Text │ South Wind
Graduate of Jiaotong University, teacher of New Oriental, screenwriter of talk show... There are too many labels on Shi Yan's body. Someone on the Internet scolded him, saying that he didn't have the talent to talk about talk shows, and he replied that he really didn't have talent, unlike Chizi, so he could only exercise through hundreds of open wheat performances a year.
Shi Yan was one of the earliest people in China to play talk shows, and many of the ordinary players in "Talk Show Conference" were dug up by him, but he said that with his coffee position, he could not write paragraphs for himself, and he could not write for others.
At the beginning of this year, the "Spit Conference" won the popularity of Li Tian and Chi Zi, followed by receiving a soft variety announcement. Shi Yan has also performed on this show, but he said that he does not want to focus on variety shows, and under the influence of the experience of New Oriental teachers, he prefers to dig and train new people.
The meeting between Bone Duo and Shi Yan was at the Sanlitun Science and Technology Temple, where a "pop happy party" was held that night, and hundreds of people were fully seated. "Poof" is the offline talk show brand of Xiaoguo Culture, the producer of "Talk Show Conference", as an open Mai performance, these occasions have always undertaken the heavy responsibility of discovering new talk show talents and "trial and error" for the performance of talk show actors. He Xiaoxi, CEO of Xiaoguo Culture, once revealed to Bone Duo in an interview that among the Chinese talk show actors who have been discovered now, there are less than 50 people who can speak for more than 8 minutes on stage, and more than 30 are in Xiaoguo Culture.
And the audience in the "Talk Show Conference" to see the vegetarian people are from the "Poof Talk Show", after the show they will continue to perform offline to accumulate experience, as industry screenwriters and organizers of "Poof Talk Show", Shi Yan still insists on performing in the open Mai. It's a completely different trajectory from other industries, in the world of talk shows, even if you have extraordinary abilities, you still can't "get out of the crowd", and the condescending will only end up with no one to pay attention.
However, China has always lacked a market base for rational irony, so there is no soil for talk shows, even if Li Shi and Chi Zi have become half the sky, strictly speaking, talk shows in China can still not be called an "industry". Shi Yan, as a person who joined in the rise of talk shows in China, can be said to be a person who has experienced the history of talk shows from scratch, and now, he is the promoter of history, recruiting talents and training soldiers for China's talk show industry.
In the interview, Shi Yan's words were very dense and gushing, and Bone Duo found that instead of making an interview, it was more interesting to listen to his own story.
A graduate of Jiaotong University who has condensed the history of the development of Chinese talk shows
I started by saying that talk shows should be 2012, which is one of the earliest talk shows in China, when there were small performances in some underground bars in Shanghai that were smaller than this one. Before there was no talk show at all, when I was studying at Jiaotong University, I said crosstalk, the president of Xiangsheng Society, and said crosstalk for four years. After graduation, I went to New Oriental, and I also talked about passages. Later, looking back, during this time in New Oriental, people were actually particularly trained, in fact, the class was to talk about passages while taking classes, which was very similar to the big framework of talk shows. Class is to talk about a knowledge point, and then use some very funny plot to describe it, in order to let students remember this knowledge point, talk show is the same, to tell a point of view, to tell a preset out, and then use funny paragraphs or plot performances to let everyone have a deeper impression in their minds, strengthen the funny effect.
At that time, no one in China was talking about talk shows, and I didn't know that there was a form of talk shows. I came into contact with Western talk shows very late, the earliest contact with this kind of solo performance is Li Liqun's "Taiwan Strange Tan", that lasted more than two hours, he said on the stage alone, I was shocked, I thought I must engage in this thing, but I myself do not know what this thing I want to do.
I started watching Ressell Peters in 2011, an Indian-Canadian with a lot of accents and the first foreign talk show actor many Chinese came into contact with. There is also Teacher Huang Xi, when I came back from abroad, I listened to his lectures, I was thinking about this thing, and I can do it, the form is simpler than crosstalk. Crosstalk also needs two people, this one person can do it, and there are many rules for cross-talk, there are many formalistic things, talk shows are very natural, just talk about their own views and attitudes. What I just said is all true, including saying that my wife is in charge of money is also true, and there are more cruel, I did not say, our talk show is basically the character setting is like this.
In 2012 I thought I was going to play this thing. I myself did a personal special session in the school, called "Jiaotong University Past", which is considered to be "Jiaotong University Spit Conference", just tell the history of Jiaotong University and other stories, although the effect is also very good, but the audience is relatively narrow, and then it began to go outside, and then a field to talk. Before someone scolded me on the Internet, saying that you don't have any talent and talked about anything, and then I said that I really don't have talent, I'm not like Chizi, he belongs to the kind of person who is particularly talented. But like me, as well as our screenwriting team's teacher Cheng Lu and Haiyuan teacher, it is a open wheat to speak out, dozens of times a year, hundreds of times.
People like those of us who come out of the line have a sense of faith in the concept of comedy talk shows. The environment we came in at that time was not like today, you see today's field I don't know how you feel, we have experienced the earlier period of people will be very cherished today's field, very serious about today's performance, because we feel very rare. Many children he does not cherish, feel indifferent, because his first act is like this. But we started out with very few people, only a few spectators, and there was the kind of neighborhood committee organization that sent culture into the community. As long as we have a good opportunity and a good audience to let us talk about it, I will continue to act like this for the rest of my life without any hesitation.
Comedy is lonely, and deadlines are the first productive force
The background of our screenwriters is mainly two pieces, the first piece is our gang doing offline, really said in the field. We have a judgment on the paragraph, as long as I see a draft, I know whether there is a laughing fruit, to what extent it is laughing, and how I can change it. We wrote ourselves more before, in fact, through the drive of the program to develop a habit of creation, and a new model. In the past, I had the impulse to write paragraphs, but now creation is my profession, and you have to write continuously, even if the writing is not so good, but you have to write it first.
There is also a piece of people who have done creative related work before, such as advertising, network satirists, like Li Tian and some screenwriters of our team, they are all online satin hands. However, this wave of people do not have offline experience, they can write a lot, but can not judge whether this thing from the two-dimensional world to the three-dimensional world is true, so we encourage them to go offline to open the maido performance, or even if you don't go to the performance, just watch more, let them experience some of the real world, do not live in the second dimension.
It is difficult to say when you will write, you may be creating all the time, for example, I can write a paragraph when I am at the scene of the performance, I see what others say and inspire me, after the performance I will sort out these things, do some processing, it will become a new paragraph. And to create this thing, the deadline is the first productive force. You give me three weeks to do an episode of Talk Show Conference, I can do it, you give me a week, give me a year, you can do it. Creation is not made up of time, so it is difficult to use figurative time to constant, for example, we have a "talk show conference" today, this reading meeting, the night before to hand in the manuscript, from the time I knew the news, to the moment I handed in the manuscript, I have been creating, although I did not write it down but my brain has been creating.
Our creation was a dynamic process, from the time I knew what the theme of the issue was, to the week or two before I went on stage to record, I would go to the open practice every night. I have now done that in Shanghai there will be one or two open wheats every night, we encourage and even ask the actors to practice, you don't know how the rhythm is the best, and then everyone will tune in together at the reading meeting.
I think the creation is still quite lonely, basically write by yourself, but after the reading meeting, those of us who have played for a while will give some advice to each other or newcomers, such as how you may say it better. There are also some people who will ask for help, saying that I really can't think of this foundation, and then we will help him to give advice, but in the end he still needs to implement it himself, put it forward from our point of view, and sometimes he feels that it is not as good as his original.
I have also written paragraphs for others, but it will be more painful for me, because I am not a screenwriter, like our team's teacher Cheng Lu and Haiyuan, they are both a very good performer and have the habit of writing paragraphs for others, they have been contributing to "Tonight's Post-80s Talk Show" and some other comedy programs since 2012.
Rather than participating in variety shows, I want to be a "fertilizer"
If the talk show is a big ecology, then the show we do is just a fruit, I am responsible for the roots and soil of the tree, I know how to fertilize, how to water, make the soil fertile, let the roots grow stronger, grow better fruit.
I'm a talk show performer myself, but deep down in our hearts, our whole team not only wants to do the show and become a production company, but also wants to do an ecological out. So we made an offline company called Laughing Friends, and I am now responsible for all offline projects across the country, including these small regular performances, open wheat and campus training, campus promotion plans.
We work with school clubs on small performances and then select talent. For example, in the first half of this year, I did "Future Spit King", hai selected the top 15 in the country, and then they came to the current "Talk Show Conference". And then there's the talk show bootcamp, and now I'm going to perform myself and I'm going to take care of that.
When I did "Future Spit King" before, the national audition and so on were all arranged by me. And I will give some creative help to some new people, such as changing the draft and thinking of direction, and they will encourage and encourage them to encounter bottlenecks when they can't write paragraphs. I jokingly called myself the political commissar of the talk show circle all day, and they told me whatever they thought, especially the newcomers. They are very talented, but because they have just entered the industry and have experienced very little, it will be very painful if they can't think of it, and I will encourage them to let them open the wheat more. What you interview in the field is first of all the paragraph itself, then the rhythm of your performance, how to establish your sense of connection with the audience's aura, all these things need to be tried. And the talk show is something that you are 0.1 seconds apart and 0.05 seconds apart, the sense of rhythm is completely different, and the effect will be much worse, so you have to try one by one.
My biggest interest is not to do such a pure artist thing as a variety show, because I have been doing education for many years, and I am more willing to invest my energy in the excavation, cultivation of talents and the cultivation of the entire audience soil, because this is the foundation of talk shows, just do this well. In the past, China may only produce one pool a year, but this speed is not good, and now it can produce five or ten or more a year, then I think Chinese talk shows have a future.