Dream a dream, pounce on a void.
"If I'm destined to be ordinary, I'm going to look up at that starry sky." This is a lyric in the interlude of the movie "Five Splashing Teenagers", which not only reflects the voice of the protagonist in the movie, but also very suitable for the embarrassing situation of the film in the National Day file.
Under the pressure of the strong "Chosin Lake" and the stable "My Father and Me", as of the time of the poison eye, the single-day schedule of "Five Splashing Teenagers" has not exceeded five percent, and the box office is currently only 16 million.
"Five Teenagers Who Splash water", which was withdrawn from the summer file to the National Day, is adapted from the 2001 Japanese film of the same name, telling the youth story of five boys practicing synchronized swimming. "Withdraw", "remake", "synchronized swimming", "newcomer lineup" and other keywords that do not sound dominant at the box office market level make the film not fully roll out before the screening. After the release of the film' Douban score to 7.1 points, the reputation is still good, and it is still difficult to achieve a counterattack during the file period.
As the "housekeeping skill" of light, a youth film, "Five Splashing Teenagers" has done more subtraction than before. The dog blood elements that often appear in youth films in the past have disappeared, but the more pure story of the youth experience of teenagers has also lost its traditional selling point.
For the audience, what kind of youth films do they really need? Can light's youth film strategy continue to work? We chatted with Sun Yonghuan, the producer of "Five Splashing Teenagers", to try to answer these questions, and the following is the transcript of the dialogue:
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > atypical youth films</h1>
Poison Eye: How did you come up with the idea of remaking this 2001 Japanese film in the first place?
Sun Yonghuan: At the press conference of "Sorrow Against the River", my industry peers in Japan took the initiative to contact me and said that there was such a film and wanted us to do it. The reason is that she watched "Sadness Against the River" and felt that the tone was right, and the youth film made for the light had the opportunity to make it into the imaginary look.
Japanese version of "Five Splashing Teenagers"
What we were moved by "Five Splashing Teenagers" is actually its youthful orientation, which is clean, concise and sharp. It belongs to boys, it's not pretentious, it's not bloody, and you feel like it's happening naturally.
Poison Eye: But in fact, the plot of this version is almost completely different from the Japanese version, what is the reason?
Sun Yonghuan: Because their culture is different from ours, including their community is not the same as ours, we have to study how to be reasonable. We interviewed a lot of schools, and then we found that there are many such people around us who will feel that they are "waste firewood", and they are also said by teachers and parents. How to break this? I think the core is the process of chasing dreams, which is actually the same. So after finding this core, we feel that all the stories can actually be handled with a good architecture.
Poison Eyes: Synchronized swimming is a sport that is far from the public, especially men's synchronized swimming, have you ever worried that using such a project as a model will make the audience feel alienated?
Sun Yonghuan: In fact, Huayou is just an introduction. You said "Wrestling Daddy", will the audience feel far away from the public because girls practice wrestling? If you think of it as a sports movie, you probably won't go to it. But when you think of it as a family film, there is a different hint. Our film, more hope to present is light comedy, not want to play it on the sports film, if you want to see it purely as a sports film, I think it is better to watch some documentaries to be more realistic.
Therefore, synchronized swimming is only one thing that the protagonists have to do. If you change to a few children going swimming, jumping rope or basketball together, it will not have a sense of novelty, and it may not be such a state. So it is precisely the need to complete a movement that seems unlikely to be completed.
Poison Eyes: Why didn't you choose to join a particularly large number of love lines? Love line seems to have always been the main theme of youth films?
Sun Yonghuan: If this film is a simple male protagonist's perspective, then we have enough space to show its family, friendship and love. But it's not, it's a group portrait of five people. So if it's a group portrait, these five people must be established, and I can't give him so much space, whether it's love or affection. In fact, there are many stories that parents can extend, including the mother of the clam, and the children raised by different parents are different, but there is not so much room to continue to extend.
Poison Eyes: Why did you choose the National Day file to be released?
Sun Yonghuan: In fact, there are not so many slots to choose from. From now until the Spring Festival, either the Spring Festival stalls, or Christmas or New Year's Eve. But after all, we are "splashing water" teenagers, it is the summer atmosphere, it is now autumn, too cold day to go to the cinema to see such a play is a little strange.
In fact, the most suitable for us is definitely the summer file, but this summer when the epidemic has recurred, under the premise of life first, we do not want to call on everyone to go to the cinema. But after the summer file, if you wait until next year's summer file, it will become an old film, which will drag on for too long. So we don't really have a lot of options.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > background color is juvenile</h1>
Poison Eye: What was the whole filming process like?
Sun Yonghuan: The origin of the project was in 2019, and the early stage was to focus on some interviews and script writing. When the official script was available, it was April 2020, and then the preparations began. Thousands of actors were selected, and the five main actors were selected, and they began swimming training in July and lasted for three months. The five children we were looking for couldn't swim, but they all said yes during the interview. Then it was officially launched on September 16 last year, finished on November 22, and then entered editing, post-production, and was completed in July this year.
Poison Eye: Did you encounter any special difficulties during the shooting process?
Sun Yonghuan: If it is difficult, every movie will have it, it is difficult to say that it is particularly difficult, but some details are still more impressive. For example, when we started shooting at that time, it was actually autumn, and I didn't expect Xiamen to be so cold last year. When the actors were training, it was still in the summer, and the pool was not so cold, but it was already very cold by the time the shooting really started.
Especially in the scenes with the dolphins, the water in the dolphin pool is all the water of the sea, very salty, very cold, and there are all kinds of dolphin feces in it, and they really bear a lot of psychological pressure. Each one has to be photographed dozens of times, without stopping the groundwater. If one of the five people hesitates, it will actually affect others, fortunately, the five of them are really very tacit, no one will let the other party wait like this, scramble, and reach the same sense of faith. At the end of the filming of dolphin pool, the director also jumped down, and he is actually a very juvenile person like these actors.
Poison Eyes: The main actors selected this time are all newcomer actors, and the youth films of the past have always been dominated by newcomer actors, what kind of considerations?
Sun Yonghuan: In fact, it is not that the light has been using new people to set problems for themselves, but that it is impossible for us to find traffic actors? Because a traffic actor's job is really full, we don't have much possibility of letting him train with us for 3 months or even 1 month, and 30 days really need to push out a lot of advertising or some other arrangements of his own. In fact, the traffic actors are quite hard, the whole time is cut very broken, there is no way to follow the crew to do such a thing. When we made this movie, we thought that I had to pursue the real, I couldn't use stand-ins, and everything had to play with the real, because only the real thing could be touched.
For example, the protagonist Zhang Wei, played by Xin Yunlai, cried in the hospital, and we only filmed one. His reactions were very real, because Xin Yun had already spent a long shooting period when he came to shoot there, it was really bitter and tired, it can be said that the emotions had been brewing for a long time, and the whole scene had completely exploded.
So this is actually the precious place of the newcomer actor, he is really here. He doesn't use eye drops, he doesn't care if he cries ugly or not, it's to convey a true expression of himself. So in this matter, it is actually worth it for the light to spend time and energy to cultivate these new actors.
The choice of new talents for light youth films is also our bold planning and strategy, and we also hope to continuously send high-quality newcomers to the market, so that more newcomers will be recognized by the audience, becoming a virtuous cycle of film and television works, and fresh blood will also inject new vitality into the industry. Of course, the debut of newcomers is not easy, it is difficult.
Poison Eye: What about the director? Director Song Haolin is also a newcomer director, how does it feel to cooperate with him?
Sun Yonghuan: He is a very teenager, so he especially understands what kind of things a boy might do right. For example, when the protagonists in the film discuss whether to confess to the teacher, Zhang Wei said, "Because I am not happy." From the perspective of girls, I will think that this line is too simple, just because it is not happy? But the director would tell me, "You know what? Boys are sometimes like this, and the reason for doing a lot of things is that I am not happy, I am not convinced. ”
Including the part where the five boys practice lifting in the pool together, Zhang Wei can't turn it over and over again, and Goofy goes up and beats him. I was wondering, is there any other way to show a kind of motivation for him? The director told me that this is sometimes the way boys express themselves, and it is rare to have a long conversation.
"Five Splashing Teenagers" opened on the red carpet of the North Film Festival
Poison Eyes: Is this kind of director and actor configuration particularly suitable for the genre of youth films?
Sun Yonghuan: I think the most difficult point of youth films is that the audience has to believe that these people are the people around him, and the audience is willing to follow the characters before they are willing to understand the whole story. Otherwise, the audience is always outside the whole story, and they always feel fake, how can this be?
So our actor, in fact, when the audience really sees it in private, will think that he is the kind of person who is really an idol and has a very good temperament. But in the movie, you will find that he is very close to us, that is, the boy next to us. Therefore, youth films are as far as possible to remove the "acting" component, so that the audience feels that he is suitable.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > light is more than just youth films</h1>
Poison Eyes: The newcomer actors who starred in the light movie, many people's agents are also in the light, from the perspective of the strategy of the whole company, what is the cooperation between the film business and the artist agency business?
Sun Yonghuan: It's very, very close. There are two reasons, one is the market environment, few movies in the market dare to use new people, so this risk we do not give the market, we bear. The second is to facilitate the planning of each step of these newcomers' future, for example, when our actors are acting in this movie, we know what his approximate schedule is, and we will plan all his time in his future work, and what kind of drama should be done next will be arranged. If it's not a light artist, it's hard to tune the time when we go out and do some publicity, such as roadshows, etc.
Poisonous Eyes: Before the light put forward the idea of "youth film + genre", hoping to enhance the freshness of the audience, but "Five Splashing Teenagers" is actually only from the perspective of "+ type", but it is doing subtraction and making a more pure story?
Sun Yonghuan: Because every time we make a youth film, we first think about where our audience is. This generation of people who watch youth films, their own youth and the generation of people who watched youth films a few years ago will of course change, so we will also adjust some of our changes according to the market situation.
But when it comes to storytelling, a lot of things are connected. Songs that were popular more than a decade ago, children now still feel good. Therefore, to find a good story that is true is the most important thing for us.
Lang Shadow Society X "Five Teenagers Who Splashed the Water"
Poison Eyes: Will The light choose to continue to adhere to the youth film strategy or focus more on diversified development in the future?
Sun Yonghuan: Actually, I have always felt that we are not strengthening youth films, but that youth films may be an advantage for us. The same is true, including animated films, and we are now doing some live-action adaptations of animation, such as "Dali Temple Journal". We also have a lot of other types of projects under development, such as Grandpa Running on the theme of old age.
The dominant position of youth films, we will not easily throw it away. It will have a certain brand effect, for example, many authors of youth literature will take the initiative to contact us when considering film and television. In addition to strengthening the genre of youth films, we will also expand other diversified themes.
Text | Liu Nandou
Edit | Zhang Ying