In the general trend of diversified development of film and television creation, there will be a churning wave of "authorized" dramas in 2023, which are different from other works of the same genre in terms of image aesthetics, story style and theme interpretation, with a distinct style, and even partially realize the integration of writing and directing.
What are the specific aspects of the uniqueness of this batch of "authorized" dramas, and what impact may it have on the creative trend of future dramas?
Director "Appeared": "The Long Season", "Moses on the Plains"
TV series are the art of screenwriting, but in 2023, there are two dramas that are representatives of becoming the director's "appearance".
One is "The Long Season". The reason why this drama can be talked about by so many fans is related to the suspenseful narrative that it explores the Northeast terroir and the memory of the times, but the more important reason is that Director Xin Shuang's audio-visual imagination matches the scheduling ability. He dared to move a Northeast story to Kunming to shoot, and used the warmth of Jin Cancan to change the cold and cold visual impression of the Northeast suspense drama. In "The Long Season", which is full of nostalgia, his "parody" use of classic songs such as "Little Star Variations", "Blue Danube" and "Looking Back Again" not only sets off the atmosphere, but also stimulates the audience's associations. He also has the ability to help actors open the threshold of acting. Under his arrangement, Qin Hao performed the sinking path from a high-spirited youth to a decadent uncle; Fan Wei captured the soul of the heroic worker big brother and the cautious old "brother" at the same time; and Chen Minghao's performance control was demonstrated in the contrast between the "Iron Mask Policeman" and the "Birch Forest Dancing King...... Without Director Xin Shuang's ingenuity at these levels, "The Long Season" is likely to blur its face on the already crowded Northeast suspense drama track.
The other is Moses on the Plain. The novel "Moses on the Plains" is by Shuangxuetao, but the drama version of "Moses on the Plains" is directed by Zhang Dalei. The reason why I say this is that Zhang Dalei has completely transformed the sense of time and space in the novel, and incorporated this story about the accident of fate and the tragedy of life into his universe of expression. He moved the story that happened in Shenyang in the novel to Hohhot. This space is his hometown, and it also recurs in his films "August" and the short films "Half the Afternoon" and "My Friend". In this familiar space, he can create a city for the play and open up all the details of life. In the novel, the narration of different perspectives is intertwined and complex, but in the play, he changed it to a chronological flow of life. He also brought his signature "long shot" to this suspense drama. Such a spectator perspective that maintains a considerable visual distance preserves the flow of time and the trajectory of people in a space. The sense of completeness of life created in this way is not willing to be destroyed by the convention of a 45-minute episode. Of the more than 400-minute scenes, Zhang Dalei only cut out 6 episodes, and the single episode lasted more than 70 minutes. The exploration of the length of a single episode of this drama also fully illustrates the artistic stimulation potential of the short drama "tailor-made".
Challenging Emotional Narratives: "Apocalypse", "Joy", "Those Young Times That Can't Go Back"
In 2023, "emotional narrative" has become a new creative trend that many drama fans talk about. It is the opposite of strong plot, which emphasizes atmosphere, inward excavation, and flow drive, and specifically at the narrative level, it tends to be "small plot" or even "anti-plot".
Since the beginning of this year, three representative dramas have been named "emotional narratives" and have been widely sought after in the circle, namely "Huanyan", "Apocalypse" and "Those Young Times That Can't Go Back".
"Huan Yan", written and directed by Xu Bing, uses the paradigm of road genre films to open up the revolutionary growth story of a progressive youth. It has a phalanx of protagonists composed of multiple protagonists. Along the way, the relay escorted Xu Tian's northward Lao Sun, Yu Yixiu, Yu Zhou, Zhang Jiayi, and Tao Tao like stars scattered in the map of the Republic of China. They have different identities and perverse personalities, and they are each traveling as leaders in Xu Tian's journey to find Yangzhi. Its story is also quite flying. Although the story "engine" of Xu Tian's return from Nanyang and his journey north to find his fiancée and open a company to support the revolution is considered realistic, the pawnshop duels, copycat adventures, casino fights and even battles with mobile teams along the way can only be regarded as poetic fables. Its way of telling the story is also intermittent and walking, and each leader has his own typical environment and destiny trajectory, but when tangential to Xu Tian's journey north, dazzling sparks are sparked. The ideal is romantic, bold and dazzling, even if it is placed in Xu Bing's iconic absurd Republic of China universe, "Huan Yan" is also quite stylized.
Director Li Mo's "Apocalypse" is a not-so-idol but romantic one of this year's urban romance dramas. He is well-known to the audience because of "I'm Good in Another Country", and when most urban dramas are still filming material contradictions, he stands out with his accurate grasp of the spiritual crisis of urban people. "I'm Okay in a Foreign Country" shows how young women find a rhythm to adapt to urban life and restore their sense of security after the certainty of relying on friendship suddenly disintegrates. In "Apocalypse", it becomes a story of two hearts that have been sharpened by urban life with a thick cuticle, how to unload their defenses, stop calculating, and devote themselves to love in the slow temptation. At a time when sexual fate brain and love brain have become high-frequency words for netizens to crusade against literary and artistic works, it takes courage to shoot a pure love drama. In order to avoid the risk of public opinion, idol dramas regard emotional "double cleanness" as the premise of love, it is risky to shoot a high-level confrontation with "Sea King". But "Apocalypse" has turned two eight-faced workplace elites into ordinary people, making their self-protection and hesitation reasonable. Then, they scattered the fragments of their love into the nights and early mornings of Beijing, and embedded them in the cracks of the office building in the CBD of the International Trade Center.
Adapted from Tonghua's novel of the same name, directed by Wang Zhiyong, and written by Wu Tong, "Those Young Times That Can't Go Back" (hereinafter referred to as "Young Times") is the most successful youth drama adaptation this year. Tonghua's original novel was written in 2010. Judging from the life curve of the heroine Luo Qiqi from a small town in the northwest to a big city to finally settle in the United States, "Young Times" has a certain autobiographical color of the author. However, in terms of the drama of the relationship between the characters, they still took some of the popular "station CP" routines of the year. The success of the drama version of "Young Times" is precisely because the main creator used a small plot to dilute the strong drama, and filled the gaps left by the narrative with poetic audio-visual. In "Young Times", the external conflicts experienced by the heroine Luo Qiqi are not deliberately amplified, but her internal psychological conflicts from childhood, teenage girl to adolescence are shown in the series with large dialogues, self-confessions and freehand audio-visual passages. The drama is also not entirely concerned with the linear passage of time and the coherence of reality, where psychological reality and life reality are intertwined, and memories, illusions and everyday life are juxtaposed. This made the audience's attention jump out of the multiple-choice question of "standing CP" and entered the substitution and reflection on the emotions and growing pains of youth.
Genre transformation: "Under the Alien", "Hometown, Don't Come Unharmed"
In 2023, there are still some main creators who are still on the main road of genre dramas, but they have injected a distinct personal style into genre exploration and program deconstruction. The most representative in this regard are the two dramas "Under the Alien" and "Hometown, Don't Come to Harm".
"Under the Alien" is a difficult comic drama. In the current urban life, Yuan Man has built a hidden Inhuman world. The aliens who belong to this world have special abilities and improve their cultivation by cultivating "Qi". They belong to different sects and organizations, have different "miracle skills", and can freely shuttle between the real world and the alien rivers and lakes. It is not easy to put such an alien worldview on the screen, but fortunately, director Xu Hongyu is quite good at shooting themes that combine reality and imagination. Born in film editing, he has a strong ability to present visually, and can concretize the imagination space with the most appropriate technology. Previously, in the game adaptation of "Crossfire", he used a combination of live-action shooting and exaggerated action special effects to reproduce the dazzling experience in shooting games. In "Under the Inhuman", he once again gave full play to his strengths, filmed the cityscape in Chongqing, and at the same time used a large number of special effects in the play, relying on the Taoist cultural system to build a "Inhuman World" that keeps pace with the times. It can be said that fantasy is so in line with the national style and the current urban reality for the first time. What martial arts dramas can't do, it does.
"Hometown, Don't Come to Harm" is directed by Peng Chen and Wang Guang, and the most familiar work of director Peng Chen before the audience is the absurd comedy "Big Mom's World" with a single episode of only 5 minutes. He is sensitive to comedic rhythms and is adept at creating safe performance spaces and capturing the details of the actors' performances in a relaxed state. In the lineup of "Hometown, Don't Come Unharmed", there are many comedians. As soon as Ren Suxi, Li Xueqin, Shi Ce, Zhang Chi and other actors met, they obviously relaxed the rhythm of the performance with a large number of "hanging".
But not every director has the ability to provide "ready-to-hang" space to play. For example, can we only give a specified situation in a group scene, and trust the actors to play each other, and for example, will there be a trick of "the camera can't stop" to capture the details of the actors' free play. In "Hometown, Don't Come Unharmed", Peng Chen obviously did it. This drama looks like the actor's "hanging" to inject soul into it, but isn't this a directorial style?
Text: Bian Yunlu (Young Teacher, School of Journalism and Media, Shandong Normal University, Visiting Scholar, School of Arts, Peking University)
Editor: Xu Luming