Recently, "Wang Yangming", a key documentary project of the State Administration of Radio and Television and a project guided by the Publicity Department of the State Administration of Radio and Television, premiered on CCTV's Science and Education Channel (CCTV10) at 21:20 on March 22, with Youku as the network broadcast platform.
First, a "documentary + drama" of the ascension and maintenance of the leap
The documentary "Wang Yangming" is neither based on pure documentary nor pure performance, but breaks through the content expression in the way of "documentary + drama", giving a new annotation to the creation mode of the documentary.
There is no doubt that this is a documentary with "expectations".
The general producer of the documentary "Wang Yangming" is the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, led by Zhejiang Cultural Industry Investment Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhejiang Cultural Investment"), guizhou Confucius Xuetang Development Foundation, the Propaganda Department of the Ningbo Municipal Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Propaganda Department of the Shaoxing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Propaganda Department of the Yuyao Municipal Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Youku and Beijing Bojing Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., and the production of Beijing Bojing Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., and has received industry support from China.
As one of the first batch of "14th Five-Year Plan" documentary key topic planning projects of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the annual key project of the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, the documentary "Wang Yangming" is destined to be a highly anticipated documentary. The metaphor of the key project representative is that there is a better production team and a higher production level to ensure the quality of the finished film.
Such a well-polished and well-produced key project will surely provide the audience with an impeccable "audio-visual feast". Therefore, this is a documentary that meets the "subjective expectations" of the audience.
Wang Yangming's psychology is the essence of traditional Chinese culture, and it is also one of the entry points for enhancing the cultural self-confidence of Chinese. The documentary "Wang Yangming" unveils Wang Yangming's magnificent life in a panoramic manner, leading the audience to immerse themselves in the context of Yangming's mind.
Therefore, this is also a beautiful attempt to revive China's excellent traditional culture, and it is a documentary that meets the "objective expectations" of enhancing the cultural self-confidence of the Chinese people and inheriting the excellent traditional culture.
So, does "Wang Yangming" meet expectations? The answer is: it's a documentary that far exceeds expectations and contains countless surprises.
The reason is that this is a documentary that is "both good and enduring".
The documentary "Wang Yangming" consists of five episodes, each 40 minutes long, and is cut into the five themes of "drowning", "sleepiness", "enlightenment", "gong" and "Ming" in turn.
The first episode of the opening chapter, "Drowning", tells the story of Wang Yangming's "Five Drownings" during his youth to youth.
In layman's terms, it is Wang Yangming's early years of the aspiration of a saint, constantly traveling, absorbing, and exploring in the ocean of Chinese culture, experiencing wandering and doubting again and again, and constantly returning to Confucianism.
This film packages the content in the mode of "documentary + drama", breaking through the boundaries of expression. The documentary "Wang Yangming" adopts the "documentary + drama" model. On the one hand, it examines historical materials, respects historical truth, and emphasizes the documentary nature of the content; On the other hand, it imitates the standards of "drama" to restore the characters, restore the scene, and restore the costumes, emphasizing the immersion of the content.
The first episode opens with a picture of the moonlight being cold and the river blue, a ming dynasty-clad man leaping into the river, and a light-colored robe gently fluttering in the water.
A strong sense of ancient wind swept over the face, leading the audience through the long river of years and back to the era when Wang Yangming lived five hundred years ago. As a result, although it is documentary content, the audience opens the first episode in the way of "watching the show".
In terms of specific details, the film is also committed to leading the audience back to the scene of 500 years ago with the performance of the actors and the construction of the scene. For example, the scene of the teenager Wang Yangming playing with the children in the street in a platoon; The scene of the young Wang Yangming riding a white horse through the dense forest to draw a bow and shoot arrows; The scene of the young Wang Yangming wearing Ming Dynasty costumes writing on his desk and chanting "Taibai Loufu" in the pavilion.
Each set of shots in the film is extremely ancient and substitutionary, making the audience mistakenly think that they are "chasing the drama". The novel setting of "Documentary + Drama" makes it possible for documentaries to go from the white snow of Yangchun to the common appreciation of elegance and customs, emphasizing both documentary and audiovisual experience on the other hand. For the industry, this model is undoubtedly a leap in dimensionality.
Second, let the "voice of the saints" of a hundred years ago re-echo
The documentary "Wang Yangming" uses novel artistic creation, travels through a hundred years of time and space, adopts the creative method of truly reproducing historical figures, combs through the life course of Wang Yangming from the perspective of today's people, explains the evolution process and core essence of psychological thinking, and observes the essence of Mr. Yang Ming's thoughts of "unity of knowledge and action", "to conscience" and "Mingde is close to the people" through character stories, so that the voice of the saints of five hundred years ago can re-echo in contemporary society.
First, high-resolution "scene reproduction" constructs an immersive experience; The film invited national first-class actor Xin Baiqing to play Wang Yangming, and also invited a number of actors to play Wang Yangming's childhood, adolescence and youth. The right choice of actors allows the audience to have a memory base point for association, and under the superb performance, the immersion of the documentary comes to mind.
Wang Yangming's "Chess Poems" once told the story of his childhood when his father threw chess pieces into the river because he was addicted to chess. The first episode of the film vividly restores the story, and with the blessing of the actor's performance and costume, the image of an angry father and a sullen child vividly jumps on the screen.
In addition, there are scenes of him being fought in court, writing desperate poems, meditating and practicing immortals, worshiping Buddhas and meditating, reading poems, practicing calligraphy, and studying military books. The high degree of similarity of the scene restoration makes this film more immersive and immersive.
Second, the rich "historical materials and ancient books" examine the historical truth; Documentaries emphasize truth and objectivity, especially for historical and humanistic documentaries, due to the long time, the facts are vague, and many facts are difficult to examine. In this situation of limited information, the more necessary it is to make a qualified documentary, the more the main creator must invest great efforts to excavate historical materials and examine the facts.
In the content of the first episode of "Wang Yangming", the production team not only referred to the "Annals of Mr. Yangming" compiled by Wang Yangming's disciple Qian Dehong and others, the "Deeds of Mr. Yangming" compiled by disciple Huang Xuan, the "Records of JingChao" written by the Popular Writer Feng Menglong of the Ming Dynasty, and the "Complete Works of Mr. Wang Yangming" published by Yu Ling of yuyao in the Qing Dynasty, but also looked for historical coordinates and verified history from Mr. YangMing's works such as "Chess Poems", "Dream Sentences", "Taibai LouFu", "Yilongquan Mountain Poems", "Jiuhua Mountain Fu", and "Final Speech".
Third, the diversified "expert perspective" deeply interprets the character experience; In order to broaden the audience's vision, in-depth analysis of Mr. Yang Ming and his people and Yang Ming's psychology. The film production team invited Chen Lai, dean of the Institute of Chinese Studies of Tsinghua University and president of the Chinese Society for the History of Philosophy, and experts and scholars such as Wu Guang and Qian Ming, researchers of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences, to serve as academic advisors to interpret Mr. Yang Ming in depth.
In the first episode, experts such as Dong Ping and Zhang Xinmin conducted an in-depth analysis of Wang Yangming's growth experience, the allusions of gezhu before the court, and the origin of Wang Yangming and Taoism. Dong Ping, professor of the Department of Philosophy of Zhejiang University and the main speaker of the series "Hundred Pulpits : Legendary Wang Yangming", believes that Wang Yangming's family provides him with a very relaxed and free environment for growing up.
Fang Zhiyuan, professor at Jiangxi Normal University and the main speaker of the series "Hundred Forums • Wang Yangming", analyzed that it is precisely because Wang Yangming had so many preferences and so many concerns about society when he was young, so he could later become the Wang Yangming we know.
From the perspective of experts, it presents a more three-dimensional and diversified character image of Mr. Yang Ming, which is also convenient for improving the audience's understanding.
Finally, the novel "entry perspective" creates a dialogue space. In addition to the novel "documentary + drama" model, the entry perspective of this film is also very novel: it adopts the process of the actor himself visiting, approaching and understanding the saint in order to create the role of Wang Yangming.
In the first episode, there is a detail: in the café, The ancient Man Wang Yangming, sitting by the window, shook his head incomprehensibly in front of the crowd immersed in electronic products. In an instant, the phantom shaking his head magically returned to the scene of the actor Xin Baiqing sitting by the window in casual clothes.
In such a detail, the concept of history and reality, the communication and dialogue between the characters and the actors, is freehand. The process of the lead actor Xin Baiqing knowing, understanding and understanding Mr. Yang Ming is also the process of the audience gradually understanding Mr. Yang Ming.
In the first episode, there is a small dramatic conflict, the actor Xin Baiqing suddenly interrupted while chanting "Jiuhua Mountain Fu", and started again in another way of acting. In the narration, the lead actor Xin Baiqing explained this skirmish this way: At the beginning of the chanting, I tried to use my previous experience as Li Bai to interpret Wang Yangming's arrogance of "surviving and independent", but halfway through, I felt that something was wrong. Suddenly, I realized that Wang Yangming's madness was different from Li Bai's madness, and wang Yangming's immortal demeanor still hid the introvertedness and forbearance of benevolent people. Such a turning point reflects the change in the actor's understanding of Wang Yangming during the visit, which is an understanding from shallow to deep, from surface to inside, and from new heights.
In the process of continuous visitation, history and reality are edited in parallel, and the characters and actors continue to engage in time and space dialogue. In this process, the audience also understood Yang Mingqi and his mind thinking.
On October 15, 2020, at the film viewing forum organized by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the content value and creation method of the documentary "Wang Yangming" were fully affirmed by expert leaders, which was in line with the spirit of the central leadership instructions and the deployment of the "Traditional Character Recording Project" of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. The whole film reflects the exquisite artistic standard, the picture is exquisite, the sense of shape is strong, and the texture of the blockbuster film is presented, which is amazing; The creative method has made a new breakthrough in the field of domestic documentary, getting rid of the boring "two skins" expression of traditional documentaries; The actors are properly chosen, whether in interpretation or commentary, they have enhanced the overall temperament, which is a rare Zhejiang masterpiece.
In recent years, we have been talking about consumption upgrades, and a chain reaction brought about by consumption upgrades is the content upgrade of audio-visual products. For documentaries, content upgrades not only need good content, but also good carriers.
The documentary "Wang Yangming" presents content in the mode of "documentary + drama", breaks through the boundaries of content expression, and re-echoes the voice of the saints a hundred years ago, which is undoubtedly a very groundbreaking and landmark attempt.
Source: China Net