Author|Apo
In 2023, group dramas have gradually replaced the absolute heroines and become the mainstream of ancient puppet dramas.
"Sword and Fairy IV" and "Pray for the Present Dynasty" fought at the same time, and the most exciting thing in the industry outside of the data is that the two dramas have won the unanimous recognition of fans and the game party.
In contrast, the movie "Flower Thousand Bone", which reproduces the popular heroine ancient puppet drama, is dismal at the box office, and the heroine of "1v1" seems to be not fragrant.
For example, "Yi Nian Guan Mountain", as an officially stamped group portrait martial arts drama, has a lot of controversy among the protagonists during the broadcast period, but when the ending is near, the team goes offline tragically one after another, which makes the audience unbearable and moved;The "fairy god and demon S4" of the four-person group of the protagonist team in the Xianxia drama "Shen Yin" has grown from the "second generation of immortals" who team up to fight monsters to the king who performs his own duties, and it also pokes at the yearning of many audiences for friendship; Guoman's adaptation of "Youth Song Xing" and "Tiger and Crane Demon Master Record" also inherit the common protagonist group adventure mode in male frequency, "Lotus Building" It also restored the classic martial arts drama young heroes who joined hands to break into the rivers and lakes......
Group dramas are in revival: from the perspective of discussion, the audience is becoming more and more fond of it, from the perspective of broadcast results, it is stable and safe for the filmmaker, and from the difficulty of production, the requirements for script and shooting are also higher.
Why do you want to make a group portrait, what kind of group portrait to make, and how to avoid invalid group portraits? Entertainment Capital Puffer Fish Film and Television Archive (ID: HTYSDA) discussed with some experienced creators, and creators who aim for "high-quality dramas" should also consider these issues.
(The screenwriter Wang Wei in the article, the literary planner Xiao Bin, the planner Ming Ming, and the action director Xiao Ke are all anonymous)
What form of group drama is popular in ancient puppet dramas?
"The current costume dramas are indeed different from before, the big heroines in the past would have a lot of highlights, and the emotional dramas focused on the heroine alone, but now we are really starting to prefer to do group portraits. ”
Screenwriter Wang Wei, who has recently written two scripts for big costume dramas, is very touched by the fact that ancient puppet dramas have begun to focus on group dramas.
One is the most typical mode of the protagonist forming a group to fight monsters, which is the most common form in inspirational adventure stories, and the screenwriter considers the functionality of the characters more to make character designs. When Wang Wei was doing the special workplace story of ancient women, the IP she encountered was originally the story of the big heroine, and the producer took the initiative to ask for it, hoping to establish a team with the heroine as the core character, and the members each had different skills, and helped each other after forming a team to solve various problems encountered in the workplace.
This mode has a strong sense of gameplay, and sets different skills for different members of the team, just like teaming up in the game, with output, mage, support, etc., so the different characters of the squad in the two "Sword and Fairy" IPs on the air are almost in line with the skills of regular game characters, and at the same time ensure that the characters are not "wasted", and they have their clear functionality in the story.
The team composed of this mode needs to go through all the way to adventure and fight monsters, and there will be a strong sense of the road, and "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" will present each city that the protagonist group arrives in the form of a map in the picture, which is the most intuitive. For example, last year's broadcast of "Youth Song Xing", "Tiger Crane Demon Master Record", and "Da Song Youth Chronicles 2" are all protagonists who need to reach a certain end point to complete the task after getting acquainted, and have this sense of road, which is similar to the game's copy running map form.
The second is ancient family dramas and workplace dramas, and the group portraits of this kind of drama should be considered from the relationship between the characters. Judging from Wang Wei's experience, the goal of the characters in family dramas is usually how to turn a dilapidated family into prosperity, or how to reunite from the fragmentation of the family to a family and everything is prosperous;
"We have to consider the relationship around the protagonist, which ones have a good relationship with the protagonist, and which ones have conflicts with the protagonist. In the process of changing the status quo, is it still possible for the relationship between these characters to turn from bad to good, from good to bad. For Wang Wei, this kind of group portrait with relationship changes in a fixed group of people will be relatively more complex and difficult to do.
However, if it is done well, it will easily become a classic, such as "The Legend of Zhen Huan" and "Do You Know If You Should Be Green, Fat, Red and Thin", which can still compete with the number of new dramas played every year.
"These dramas with a good long-tail effect are all group dramas, and they do make many producers see the advantages of group dramas. Literary planner Xiao Bing said bluntly, so in the process of selecting IP for the producer, he will tend to look for stories where the original work itself is a group portrait.
The planner of "Sword and Fairy IV" clearly told Fugu Jun that ancient puppet dramas, especially Xianxia themes, are not very original, so they will be adapted based on the IP level, and they can't jump out of the magic change. The most classic thing in "Sword and Fairy IV" is the relationship between the four protagonists, and the relationship between the four characters and the four people still has many fans, which is the direction determined during the preliminary research of development, and it is also the most attractive part of this IP.
"In particular, game adaptations and novel adaptations may be very different, gamers will have their own projection of character relationships, and we also found that game fans will have different perspectives and like different characters and character relationships. Xianxia dramas also have their own advantages, that is, because the characters can go to the sky and the earth, they can make a bigger spectacle, and the possibility of different characters changing will be greater, which is why we go to station B to watch the second creation video, and the Xianxia group portrait will feel very good as soon as it comes out. ”
In addition, producer Wang Fei also mentioned the market reason, most of the Xianxia dramas that will appear in 2023 will begin to incubate around 2020, when it was in the stage of concentrated appearance of Xianxia themes, and the market has an obvious demand gap for Xianxia drama content innovation, and good group dramas have also become a key part of film and television companies in the process of seeking content breakthroughs, and finally a large number of them have been launched in the near future.
The rise of supporting roles
From the classic "Journey to the West" to "Huanzhu Gege", you can watch the protagonists team up for adventures; from "Mansion Gate" to "Ming Dynasty 1566", you can see the group portraits of the officialdom of the house; there is no shortage of group dramas in domestic costume dramas, what is lacking is how to give birth to better group dramas in young ancient puppet dramas.
"In addition to the protagonist, group dramas also need a lot of supporting roles to achieve. Planning Xiaoxi took the stage of reducing costs and increasing efficiency that began in 2021 as an example, the platform is more supportive of the production of head dramas, and group dramas are more suitable for supporting head dramas in terms of the fullness of characters and plots and the volume of production.
It is also after reducing costs and increasing efficiency that the platform has cut many original middle-waist dramas, and the protagonists of these middle-waist dramas will flow into the head drama market, and actors who have rich experience in leading roles can better support the performances of supporting roles in big dramas.
Wan Peng, the actor of Luo Zhaoyan, the outstanding supporting actress of "Praying for the Present Dynasty", has rich experience as the heroine of sweet pet dramas, Zeng Shunxi, the second male lead in "Lotus Tower", can even be the male protagonist in most A-level or above dramas, and the most attractive unintentional role in "Youth Song Xing" is Liu Xueyi as a special starring role.
Producer Wang Fei has repeatedly emphasized to Fugu Jun that in addition to the characters in the text creation stage, the shaping of the supporting roles in the group portrait drama is also very dependent on the second creation of the director and the actors in the filming stage.
Screenwriter Wang Wei said that some producers will even increase their production budgets in order to hire better supporting actors. Planner Xiao Xi explained that if an actor with a good coffee position is invited to play a supporting role, he will also cooperate with the actor in terms of costumes, so that the overall texture of the protagonist group and group portrait will be improved, and the audience will also have a psychological expectation of "this drama has a strong lineup and is worth watching" when they see actors at the protagonist level of other dramas to play the roles in the group portrait.
During the adjustment period of the industry, the tendency of many actors to choose dramas has changed, which is also a kind of time and place for group dramas. The rest is how to make the group drama look good.
The most common mistake made in group dramas is that the supporting characters are outside the main line, or reduced to tool people. There was a story of a popular drama in which the protagonist and his team adventured all the way in the name of a group drama, but all the members of the mid-term squad were reduced to the male and female protagonists assisting the sugar tool, and only returned to the main function at the end.
"Pray for the Future" and "Shen Yin" closely followed the theme of the protagonist's squad in the marketing stage, and called themselves "Hexagonal Team" and "Shen Yin S4"
Screenwriter Wang Wei explained to Fugu Jun that this is too many repetitive daily water scenes, and there is a lack of promotion of major events, and the male and female protagonists can continue to promote each other's feelings, but the supporting roles are idle and have nothing to do, "or the density of important plots is not high enough." Sometimes when it is rough, there will be "decapitated characters" who disappear halfway for no reason, and director Fei Zhenxiang's creative concept in "The Splendid Stars and the Moon Rises in the Sea" "Every character has a place to come from and a place to return" is to prevent the appearance of this kind of "decapitated characters".
"The audience will also hope that a good supporting character or deputy CP will extend more plots, and a producer once asked me to write two more episodes for a supporting role, hoping to have the opportunity to shoot it. Wang Wei said with a smile.
Planning Xiao Xi gave a more interesting way to create, that is, to learn to draw a character relationship diagram in the character design stage, when the important characters you need can be connected to the two-way arrow line, a good group portrait is half completed, and then you can make the supporting characters as much as possible with the main purpose of the whole story, beware of the wandering of the supporting characters.
The right direction of group drama: blank space and positive energy
"Fans like "Sword and Fairy IV" because they see their youth in the 4 protagonists, they experience life experience together, grow together, and are youth partners from adolescence to youth, this beautiful and pure idealized relationship is what they yearn for. The planner obviously mentioned such a character relationship when he mentioned the adaptation concept of "Sword and Fairy IV".
The popularity of the juvenile inspirational adventure theme in the group portrait also comes from the unity and inspirational spirit of this teenager and girl. Planner Xiaoxi said with a smile, "No CP has become one of the top ten keywords of online literature in 2023, because young people are more willing to choose the two people they want to eat among some vital characters to develop character relationships, and they don't even necessarily need to be officially designated." And screenwriter Wang Wei also said, "The situation of only one pair of CPs in a drama no longer exists in the current film and television dramas." ”
The clearest trend is that even if there is a polyamorous relationship in the protagonist group of the group portrait, there is a high probability that there will be no "female competition".
Wang Wei bluntly said that female mutual assistance has become the basic configuration of group dramas, "The eldest princess in "Ning An Like a Dream" likes the heroine very much, just because the heroine painted a flower on the scar on her face, saying that this is a medal for the country. The emotions between women can be more delicate, not only to be rivals, nor do they have to have a fateful relationship like men. ”
"In the four-person team of "Shen Yin", the second female likes the second male and the second male likes the female protagonist, but the relationship and mutual trust between the second female and the female protagonist have not been affected in the slightest, and the two can even rely on each other for life and death. is no longer like the previous ancient puppet dramas, the second female loves the second male and has no choice but to frame the female protagonist for blackening. Xiao Xi described, "If I still see such a stereotypical character relationship in any drama now, I will think that this drama is very low-level." ”
At the shooting level, no matter whether the plot of "Da Song Boys' Chronicles 2" is controversial or not, the friendship of the Qizhai team is still very strong, which is what the audience yearns for and will not disagree. There are also some externalized manifestations of this sense of teamwork, such as the ancient campus elements in the first part of "The Chronicles of the Song Dynasty", which will amplify the sense of teamwork through the unity of school uniforms, and campus ancient puppet dramas such as "Beautiful Scholar", "Qingqing Zijin", "Chang'an Boys" and other campus puppet dramas have similar practices.
The Qionghua "school uniform" of "Sword and Fairy IV"
"When the four protagonists in "Shen Yin" fight monsters together, there are many unifying places in the fighting action, and even four people need to make consistent actions at the same time to defeat the opponent, all of which are indispensable, which is what the action director needs to do in team battles. Action director Xiao Ke explained to Fugu-kun that this unified action not only emphasizes the importance of everyone in the team battle, but also amplifies the emotional feeling of "burning".
A footage of a team fight in "Shen Yin".
From the marketing level, screenwriter Wang Wei pointed out some pre-marketing methods, which character relationships are good when creating texts, which can bring the audience a second creative space, but must not create CP for the sake of CP, more like the relationship between the characters that the screenwriter can empathize with is a good relationship, "If I see the audience's feedback during the broadcast period, and I have the same character relationship as myself, then I will be very happy." However, the audience's imagination is always the richest, and it will definitely taste the relationship between the characters that I didn't expect. ”
For Wang Fei, the juvenile hot-blooded group portrait and the love line provide the audience with different emotional values, but the two do not conflict with each other, if the group portrait drama can allow the audience to taste different official CPs, and also allow the audience to dig out different character relationships such as brotherhood, girlfriend love, family affection, master and servant love, such group portraits are rich and effective.
"Ancient puppet dramas, especially Xianxia dramas, still hope to create dreams for everyone, beautiful and warm. ”