After the launch of "Great Click" on Youku, there are now more than 150 million hits, which is very good for a web series that has no "stars", no remakes, and is bound to IP. Original by Tianna, "The Great Click" was co-produced by Tianna, Bona Film Group, Youku Tudou and Jebsen Rui Jixiang, and was broadcast exclusively on Youku on March 25, 2016. Film and television industry network interviewed its producer, producer and screenwriter Wang Zheng, from his point of view step by step to restore "The Great Click", how to position, how to judge the story and theme, and how to grasp the soul of the play.
First, the background
Production cycle: Discussions on "The Great Click" began in December 2014. It was launched on September 11, 2015, and the first episode was launched on March 25, 2016, and was broadcast exclusively every Friday at 12:00 Youku.
Hits: 158.79 million (as of June 1)
Production cost: 15 million (including publicity)
Production positioning: Urban fantasy comedy. The positioning of the audience is the main group of post-90s netizens, and it is more focused on students.
IP situation: Original
Production features: large amount of art scenes, actor demand, post-production time is long
Art group work photos
Second, the team introduction
Production company: Tianna (Beijing) Advertising Co., Ltd., for New Balance to create a micro-film that has touched countless netizens, "My Ex is the Best", "Girl Sherlock", and "What the Advertisement Says I Believe". The other producers are Bona Pictures and Youku Tudou.
Director: Yang Fan, Screenwriters: Wang Zheng, Pan Fake, Yang Fan, the team's past cooperation experience: The New Balance micro-film "My Predecessor is the Best", "Sherlock girl" and the recent hit "Sad Cooking" are all his works.
Third, the operation is explained
Story style and duration determined:
The fantasy setting of "The Great Click" is not important, the purpose of the fantasy setting is to make more stories presented. Therefore, it is positioned as a low-model fantasy story, and the story is our original intention. We hope that after watching it, in addition to some of the most basic pleasures, the audience can also be touched in the heart. The need for emotion is a basic need inherent in the audience, which is a basic principle of our writing.
At the beginning we first identified this open structure, which is a magical barbershop. When you encounter something you can't face, you will come here, so the guests who come here must have encountered something particularly bad. Once this structure is determined, we list the elements that measure the story. For example, people, sometimes the identity of the character will have some drama, a virgin he wants to finish his first night, and then meet three barbers, three barbers have their own personality characteristics, these personality characteristics will affect the way they go to receive guests, the way they go. When guests come here, different hairdressers help him with problems, which means that the story will go in different directions. Another point, the barbershop is a low-magic fantasy setting, modifying memory, brainwashing this thing is very easy to understand, we do not have to explain this concept too much, but to use this setting to derive a variety of stories, fantasy is more of a functional existence, so every story is changing. After these points are determined, everyone begins to think of ideas, make the story as rich as possible, and then use these basic points to see the possibility of the story, and then PK between the next ideas, and finally select these stories in the play.
The first episode, "No One Is Spared", is designed to lure the scumbag into the bait and take a series of revenge
The feud between "Otaku" and "Sugarcane" in the third episode
Our original idea was to set a story, and later in the creative process found a problem, some very rich stories will not be able to unfold because of the lack of time. Barbershop to have a guest in one episode, in fact, there will be problems, which will make the audience tired of this matter, so there must be some differences, such as different guests at the same time, then the relationship between these guests will be contrasted, which will produce dramatic tension. Like the episode where there is no ghost in the zero season, the previous episode is about Li Xiaoming's story, and the next episode is to become another one, but I put the two stories together, Li Xiaoming helped this uncle to complete his thoughts, and his own problems were solved, so the story types are much richer. Guests seem to have only vertical connections, but in fact, these guests also have a variety of inextricable relationships between them horizontally, which are what we want to pursue. So the most important thing is the story, because we are also just beginning to try this theme and form, so how to be comfortable and how to come, so you will see that there are upper and lower episodes, there are single episodes.
The whole image style is Japanese, and when it was initially set, I wanted it to be a sense of time, a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of absurdity, and then there was a little bit of comedy in it, which made everyone feel a wonderful feeling. Because the barbershop itself, it is a place about memory, then the place about memory is born with a temporal texture, so it is like the feeling of the Republic of China, including those art and scenes in each episode, which are relatively absurd and have a strong symbolic meaning. But this absurdity has a sense of quiet comedy, and there is a little beauty in it. Not a spoof, a spoof is a means, a form, it can not affect the storytelling, spoof is easy to fragment the story, so this thing to control, the story is the most important. We've always been an advertising agency and we're used to getting spoofs out of the bad places and out of the good. The certainty of this lies in the fact that whether it is a spoof or a final emotional touch, this is a particularly fundamental thing of human nature, from the brain hole and then directly to the heart, the principle of the play is actually like this.
Production method:
"The Great Click" we shot it the way the movie was made. The shooting time is only 77 days, but this form of unit drama requires a lot of scenes and actors, so it is inevitable that there will be many problems, including a lot of changes in ideas, so that when editing, even some of us readjust.
According to the way of the film, it is not just shooting and production, from the setting of the script, it is already a movie. We weren't so determined to follow the film at first, because the way the film was made was a very laborious thing and the cost was high. When we write a script, we are more inclined to event-driven, that is, plot-driven, for TV series is more dialogue-driven, as a screenwriter, I am a screenwriter who hates dialogue, I think that the dialogue of the characters unless it is the needs of the plot and the characters, the less dialogue the better, if the story is told by the dialogue of the characters, in my opinion, it is boring, because I am also a screenwriter, so in the process of screenwriting This tendency will be very strong. So when the script was completed, when we were doing the preparatory work for the pre-shooting of the sub-scenes and so on, we found that the drama could not be filmed according to the shooting method of a TV series, which also led to a particularly large increase in our previous estimated cost. But at that time we made a decision to shoot according to the script. Because we have confidence in this script, if we change the script to a TV series, then many of the flashes of the show itself will be gone.
But this choice will cause a lot of problems for shooting, such as the scene has to be particularly solid, because there are so many stories, and all the scenes in the story must be there. The amount of requirements for actors is particularly large. We have two actor assistant directors, one young, one older, the younger responsible for finding the younger, and the older responsible for finding the older. In addition, the demand for storyboarding is particularly large, until we start the camera, the storyboard is not finished, so there are some of us in the back after the end of the first day's shooting, and then go to discuss the next day's scheduling and storyboarding. But fortunately, in fact, shooting is like this, it is always on the scene that the final way will appear. The average TV series shoots four pages a day, nothing new, we are basically between TV and movies, shooting two pages a day director already feels very satisfied. In fact, it is very difficult to coordinate, there is no way to say that in an efficient way, for example, between my different episodes, the stories are different, the actors are different, it is necessary to do different co-ordination, the only thing that can be coordinated across episodes is the drama in the barbershop. But there is another difficulty in this, that is, the problem of actor schedule. Therefore, there have been very few scenes in the barbershop that are coordinated across episodes, and in most cases, they are filmed in the order of the episodes.
Producer Wang Zheng is on the set of filming
This also led to the post-editing methods and means to become very much, our show a total of 13 episodes, the whole post-production time is five months, the editing ratio is almost one to five, including the use of music is also very large. In fact, this matter itself is very experimental, for us to explore the nature of a strong, we used to advertise, so in the creative process will constantly revise their own ideas, according to the actual situation to adjust. "The film is alive when it is thought in the mind, and dies from the creation of the script; Resurrected during filming, died on negatives, and revived again during editing. "We don't think that when the script is finished, it must be perfect.
Business operation mode:
When we do this drama, there is a particularly important point, we hope to have creative autonomy, so we have three co-producers are Tianna, Bona Pictures and Youku, because the IP we are unique, for many video sites are not very accept this condition, because Youku gave us the fastest response, so at that time we chose Youku.
Before filming, we set a principle that we would not do plot implantation, because doing plot implantation means destroying the rhythm. The pace of the TV series is relatively slow, and it is good to insert something into it, but our drama is defined as a movie from the beginning. Including proving that our decision was correct when shooting, when not shooting implants, people who have already filmed people have turned over on their backs, and it is more troublesome to join the implantation. But we use the IP licensing method, we license this IP to the customer, and then I give you a small story, using this form to achieve everyone's business value conversion. Because our company has a special nature, we are the producer, and then the producer, and then the contractor, and our identity is an advertising company, so it is easy for us to operate this model, and it may be very difficult for others.
Overall operational considerations:
2 years ago, the web dramas on the market were very fragmented, and there were some big IP adaptations later, but for us, if we want to make an original drama, we rely more on the story, and I personally hope to be able to do a theme that can try a lot of different stories, and now the advantage of the setting of "Great Click" is that we can put different stories in. Every story is different, and then there are different protagonists, different forms, which is a very interesting attempt for us. For Tianna from the perspective of commercial value, it is easier to buy an IP for online novels. But after all, IP is bought, and the usable value of an original IP is greater and higher. Then there is a real problem, these online novel IP in the process of adaptation, from my standards they are very difficult to audiovisual, which is determined by the ecology of online writing, in most cases readers will pursue the coolness of online literature, but once this kind of thing is filmed, it is not a drama structure, so the difficulty of adapting it is similar to the difficulty of going to the original. Of course, there is still a personal preference for doing originality, and we have two principles for doing one thing: first of all, this thing must be liked by ourselves, and secondly, what we like can create value.
Another point is that it is particularly valuable for our own growth, like joining a devil's bootcamp. If you follow the normal growth trajectory of the film and television industry, and a TV series group or a movie group, it takes so much time, and all you get is one or two kinds of experience, but the "Great Click" thing is the feeling of several movies, and the richness of the problems encountered is much richer than others, which is a valuable experience for us. So I think it's worth it, even though it's such a toss.
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