract the project to 8 different visual effects companies according to the difficulty level.

(The slave labor in the altar is all digital characters)

3. Why spend so much energy and so long doing such a thing?

Urshan replied that there is only one way to complete a work like this. He wants to complete a mythological epic film that Chinese himself, and if he wants to achieve his goal, he must use corresponding methods. "I don't believe in being ugly."

So, what about him personally? Why does he have an almost obsessive pursuit of mythological epics and genre movies?

His answer was, someone had to do it. This psychology is a bit complicated, with some competitiveness, a sense of responsibility, and some anxiety about the future. He said that because of the current gap in this genre, and China is a big country in history and culture, cultural resources are very rich, it is a pity if it is not used to achieve it in films, he is interested, there is just the opportunity, there is team support, he feels that he should do such a thing.

If you want to look for answers from a personal aesthetic. That's probably because he likes things that open and close. For example, he likes myths, histories and allusions.

It also has to do with upbringing. Born in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, he moved to Beijing with his parents at the age of 4 but still maintains Mongolian habits. When I was a child, my parents used to speak Mongolian at home and drink milk tea every morning, and my father's colleagues were singers or dancers, and they often gathered at home to sing and dance. These subtly influenced his personality, making him "more willing to look at the current cultural situation in a macro and think in a big way." ”

Li Xuejian and Wu Ershan

This makes him rarely start from personal experience when choosing subjects, and rarely expose himself in the film. You probably know what type of films he likes to make and know his style of work, but rarely read about his personal experiences and self-projections from his films. Once, he said in an interview, "Movies have to be mass, and I'm not entangled at all." ”

Before becoming a film director, Urshan shot commercials for almost 10 years. Advertising directors need to do a lot of preparatory work in the early stages to understand customer needs. During the shooting, the client puts forward a request for modification, even if the proposed thing will destroy the advertising effect, it is necessary to try to be considerate and satisfied. It is a kind of training for all aspects of the director, requiring the director to have the ability to deal with complex problems at any time.

This experience probably influenced his filmmaking. For example, before the filming of "Painted Skin II", Wu Ershan asked the producer Chen Guofu to talk about the project ideas, and he proposed two shooting methods, one shooting method to shoot with the visual aesthetics of classical Chinese figure painting, and Chen Guofu firmly said that it was impossible. Wuershan didn't have much entanglement, so he decided to make "Painted Skin II" into a commercial film.

Once, in an interview with the media, he compared the advertisement to a 110-meter hurdle, and the movie was a marathon, "Talent is no longer important, the test is your endurance, and whether you can make the right judgment and choice in the face of every difficulty." ”

There are two small things that influenced the director's film path.

One day in 2006 happened. He accidentally went to the cinema and wanted to see a movie, but found that all the films were showing American films. He usually doesn't go to the cinema, so he was very shocked and found that there were no movies he wanted to see in the theater, and everything he wanted to see was on pirated plates. He later thought that the cinema was the real battlefield for filmmakers. There should be good mainstream entertainment movies, the kind of works that combine spiritual quality, production quality and entertainment effect. He wants to see such works, and since there is no one on the market, then do it himself.

Another small incident happened when he and his wife went to visit the planetarium. They saw a fulldome short film "Magical Universe" in the planetarium, a documentary with almost no storyline, and for ten minutes, the camera shifted from the macroscopic galaxy to the earth to the most microscopic ant nest, which gave him a strong experience.

Coming out of the planetarium, he told his wife that he knew what kind of film he was going to make: a strong cinematic sense, creating a world that had never been seen before, with powerful audiovisual power, majestic visuals, powerful sounds, and rich emotions. The viewer cannot experience it in reality, but it will be spiritually fascinating. Specific to the genre, it is fantasy, epic, and Chinese story.

Therefore, in Wuershan's film sequence, there are fantasy genre films such as "Finding the Dragon", as well as mythological epic movies such as "Fengshen Trilogy".

("Fengshen Part 1" Proton Group)

The relationship between the film director and the audience is similar to a romantic relationship, some is similar to a doctor-patient, and some is just an intermediary between the film and the audience. Wuershan hopes that his relationship with the audience is that of chef and diner. The audience came, first of all, they were attracted by the color and smell, and after eating, it was quite nutritious, "So I want to be a chef in the film industry, to make genre films, first consider the entertainment value of movies, and then discuss film aesthetics and human nature." ”