Text: Yiqing
Ed Chen Meixi
After "Faint Fire", "New Life" won again in the compatibility of suspense, realism and artistry, allowing Youku's "White Night Theater" to gain a firm foothold on the social suspense track.
At the beginning of the story, the protagonist Fei Ke was still winning in the last second, and the next second he was foaming at the mouth and was sent to the ambulance, and the camera was given to the medical staff, and the audience was shocked to realize that Fei Ke's fall to the ground was not a "climax", and there was someone else behind the scenes.
As a suspense drama, it is customary to set a hook at the beginning to attract the audience into the situation, but a good-looking suspense drama must not only set up a good hook, but also lay out exquisite organs, so that the audience is also immersed in the process of revealing the truth.
The mastery of "New Life" lies in the process of solving puzzles. It uses "participating in Fei Ke's memorial service" as an incision, gathers friends related to Fei Ke, and then locks them into a secret room, and through the murderous interrogation of the script, piecing together the true appearance of the "deceased" from everyone's mouth, making the people in the play look at each other, and also breaking the fourth wall, so that the audience in front of the screen jumps into this scam and becomes a member of the puzzle.
When the line "We know five different Fei Ke" came out, it was even more creepy. It's never the horror stories that are really scary, it's the people who know the faces.
Fei Ke is like Frank in "Cat and Mouse Game", observant, quick-witted, and deceitful, using information to turn lies into truth. However, this drama is different from "Cat and Mouse Game", it does not intend to exaggerate the advanced methods of fraud, but points to real life, and presents the audience with various types of fraud modes of "love" and "desire" within a limited framework.
As a film and television drama, "New Life" is not only entertaining, but also can become an anti-fraud guide for the audience, broadening the public's imagination of human nature.
As an innovative product of the White Night Theater, "New Life" is not only the "new life" of the platform's suspense track, but also allows the suspense track, which has not had a hit for a long time, to open up creative ideas and obtain a "new life".
Creating a "Guide to Fraud Prevention"
Youku's White Night Theater is paying more and more attention to social reality.
In the hit "Faint Fire", you can see the multi-dimensional plight of women, not only physical violence from the family, but also verbal violence from social injustice. This dilemma is not only about the perception of the times, but also about the most subtle side of human nature, and any snowflake is enough to dismember a person.
Like "Faint Fire", "New Life" does not deliberately use the camera to trick the mystery, but returns to the content itself, capturing the complexity of human nature in one scam after another, presenting the whole picture from the perspective of God, and helping the audience to see through the classic deception in reality.
In the past two years, the public's anger against the "love brain" has almost reached the full level. As a result, film and television dramas keep pace with the times and strive to depict the sober and independent side of women, but few dramas can face the issue of "why can't you fall in love".
In the first episode of "New Life", the story of "cheating marriage" brought the audience the top love brain fraud. Among the five people who came to the island to mourn Fei Ke, there was a man named Chen Shufa, half a year ago, his daughter Chen Jiajia brought Fei Ke to himself, and since then, he began to step into the abyss of "people and money", not only was defrauded of a lot of money, but his daughter eventually committed suicide due to depression.
The process of Chen Jiajia falling in love with Fei Ke is the process of Fei Ke waiting for the rabbit. Chen Jiajia, who has a better family condition, should have seen the world, but she was still dazzled by Fei Ke's methods, first at the party he used magic to attract attention, and then by his disguised motivation and maturity to deceive psychological identity. And Fei can retreat into advance, taking advantage of the emotional rift between Chen Jiajia and his father, as well as Chen Jiajia's love for himself, and finally get the opportunity to cling to the powerful.
For this well-known topic to the audience, "New Life" did not take shortcuts, preach with opinions or carry out emotional incitement, but explored in depth, not only answering the question of "why people can't fall in love", but also answering the questions of "why people are deceived because of love" and "how to avoid being deceived".
Fei Ke accurately grasped the needs of women and men, and was considerate and perfect in front of them, just right, and successfully blinded everyone. During the marriage, Fei Ke took the initiative to write Chen Jiajia's name on the house book, showed his attitude, and finally settled in the villa; Chen Shufa is a businessman, so Fei Ke fabricated his background from a well-known family, and used Chen Shufa's lack of "knowledge" and "power" to make him relax his vigilance little by little.
It is not so much that Chen Jiajia is in love with her brain and Chen Shufa's education is not high enough, but that Fei Ketai will use the fishing net of "demand" to fish, and even the elite man Cheng Hao has become his "thing in the palm".
In front of Chen Jiajia and Chen Shufa, Fei Ke behaved elegantly, maturely and decently, and did not panic, as if he did have a good background and upbringing. In front of the elite man Cheng Hao, Fei Ke did a little low, incarnated as a housekeeper, controlled Cheng Hao's daily life, broke his psychological defense line with sincerity, and then occasionally showed weakness that he had no money, seized Cheng Hao's greed, and completed a terrifying financial fraud.
After waiting for the building to be empty, Cheng Hao found that high-end hunters often appear as prey, and from the first time they met, he was already Fei Ke's Chinese food.
From Chen Jiajia, Chen Shufa to Cheng Hao, the degree of shrewdness and wisdom of the characters is increasing, but Fei Ke's fraud methods are "different from person to person". Perhaps it was never how skilled Fei Ke's deception was, but the abyss of everyone's own desires.
"New Life" does not criticize the weakness of any type of people, but uses Fei Ke to create an "anti-fraud guide", using the most familiar topics to tell everyone the truth: as long as you have weaknesses, you can be exploited and attacked. Protecting your money is the best anti-fraud bottom line.
Return to the landing point of "human nature".
The reason why suspense dramas have changed from "niche" to "out of the circle" is because they knocked on the door of "human nature".
In 2022, the campus suspense drama "Coward" will be broadcast, this drama adapted from Zheng Zhi's novel, does not have the blessing of traffic and celebrities, and does not belong to the popular genre of suspense dramas, but it has received a high score of 7.8 on Douban. The wonderful story is not the protagonist's modus operandi, but the love-hate intertwining hidden behind the motive for killing, from adolescence to adulthood, the comparison of the life trajectories of the four protagonists also makes the audience sigh helplessly about life.
In order to continue to bring freshness to the audience, the platform has made multi-dimensional improvements in genre integration, narrative mode, actor matching, etc., but it has also fallen into the bottleneck of form innovation, resulting in "suspense" becoming a product of trickery, the killing method is terrifying enough, but the motive for killing rarely stands up to scrutiny.
In recent years, the reason why popular works have been covered by realistic themes just shows that what the current audience likes to see most is a story that digs deep into reality and human nature. The protagonist in the play is like a mirror, reflecting the hatred, delusion, struggle and contradiction of everyone in front of the screen, and winning the audience's resonance to the greatest extent.
The same is true for the suspense drama track, the suspense dramas that are out of the circle can always use skills to attract the audience into the game, and finally use the landing point of "human nature" to make the audience applaud.
"New Life" is a typical proof of this. On the one hand, it uses the most frequent cases in life such as marriage and love fraud, emotional PUA, and financial fraud as the story base, on the other hand, it is not confined to vulgar expressions and discussions of social issues, but seeks deeply, so that a story has a multi-dimensional interpretation, presents the complex side of human nature, fills the gap that has not been discussed in genre dramas, and also expands the audience's imagination of real life.
In the fourth episode, Su Qian, an older young woman, told about the process of falling into the trap of Fei Ke, and she even found Cheng Hao's residence, but she passed by the truth because of silence. Cheng Hao asked Su Qian, "I asked you who you were looking for that day, why didn't you say it?" Maybe we're on the right track. Su Qian's answer is also worth pondering, "I don't want people to know my relationship with him." ”
"Online dating" seems to be a word exclusive to young people, but Su Qian, who is about to be forty years old, still has a desire for love, but it is difficult to talk about it in her heart. Her silence and her recklessness cannot constitute the audience's contempt for her, but it gives people a "extenuating" understanding. The emotional connection between the characters and the audience makes the logic of the deception in the story more meticulous.
As a collection of fraud, Fei Ke's deception methods are certainly wonderful, but the essence of human nature seen through the scam is also a typical Chinese horror story. He can not only become a "fast son-in-law" and "family cook", but also a "sunshine boy" or any kind of other half who fits you; On the surface, he is emotionally stable, sincere and friendly, but in fact he does not hesitate to harm himself in order to achieve his goals, and after swindling money, he turns around and leaves, without any nostalgia...... The dark side of human nature is far more complex than we think.
The audience has seen the ceiling of suspense dramas, and their aesthetics and minds are constantly improving, even if suspense dramas refocus on realism and return to the foothold of human nature, they may still not be able to reach the audience's cool point, after all, topics such as financial fraud and marriage fraud are full of our real life.
The most advanced thing about "New Life" is that it connects these common topics, so that Fei Ke can take advantage of the information gap between them, so that the victim can never find a loophole, because what he says is true, but it comes from another person's life, and it is difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood. In the script-killing narrative mode, what is revealed is not the truth of life, but the impact of multiple life truths.
The reality is not as good as we imagined, and all the people and things you think are just in time are likely to be scams designed for you.
As another work of the social suspense track of the White Night Theater, "New Life" gives the audience a deeper understanding of the darkness of human nature, but this recognition will not affect our beautiful imagination of life, but can help us overcome the trap and live and love people better.
Stabilize the heel of "word of mouth".
It is not easy to do a good job in the social suspense track.
The upgraded White Nights Theater, whether it is "Faint Fire" or "New Life", is closely related to the theme of "social suspense", but in order to make the series deeply discuss reality and analyze the subtleties of human nature, it is suspenseful, realistic, and artistic, and it still needs a profound creator to escort it.
The reason why White Night Theater can stand on the heel of word-of-mouth is closely related to Youku's choice of the main creators behind the scenes.
In 2023, the film "All or Nothing", which was co-produced by the director of "New Life" in the Olympic bid and Alida Entertainment, has a cumulative box office of more than 3.8 billion, becoming the champion of the summer file, and also breaking the box office record on the premiere day of crime films in the past five years. From the beauty dealer online dealer's out of the circle, to the five people who can't piece together a complete Fei Ke, the Olympic bid knows what the weakness of human nature is.
In addition to the director, the selection and matching of actors in "New Life" is also an important part of the series' reputation.
The suspense track is the stage that most needs actors to contribute their acting skills, because once the performance is false, the motive for the crime is not established, and the story becomes unconvincing. But with the rise of suspense, the acting schools on the suspense track also tend to be face-painted, and their acting skills are still online, but they can't exceed the audience's aesthetic imagination and give freshness.
"New Life" provides a new idea for the configuration of actors. In the eyes of the public, Jing Boran's realistic image is always inseparable from "good popularity", but he played a role in the play that scammed everywhere, and the contrast formed made the audience's eyes shine, and the rivalry of Huang Jue, Wang Yanhui and other acting schools made the tension of the story more full. Let mature actors try to contrast roles, constantly explore the other side of the acting school, and also give new actors opportunities, the configuration of "New Life" has injected more fresh vitality into the suspense track, so that everyone's attention is attracted to the suspense track again.
This is also why Youku's White Night Theater can gather the audience's expectant attention. It is not difficult to find that "Snow Labyrinth" has Zhang Yimou as the producer, and "Sandstorm" has Zhao Dongling as the screenwriter; The movie cafes also went down collectively, not only film directors such as the Olympic bid, but also acting schools such as Wu Zhenyu, Xiao Yang, Zhang Yu, etc., who brought a new look to the suspense track and also brought the guarantee of word of mouth.
Ten episodes, script killing, poor information, anti-fraud, from the perspective of the number of episodes, narrative mode, story concept, etc., some people describe "New Life" as "Blizzard Villa", and some people describe it as the national drama version of "Cat and Mouse Game". But it just borrows an interesting shell and innovatively tells a story that is closely related to our lives, which is not only realistic, but also more "pragmatic", allowing the audience to engrave fraud prevention techniques into their DNA in the exquisite scam.
Users are changing, and so is the content market. Just like the name of "New Life", White Night Theater is not only the "new life" of Youku's suspense drama, but also the "new life" of the platform to build a bridge of communication with users in the new era.
After many years of suspense fever, we need "New Life", and we also need a label like Youku White Night Theater that focuses on "social suspense", which not only represents the courage of platform innovation, but also bears a platform responsibility - linking life, paying attention to the public, and creating value.