Who is supporting Guo Jingming?

Four years ago, Guo Jingming served as a mentor in "Actors Please Take Position", and he was the first to talk about performance theory, and at that time, some viewers said that he was talking on paper, and he might "get it on paper", and four years later, Guo Jingming took out "Cloud Feather".

This drama does have the effect of making the audience ten years younger, just a few episodes of "Cloud Feather" on the hot search with the "nickname" of "Small Times 5 Feudal Era", dreaming back to the cinema ten years ago where "we said good not to separate".

This is Guo Jingming's work presented to the public again after three years, and it is also the first TV series he directed. The popularity of iQiyi station exceeded 9,000, and in the STAFF list of dramas, "Gu Xiaosheng" on the director column was generally considered to be the pseudonym of his "Guo Xiaosi", and the co-director was his long-term love.

Audiences who have seen Guo Jingming's novels and movies, open "Cloud Feather", you will definitely feel the rushing, Guo Jingming-style sense of atmosphere, whether it is the exquisite flow faces, male aesthetics, or the story piled up with intertwined relationships between characters, just the background of the story, from the materialistic Shanghai to the ancient mountain family.

After so many years, Guo Jingming has not changed, and neither has his audience.

Flashy aesthetic

Zhang Linghe and Yu Shuxin, the male and female protagonists of "Cloud Feather", mentioned in interviews that Guo Jingming, the director who came to the door, persuaded them with one sentence: "I want to leave your most beautiful appearance when you are the most beautiful in your 20s." ”

This sentence moved Yu Shuxin and Zhang Linghe, and also incited the audience who came to see "Cloud Feather" for this reason - a large number of viewers who expected it before the show was broadcast, all out of trust in Guo Jingming's "aesthetics". The atmosphere before the start of the broadcast Reuters, the topic of "Guo Jingming's crew weight loss training camp" around the crew and actors, are constantly releasing signals to the audience, that is, "Cloud Feather" is a visual feast.

The dismantling of the so-called "Guo's aesthetics" is generally a "sense of premium" and a "feast for men".

Guo Jingming chases glitz. He recalled in "Lu Yu Has an Appointment" that when he first came to Shanghai to study at university, he could not wear the most fashionable shoes and clothes like his local classmates, and he would be humiliated by the clerks of luxury stores. Years later, "Small Times" was full of English names of luxury brands, and "Minimal Story" and his Weibo leaked fragments of Vanity Fair's life, and he was happy to change Hermès curtains and wallpaper to his Shanghai residence.

He is also good at portraying glitz. An Xiaofen, the producer of "Small Times" that year, praised him for being "very good at photography, lighting, and finding angles". As a fashion film, "Small Times" is very prominent in the service level of domestic film and television dramas, and a CP clip of Meng Yanchen and Gu Li recently played by Meng Yanchen and Gu Li on Station B exceeded one million, and "Small Times" around 2014 and "My Human Fireworks" in 2023 did not have many era gaps in the matching of styling and clothing.

At the same time, Guo Jingming pays great attention to the beauty of the characters' faces. In the starring roles of "Jue Ji", Wu Moufan, Fan Moubing and Yan Yikuan are all standard high-nosed and deep-eyed "thick" looks, and the casting standards are comparable to computer modeling.

When he made the TV series, everything he valued was reproduced in "Cloud Feather".

The "beauty" in his eyes is one of the most important parts. Huang Wei, the costume styling director of "Cloud Feather", is the former creative director of "Vogue", who served as the costume director of "Menghualu", "Kyushu Sea Muyun" and "Long Moon Ember Ming", and was also the art consultant invited by Guo Jingming in the "Small Times" movie that year. In "Small Times", he repeatedly rendered the heroine and girlfriends struggling to squeeze into a beautiful but torturous dress dress, and in "Cloud Feather", in order to look good on camera, the actors were asked to lose weight, even including Jin Jing, who played a comedy-style role.

Gong Zishang (played by Jin Jing)

Leaving the urban background, "Cloud Feather" is set in an ancient martial arts family, and the styling route should strive for "low-key luxury". During the filming, Yu Shuxin's fans expressed their dissatisfaction because the heroine's hair accessories were too simple, and Guo Jingming replied quite arrogantly: "Let Yunwei use the rented hair accessories of Hengdian for shirts? Are you serious? I don't have to rent a supporting role, let alone the female one. ”

However, after the launch of "Cloud Feather", Guo Jingming's proud vision, in addition to the continuous controversy, the "aesthetics" alone did not seem to be acceptable to public opinion.

The pursuit of texture "Cloud Feather" does not use the common dermabrasion filter of ancient dolls, but the dark tone lighting and the state of the actor after slimming down make some of the original flaws more obvious, Yu Shuxin's face shape and head-to-body ratio are not prominent enough, and Zhang Linghe's foundation color is too white, which is a little abrupt in the play.

In recent years, his aesthetic was touted at its highest when he served as a draft mentor for "The Name of a Boy", taking makeup photos and theme song MVs for the contestants. But the stage lighting faced by idou requires heavy makeup, and it is easy for actors to use too much makeup in the play to look unnatural - his remake of "The Legend of the Demon Cat" in "Actors Please Take Position" was put on the Internet and compared with the original at that time to cause group ridicule, but now Director Guo is also rated as "low, low, low, low, and low-matched version of Chen Kaige" on Douban, I don't know if it is considered to be what he wants.

Thin story

After the release of the first two films of "Small Times", the China Federation of Literature and Literature wrote in the "2013 China Art Development Report": ""Small Times" focuses on scenes and light plots, while over-rendering the scene space stacked with flashy urban fashion elements, the plot of the film is pretentious and thin, exposing the lack of narrative 'prototype/original' characteristics, inconsistent narrative style, and unclear narrative typological characteristics. ”

Guo Jingming may not be satisfied with this kind of evaluation, and in the process of "Small Times" evolving into "Cloud Feather", the audience can clearly see the progress of his pursuit of the story. "Cloud Feather" at least has a unified main line, and tries to let the audience quickly understand the relationship between the characters, lay suspense, and lose a large amount of narration.

Official character diagram of "Cloud Feather"

But the audience can still glimpse a familiar shadow from the story of "Cloud Feather": Jin Jing's role is a Guo-style comedy character similar to Tang Wanru, the male second palace Shangjiao and his younger brother Gong Yuanzheng have a deep relationship, which can make the audience snort orthopedic CP, and even the family name of the male protagonist is Gong, this surname is a symbol of power and money in "Small Times", and the important male partner Gong Xiao is widely regarded as the embodiment of Guo Jingming's own ideals.

In the context of "martial arts spy war", "Cloud Feather" does want to lay out a story that is cruel enough to find true love between intrigues, and the direction of the plot cannot be said to be not rapid, the second episode confirmed the identity of the other two bladeless assassins in addition to the female protagonist, and in the third episode, the male protagonist's father and brother both died, and the male protagonist inherited the position of blade (family master) because of family rules.

Unfortunately, the unreasonableness of the background and the characters themselves makes the cruelty of the story have loopholes, and it is difficult for the audience to get the shock that the director expects.

The beginning of the plot focused on rendering the opposition between the palace family and the Wufeng organization, but the female protagonist and the female second entered the ranks of the bride to be selected and happened to be selected by the male protagonist and the male second, which is too coincidental and easy in itself. The male second palace Shangjiao was portrayed as the image of a leader in this generation whose martial arts skills are all the best, but he clearly noticed that the female second Shangguan had a problem, and still let her live in his own courtyard.

The male protagonist's guard Jin Fan is not a simple green jade guard, and the female protagonist's Wei rank assassin rating is strange, and it is too easy to guess. This reversal of identity is Guo Jingming's usual method in the past, the star track in "Phantom City" is actually the villain's Western protector, and the ordinary noble girl Shenyin in "Jue Ji" is actually a second-degree king apostle, all of which have this identity disclosure "contrast".

The shaping of the male protagonist directly created a quarrel among several fans: in Guo Jingming's previous novels, whether it was "Phantom City" or the later "Small Times" and "Jue Ji", the protagonists are all growth-oriented characters with pure hearts, and the "crazy criticism" characters with ambition and a sense of contrast belong to supporting roles.

This time's male protagonist Gong Ziyu, from the current plot, has not been included in the candidate list of the family owner since he was a child, not enough to be scheming, pure nature is excusable, but the process of going through the trial of the three domains is much easier than others, with the help of guards and heroine, and the elders of the back mountain take care of him - the growth protagonist must also let the audience see his brilliance, otherwise it is easy to incur the audience's disgust, Zhang Linghe fans are therefore dissatisfied with the deletion of the clip expressing Gongzi Yu's understanding of medical skills and never forgetting, questioning the crew's intention to "hold a supporting role".

In terms of narrative means, a large number of interpolations and close-ups also block the rhythm of the story to a certain extent. There were too many flashbacks in the background introduction of Wufeng in the first few episodes, and when the third Wufeng assassin Zheng Nanyi in the second episode was exposed, she simply and rudely inserted a love memory of her and the online jackdaw, resulting in the plot of the story being directly cut off.

The director mentioned in his reply to fans that the play has a lot of inner drama and secret eye transmission, so he used a lot of close-ups of facial expressions in the super close play to capture micro-expressions. But a large number of close-ups and excessive emotional shaping have also led to the hustle and bustle of the narrative, which has become a large-scale plot MV - perhaps Scissorhands will feel ecstasy, and the close-ups of the emotions of the characters that are focused on portraying obviously leave plenty of space for Erchuang.

Savvy businessman

A rather paradoxical phenomenon is that even though there are many related controversies, the narrative rhythm and script are not perfect, the popularity of the iQiyi station of "Cloud Feather" still broke 9,000 straight up, and the CP "light night" of the male and female two quickly topped the drama derivative super-talk ranking, breaking through the month-long reign of "Meng Yanchen".

This coincides with the spectacle of "Small Times" many years ago. Even though mainstream public opinion has repeatedly denounced the value orientation of the film, it still cannot resist the rapid progress of the film box office. The box office of the entire series of "Small Times" has accumulated nearly 2 billion, and ten years later, it still makes the audience miss it, and "Lin Xiao you" has once again become a hot meme on the Internet.

According to a 2013 big data report by Shutopia Studios, the average age of the moviegoers in "Small Times" was 20.3 years old, which was younger than the 22.5 years old in "To Youth".

Poison Eye's previous articles also mentioned that the student party that had not yet gained the right to speak in the Internet space, and the "fan" group that had not yet grown at that time, became the secret supporters of "Small Times", and many years later, "Small Times" did not become popular, but the audience who liked "Small Times" finally dared to speak out. (What happened to "Little Times" from "rotten and smelly" to "really fragrant"?) 》）

Guo Jingming is a shrewd businessman, he is one of the first film directors to embrace the fan economy, the starring role is to use the most popular traffic flowers, in the supporting roles, the TFBOYS who have not yet been separated are on the cast list of "The Trail of Jue". Group portrait and CP are the code of the vitality of the second creation of the movie content, he created a pair of high-value BLCPs in "Small Times", and "Cloud Feather" is the main CP "stew", putting everyone's complex relationship on the table and leaving it to the audience to choose.

According to Artist's data, among the user portraits of "Cloud Feather", users aged 18-24 accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 47.39%, users under the age of 17 accounted for 21.32%, and users under the age of 24 accounted for more than 60%. When the audience who watched "Small Times" grew up, they may sweep Guo Jingming's works into the corner of memories as black history, but there will always be people who are young.

Source: Artiste Data

"Cloud Feather" is an ancient puppet - the audience often does not require too strict plot direction for the content of the episodes on this track, and the filters of handsome men and women and CP good can trump everything.

What's more, the threshold for watching the movie and the second creation is higher than the series, the movie of "Small Times" still needs four movie tickets, after watching "Cloud Feather" only needs an iQiyi membership season card, the second creation of the movie also has to cut out the clip from the trailer material, and the episode CP video can be downloaded and put into the cut when it is broadcast that night.

Students who are much more developed online than they were a decade ago, and who are exposed to social media earlier than ten years ago, will naturally have enough enthusiasm to join the audience watching "Cloud Feather".

Guo Jingming once again grabbed the business password and proved himself as always. Is this a good thing for him? Perhaps, after all, when he stopped boasting about the film's lens language and performing art, and sank into an audience moved by sadomasochism and exquisite costumes, he could finally be praised for commercial success.