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AfterRain No.165
When Xu Zheng was interviewed by "Chinese Entrepreneur" magazine, he explained his criteria for choosing a movie.
First of all, he doesn't care about hot spots, but chooses the concepts and subjects he is familiar with, and acts within his circle of ability.
Secondly, discover the problem from oneself, use the perplexity of life as the subject to explore.
Finally, through the form of investigation, to find the audience's preferences, especially comedy and family fun movies.
From the perspective of "囧Mom", Xu Zheng did indeed do it all.
For commercial considerations, he continued the "囧" series, shooting a family comedy film, and doing what he knew easily.
He understood the preferences of contemporary movie audiences, went to Russia, picked up the train, crossed the forest, crossed the ice river, and escaped from the bear mouth. , Satisfies the audience's desire for new changes in the spectacle and visual experience.
He explores the way of family relationships and adds a literary commentary to this comedy with the theme of love.
However, it is a good story, but it has not been highly praised by the audience. So far, Douban scored 5.7 points.
In the minds of many viewers, the end of the film presents an unsympathetic reconciliation. What is even more unpredictable is that an epidemic promoted "囧Mo" to become the first Chinese New Year film premiered on an online platform. The film's performance techniques were converted to a small screen, which dispelled the film’s charm and highlighted some of the narrative shortcomings. .
01
A good story
From the point of view of creation, Xu Zheng is always willing to step out of his comfort zone and do something different. "囧Mom" is the one with the least comedy in the "囧" series and the strongest emotional component. Part of.
He adopts a classic three-act structure, steadily and steadily in terms of movie theme and character creation, presenting a relatively complete story. This is why the film still impresses many viewers.
's famous director, screenwriter and actor Field shared the classic three-act structure of film script creation in his work, and believes that this rule has laid the most solid foundation for screenwriting creation. The so-called three acts refer to three paragraph units, each paragraph often consists of many scenes. Each scene has its specific role and function.
1. The function of the first act is to build, which is to complete the establishment and setting of the basic worldview, character relationships and basic background.
Xu Zheng is very familiar with the screenwriting skills of genre films. He used dialogue to show the details from the beginning. A dialogue between Xu Yiwan, played by Xu Zheng, and Zhang Lu, played by Yuan Quan, contains a wealth of information-
divorced, but hiding from the mother, it can be seen that the parent-child relationship between Iwan and his mother is not honest;
argues for divorce After all, Ivan is unreasonably paranoid, indicating that he has another heart knot;
Zhang Lu persuaded Ivan to be nice to his mother, proving that Song Yiwan’s parent-child relationship is not ordinary non-interference, but prominent contradictions;
also, The only focus of the two people's common concern is the cat, they have no children. All the conflicts and explanations of
are described in the previous scenes. And laid the tone of the film comedy.
2. The function of the second act is confrontation, which allows the protagonist to constantly carry out confrontation actions, such as confrontation with the heart, confrontation with others, confrontation with society, etc.
"囧 mother", Ivan first is to confront himself His mother, he can’t understand his mother’s concept, can’t accept the way his mother expresses his love for him, just want to escape and escape;
second is to fight his wife, he will fight with his wife and delay the divorce time;
third To fight against himself, it takes him a long time to understand why people he loves often hurt each other.
is precisely these confrontations, which have become an important part of the movie's exciting plot. The unique feature of "囧Mom" is that the confrontation of the characters highlights the family conflicts in the context of the times.
is the mother on the one hand. The mother in the film is always influenced by Soviet aesthetics, and her way of thinking and life ideals are all Soviet-style.
She loves the song "Red Berry Blossoms", and she named her son Ivan. Her growth experience and the past of her home country bear a strong mark of Sino-Russian friendship. Among them, there are daily drips and waves.Fu's destiny changes are the old times engraved deep in her memory.
on the other hand is a wife. His wife Zhang Lu was a Chinese who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, and was influenced by the material impact and cultural influence from across the ocean. The
generation of women's inner recognition of independence is built in their bones, and they have completely different views on feelings and marriage from the previous generation. Finally,
is the protagonist Ivan. He is a local entrepreneur in the new era. He has not inherited the tradition and feelings of his parents, nor does he fully recognize the openness and emotional independence of the West.
Therefore, he is not satisfied with his mother's arrangement and sacrifice, nor does he understand his wife's self and shrewdness. The sharp and familiar estrangement between the characters of
allows us as children to see the shadow of our lives. This is the expression of the director when creating a film, and it can bring some in-depth thinking to the audience.
3. The function of the third act is the ending. In this part, you need to describe a big plot point to change the protagonist's dramatic needs. The turning point of the story of
happened after Ivan had a violent argument with his mother, and her mother got off the car in a hurry. The mother and son
then experienced the openness in the snowy woods, the incredible escape from the bear’s mouth, the fantastic glacial journey and the hot-air balloon journey, and finally Ivan helped her mother realize her wish, and the two reconciliation came to an end.
Ivan said to his wife, "I am fighting with you and delaying your time because I don't want to divorce, and I want to keep you by my side", and to his mother, "If it is too late, we must catch up with the Moscow show."
He no longer responds to accidents on the road for a clear goal. He is aimless, but at least at the end of the journey, he puts aside the struggle in his heart and finds the most desired peace. The real controversy in the
film is actually concentrated in the third act, where the plot point is too surreal. However, in terms of the purpose of creation, the role of the third act is to solve the problems faced by the first two acts and to draw an end to the whole story.
Only in terms of the conflicts and contradictions at the beginning of this journey, the three people in the relationship finally have a certain degree of frankness.
02
An unsympathetic reconciliation
A good story is often made up of the protagonist's ups and downs, rich emotional lines of action, so to write a good story, you must build an outstanding character.
and this is precisely the part with the least ink in "囧Mo". In order to present a Chinese-style family love movie, it emphasizes the difficulty of intergenerational communication between mother and son by using comic-oriented actions and paragraph-like lines, but neglected. Deep interpretation of characters.
If the audience cannot understand a character, he will not be moved by the character's story. Generally speaking, the establishment of an outstanding character should have three elements:
1, the character has dramatic needs, and find a reasonable motivation for his behavior
On the topic of Chinese family affection, the main creator has indeed done enough homework, such as "the elderly WeChat chat 60-second voice phalanx", "health-care articles of major public accounts", "promoting birth" and other hot topics.
In our lives, we are often troubled by this kind of family relationship, and this part of creation has almost been recognized by everyone.
But in the last third of the movie, a different mother suddenly appeared: loves music, loves art, loves movies, and a sad marriage. As for how she did it? What kind of changes has this distinguished and experienced woman experienced? Why does she become an old lady eager to hug her grandson when she gets old? The
film did not show the dramatic needs of this character, and the audience felt so abrupt to her transformation.
2. Characters have their own opinions when thinking about problems, and have their own attitude towards things.
The famous Korean screenwriter Zheng Shu said that people’s personalities are diverse and complicated. It is impossible for the screenwriter to describe a certain character to show the full picture of the person, but it should Master the most distinctive dominant traits of the protagonist’s personality traits, and portray them.
And this kind of portrayal is presented precisely through the perspectives and attitudes of the characters. This is the way a person sees or observes the world. People with their own opinions and attitudes will quickly be understood by everyone. The older generations of
have an amazing stubbornness on certain issues. They eat the leftovers overnight.A diet of vegetables and heavy oil and salt tells you that you will die if you sleep ten minutes late.
When should we fall in love, when should we get married, when should we have children, everything is as sacred and inviolable as a totem.
So Xu Yiwan didn't understand why his mother was so obsessed with a pot of small tomatoes, and his mother didn't understand why Xu Yiwan didn't want children. In the confrontation part of
, the images of mother and child are both distinct. Behind this misunderstanding is the lack of genuine and peaceful communication between everyone.
However, the views and attitudes of the characters completely disappeared in the last scene, seemingly achieved through the appearance of a bear, which instantly collapsed the favorability and realism established in the audience's mind.
They seem to be born like this, they are a strong, stubborn, ignorant character, a joke.
3. The characters have undergone a personal transformation during the journey of the story, making the characters richer. Three-dimensional
On the surface, the film does follow this creative principle, and all the characters have finally completed the transformation. Unfortunately, there is not enough foreshadowing. , The scene created is too blunt. More importantly, this kind of character transformation is contrary to the diversified values of the current parent-child relationship.
Psychologist Li Songwei interpreted the mentality of young people facing the dilemma of family relationships in this way: each person has his own choice. Some people have no desire to truce with their parents, nor do they think it is necessary to understand their parents, so they want to freeze. And stiffness like this is better than self-righteous consideration. The former at least reveals that there is a problem between us. This sentence of
is actually the true feelings of many viewers. We don't need to use the warmth of "囧Mom" to whitewash problems. We think that reconciliation is to give a high-profile hug, and all problems disappear. If the
film is shown on theatrical line, it can still touch the emotions of the audience with a strong sense of picture and vocal music, but in the form of webcasting, the audience has enough reason not to pay for such a settlement, which is very good with the TV series The same reason is always criticized at the end of ".
03
An attempt to premiere a movie on an online platform
Luo Zhenyu once said: "What kind of media there is, and what kind of information is there. When the medium changes, the information changes. The video played in the cinema, and the one played at home. Video, the playing environment has changed, and there are two species at all." During the special period of the outbreak of the epidemic, when the New Year film was completely withdrawn, the first broadcast on the Internet platform allowed people across the country to enjoy the film for free. It is a wise move for both reputation and profit.
Amidst the controversy that online platforms are bound to replace movie theaters, I still want to say that the form of webcasting definitely has an impact on the experience of watching movies. The charm of movies can only be fully displayed in theaters in a short period of time. This is unique to movies. The narrative method is inseparable. There are two main reasons:
First, the production of small screens emphasizes "decentralized concentration and investment", and the characteristic of movies is "compulsive investment".
Different communication media, the audience’s input method is different-
text media such as books input method is "selective input", choose a book you want to read, and then focus on reading;
movie has The nature of "compulsive involvement" means that once the audience chooses a certain movie, they will be restricted to watching it in a certain space and rarely leave.
's small-screen input method is "decentralized concentration and input". The audience will not concentrate all the time, but in a dispersed state, they choose to invest at certain moments.
Therefore, the production of TV dramas played on small screens is often loosely compact. Adding many small episodes can help attract the audience. If every moment is arranged very compactly, it will be counterproductive.
However, the movie only has an hour and a half, and the minimal plot is the most important point that distinguishes it from TV series.
This is why almost all movies don’t look good on small screens. It’s hard to imagine a person watching, while using his mobile phone, going to the toilet, or washing dishes, and being emotionally affected by emotional fluctuations. .
Second, film is not only the art of light and shadow, but also the art of sound.
First of all, the greatest value of sound in movies is to simulate the auditory experience in reality, allowing the audience to be on the scene, Empathy.
Secondly, sound can also create some practical functions for movies. For example, if you don't want the picture to look too bloody, you can use sound to mobilize the audience's physiological reaction, and it can also express violence and cruelty.
In addition, the sound can be separated from the picture and narrated separately. The same voice will evoke different emotions and memories of the audience, and the "symbolicization" of the voice can be used in the movie to play a role in shaping the character's modeling and situational cues.
Takes "囧Mom" as an example. Mother overcomes all difficulties and got on the stage of Moscow Red Star Theater and sang "Red Berry Blossoms". The singing made the audience mesmerized. The melody of
is melodious. The old song is an episode of the Soviet film "Happy Life", which expresses the girl's longing for her sweetheart. In the film, it can also be regarded as the mother's longing for Ivan's father and the nostalgia for the good old days.
This should be the last climax before the end of the film, and it is the key resonance point. Only in the three-dimensional surround sound of the cinema, coupled with the huge wide screen, can it have dramatic and spatial penetrating power, bringing a strong emotional impact to the audience. However,
is converted to webcast, even with the form of projection, such a scene is difficult to construct. Because this method of using vision and hearing to tell a story is what we call movie language, and it only belongs to movies.
One point summary:
From the heart, "囧Mom" is a good story. Compared with the meaningless funny of "Thai Embarrassment" and "Hong Kong囧" in the past, I think "囧Mom" is for comedy movies. Salvation.
However, a good story may not be able to tell well. The ultimate criterion of a good movie is still to impress the audience. Only by understanding the diversified values of the audience in the new era and shaping the image of characters they understand and recognize can it be possible to gain empathy.
Especially in the era when the new media network has become a trend, people's entertainment habits will inevitably bring challenges to the narrative of movies.
These questions cannot be answered purely by audiences filling out questionnaires. The creators of the film shoulder the mission of leading aesthetics. Still the same sentence:
People who appreciate beauty need not know the composition of beauty, but those who create beauty have to know.
- END -
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