Please click "Follow" before reading the article, so that it is easy to discuss and share, and in order to return your support, I will update the quality content daily.
Text | Thorndike's Ru
Edit | Thorndike's Ru
The narrative in family dramas is known for its natural flow, generally does not pay attention to the dramatic conflicts of ups and downs, and restores the true characteristics of secular life. Although it weakens the dramatic color of the story to a certain extent, it impresses people with the real emotions of ordinary people by showing the audience real life pictures, and gives the audience the freedom to judge emotionally.
Family dramas are set within the family, and the adhesion between characters is strong. In domestic family dramas, the relationship between the characters is relatively simple, with the emotions of the male and female protagonists as the main line, and other characters are mostly attached to the protagonists, and new auxiliary plots are produced.
In the first episode of "Parental Love", the main line revolves around the first meeting and blind date of the hero Jiang Defu and the heroine An Jie, and the additional characters are arranged to promote the development of the main line, the number of characters is small, and the relationship is clear at a glance.
Domestic family dramas pay attention to simplicity in character settings. The appearance and exit of characters must have the reason that they have to, for various reasons to promote the development and climax of the main story, and the screenwriter will minimize the interference of other characters on the main line.
In the first episode of the first season of "Modern Family", in the first episode of the first season of "Modern Family", in a 4-minute duration, the three nuclear small families in a large family are introduced, and the characteristics of the current members of each family are briefly explained.
Enriching character relationships is first of all to create a multi-faceted and three-dimensional character image. If viewers don't like the main characters of the series, if they're not interested in knowing the characters' weekly encounters, loves, or counterattacks, then the ratings of the show are bound to be dismal.
Although there is a certain standardization and stylization of character settings, for example, when describing characters, as far as possible to use abstract one-sided words such as "kindness, hypocrisy" for evaluation, advocating more use of details to make the character three-dimensional.
In the domestic family drama "Chinese Divorce", Lin Xiaofeng, played by Jiang Wenli, is a middle-aged woman who is crazy to the point of almost neurotic, and this extreme personality is only symbolically reconciled at the end, fundamentally Lin Xiaofeng is still a flat character.
In American family dramas, screenwriters often merge the functions of the characters, increase the richness of the characters' functions as much as possible, make the characters more three-dimensional, and the whole drama is mainly connected through the emotional fuel of the infinite character arc.
In "Desperate Housewives", each regular character has multiple identities, mainly Bree, and the initial image is a comic-style perfect housewife, which does not allow the existence of a single flaw. It is mainly manifested in two aspects, one is the emphasis and control of the "perfect" image, and its extreme pursuit of perfection is shown through loose buttons and obsession with hygiene during sex.
The second is that when her "perfect" image is violated by others, she will instinctively and desperately attack the other party, and when her husband Rex speaks of marriage counseling at a friend's party, Bree fights back and exposes it without hesitation.
This comic book style character initially presents one
A flat style, under the development of the subsequent plot, Bree began to lie, drink, and promiscuous, but always used his own strength to protect his loved ones, and tried to bear the responsibility of murder for protecting his friends.
As Chuck said, "Your husband dies, your son leaves, your business goes bankrupt, but you still stand up to protect those around you." ”
This contradictory and complex round character makes Bree have small shortcomings, but the audience still likes her, and to some extent, it is closer to life itself.
Family dramas with complex character relationships can attract different audience groups. Domestic family dramas take husband and wife relationship and children's education as the main line, and the audience positioning is mainly aimed at housewives, and the viewing group is relatively single.
In addition, appropriately enriching the relationship between the characters can not only extend the plot indefinitely, but the addition of new characters often carries different types of elements, and the plot content will be richer.
In "Desperate Housewives", Bree evolved from a perfect housewife to a "problem" housewife, from a conventional family husband and wife relationship, a mother-child relationship to a new complex relationship with members of society, with idol drama elements, crime drama elements and comedy elements, which can enrich the genre elements accommodated in family dramas and strengthen plot conflicts.
Each specific type of TV series has its own specific content and form paradigm, and also has its specific audience group, organically combining the classic elements of various types of dramas, which is conducive to enriching the creative means of TV series and attracting a wide range of TV series audiences.
In the process of genre mixing, American TV drama writers insist on a certain genre as the dominant genre, rather than "miscellaneous and evenly mixed".
"Mad Housewives" combines drama, comedy, slapstick, soap opera, mystery, thriller, satire, and other elements. ”
Although Chinese TV dramas are divided into revolutionary historical dramas, period dramas, family dramas, urban dramas, etc., these divisions mostly start from the theme content, and the awareness of genre is relatively weak. The new generation of audiences has been influenced by the Internet for many years, and the contact with American dramas, Korean dramas and other film and television dramas with distinct genres has formed a relatively clear type consumption awareness.
In addition, the rhythm of family dramas is relatively relaxed, and such a background requires domestic family dramas to enrich genre elements while strengthening genre awareness to meet the aesthetic needs of the current audience.
As a common genre of American dramas, crime dramas are popular with audiences for their fast-paced scene transitions and suspense settings. "Desperate Housewives" integrates popular crime elements, setting regular characters as housewives, and temporary characters participating in the commission of crimes every season, telling family life from a new perspective.
In the domestic TV series, "Cooking Woman Detective" (45 episodes, 2016) starring Li Xiaolu and Jia Nailiang tells the story of a housewife Gou Jixiang joining the patrol house and partnering with the arrogant son Mao Ruyi to solve the case.
Compared with "Desperate Housewives", the focus of the play is more suspense crime, with idol drama colors, and the laughter mainly comes from the "cat-dog contrasting personality" of the pair, and the plot progress is relatively slow.
TV series such as "The Gate of the Mansion" and "Golden Wedding" are a combination of family stories and period dramas, and the protagonists will experience family conflicts at different times. American family dramas will pay more attention to the plot direction of space throughout the season, and the change of age is mostly presented in the switch of different seasons.
In general, the genre elements of most family dramas in China are relatively single. The hit of "Longing" in the 90s portrayed women's fearless sacrifice spirit, to "Chinese Divorce", "New Marriage Era", "Marriage Defense War", "Parental Love" and so on.
More around the marriage relationship of the husband and wife and trivial things in the family, the plot is close to real life. Since TV dramas are mainly living rooms and family-style viewing modes, the genre innovation of family dramas should still be sought within the "greatest common divisor".
While enriching the relationship between the characters, black elements can be appropriately combined to increase suspense in addition to ordinary family life, strengthen drama conflicts, and expand the viewing group.
Dive into family reality and value audience interaction
In recent years, the film and television drama market has undergone earth-shaking changes, however, content is king has become an unchanging industrial creation law. The creators of the TV series are committed to discovering different topics from life and integrating them into a new story that can resonate.
As far as the artistic characteristics of the show are concerned, a prominent feature of family dramas is to be as close to and reflect daily life as possible, and soap operas in the past reflect more elastic emotional life.
Since the 70s of the 20th century, "family dramas began to design social events such as the 'two-generation gap', artificial abortion, drug use, and unmarried cohabitation." ”
Until now, with the growth of a new generation of audiences, family dramas have begun to expand, becoming more creative in terms of expression content and narrative techniques, and the audience has expanded from housewives to other audience groups.
"Desperate Housewives" selects four housewives with different styles, each facing desperate family problems, and works together to express the plight of a large and comprehensive middle-class housewife - marriage and family - outside their own clues, integrating most of the difficulties that women can encounter into a family drama, making the text have a broader coverage.
As a classic comic-style female model, Bree's pursuit of perfection does not allow a little flaw in family or life, but it often backfires; Abandoned by one man, Susan continues in despair to find the next, through whom she determines her feminine identity, but also fulfills her duties as a mother, which she can choose.
Gabe is a beautiful and selfish housewife who also grows and changes as the plot develops, and is eventually ready to sacrifice herself to protect her husband; Lenette represents the dilemma between the workplace and family for women in many contemporary family drama texts, but the screenwriter only places it on one woman, and does not deliberately amplify or highlight it.
In addition to showing the contradiction between the housewife and the outside world, the play also nests other topics in real life, such as the rebellion of teenagers, the gap between parents and the education system, including the "difficult growth" of Gabe being sexually assaulted by his adoptive father when he was a child.
In individual growth, discussing fidelity and betrayal of marriage, showing the weakness and brilliance of human nature, becomes an important way to shape ordinary or great personalities.
When faced with a plot bottleneck or need to add new topics, various surprises become a regular option for breakthroughs. "Desperate Housewives" is a typographic version of family reality, guiding the audience in front of the TV to find their own figure in the four housewives.
Finding similarities also sees differences, integrating topics that are different or even contradictory, and finally presenting a synchronic meaning system that can be interpreted preferentially. Find an imaginative solution for the audience to achieve a temporary reconciliation of housewives and family conflicts.
In addition, as an assembly line product, American dramas will adjust their strategies according to different market feedback, and then launch improved products.
When "Desperate Housewives" premiered in the second season, as many as 28.4 million viewers tuned in, introducing for the first time a black housewife whose story line imprisoned her mentally ill son in the basement was unanimously badly commented on, and the ratings of the second season were greatly affected.
In light of this, ABC added a new writer to the creation of the third season of the series, and Bob Daily became the mastermind behind the series.
The seventh episode 'Bang' captured the second highest viewership after the broadcast, with 22.7 million viewers.
Before the episode aired, in order to boost the ratings, "the creators announced online in advance that they were going to let a housewife die in the episode that aired on November 5, and solicited viewers to vote on it, according to the audience's wishes, to decide which heroine to die, and the final result was revealed on the broadcast day." ”
This way of operation whets the appetite of the audience, who not only wants to know which housewife will eventually die, but also expects how the screenwriter cleverly sets the plot to make it die.
In this episode, housewife Caroline learns of her husband's betrayal, and in despair she rushes directly into her husband's supermarket with a gun, eating her first cookie in six years while cursing her husband for being unfaithful, and she was nominated for an Emmy Award for this crazy and extreme role. To some extent, it is also the embodiment of the creative advantages of screenwriting-centric.
In order not to tire the audience of the series, Mark Chel used "Time Jump" to explore a new story line at the end of the fourth season. Five years later, the characters' situations have changed - Bree has become a well-known food, Susan and Mike are divorced, Lenette is trapped in family fatigue, Gabe has become fat and has two children.
Due to the time jump, the screenwriter also introduced flashback shots to explain the plot. By the time the 14th episode of the seventh season aired on February 13, 2011, the audience was only 9.2 million, the worst result since the show's inception, and viewers began to feel dissatisfied.
The creators are also trying to add gimmicks to try to attract audiences back again, such as favoring Vanessa Williams in "Ugly Betty" (as Rainee, the seventh season housewife) to keep everyone fresh about the show.
In the creative process, not only the main creators are studying the psychology of the audience, but the person in charge of the TV network is also constantly observing the changes in the needs of the audience, and strive to make the product converge with the public's emotional and psychological models.
As early as four years ago, when the ratings of "Desperate Housewives" were poor, ABC had a new move, and in 2009 launched a new family drama, "Modern Family", which won the Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series for five consecutive years from 2010.
At the moment of depression in the US economic form, compared with the plot of "desperate housewives" tragic crime and murder, the audience is more willing to watch the ordinary family life full of love and support in "Modern Family".