Once upon a time there was a mountain, and there was a tree in the mountain, and there was a story under the tree...
This story has a legendary beginning: under mount Emei, there lived a family surnamed Li, Li's father was unexpectedly rich, after his death, the family business passed to his son Li Guanjun, but within a few years, the debt was high, Li Guanjun had to flee back to his hometown to hide his debts, and found a treasure map under the jujube tree in the house. He called Shangfa Xiao to go on a treasure hunt, and after much hardship, they found a golden jujube tree in the cave where the treasure was hidden, full of ruby-like dates. Back at home, Li Guanjun found that the jujube tree in the yard was missing...
At the end of December 2020, a clay sculpture animation short drama called "Jujube Knows" was launched online. As the first work of the World Cultural Heritage New Cultural Creation Project, this short drama integrates the intangible clay sculpture creativity, short story text and stop-motion animation with local characteristics of Sichuan, which surprised many netizens who only wanted to see Qin Hao's "climbing mountain terrier", in fact, the construction period of this short drama to promote the "relay" took less than three months.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > write a short story for the Yellow Emperor</h1>
At the beginning of September, Sichuan Emei writer "Squid who loves diving" (hereinafter referred to as "squid") received an invitation to choose a topic, and Tencent and Reading Group wanted him to write some stories about world cultural heritage to "sample" the newly launched "New Cultural and Creative Project for World Cultural Heritage".
Squid is a platinum writer for the Reading Group, and 2020 is already his 9th year of writing online novels. This squid who at first only wanted to quietly "dive" in the forum has now become the head author specializing in the creation of Western fantasy arcane and classical immortal themes, and has published dozens of popular works such as "Extinction Catalogue" and "Arcane Divine Seat". However, since the college entrance examination, he has never written a short story.
Propositional composition, creativity is the most difficult.
In the past, when writing long stories, it was because there were strong ideas to express, and the elected questions were limited to a smaller range, and it was more necessary to reorganize the ideas according to the theme. Putting down the occult and steampunk full of occult magic and steampunk in the otherworldly continent, the squid sat at the table and fell into childhood memories: "In addition to the beautiful scenery and delicious food in Mount Emei, we have many Buddhist things, temples, and monks, but the funeral customs are a little more Taoist, and the overall religious culture gets along more harmoniously." ”
The hometown in memory is always mysterious and simple, with strong religious overtones. The monks walked through and dressed in clothes, and this atmosphere made him think of the story of Xuanyuan Huangdi's visit to Dao Emei.
The Taoist classic "Five Runes Classic" records: "The emperor is nine feet long, the body of the Xuan hair is covered, all are long and long, and the hair is only a few inches, living under the cliff north of Mount Emei." ”
The "emperor" is the well-known Taishang Laojun, who goes to the Heavenly Palace and knows the earth. The Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan was famous, and he did not hesitate to visit from the bank of the Yellow River to seek a good strategy for governing the country and the world. They lived in a jade chamber made of pale jade under the cliff, the jade chamber seats were made of gold, and the attendants were fairy children and jade girls, accompanied by the Taiqing Immortal King. This is an ancient legend known to everyone in Emei.
Where there are immortals, there are treasures. Why not write a treasure hunt story?
The squid envisioned that the story would have Emei's mountain cave house, rare treasures, unavoidable desires and the sayings of fate, and unexpected reversals and loop designs.
Even the horn dates of Mount Emei have become the most important "MacGuffin". The strangely shaped dates produced in the jianfeng village of Shuangfu Town look like rubies from a distance, just in time for the treasure hunt. The title of the story is also available, which is called "Jujube Knows".
"The letter said that somewhere under the cliffs of Mount Emei hid a treasure from an ancient era, which contained a large amount of precious jade and gold, which was suspected to be related to the Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan, and that picture was the treasure map."
The idea for "Date Knows" took shape in three weeks. A micro-novel of more than a thousand words, like listening to the bedtime story told by my grandmother when I was a child, love and hate are clear, the cycle of life and death, it is inevitable to be a little scary after listening. The squid also added the secret of cultivation that the naïve emperor said to the Yellow Emperor of Xuanyuan in the True Dragon and Tiger Nine Immortals Sutra into the text: If the son wants to cultivate his body, he must first calm his mind. Rest in the heart of the gods, and go out of their desires. When practicing things, if the multitude arises, it is reasonable to reason with qi- in "Jujube Knows", it even becomes a text code nested in the space-time loop.
The squid felt that his "half-proposition essay" was written quite right.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > can only shoot for 3 seconds a day</h1>
Get the blueprint of the story, and the next step is to determine the direction of incubation.
2020 is the 25th anniversary of Emeishan's "heritage", and the Sichuan Provincial Culture and Tourism Information Center and the Emeishan Municipal Bureau of Culture, Sports and Tourism hope to add more Sichuan elements to this story.
The main creative team thought of clay sculptures. The Clay Sculpture of Xu in Daying County, Sichuan Province, has been passed down for more than 200 years and is an intangible cultural heritage of Sichuan Province. These clay sculptures were popular in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, focusing on myths and legends, historical stories and religious stories in terms of themes, promoting truth, goodness and beauty, persuading The Tao, and the character modeling "Cao Yi out of the water, Wu Belt Dangfeng", permeated with a bit of ancient style, these qualities coincide with the ancient mysterious atmosphere of "Jujube Knows".
Determining the form of clay sculpture, the team found Weng Jie, a teacher at the China Academy of Fine Arts and the founder of Runwu Stop Motion Animation Studio. Weng Jie and the members of the studio have focused on stop-motion animation since 2013, and in 2017, their modern stop-motion animations such as "Temple of the Wind and Snow Mountain" and "Prequel to the Assassin Nie Yinniang" have caused a hot discussion on the Internet, and their 2019 work "Gap in the Twilight" was also shortlisted for the Short Film Corner section of the Cannes Film Festival.
Characters, props, and sets all need to be built by hand, and clay sculpture stop-motion animation is a process that requires patience. Over the next two months, Weng Jie and his team members first needed to study the costumes and house characteristics of the Ming Dynasty, and delve into the shirts and shirts worn by the readers, the shirts and trousers of ordinary people. Stitch and stitch a thread to sew clothes for clay dolls and design shapes. "The puppets have to open their mouths when they speak, and these mouths are all sculpted by us, and the speech achieved by changing the mouth, all the hair, all the face makeup will fall off when shooting, so every shot has to be re-put on makeup, just like a real actor." 」 Weng Jie said.
Live-action shooting, they use roto-scope way, in order to restore the real movement of the shoulder shake, the change of center of gravity, to be performed by the real person first, the animator and then the speed collection, after accelerating and decelerating to create an exaggerated sense of animation, Weng Jie introduced, under normal circumstances, a day can only shoot 3 seconds of material.
After repeated discussions and modifications, the entire production took more than 80 days, and the finishing effect of more than 6 minutes was amazing. The freeze-frame clay sculpture is simple and natural, the image is three-dimensional, and it has a sense of fantasy that is not real like a legend.
Only a few of the treasure hunting experiences depicted in the novel have come alive: On the way, Li Champion and his small hair are blown up and down by the fierce wind in the cave, shaking up and down. The surprised look of the two after seeing the treasure, the action of jumping and scrambling, the whiskers of the skeleton, and the strange red light of the horn jujube are displayed one by one in the picture.
Screenshot of the short drama "Jujube Knows"
After the short drama was launched, some netizens commented that this texture reminded him of the stop-motion animation "Avanti" he watched as a child. The squid who did not know much about Sichuan clay sculptures before also found it "very interesting", "This cultural expression is very good, and it is a good thing to combine these two to promote to everyone and let everyone know more about these cultures." ”
Weng Jie thought that conscientiously doing the ultimate was the meaning of this matter.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > creative activation</h1>
On December 29, Mount Emei's annual short drama "Jujube Knows" was launched online. At the beginning of the whole film, the team also specially found Qin Hao, who was "full of suspense", as the narrator of the World Heritage Site: "On the mountain, there are always many stories happening. On this Mount Emei, there are more stories..."
World Heritage Narrator: Qin Hao
Douban netizen @ big head mung bean commented, "At the moment when computer special effects can be messed up, insisting on using stop-motion clay sculpture animation, which looks a bit clumsy, to tell the story, there must be a reason for this." The core of "Jujube Knows" is very similar to the folk tales that were still circulating in the 1980s, with both good and evil ends, simple and absolute values, and carrying many basic social indoctrination functions in that era. This grassroots, primitive, and inseparable awakening from the earth is indeed suitable for growing on the rustic roughness of clay sculptures. More netizens' messages are quite simple: after reading it, I want to go to Emei again and buy some dates to eat.
On May 20, 2020, the "Belt and Road" Youth Creativity and Heritage Forum Special Dialogue was held online. At the meeting, the 2020 Next Idea Tencent New Cultural creation competition was officially launched, and UNESCO and Tencent invited young people around the world to use creativity to activate world heritage IP and innovatively inherit culture with wonderful new creative works.
Initiated by Tencent in 2012, Next Idea Tencent New Cultural and Creative Competition is a Chinese cultural symbol-making program for young people focusing on the revitalization of traditional culture. In the past four years, Next Idea has launched a series of cultural and creative projects such as "Ancient Paintings Will Sing" in conjunction with the National Bureau of Cultural Relics, the Palace Museum, the Dunhuang Research Institute, the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Mausoleum Museum, the Nine Provincial Museum and other cultural and cultural institutions.
In May 2020, the competition was themed "My (World) Idea is Next Idea" to "revitalize" and inherit world heritage with youth creativity. In order to promote the launch of the event, Tencent invited creators in the fields of literature, music, film and television to create corresponding works for the World Cultural Heritage. By the end of the year, the Next Idea Competition had received nearly 7,000 submissions, and in addition to Mount Emei, other well-known Chinese cultural and intangible cultural heritages such as the Qinling Terracotta Warriors, the Summer Palace, and shadow puppetry had also entered the scope of "revitalization".
On the basis of the competition, Tencent and Reading Group jointly upgraded and launched the "New Cultural and Creative Plan for World Cultural Heritage". Around UNESCO's World Heritage List, online literary writers were first invited to create short stories. Then invite directors, screenwriters and short video creators to further develop the work in a variety of digital content forms, and create a full-chain IP development model from short stories to adaptations of short plays, animation, music and other digital content forms.
"Jujube Knows" is the first stick of this plan. From short stories to adaptations of short plays, anime and music, Tencent calls this model "short IP" development.
Poster of "Dates Know"
"Jujube Knows" only took three months from the establishment of the project to the formation of the short drama, and the squid was surprised by this rapid IP incubation method, "Which is very good in the creation of the short drama and some partial publicity forms, of course, the TV and film adaptation still needs to slowly polish the script, with more animation technology support." Our current form is the rapid creation of novels and various cultural combinations such as clay sculptures and ink paintings, which provides a better way to integrate cultures. ”
This short and fast creation also gave the squid a new idea of the material library in traditional culture, and he thought that every content creator should not ignore these legends and stories with a lot of value, "Let your imagination run wild!" ”
Cheng Wu, Vice President of Tencent Group, CEO of Yuwen Group and CEO of Tencent Pictures, said: "During the Spring Festival in 2021, the 'New Cultural Creation Plan for World Cultural Heritage' will also launch a series of new cultural creations by young creatives, so that the public can travel through the cultural heritage in rich digital content and feel the beauty of human millennium culture at home. ”
The squid has more plans to create about local culture. Long-term investment in fantasy arcane and other themes, he is very interested in the sichuan Sanxingdui related derivatives, "Sanxingdui itself includes grand, mysterious, cultural and historical inheritance, very communication value." In his view, Chuanxi culture itself can create a "Good Scenery of China", and perhaps more emphasis on cultural introduction and the dissemination of the genre of partial travel can also become a hit in the future.
"There are still many stories on this Mount Emei, do you want to come to the treasure hunt one day?" At the end of the story, the narrator Qin Hao has a mysterious face.