The Paper's reporter Yang Kaiting
Producer Tang Lijun, who worked in Oriental Satellite TV in his early years, "operated" the holding of many Shanghai TV Film Festivals, led more than 30 core employees, directed more than 2,000 volunteers, and did more than 240 activities in two weeks with the full support of Wenguang Group. She excels at dealing with this "extreme challenge". Later, she became an independent producer, and the first shot was made to make the absolute blockbuster drama "Flowers and Bones" in 2015.
Stills from "Flowers and Bones"
In 2014, by chance, Tang Lijun chose Chongzuo in Guangxi as an important location for "Flowers and Bones". Here has a natural karst landform, the natural scenery is very charming, especially with a fairy temperament. But after deciding to shoot in Chongzuo, it also faced many challenges, there was no professional studio in the local area, there was no supporting costume props, photographic equipment, no group performance, the whole shooting process was very hard, "we gritted our teeth and shot there for a month."
@ Guangxi Department of Culture and Tourism promoted the filming location of "Flowers and Bones" Long Stay Wonderland Chongzuo.
Beautiful countryside + ASEAN culture empowers the economy
"Flowers and Bones" broadcast a fire, bringing a new atmosphere to the tourism culture construction of Chongzuo in Guangxi. Mingshi Tianyuan, Detian Waterfall, Dragon Palace Wonderland transformed into an Internet celebrity punch card, the number of tourists reached more than 4.5 million in the year the series was broadcast, an increase of nearly 28.38% year-on-year, and the comprehensive tourism income reached 3.326 billion yuan, an increase of 46.91% at the same time. "But this number, in the second year, is an increase of twenty-three points, and by the third year it has dropped to sixteen points, why?" Because there was no other scene behind it to shoot there. Tang Lijun said.
Tang Lijun
In 2019, after negotiating with the relevant local government departments in Chongzuo, Tang Lijun once again gave herself a "limit challenge": she began to conceive of giving full play to Chongzuo's geographical location advantages and synergy advantages to establish a film and television base that is both domestic and ASEAN countries. "Xianxia, wuxia, fantasy, mythology, these four types of film and television dramas are our dominant themes in the Southeast Asian market." Tang Lijun said, "Positioning Chongzuo as a creative and shooting base for such advantageous themes is not only our drama going to the Southeast Asian market, but we also hope to attract our colleagues from Southeast Asia to come here to shoot their projects." Similarly, we not only hope to attract young domestic audiences to travel here, we hope that southeast Asian audiences will also come to travel and spend because they like this kind of film and television works. "Giving full play to the construction of beautiful villages and the role of ASEAN culture in empowering the economy, and carrying out "global film and television", this is Tang Lijun's beautiful vision for Chongzuo.
"Flowers and Bones" landed on the Japanese FOD platform
In the context of the global epidemic, it is undoubtedly very bold to dare to imagine the establishment of a film and television base with the vision of "transnational exchanges and cooperation". Over the years, Tang Lijun's self-confidence has always come from her many years of understanding and familiarity with overseas first-line film and television production teams, film and television platforms, and forward-looking observations of global film and television industry trends.
In the past, when doing film and television festivals, Tang Lijun was very aware of the interest of the "foreigner" market in Chinese culture. When doing "Flowers and Bones", she put forward a concept of "modern ink painting style", which is a highly targeted aesthetic concept for overseas markets, which has indeed attracted international attention, and the drama has become popular in many southeast Asian countries, triggering a ratings boom.
"In Asian countries, there are more and more 'national dramas going to sea', not only costume dramas, but also our urban dramas are also going abroad." But I don't think that's enough. In addition to Asia, we also need to expand to the European and American markets. "When it comes to the topic of 'national drama going to sea', Tang Lijun revealed her "wild hopes" for this.
She mentioned the news that Netflix will recently produce a drama version of "Three-Body", "Seeing that such excellent works as "Three-Body" can attract attention in the European and American markets, in addition to the excellence of the works themselves, I think this is related to the enhancement of China's strength, especially the enhancement of scientific and technological strength." I expect that there is a high probability that there will be a boom in Chinese science fiction film and television dramas in the industry, there may be a lot of 'science fiction + other elements' works, this type of drama will become a market outlet, if we can grasp this boom and output high-quality works, we even have the opportunity to influence the mainstream market in Europe and the United States. At the same time, due to the popularity of Xiu Xian novels in the European and American markets, costume immortals and Xiu Zhen dramas may usher in a new breakthrough. I think we can start exploring and laying out. ”
Open overseas markets and tell the Story of China
In addition to the status quo that seems to be steadily advancing and the opportunities full of possibilities, what is the challenge facing the "national drama going to sea" today? Tang Lijun believes that in the phrase "telling Chinese stories to the world", which has been mentioned in various forums to explore the issue of "going to sea", the way of "telling" is sometimes more important than the "story" itself. "How to go about packaging your story?" How do you make audiences and platforms in the context of Western culture attracted to our stories? ”
The 3rd China-ASEAN Television Week Audiovisual Communication Summit
When she was in charge of the Shanghai Film Festival, Tang Lijun and her colleagues would "train" young filmmakers to participate in venture capital: in the shortest possible time, tell the core concept or core story of your film clearly. "In fact, the investment candidate does not choose the decision time of your project, that is, 30 seconds to a minute, maybe the moment the investor walks from the elevator to the car, you can't attract him, and the opportunity is fleeting." Tang Lijun believes that the same is true of national dramas going to sea or transnational film and television cooperation. She gave the example of the kunqu opera master Zhang Jun, when he brought "Peony Pavilion" to Europe, he said that the story was "Romeo and Juliet of the East", and Western audiences immediately understood how to look at this story.
In addition to the way of "speaking", Tang Lijun believes that another key to the sea of chinese opera is the international vision in creation. In 2015, with a ten-minute feature film of "Flowers and Bones", Tang Lijun went to the Cannes TV Festival to promote it. "After reading it, a few foreign friends gave me advice, they said why the love of the hero and heroine is so stoic and abusive, but they just don't tell each other? This expression of emotion is not the Western way. The estrangement caused by this cultural difference, in the final analysis, puts forward high requirements for the creators, in order to truly "go out" of the series, we must not only understand our own traditional culture, but also understand the history of Western culture and the development of global culture. ”
Tang Lijun put forward a creative idea, she believes that the younger the content in the future film and television creation, to some extent, its expression will be more international. "In the Internet age, young people are not only strongly sensitive to new things, but also have the habit of embracing and accepting global culture, and they also like to share and express, and young people are barrier-free for global information and thought exchange. The problems faced by young people and the content of their thinking are also similar in the context of globalization. The younger the content, the easier it may be to resonate and love with young overseas audiences. ”
It is not uncommon to mention the domestic transnational cooperative film and television projects in recent years, word of mouth or box office failures, and even bring the audience a bad impression that "transnational co-production must be a bad film". Speaking of this, Tang Lijun believes that "those attempts are very worthwhile, brave, and also our industry has gradually entered the process of transnational in-depth cooperation, and some useful explorations have provided us with experience for the whole industry." ”
Tang Lijun admitted that it is difficult to cooperate across borders in film and television creation, first of all, we must distinguish whether the main market is domestic or foreign, which one is the mainstay, which one to create, "If you want to take both into account, in the end, both markets may not rely on." And if you want to focus on the overseas market, it may involve the problem of different standards of domestic and foreign film and television drama creation and censorship standards, mentioning several topic Korean dramas that have become popular on Netflix in recent years, Tang Lijun is a little helpless, "You said that overseas audiences have watched more works of extreme expression, and then look at some of our particularly warm works, how to see it?" ”
"At present, we are in the overseas market, the competitive environment we are facing is quite dangerous, not only the efforts of the creative and production ends, but also the formation of a joint force in all aspects of society, and all parties must consider how to make our film and television works have more advantages in going out."
Young screenwriters should have the patience to polish their originality
At the end of the interview, since we talked about the creation and production of film and television dramas, then in recent years at home and abroad, there have been few original projects, and IP adaptations and classic IP remakes are popular, which is a topic that cannot be avoided. Tang Lijun admitted that under the impact of short videos, the world's long video creation and production are facing great challenges, and "it is more and more difficult to get out of the blockbusters."
"IP can at least provide some market data as a support for the feasibility of the project, relatively speaking, it is a hedge variety, and it is understandable that producers and platforms rely heavily on IP for production." But pay attention to the young people's preferences and chase things, iteration is very fast, buy the IP, see the data, it is lagging, and so you buy back, you may find that this content has not been popular in recent years, you want to wait for it, but the IP authorization is time-limited, you do not shoot in these years, it is wasted. So IP is indeed a double-edged sword. ”
At the same time, Tang Lijun believes that at the creative end, the more it relies on IP adaptation, the less the power of originality will be. "Let me give you an example, if this person keeps changing articles and you ask him to write articles, he probably won't write them." Tang Lijun admitted that her team has been polishing several original works in recent years, but "it is too difficult to push." "For example, there is an original script written for three years, and people over middle age like it, because the screenwriter is middle-aged, but the young audience does not buy it, then we continue to push down to grind with young screenwriters, but many young screenwriters are not willing to write originals, and many of them only do IP adaptations in their careers." They also have confusion: I also want to survive, you let me get an original, the platform will be old when it is over, and a few years of time will be spent in it. And I do IP adaptation, I can quickly earn money, the original is really not cost-effective. ”
"We need young screenwriters who are willing to go deep into life, spend more time and energy, and patiently polish an original work." But we must understand that this 'patience' actually requires the joint support of the platform, the production company, the competent unit and the audience to be realized. ”
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Ding Xiao