Recently, the urban drama "Cheng Huan Ji", adapted from Yishu's novel of the same name, has come to an end on Tencent Video and CCTV-8, and has handed in beautiful ratings and webcast data report cards.
It is one of the most popular urban dramas in the market recently, but it is not without controversy.
Plots such as "ex-boyfriend Xin Jialiang is rich and pretends to be poor", "A typical East Asian mother cheats on her daughter to get engaged", "The scumbag father was immediately created after reconciling with his son" and other plots have been on the hot search, and some fans have discussed whether it is too dramatic.
The rewriting of Mai Chenghuan's view of money, love and the way the relationship between mother and daughter is handled in the series has also encountered some doubts due to discrepancies with Yishu's original novel.
When we discussed the achievements and controversies of "Cheng Huan Ji" with director Tian Yu, his attitude was very frank.
In his opinion, the story of "Cheng Huan Ji" is indeed based on the extreme relationship between characters, from novels to dramas. It's just that the protagonists in the series come from more ordinary backgrounds and follow more simple values.
This kind of extreme determines the wider reach of the story, but the "sinking" adaptation of Mai Chenghuan is destined to fail to meet everyone's aesthetic expectations.
Directing "The Legend of Cheng Huan" is also a creative experience for Tian Yu to jump out of his comfort zone.
Before that, he was well-known to the audience with the "Tieyuan" trilogy ("I Don't Want to Be Friends with You", "I Want to Be a Brother with You", and "Shine in Your Winter Night"). In the industry, he has a reputation for being good at youth themes, being able to skillfully implement "high concepts" in small and medium-cost productions, and is especially good at handling family relationships.
directing "Cheng Huan Ji" this time not only left the northeast space he was familiar with, but also no longer had a youth fantasy setting. He needed to adapt to the production rhythm of S+ projects, and also give full play to his strengths in the handling of family themes, so that this story that originated in Hong Kong at the turn of the century landed in contemporary Shanghai.
What is the temptation and challenge of filming Yishu's novel adaptation? He, who is accustomed to filming group dramas, does he need to adapt to "water and soil" after taking over an urban "big heroine" drama? What is the uniqueness of the mother-daughter relationship between Mak Chenghuan (played by Yang Zi) and Liu Wanyu (played by He Saifei) in his opinion?
The following is Tian Yu's account.
It's easy to choose, and it's easy to adapt
"Cheng Huan Ji" is one of the fastest finalized projects I have been in contact with so far. From getting the script of the first 5 episodes to joining the group, it only took 7 days.
The reason why it was finalized so quickly is mainly because I and the producer have the same idea in terms of creation.
First, we all want to change "Chenghuan Ji" to the present, and second, we all want to change it in the direction of family drama, rather than focusing on love. The mother-daughter line between Mak Chenghuan and his mother Liu Wanyu is what attracted me the most in the original novel, and it is also what I wanted to amplify in the original plot.
When I joined the group, it was about three months before I started the film.
At that time, the story outline and a draft of the script had been completed, but the script was later adjusted significantly. Although "Chenghuan Ji" is now positioned as a "big heroine" drama by the market, there are actually many characters around Mai Chenghuan in the play.
There is a family of four in the Mai family alone, as well as a family of four in the Xin family, plus Yao Zhiming (played by Xu Kai), grandmother Chen Shuzhen (played by Wu Yanshu), and best friend Mao Mao (played by Xu Lingyue...... We hope that each character's drama will be closed, and the two lines of family affection and love will be intertwined, but in the end, it will fall on the mother-daughter relationship.
How to choose a balance was a relatively big difficulty in the second half of the creation at that time.
The adaptation of Yishu's novel has already had "The First Half of My Life" and "The Golden Years", and "The Story of the Rose" later.
There is not only one way to adapt Yishu. We just want to shoot a story that is warm, healing, and topical, so that the audience feels "related to me", reflecting the current view of love, family and family.
The novel "The Legend of Cheng Huan" is less than 70,000 words, and it has been changed into a 37-episode TV series, which has to add quite a lot of original plots.
The first 11 episodes of "The Story of Cheng Huan" are relatively close to the original book. The conflict and collision between the Mai family and the Xin family, two families of different classes in the novel, because they are preparing for marriage, are taken as the main contradictions. But in the middle and late stages, the Xin family was basically offline. Yao Zhiming, an almost original character, became the protagonist.
In the second half, we filmed Mai Chenghuan's workplace line managing Xing'anli Hotel, filmed the spark of love between her and Yao Zhiming, filmed how Yao Zhiming became a family with the Mai family because of the entrustment of his grandmother Chen Shuzhen, and also filmed the comprehensive reconciliation of the Mai family's children and parents.
The so-called "group portrait", in my opinion, is actually that every character is important. Although the roles are different, each character should be treated as the protagonist to make a short biography. We did the same in "Cheng Huan Ji".
For example, Mai Chenghuan's younger brother Mai Chengzao (played by Zhang Yao). He didn't grow up with his parents. Because of special reasons, not long after he was born, he was sent back to his hometown by his mother to raise him. He always subconsciously thinks that his parents don't love him, so he has always been very sensitive. He only returned to Shanghai to attend primary school at the age of 7, and he was careful in front of his parents, for fear of upsetting his parents and sending him away.
He and Mai Chenghuan are both pleasing personalities, but the original intention of pleasing is different.
After Mak Chengzao returned to Shanghai, Mak Chenghuan's best friend Mao Yongxin has always taken good care of him. People who have been left out in the cold suddenly feel warm. That's why he had an inexplicable dependence and trust on Maomao, which gradually evolved into love.
So, although it seems that this is a popular sibling love setting, we have done a lot of laying out the cause and effect of the characters.
Another example is Xin Jiali (played by Hu Dandan), the daughter of the Xin family, why did she become so utilitarian and domineering. In fact, the lines also imply that her own marriage made sacrifices for the benefit of the family, which was very unfortunate. If you don't protect your mother's property, your status in your in-laws' family will be even lower. That's why she has such a strong desire to control and to keep the Xin family's property safe.
Mai Chenghuan of "Chenghuan" and Yao Zhiming of "Breaking Relatives".
There are two characters in "The Legend of Cheng Huan" that are very difficult to film. One is Mai Chenghuan and the other is Yao Zhiming.
Mai Chenghuan is difficult to shoot because she is the heroine, and the mainstream requirement of the market is that the characters cannot have too much grayscale. But if the characters are too sunny and positive, it will be a little distorted, and it will be difficult for the audience to empathize.
So when I met Yang Zi for the first time, the main discussion was how to make Mai Chenghuan a little shadowy.
The image symbolizing Mak Chenghuan in "The Legend of Cheng Huan" is a sunflower. Sunflowers are always towards the sun, and Mai Chenghuan will always show his best side to others. Be conscientious at work, take care of your family, and be patient with your lover. But she also has times when she is tired, and there are times when she is lost and broken.
What should we do? We designed her relationship with her closest grandmother as a "cool moment". She can confide, she can be powerless. Tight strings can be loosened.
Mai Chenghuan had a big emotional outburst in the play, at the engagement that her mother was preparing with the Xin family behind her back. This moment is when her strings are broken, and she decides not to cater to others, at least not completely obey her mother, and start an independent life.
Of course, this kind of departure is only temporary. The bond of affection between mother and daughter cannot be broken, and one day it will have to be reconciled. However, reconciliation does not mean that all problems are solved, and new problems will arise. The mother-daughter relationship, like all intimate relationships, is fluid and evolving. The key to this theme that attracted me was also here.
I don't make many dramas, so far I have a total of 5 dramas. But among all the co-actors, Yang Zi is one of the actors who communicate with me the most.
Although she has a tight schedule, she not only talks to me about the role before filming, but also brings out the confusion she encountered that day after filming. There is more on-site communication, she strives for perfection from character motivation, actions to lines, and is an actor who is very strict with herself.
In "The Story of Cheng Huan", there is a highlight of the reconciliation between Mai Chenghuan and his mother in the kitchen. In this scene, Mai Chenghuan is honest with his mother for the first time, talking about his hardships and avoiding him, and his mother also confesses his love and fear for the first time, and apologizes for his recklessness in the past. The two hugged and reconciled, and agreed to grow together.
Such a scene was changed three times before and after, and it took me and the actors nearly two hours on the spot, going through the process from beginning to end several times, re-optimizing the lines, and then having the final shooting effect.
Regarding Mak Chenghuan, there is a controversy that the audience thinks that her view of marriage is conservative and too tightly tied to her family. At this point, it is indeed different from the novel.
But I personally think that once the love between two people reaches the point of talking about marriage, there is no way to be independent of society or completely break away from family bonds. At least in China now. Of course, it is impossible for everyone to have the same view of marriage. What we want to tell is a story about most people, which is not quite the same as the original novel.
When filming "Shine in Your Winter Night", it involved the phenomenon of "breaking off relatives" that is beginning to appear among young people today. In "Cheng Huan Ji", there are not only traditional Cheng Huan's knees, but also "broken relatives".
Yao Zhiming is a person who has severed ties with his gambler father. His original family was broken up since he was a child, and his growth road was bumpy, until his grandmother appeared to help him, he began to have a stable living environment, and he relied decisively on his own to get to today.
Except for his grandmother, he doesn't believe in any intimacy. His daily life is also very simple, except for going to work, he basically stays at home alone, doing his own thing. Don't bother others, don't bother me. This is a microcosm of modern urban youth.
But being alone like an atom is not an active choice. In the second half, Yao Zhiming gradually came out of the confusion of his original family because of the healing of the Mai family. He is not a traditional boss, he has a very cute and cute side, and in the second half, we made some "color difference" for Yao Zhiming.
The endless East Asian family relationship
I have filmed several scenes about the relationship between mother and daughter.
The reason why I took "Cheng Huan Ji" very happily is because I have filmed the way adolescent daughters get along with their mothers, photographed daughters in their twenties and reconnecting with their families, and now I want to shoot how daughters in their thirties grow up with their mothers.
I'm almost 40 now, and I know what it's like for a child in his thirties to get along with his mother. Although I am male, the core contradiction is similar.
At this age, the child has been working for many years, has been growing and improving, and has a rich space for social activities. The mother may be almost 60 years old, and there is a high probability that she will not have any special opportunities for improvement, and she may become conservative and closed.
At this time, in order to avoid conflict, the child may deliberately reduce the communication with the mother, not because it is not unfilial, but because the two generations have their own lives and can be independent of each other. As there is less communication, the gap grows.
Mai Chenghuan is the same in "The Story of Cheng Huan", she chose to move out of the house at one stage, let Liu Wanyu entangle and be willful, and she always refused to go home. But is it true that mothers can't change? If something goes wrong, can running away solve the problem?
What we are trying to convey is that mothers and daughters can grow together as long as they are willing to face the problem head-on. Daughters keep learning to be daughters, and moms keep learning to be mothers.
Teacher He Saifei is the actor who surprised me the most in the whole play. Not only does she fit well with the character, but I was also surprised by how serious she is about the role. Compared with Yang Zi, it is even better.
She will add a lot of performance details to her mother's play. For example, why do you have to set up 5 stools for dinner today, and how many dishes do you want to stir-fry for a few people today...... She doesn't deliberately take it seriously, but wants to integrate the play into the situation.
I remember a scene where there was a problem in the kitchen of the Mai family, and the family went downstairs to eat noodles. At that time, there was a quarrel in the family, and Liu Wanyu turned her head, didn't eat, and left.
Originally, the script was written that she and her daughter were standing and chatting at the entrance of a commissary, and this contradiction was resolved. But Mr. He felt that his emotions had not yet been vented at that time, and he could not stand. On the spot, we changed the scheduling and rearranged the scene, so that they could talk while walking, and the emotions were flowing all the time, and this scene of conflict resolution was smoother.
Northerners shoot Shanghai
Most of the scenes I filmed before were filmed in Northeast China or Beijing.
This time is different, "The Legend of Cheng Huan" is a story set in Shanghai, mainly taken in Shanghai and Anhui, and three more studios were built for the interior scene, which cooperated with the completion of the filming of the whole drama. Wattecton's team has been filming in Shanghai for a long time, and they have rich experience in finding and filming scenes, and the way to coordinate filming is very smooth.
There are three interior scenes, one is the home in the Maijia Alley, one is the office of the hotel and Yao Zhiming's office, and the other is the old bungalow.
Among them, the Mai family's home in the alley is relatively complicated. We referred to many old houses in the alleys to make such a strange and irregular home. Some places are prominent, some places are bent, the area is very small, and the sister and brother can't have their own rooms, so Mai Chengzao can only build a marching bed in the living room for a long time. This kind of space is also helping to sharpen the contradictions.
In addition, I prefer to eat patting. This time, I also photographed all the home-cooked dishes and specialties that are commonly eaten by ordinary people in Shanghai. I also made some delicacies into contradictions.
For example, in order to please the Mai family, the mother of the Xin family specially came to Liu Wanyu to learn how to make eight-treasure sauce, and after finishing learning, she threw away the sauce when she turned around and didn't eat it at all.
This is the externalization of class conflict. These foods are also a manifestation of locality.
However, "Chenghuan Ji" does not emphasize regionality. Because this is not a story that only Shanghainese people have. In the play, Liu Wanyu is a native of Anhui Province who broke into Shanghai, the Xin family came to Shanghai from other places to do business, and Yao Zhiming is a Shanghainese, but he grew up abroad. Therefore, we just made the urban space more realistic, but we didn't use Shanghainese lines. We hope that the look and feel of "Cheng Huan Ji" will be more universal and make audiences across the country feel intimate and real.
【Text/Tin Sheet】