Recently, due to the launch of "The Hero of the Warring States", the plot-style historical documentaries have begun to enter the audience's field of vision.
The so-called "dramatic historical documentary", also known as "historical melodrama" in the past, is a performative documentary work in which a real person presents a situational reduction of history. The former is intended to highlight the documentary properties of the work, while the latter is more emphasis on the performance properties of the work. Both of them make sense, because the works are inherently cross-border, which is a new attempt to build a bridge between performance art and documentary works.
Strictly speaking, "Fengyun and Warring States" is the second season of the "Fengyun and Warring States" series, the first season is "" which was broadcast in 2019. However, because historical documentaries were not a hot spot in the industry at that time, they were ignored by the media and audiences for a long time. It wasn't until the recent second season that drama-style historical documentaries and historical sitcoms began to enter the center of everyone's conversation. It is not uncommon for
to use real people to play historical roles and present real history. They either appear in the Humanities, Science and Education Channel, or in the literary and artistic columns related to film and television literature. Usually, actors reproduce the situation at the time, supplemented by voice-overs, documentary photos, and historical materials to provide a composite narrative of thematic events or characters. For these works, people generally still classify them as "humanistic records", although the program has already appeared a large proportion of performative elements.
"Warring States" series attracts attention, first of all, it is different from the previous works of the same type, which often use unknown actors to perform, and most of its performance team members are "dramatic" actors known for their acting skills. For example, Hai Yitian, Yu Rongguang , Zheng Zeshi , Lin Yongjian , Wang Jinsong , Li Liqun , Yu Entai , etc. in "Fengyun and Warring States", "Fengyun and Warring States " invites careers in recent years The rising trend of powerful actors Nie Yuan , Su Ke , Wu Yue , Qi Xi, Zhang Bo , Song Yang , Huang Weide and so on joined. The second is the "Fengyun and Warring States" series with the fate and national character of Seven Kingdoms , as well as the historical figures who the director considers important as the narrative targets. If it is said that the separate narrative by country is more or less in line with the traditional historical descriptions such as chronology and chronicle, then the "success is also Xiaohe, defeat is also Xiaohe" style of fateful overlook interpretation of the national characters of various countries, it is because the audience used to have very few You can see it in a history show. The level of innovation it shows in narrating history is no less than the hundreds of forum-style interpretations that were opened more than ten years ago and later became popular in social science programs.
uses powerful actors familiar to the audience to interpret historical situations. Compared with previous situation documentaries, this seems to be just an upgrade of production scale and investment. In fact, it also hides the director's ability to communicate and tell history. "Ambition". This "ambition" is accompanied by the accumulation of the number of programs and word-of-mouth, and obviously also includes a re-examination of the historical process. The Yan Prince Dan , Bai Qi , Mi Bazi, Tian Dan , Xinling Jun , Li Mu , Qin Changping Xiong Qi presented in "Fengyun and Warring States Heroes", it is hard to say these Individuals are more important than Ying Zheng, Zhang Yi, Qu Yuan, Chu Huaiwang, Lin Xiangru , Lian Po, Lu Buwei , Li Si and others who have paid attention to historical books and scholars in the past. It's hard to say that they are better than another batch of historical celebrities that are not separately involved in this film, such as Mencius , Guiguzi, Sun Bin , Ganlong , Xishou, Mengchangjun , Chunshenjun , Wei Dazzling , etc. are more prestigious. In the limited time, it is not easy to choose which protagonist to choose and tell their relationship with the historical process. Behind this lies the creator's thinking on historical facts and expectations for the audience's understanding.
The historical knowledge disseminated in the media should not be "cramming" boring materials, nor should it be jokes in various historical dramas. TV dramas with high historical elements (for example, " Daming Dynasty 1566", " Yongzheng Dynasty ", " Han Wu Emperor ", etc., which have been popular in the past few years), are essentially TV dramas, and still have the creators to shape them. Artistic image, a "reasonable imagination" deliberately created to create a dramatic conflict. This is easy to understand for middle-aged audiences, but for the vast majority of young audiences in the digital age and video game age, I am afraid it is not so easy to distinguish. In many cases, humanistic documentaries need to take on the responsibility of correcting mistakes and correcting deviations. "Story-style historical documentaries", such as the "Story of the Wind and the Warring States" series, which are narrated by well-known actors, are a wonderful use of social science documentaries on the screen talents of "drama-level" actors, and also make such works more influential and disseminated. .
In the video age, the trend of entertainment is unavoidable. How to make the best use of the situation, while disseminating correct and accurate common sense, while avoiding disadvantages? How to make good use of the attraction of lens language to viewers to offset the "water injection" faced by knowledge in the process of dissemination? These issues require careful consideration by film and television professionals and cultural professionals. When conveying historical common sense, the use of situational interpretation promoted by "playing bones" can only be regarded as a "little trick", but the "calcium supplement" effect of such "little tricks" on variety shows and humanities is huge. of.
Photo: Douban, drama official Weibo