Q1 of 2024 has passed, and it is the turn of the hot dramas in April to be urban emotional topic dramas.
Produced by CCTV, Huaceketon's Dream Forest Studio, and Tencent Video, with Yang Liu as the chief producer, and "Cheng Huan Ji" starring Yang Zi and Xu Kai has been broadcast on CCTV's eight sets of golden files, Tencent Video and CCTV's morning files.
In the urban atmosphere of Shanghai, Yishu's classic IP + Yang Zi and Xu Kai + the blessing of old drama bones made the popularity and topic index soar as soon as the show was broadcast. Not only did it set a record for the fastest Tencent Video urban drama to break 30,000 this year, and the fastest record of 100 million Tencent Video barrage interactions in 2024, but it was also the first drama on Tencent Video to exceed 10 million posts in 2024, radiating multiple circles of audiences.
As the plot progresses, the mother-daughter interaction between Yang Zi and He Saifei ushers in a heart-wrenching famous scene, and the intergenerational conflict is unstoppable;
Wu Yanshu's cute and amiable grandmother Mai suddenly went offline, earning enough tears from the audience; the different values and marriage views of three generations of women, and the road to self-esteem and self-improvement of young children all affect the hearts of the audience.
As an urban emotional topic drama filmed in Shanghai, the originality and on-site filming of "Cheng Huan Ji" at the production level also add a lot of points to the overall texture of the series. The camera focuses on the streets and alleys of Shanghai, and captures the unique customs and rich fireworks under the precipitation of time and culture.
The "double strong" male and female protagonists work together to break through
There is neither a routine of love at first sight in "The Legend of Chenghuan", nor a deliberately created coincidence and traditional boss and Cinderella characters. There are reality disturbances and family ties, as well as the male and female protagonists breaking through their respective sieges and experiencing a long process of self-growth and transformation.
In the first few episodes, the emotions of Mai Chenghuan and Xin Jialiang (played by Niu Junfeng) played by Yang Zi encountered multiple crises, the warm and loving Mai family and the mercenary Xin family had a huge difference in their three views, and the juniors were caught in the middle and were in a dilemma, and the feelings that were about to enter marriage collapsed.
When young people are faced with a balance between family and relationships, they inevitably experience pain and self-doubt. But this relationship also brought Mai Chenghuan an opportunity to change from "Chenghuan's knees" to "Chenghuan himself".
On the other hand, there are rich highlights of Mai Chenghuan and the male protagonist Yao Zhiming (played by Xu Kai) "One Night Chengming" CP.
This pair of business partners, who are known by many as "wolves and rabbits", both double A and double O, got to know each other after experiencing bumps, and the time spent with their grandmother together gradually warmed up their relationship.
Yao Zhiming used his professional characteristics of planning everything and killing decisively to let Mak Chenghuan get experience and growth, and Mak Chenghuan's love and righteousness, liveliness and jumping out are also healing Yao Zhiming's injured childhood, making him soft and humane. No matter how you look at it, the CP of "One Night Chengming" is more like a natural pair that heals each other and complements each other.
However, "Cheng Huan Ji" still does not play according to the routine, and before the two parties have time to find out the relationship, the unexpected death of Grandma Mai and the distribution of the estate have changed the situation again.
At this time, Yao Zhiming, who had experienced the death of his grandmother, was no longer an absolute refined egoist, and Mak Chenghuan had grown from a good girl to a thoughtful hotel heir. The tension between the two has once again elevated a dimension, the subtle change in the relationship between the characters brings freshness, and the strong topicality has become the motivation for the audience to continue to follow the drama.
The philosophical lines present the core of the topic drama
The strong topicality of the first half of "Chenghuan Ji" is brought by He Saifei and Yang Zi's mother-daughter relationship.
The heroine Mai Chenghuan has always adhered to the meaning of her name "Chenghuan Knees" until she was 30 years old, filial to her parents, and obedient to her strong mother Liu Wanyu (played by He Saifei). But with the outbreak of one incident after another, Mai Chenghuan understood the importance of "pleasing himself" and "realizing self-worth" at the age of 30.
Liu Wanyu's experience and personality led to her being unwilling for her children to continue to follow her old path, being mediocre and wronged all her life, and once doing bad things with good intentions.
In the previous plot, Mai Chenghuan revealed his heart to Liu Wanyu at the engagement scene, claiming that he didn't want to be his mother's "doll", and the plot of "mother and daughter tearing" caused heated discussions on the Internet, and the intergenerational conflict reached the highest point of emotional concentration. The audience can not only empathize with the urgency of being a child and desire freedom, but also understand the painstaking work of parents for their daughter.
But in the plot of the last two episodes, Liu Wanyu and his wife moved into an old house to live with Yao Zhiming, and the two sides understood each other in the undercurrent surging, and the mother-daughter relationship was also eased with Mai Chenghuan's insistence on independence and the start of the entrepreneurial model.
"The Story of Cheng Huan" uses a strong plot that links one link after another to present the impact of the original family on young people, and the plot about the mother and daughter of the Mai family and the sisters and brothers of Xin Jialiang even hit the pain point of family conflicts. But on the whole, the play does not take the extreme route of sprinkling dog blood, but uses a warm and tolerant tone to present the bonds between family members, and then proposes ways to solve problems with weight.
In the play, Grandmother Mai played by Wu Yanshu is a lovely old man who pays attention to food and clothing, and is wise and round, and her death also pushes the story to a climax and a turning point.
Grandmother Mai's parting words to the younger generations were few but very philosophical, full of wisdom in life, which caused a barrage of collective tears.
She said to her most beloved granddaughter Mai Chenghuan, "Be kind to yourself and love yourself"; to the strong and worrying Liu Wanyu, "The children are all older, let go is your homework"; and the teaching to the younger generations is "It is useless to complain, self-improvement and self-reliance are the truth, only independence can magnify the right to choose", "People are born lonely, and they will not be lonely when they get together".
After the death of Mai's grandmother, the inheritance was left to Mak Chenghuan and Yao Zhiming respectively, she thought that Mak Chenghuan was diligent and motivated, and only lacked one opportunity, so she handed over the management of the time-honored hotel Xing'anli in Shanghai to Mak Chenghuan;
Combined with the characters' personalities, such an arrangement is both unexpected and reasonable.
Just as Mai's grandmother thought, Mai Chenghuan did not sit back and enjoy the success, but handled a series of rectification matters and crisis public relations of the hotel properly, and maintained her grandmother's hard work for many years. The plot of the big heroine of such a legacy from heaven is not only refreshing, it is the unanimity of the concept of the two generations that has reached such a legendary handover.
Fuhuadao is meticulous + real-time shooting, and ingenuity shows attitude
More than half of the episode was broadcast, and the audience followed the footsteps of the people in the play, from the Sanheli Alley where the fireworks in the world were fireworks, to the Waibaidu Bridge that used to be a ten-mile foreign field, and then to the Ruijin Hotel, which carried the history, the mellow Shanghai-style culture gushed out.
The Shanghai-style architecture and costumes in the play are extremely elegant, and the Shanghai landscape with fireworks or exquisite sense of fire is also fascinating, and the screenshots are all pictorial effects. Grandma Mai's Xing'anli Hotel is set in the century-old Ruijin Hotel, which combines the grace and opulence of old Shanghai in the 30s of the 20th century with the red walls and tiles that lead to the secluded garden.
In the first few episodes, the Mai family of four lived in the alley cottage in Sanhe for more than 30 years, and due to the constraints of life, every space and corner was used to the extreme.
The three-foot stove in the kitchen is Liu Wanyu's "workshop", she is busy for the whole family to wash and wash; her younger brother Mak Chengzao (played by Zhang Yao) has no room of his own, so he can only sleep in the living room; the house facilities are in disrepair, and the aging and leaking water pipes lead to the damage to the entire floor of the house, and Mak Chenghuan takes the initiative to shoulder the maintenance work.
"The Story of Cheng Huan" uses these details to show the "poverty" of the Mai family in the early stage very intuitively. But through the design of the room layout, lighting and composition, the audience can see a full sense of warmth.
The clothes are also full of Shanghainese flavor. The crew specially observed the dress of the Shanghai girl and selected a large number of simple and capable costumes close to the characters for Mai Chenghuan.
Yao Zhiming's early three-piece suit fit his executive's delicate and cold image, and after opening his heart in the later period, he gradually became more casual.
Grandmother Mai and Liu Wanyu have many elegant and slim cheongsams, mostly made of silk. Father Mai's (played by Yao Anlian)'s suit and leather shoes are also carefully maintained, and they always wear them when they are proud.
The play is created by the Dream Forest Studio under Hua Ce Keton, which has produced the hit drama "Acquaintance with Jun Chu, Just Like an Old Friend", with Yang Liu as the chief producer.
From the "immortal" of the costume fantasy theme to the "new" of the urban emotional topic drama "Cheng Huan Ji", Dream Forest Studio has its own uniqueness in grasping innovative themes, selecting IP to theme mining, and creating differentiated characters. The character values and costumes that fit the current audience have also made these dramas gain a large number of young fans.
The outstanding performance of "Cheng Huan Ji" in terms of content, production and filming shows that Dream Forest Studio takes into account both cutting-edge and depth, and pays attention to the creative pattern of spiritual core and aesthetic expression.
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