Reviewing the network broadcast data of this year's drama summer file, it will be found that on various popularity lists, there is a series of episodes that are not prominent in the lineup and have a somewhat comical sense of the title, which appears frequently, mixed with a number of network dramas and head self-made dramas, which is quite conspicuous.
This is the urban idol drama "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up" directed by Lionfish, directed by Sun Chengzhi and written by Hu Meng. As the summer cadre of Youku's "Pet Theater", "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up", which takes "Love under the Year" as the main line and integrates many urban women's topics, has a strong momentum, not only repeatedly topped the TV series heat list and sweet pet drama hot list in Youku Station, but also rushed to the first position in the real-time popularity of the Maoyan whole network heat list when it was launched for half a month.
If this data is not enough to "break the circle", the results of the ledger released a few days ago have made "My Neighbor Grow Up" really become a topic work in the industry. In the 2 months since its launch, the box office of the sub-account exceeded 50 million, which is close to the upper limit of the box office of non-costume sub-account dramas.
But it doesn't make sense to use this box office performance as a basis to start the sweet pet recipe of "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up". The creation story of the "Neighbors" series should at least start with the "My Neighbor Can't Sleep" released in 2019. The lionfish with director Sun Chengzhi and screenwriter Hu Meng as the core, and the "small and fierce" creative concept they have always adhered to, are not born for "sweet pets".
Directed by Sun Chengzhi
Do series not a sequel
For audiences familiar with idol dramas, "My Neighbor" is not an unfamiliar title.
In the summer of 2019, "My Neighbor Can't Sleep", which tells the story of the love between the piano genius Xi Song and the drama girl Song Miduo, has conquered a group of audiences with a romantic and pure love minor. At that time, "sweet pet" and "sub-account drama" were still considered to be new languages in the market. At the end of 2018, the "Neighbors" series of "Neighbors" that had been brewing and formed, "My Neighbors Can't Sleep", with the preemptive half-step creation of the place, broke through strongly in that summer file and achieved a good result of breaking 30 million in the account.
For the lionfish, it was a reward that exceeded expectations a lot.
"A girlish, fresh and beautiful story like 'My Neighbor Can't Sleep' is something we've always wanted to do. But at that time, the sub-account drama was not as mature as it is now, and we did not dare to do too much cost, basically using a large investment to make a 24-episode web drama. Because of the limited cost, Hu Meng limited the story of "My Neighbor Can't Sleep" to the relatively closed Qiuyin Town, there are not many characters, and the interlocking love stories are mainly aimed at the student population.
In addition to writing the screenplay, she also co-directed "My Neighbor Can't Sleep", while director Sun Chengzhi formed a team for the show as a producer and producer.
After "My Neighbor Can't Sleep" received a good response, Lionfish was confident that it would continue to do the "Neighbor" series positioned in the idol drama. But for what to do with the second part, the market feedback and suggestions received by the main creative team at that time were very complicated.
"From the market logic, the first audience feedback is good, and it is natural to make a sequel story. But we think that making a sequel is also very risky. The market is changing so fast, the sweet pet drama has been piled up, and copying the story of "My Neighbor Can't Sleep" again may not necessarily replicate its success. ”
Based on the analysis of the market volume of sub-account dramas, the changes in genre trends, and the creative requirements that do not want to repeat themselves, the second part should be fully upgraded to become the consensus of writers and directors, which makes the series a better choice than a sequel.
"The 'Neighbors' series is romantic, but we don't want it to be too levitating, too young. Therefore, in "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up", we wrote the age of the protagonist to the larger age, mentioning the 30+ age group. In the workplace, family and life status of the performance is landed, so that the mature audience will have a sense of substitution. However, in terms of interpersonal relationship performance, including love, girlfriends, parent-child, and superior-subordinate relationships, they are all more idealized, which is the source of romance and healing. Hu Meng explained.
From the perspective of the screenwriter, such an upgrade means the three-dimensional character shaping, the complexity of the character relationship and the diversification of emotional elements. Implemented at the level of directing and shooting, it means that there are many people, the scenery is complicated, and the scene is difficult.
"When we were filming, we actually made "My Neighbor Grows Up" as an urban drama. It reflects the work and life, social and emotional life, social and emotional of all kinds of urban men and women, but love is the main line. Since it is an adult story, urban space must first be enriched. The company, the protagonist's home, the various social spaces, and the exterior of the city must be realistic. After having this environment, it is necessary to find the current living conditions of urban people, the way young people talk and do things. Although they are all idol love stories that make dreams, we have to do something to the ground. Sun Chengzhi introduced.
Because of the comprehensive upgrade from the concept of the play to the shooting and production, "My Neighbor Is Not Big" not only has a leap forward in cost investment compared with the previous one, but also has a relatively long cycle. It took nearly 9 months to write the script, and it took more than 7 months for the director to prepare for the establishment of the group. After the official start of the film in September last year, it took 83 days to shoot, and then it took nearly half a year to do the post-production, and then there was this year's summer blockbuster "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up".
Each time "out of the box" a little bit
Of course, serial creation is not a reversal, and upgrading creation is not a blind leap forward. If you carefully compare the two "neighbors", you will find that "there is evolution in the connection, and there is temptation in the adaptation" is the key to the creation of this series.
Take the hot theme of "love under the year" in "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up", which seems to have little connection with the small-town summer love in "My Neighbor Can't Sleep", but it is unified in the interpersonal model centered on "neighbors".
"The 'Neighbors' series is really about relationships, not just about spatial location." After the first attempt to let men and women live next door, Hu Meng changed the concept of neighbors to the premise in time in "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up" into a green plum bamboo horse, "from the male and female protagonists are neighbors, to their parents are neighbors." In this way, the two characters not only have a previous history, but also integrate the closeness between the neighbors of that era through the retracement of the story of childhood. ”
Such a definition of "neighbor" also gives a new solution to the most difficult "obstacle" problem in love stories.
"We write love stories now, and the hardest thing is to find obstacles. The fate of parents, the age difference, and even the difference in race are no longer obstacles in the eyes of the audience. Although the difference between the sister and brother in "My Neighbor Is Not Big" is also an obstacle, there will still be many viewers who feel that this is not a problem, "Once the obstacle is not established, the role has no gap to cross, and the play is not good." But if the two are neighbors who grew up together, this obstacle is there. The heroine has been a big sister since she was a child, and she has never regarded her little brother as a boy, calling him a flower fairy. This is to talk about love, psychological positioning, emotional cognition of the break, is the biggest obstacle. ”
In "My Neighbor Grows Up", director Sun Chengzhi also constantly explores the boundary in terms of performance techniques, which is not only a bottom-up for the audience to interpret the boundaries of the work, but also a challenge to the creation of sub-account dramas.
Sun Chengzhi is a director from a class, has many years of directing experience in the content of the ledger, the previous works are mainly films, involving families, crimes and fantasy, history, "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up" is the first idol love drama he directed. During the filming process, he still maintained his previous creative habits: paying attention to the creation of a world view, paying attention to details, and using all possible audiovisual means to help actors shape characters.
The construction of the world view in urban dramas is not as important as in costume dramas. Especially in small-cost production, it is usually based on the characteristics of the filming location, and it is enough to create a sense of place vaguely according to local conditions.
But Sun Chengzhi insisted that in "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up", there is a clear regional hierarchy: "The place where the male and female protagonists grew up is Qiuyin Town, then the rhythm of the city where they live must be different, so we set them to a city next to Qiuyin Town, called Qingning." Qingning is a city, but the building signs and license plates in the city must always have a province, and finally we set this province to be Lionfish Province. When shooting, we encounter signs and landmarks that do not match the settings, so we erase and modify them a little later. If you look closely, you will find that the license plates in the play are all 'lion' head.' ”
After having a basic regional hierarchy, it is then necessary to create a living space for the characters, and Sun Chengzhi has also put a lot of effort into this point.
"Life is where we're going today and we're going there tomorrow. Space is the social circle of our lives. An independent woman in her 30s has her own social circle, so she can't go back and forth between work, home, and road, and create a sense of reality for her. In addition to the main scene, we also have more than thirty scenes such as restaurants and cafes, that is, there will be a new small scene on average every episode. In this way, everyone will not have aesthetic fatigue in a modern play. ”
Finally, when it comes to the construction of the main scenes, Sun Chengzhi's requirements are even more meticulous. Take the heroine Lin Yang's home, which is divided into multiple functional areas such as the entrance hall, corridor, living room, bedroom, balcony and so on. Each functional area has a different arrangement at different emotional stages of the protagonist.
"At the beginning, the heroine is a tired, strong urban woman, who comes back drunk after socializing outside, and pushes open the door of the house, and the entrance hall is a bunch of unopened couriers, all household items. This is the embodiment of her state of life at that time. Her home has a special hallway, and I have designed many scenes in this corridor, because I feel that life is such a process of moving forward in confusion. ”
In the play, as the emotions of the male and female protagonists heat up, the curtains, wall decorations, and balcony arrangements in the home have all been adjusted, but the director did not deliberately emphasize these changes with the lens. "It would be silly to show these details to the audience with the lens everywhere, and it would be foolish to believe in the sensitivity of the audience and believe that they can capture these differences in the sense of atmosphere."
Interacting with the audience through details is also what director Sun Chengzhi is good at. For example, in the home of the heroine Lin Yang, there is a large black dog ornament with a high sense of existence. When Lin Yang and the male protagonist push and pull and communicate with girlfriends, this big black dog often has a dynamic sound of reaction shots and tones. Every time the big black dog appears, the audience seems to be poked in the cool spot, and the barrage will immediately explode. And this detail is not in the script, it is a detail that the director deliberately added after careful analysis.
"I think the heroine is a person who longs for companionship in her heart, she is not enjoying loneliness, but there is no way. She had to have something in her house that would make up for her loneliness. That's why I designed the ornaments of this big black dog. In order to echo back and forth, in the passage showing the male and female protagonists growing up in Qiuyin Town when they were young, we also have a small black milk dog. Everything you experience growing up will leave a mark on us, as if it were still with you in another form. ”
It is worth mentioning that the tone of this big black dog ornament is the director's own recording in the recording studio. Another detail that adds a lot to the series — the heroine Lin Yang's "poisonous chicken soup" inspirational alarm clock — was also written and voiced by the director himself in order to shape the character.
"I deliberately wrote it a little weird, very ungrounded. This is a kind of childishness that we adults ourselves may have in private, like a joke and a little self-motivated. Sun Chengzhi explained with a smile. These details are buried in the plot, which may not have much effect on the plot promotion, but they can add flavor to the series. Once on the channel with the audience, these details become the "memes" that catalyze the drama out of the circle.
From the perspective of the creation rules of the sub-account drama, many of the attempts of director Sun Chengzhi in "My Neighbors Don't Grow Up" are not just needed. The spatial details mentioned above are on the one hand, there are many long shots designed to protect the performance state of the actors, a large number of night scenes arranged in order to make the protagonist's life reasonable, and so on.
In Sun Chengzhi's view, the sub-account drama is not only a way to reduce the cost: "If the drama is filmed well, it can make money." Everything we put into it is to get the text done better. Before doing all the dramas, we first consider the cycle and cost, thinking that such a text is achievable, we will do it, and since we want to do it, we must do the best we can. ”
Epilogue: I don't want to be "sweet" all the time
At present, the third part of the Lionfish "Neighbor" series, "My Neighbor Can't Eat", is in the script writing stage. It is understood that this drama will tell a more weighty love story, involving some of the original family problems, but the background color is still healing and warm.
"It will go one step further in thinking about the issue of women's independence." This is actually the pursuit of me and the director, including the main creative team, that is, I want to be more realistic, so that these three dramas can have a progressive relationship in the expression of value. Hu Meng introduced.
In addition to the "Neighbors" series, Lionfish also has a workplace drama about the modeling industry, as well as an emotional suspense drama in preparation. Neither the director nor the screenwriting team of Lionfish has set limits on creation because of the success of the "Sweet Pet" drama.
"'Sweet' wasn't my intention, I just shot the ideal romance." Sun Chengzhi explained with a smile. Talking about the planning for future creation, Sun Chengzhi frankly said: "I want to shoot subjects that can move me, so that I feel that there is a story that has a human light and is worth excavating." ”
In his view, the extreme pursuit of "fast" in the current drama market, especially in the sub-account drama market, has affected the mentality of some creators. "No matter what the story is, the characters have been acting, the rhythm is very fast, this is pragmatism is not realism, but also the distress and status quo of our modern people, film and television to simply repeat it is not interesting." 」 What he has been trying to resist with his works is precisely this concept of "fast".
"When I was creating, I never wanted to shoot a sub-account drama, a copyright drama or a custom drama. The only thing to consider when creating is how to use all your emotions, aesthetics, artistic accomplishment and sense of responsibility to make a good drama. Sun Chengzhi concluded.
【Text/Tin Drum】