Beijing News (reporter Zhou Huixiaowan) This National Day file, based on Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tale works, the first live-action cinema film "Pipilu and Lu Xixi's Canned Villain" (referred to as "Canned Villain") was released, and the box office followed "Chosin Lake" and "My Father and Me", which currently ranks third in the total box office of the National Day file, with a box office of 42 million yuan. This live-action children's film starring Hong Yuexi (as Lu Xixi), Zhuang Zexi (as Pippiru), Yu Shuyao (as an artist), Wen Chundi (as a doctor), Liu Xiangqing (as captain) and other children can achieve the current results, which has a lot to do with the style of the film's family comedy, and the advent of "Canned Villain" allows readers to "get together with Pipilu and Lu Xixi, return to childhood, embrace childlike heart and imagination." ”
Pippilu in the movie is a bit naughty in the original book.
The film has no celebrity actors, no hundreds of millions of investments, no famous directors, no high-ranking films, only a story that has been tested by 37 years and three generations of readers. It has been 36 years since the founding of "Fairy Tale King" in 1985, and Zheng Yuanjie has published more than 300 kinds of books. However, before the launch of "Fairy Tale King", the story of "Canned Villain" had already been created. The fairy tale was created in 1984 and was adapted into an animated film in 1989. In addition, "Canned Villain" was also made into a fairy tale drama by the China Children's Art Theater, with more than 600 performances in ten years, this time, the fairy tale characters Pipilu and Rusisi in the movie appeared on the screen as real people, and they encountered the canned villain after encountering many difficulties and tests, but each time they could overcome the danger.
The film shows the magical abilities of five canned villain captains, singers, diplomats, artists, and doctors who can help Pipilu and Rusisi in different fields, and the sparks they collide with teachers, classmates and parents also make the film rich in different degrees. As the first reader of this story, the film's producer Zheng Yaqi told Zheng Yuanjie's original intention of creating "Canned Villain": "When I was a child, because I wanted to eat more, Old Zheng (Zheng Yuanjie) always bought me canned food, and every time he opened the can, he thought about what would happen if there was no meat in it, but what would happen to the five little people, so he wrote the story of "Canned Villain". "Why bring this story to the screen? How do small actors choose to "get out"? Zheng Yaqi accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from the Beijing News to reveal the secret.
The canned villain observes the outside world.
Nearly three thousand children found Lucisi and needed to perform without a trace
Zheng Yaqi introduced that the planning of "Canned Villain" began in 2018, and in June of that year, Zheng Yaqi's team and iQiyi cooperated in the short drama "Taming rabbits", which achieved great success after its release, which strengthened the confidence of Zheng Yaqi and his team. They found that whether there is such a genre film on the market, as long as the story can really move people, it can still succeed, "'The Taming of the Rabbit' makes us determined to do a good job of Pipilu's live-action movie." Zheng Yaqi said that the great advantage of making "Canned Villain" is that the story created by Zheng Yuanjie has been very perfect, so the production of the film in the script cycle is very fast, and the production of two years is a very normal cycle of live-action animation movies.
The script has a big advantage, and finding who to act has become the most critical issue. Zhuang Zexi, who played Liang Guo in "The Taming of the Rabbit", became the actor of Pippiru, while Lu xixi was the creator who selected nearly 3,000 children across the country before finally choosing Hong Yuexi. "The requirements for small actors on the big screen are very high, there are many parents in our country who hope that their children will engage in acting in the future, and they generally like to send their children to the acting training class, but we have contacted most of the children who came out of the training class, and the performance traces are relatively heavy, and four or five Lusisi actors have been selected from nearly three thousand children for rehearsal." Seeing who can really act naturally in front of the camera in the end, it is later found that Hong Yuexi is quite successful, and she basically can't see the traces of the performance. Zheng Yaqi said that the standard of casting is that as soon as the children are presented on the screen, her performance can move people, "This is a requirement of intuitive feeling, just like the audience can't feel that this person is acting when watching the performance." ”
Good student Rusisi.
Judging from the feedback received so far, Zheng Yaqi gave full recognition to the performance of the children in this film, and he said that many children will have a very grounded feeling after watching the movie. They don't think that Rusisi and Pipilu are specifically looking for someone to create in front of the camera, but they think that these characters are their classmates. To convey this effect, the young actors must also make a lot of efforts, just like the director Yu Fei believes that the most important job of this film is not to be a director, but to give children performance guidance: "This play itself is particularly difficult, there are children, there are animals, it is difficult to coordinate." Coupled with the fact that there are many scenes in the film that need children to perform against the green screen, they need to make full use of their imagination and naturally reveal, these children also feel the difficulties, and they also grow up with the shooting, and when the last scene is played, everyone cries all the way from the set to the end, and they are also deeply moved. ”
Word of mouth is more important than the box office, and will insist on Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tale king film and television
For "Canned Villain", Zheng Yaqi is still full of confidence, after all, Zheng Yuanjie's works have been selling well in China for decades, and now there is still a large reader market for fairy tale books, recalling the bits and pieces that accompany him, Zheng Yaqi may have a deeper feeling than any reader. Compared with Zheng Yuanjie, who is a thoughtful writer, Zheng Yaqi, who is "deviant", is more suitable for upgrading and commercializing his father's fairy tales. Over the years, Zheng Yaqi has used Zheng Yuanjie's fame and IP to make various fairy tale characters into cartoon images that children like and are willing to accept now, highlighting humorous elements, adding action scenes on the basis of Zheng Yuanjie's original text dialogue, and constantly trying various types such as two-dimensional, three-dimensional, freeze-frame, and close-up in form. According to Zheng Yaqi's words, although the carrier has changed, the feelings are still the same, and the story can still touch generations.
Canned villains fly.
"Canned Villain" is Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tale work adapted into a live-action movie debut big screen tour, the only requirement for the adapted author is "faithful to the original", for this reason Zheng Yuanjie let the crew answer questions to examine the familiarity of the original, sent everyone an A4 paper exam, all from the original questions, do not answer the questions correctly, do not stay in this crew. Zheng Yaqi believes that it is difficult to do animation or live-action animation movies, and the first thing that was decided to find children to act was because this operation would make children have the feeling of "finally someone treats us as adults": "Shoot the things around them, close to life, "Canned Villain" can make the audience be moved by the child's performance, which is more convincing than imaginary animation. ”
Zheng Yaqi said that in the production of "Canned Villain", the most feared thing is that the reputation of the film does not meet the requirements, and if the reputation is not good, it will make them sad more than the box office. But he also does not think that the box office of this film will affect the development of Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tale film universe: "I think that on a large level, the box office of the works made with heart will not be too miserable, and there is also a large market for domestic animation, from the beginning of tens of millions of box office to hundreds of millions, plus old Zheng has so many good works, we will insist on doing it on the line." My biggest pressure was that I didn't want to be called 'ruined childhood' and called me a 'pit daddy' (laughs). ”
In the future, Zheng Yaqi decided to develop hundreds of stories in Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tales in tandem with each other, and interspersed horizontally between each work, and finally complete a large-scale epic fairy tale masterpiece. Pay tribute to his father Zheng Yuanjie, and present the fairy tale gift of the new era to countless readers who love Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tales. "There will be a lot of pressure, but in the end there is still a thing that surprised me on this project, that is, Zheng Yuanjie was also very satisfied after watching it, and when he first finished filming, we did not dare to show it to him, after all, he had a particularly high requirement for the adaptation of the original work, and he did not expect that he said that the film was done well after watching it, at least reflecting the essence of his original work, and also strengthening our determination to continue to build this fairy tale universe, the next story may not be "Canned Villain", but it will definitely be explored on Pipilu and Lusisi."
Beijing News reporter Zhou Huixiaowan
Edited by Tong Na Proofreader Liu Jun