The author | tons tons
Every Saturday, open iQiyi's variety show "Dance Student", the audience can often see such a picture -
Before each performance, the host will first reveal a suspense, "The one who can finally get on the stage is..." After the same time of training and dedication, only one person can get the opportunity to perform between the two dancers in the A corner and the B corner. At the same time, not only the dancers, but also the audience under the stage and in front of the screen are also waiting with bated breath.
Obviously, this has also become one of the highlights of the show.
In this show, there are 40 female dancers from professional or comprehensive colleges, as well as different groups. As contestants, they will live, rehearse and perform together for 100 days, they will not be eliminated, but there will always be someone to participate in the competition for the opportunity to perform. The camera documents the process of everyone being tested and growing up, and thus shows the charm of the dance itself.
Since its broadcast, from the stage performance that integrates different dance types and styles to the gripping AB corner competition, the program not only restores the dance ecology, but also reflects the interest and attitude of young people, which has attracted the attention of many viewers.
Back to the creative end, why did the main creative team choose this group of dancers? As a dance variety show, how does it grasp the uniqueness? All along, iQIYI Variety show has continued to launch content that meets the tone of young people. With these questions, Entertainment Capital interviewed Gu Chaofeng, the general director of "Dance Student".
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" Data-track="17" Why are > dancers? </h1>
Behind "Dance Student" is iQiyi's self-made variety show studio YOH.
Director Gu Chaofeng introduced that the birth of this show is related to the team tone, "We have a new show almost every year, basically aimed at young people, or trend attributes. Therefore, with a series of previous masterpieces - "China New Rap" and "Trend Partner", from rap to trend, these programs have presented the interest and attitude of young people at the first time.
This time, the team has always been thinking, "What kind of new program we want to make, we can find our own position in the market this year, there is hope to break the circle." After some exploration, their eyes stayed on the group of dancers.
At the same time, women became the absolute protagonists of the show. Gu Chaofeng told Xiaoyu that all women were chosen because in a large number of interviews in the early stage, it was found that focusing on showing women would make the topic point more focused, and women's strength has also attracted widespread attention in recent years, and there are many outstanding female athletes in this year's Olympic Games.
So, the team wants to stand in their shoes more vertically to tell a new story and unearth more possibilities from it.
On this basis, the program gathered 40 dance students, including professional dancers from Shanghai Opera and North Dance, as well as amateur players who studied in comprehensive colleges such as Peking University and studied majors that had nothing to do with dance, but won a stage with their interests and talents. We are good at different dances, such as national standard, folk dance, house dance, street dance, etc. The difference in personality also allows them to form a picture of contemporary young girls.
So, how did the program team find them?
According to Gu Chaofeng, since November last year, the team has spent nearly half a year casting, "We have gone to more than 100 schools, there are professional dance schools and art colleges, there are also comprehensive universities, such as Tsinghua, Peking University, and even some schools that do not have dance majors, in addition to song and dance troupes and dance institutions on the market, almost all the scenes related to dance in China." ”
In terms of quantitative figures, the program team contacted more than 10,000 dance students, and 1,200 people were able to enter the video interview stage, and repeated screening locked in 40 people today.
In the process, they found that compared to other groups they had been exposed to before, such as singing and dancing idols, the dancers were very special.
These girls are not very old, but have been focused on dancing for a long time, and probably two-thirds of their lives have been spent on this matter, and it is difficult to stick to it without heartfelt love. After pouring all their efforts, they face a very real problem, and there are not many opportunities to really stay in the industry.
On the other hand, because they have not been packaged and trained by the agency, they give the overall feeling of freshness and uniqueness, and the youth and directness of facing the camera are precious, "Everyone is doing the most authentic expression." ”
In addition, there are some people in the show who have said goodbye to the dance industry, which involves the question of how to define "dance student".
In fact, the criteria for selecting people are multi-dimensional, and the two most basic points are dance style and personality. From the beginning, they wanted to do a full dance program, "other dance variety shows on the market are relatively low, the whole dance represents openness and inclusiveness, and we want to bring in dances outside the common genres, such as house dance." The second is personality, Gu Chaofeng said, different growth experiences and educational backgrounds have created a diversity of dance students, so the audience can see a variety of girls with different personalities in the show.
This makes the definition of "dance student" more inclusive, in Gu Chaofeng's view, no matter what they are doing at the moment, as long as they have been dance students, every story is true here, because these young people's love for dance is common. For example, Kang Keren, who has worked hard to grow up on the road of actors, and Li Fan, who has left the literary troupe, have let the audience see the charm of the dancers.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="112" how to find more possibilities > dance variety show? </h1>
Before "Dance Student", there were other dance variety shows on the market, and how to find more possibilities and make the show have a unique temperament is also a problem that needs to be solved.
The first is to grasp the key word "female". In addition to the contestants, the three instructors of "Dance Student" are also women, namely Tong Liya, Jin Chen and Meng Meiqi.
Gu Chaofeng explained that there are two main considerations when choosing a mentor. One is professional output, based on the idea of covering all kinds of dance in the program, it is necessary to choose a tutor who has his own strengths in the profession; the second is to feel the output, and the fit of each tutor and the dance student group has its own focus, which can resonate with everyone at different levels.
Among them, Tong Liya has a deep understanding of folk dance and classical dance, from the dancers of the song and dance troupe all the way to the actors, participating in the creation and performance of dance dramas; from the upper opera to the North Dance, Jin Chen has a growth path closer to the contestants, so there are often scenes in the program where she and the students recognize each other; Meng Meiqi is more good at popular dance, and is relatively young, and many of the contestants are the same age.
It turns out that their participation has brought special effects to the show, from the instructor's own performance on the stage to the comments on the contestants, all of which are interesting and informative.
The second is to find the correct positioning, the core of "Dance Student" is growth + competition, and these two points need to be achieved through the competition format.
At the beginning, "Dance Student" announced that there was no elimination rule in the whole process, but the cruelty of the format was no less than elimination. Because the show introduced the concept of AB corner. Taking the first performance as an example, after the dancers are grouped, each group has two girls who play A and B corners, and only one of them can perform on stage, and the results will not be announced until they go on stage.
In this regard, some viewers expressed puzzlement: Is it too cruel?
But in fact, the dance industry has always had the setting of substitute actors, and this design refers to the industry ecology, which is also what the program planning wanted to present at the beginning. Jump out to see, this is also a kind of logic that young people have to face naturally after entering the society, "There will always be people around you who compete with you, everyone is both a friend and an opponent, how do we face it." ”
Compared with the usual knockout system, today's format retains cruelty and creates possibilities. For example, in the performance of Yigong, there are many B corners that replace the A corner on the stage, and this counterattack has also become part of the dance generation.
Finally, it is also a very laborious point, that is, to highlight the charm of dance and do enough professionalism.
In terms of choreography, the choreography team has made many attempts at integration, both the fusion of Chinese and world dances, as well as the fusion of classical and modern dance. Visual packaging also took a lot of thought, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games closing ceremony "Beijing 8 minutes", G20 Summit "The Most Memorable is Hangzhou" concert chief art designer Zhao Min tailored for the program called "Unfinished Theater", the presentation of the performance stage is also unique.
Gu Chaofeng stressed that this kind of ingenuity does not refer to gorgeous dance beauty, but to show the meaning of the dance work itself. For example, "Freedom" of the urban Urban Urban group of the first public time is not complicated, but when the three girls dance handsomely in suits, three beams of light are cast behind them, and the B-corner dancers who have no chance to appear on the stage also join in the corner, and the extremely simple design is also infectious enough.
In addition, the program also invited three senior dancers, Wang Run, Tang Shiyi and Xie Xin, who participated in the evaluation of the contestants on the stage as dance masters, which is also a blessing for professionalism.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="113" > from rap, trend to dance, iQIYI variety show "pinch" young people</h1>
To some extent, the emergence of "Dance Student" once again confirms iQiyi's problem-solving ideas for developing variety shows.
Many viewers have a sense that they always pay attention to the areas that young people love and are willing to consume for, and grasp the entertainment needs of young people. YoH Studio has always been one of the continuous exporters of this young content. So how does the creator and his team maintain a keen sense of smell during the development phase?
In Gu Chaofeng's view, this aspect benefits from the fact that the team itself is very young. Taking "Dance Student" as an example, the youngest of the director group is 97 years old, and there are many young blood of about 95 years old. People share what they're looking at, and this perspective from young people helps to connect content and audiences.
On the other hand, the team is also looking for possible tracks in the future, and dance is something they have always been optimistic about, but they are waiting for the right time to present, that is, the present. Because at this stage, dance has become one of the ways for many young people to relax and entertain, and some people will enroll in dance classes outside of work.
It can be said that dance is both a hobby of young people and a kind of consumer product for them, and in this process, everyone will form a social circle through the bond of dance. The same is true of the dancers in the show, although more extreme, but to a certain extent, they can reflect the current young people, thus resonating.
Going back further, YOH Studio has also opened up tracks such as rap and trend, and has successively launched "China New Rap", "Blood Song and Dance Troupe" and "Trend Partner", making variety content a vane of trend culture.
It is worth noting that these programs also open up channels from online to offline, and even combine with consumption. Taking "Trend Partner" as an example, as a trend management experience program, it has built a real consumption scene, opened a limited-time experience store and a digital art exhibition offline, and generated closer and more active interaction with the audience.
From the overall point of view, the content layout of iQIYI Variety shows has always been based on the entertainment needs of young people.
And on the path, there are both insights and guidance of trend culture, which extends to the consumer side, and there are cases of reverse derivation, by targeting consumer preferences for content creation, such as the "Confused Synthesis" series launched this year.
Since 2020, script killing has become a new social method favored by young people, driving the birth of a tens of billions of scale markets, and also attracting different levels of content to enter the game. iQiyi is one of them, successively launching three related variety shows of "Detective Detective", "Strange Script Shark" and "The Last Winner", each of which focuses on radiating young groups and ordinary audiences who are keen on script killing.
Obviously, in terms of content development, iQIYI Variety has formed a practical and feasible logical closed loop. In various types of programs, we will explore different tracks, gather and lead young people through their interests and consumer needs, and present their love and consumption mainstream.
Previously, iQIYI Variety has gone deep into vertical tracks such as rap, trend, dance, script killing, etc., and the audience has reason to believe that it will also find more content entry points and interact with young people.