Qin Hao tells the short film "Jujube Knows": The secret Sichuan flavor has a beginning

In the second half of 2020, Tencent joined hands with Reading Paper to invite the platinum writer "Squid Who Loves Diving" to create an online short story related to world cultural heritage, "Jujube Knows". Subsequently, under the guidance of the Sichuan Provincial Culture and Tourism Information Center and the Emeishan Municipal Bureau of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the two sides also created a short drama of the same name based on this novel. Interpreted by World Heritage narrator Qin Hao, the short drama adopts the aesthetic method of Sichuan intangible clay sculpture, produces a stop-motion animation short film, and takes the Sichuan specialty "Cow Horn Jujube" as the story clue, so that the audience can feel the strong Sichuan flavor.

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The humanistic elements of Emei are presented in the novel

The story of "Jujube Knows" is very bizarre: the male protagonist Li Champion returned to his hometown in Mount Emei to hide debts, and accidentally found a treasure map under the jujube tree in the house, which left his father's "peace of mind inside, desire outside, do not be greedy." Li Guanjun invited a small piece to go to the mountains to find treasure. The two went through thousands of hardships to find the treasure cave, in which the jade was the wall and the gold was the seat. One of the jewels, the date tree, shined, but remembering the inscription on the treasure map, the two simply took some silver money and returned home.

They return safely, but they don't know that returning home is the beginning of the danger... It turned out that when they counted the silver money, their hearts changed greatly because of the shining gem dates that appeared in the baggage, and they rushed to grab it, but they did not know that the jujube tree in the courtyard had long disappeared. In the scramble, the two exhausted Shouyuan, and the flesh and bones dried up and turned into Sensen white bones. Soon, a young man appeared at the door of the house, and after the young man looked at the white bones and treasures in front of him, he was very sorry, wrote a twelve-character proverb on the treasure map, and buried it with the white bones under the jujube tree in the courtyard...

A few years later, when the young man looked at the jujube tree again, a child asked him, "Daddy, what are you looking at?" The young man told him: "Champion, you will know later..." This story that arises from greed and ends with greed is still in an infinite loop, and the way to end this endless cycle has long been written by his father on the treasure map - to calm the gods inside, to go out of their desires, not to be greedy.

Talking about the time spent on the creation of this novel and the large number of Emeishan elements in the text, the "squid who loves diving" said that he himself is an Emeishan native. At that time, when Tencent and Yuwen's "World Cultural Heritage New Cultural Creation Project" project team approached him, they said that they hoped he would write some stories about world cultural heritage, and he immediately thought of his hometown. It took about three weeks from the beginning of the idea to the formation of the story, in his opinion, the most difficult thing about the short story is the inspiration idea, with the idea there is an article structure, a short story is basically formed, and then the animation clay sculpture part of the team spent more than two months to shoot the short film.

"My biggest impression of Mount Emei, in addition to the beautiful scenery, delicious food, there are many Buddhist temples, monks, in the folk funeral customs will be more Taoist, here is a more harmonious area of religious culture." In addition, there are many humanistic elements, such as Li Bai, and the legend of the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan, the ancestor of the Chinese nation, and I hope to present these elements a little. "Squid who loves to dive," he said.

During the interview, the Beijing Youth Daily reporter also learned that "Jujube Knows" is the first online short story in the life of the "squid who loves diving", in his view, writing a long novel can be laid out, spending a lot of details to outline what you want to express; The length of the short story is very limited, and it must have a beginning and a complete story structure in such a short space, and the whole creation challenge is even greater.

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Combined with non-heritage filming into a stop-motion animation short film

It is worth mentioning that clay sculptures are the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage, and sichuan clay sculptures are even more exquisite. To this end, Teacher Weng Jie of the China Academy of Fine Arts adopted the method of Sichuan Intangible Cultural Heritage "clay sculpture" to make "Jujube Know" into a stop-motion animation short film, and took the Sichuan specialty "Cow Horn Jujube" as the story clue to let the audience feel the "taste of Sichuan".

It is understood that the entire production process of this short film is about 89 days, during which the producer deeply studied the costumes and house characteristics of the Ming Dynasty, such as the Ming Dynasty readers mostly wear shirts or straight shirts, while ordinary people wear shirts and pants on the bottom for the convenience of labor. Before shooting, the studio's friends will first star in real life, and then collect his speed, and the animators will perform some animation exaggeration.

"The whole shooting process is quite a test of patience, for example, an animator can only shoot three seconds of footage a day, because to say a word, you have to change your mouth a dozen times." Moreover, the hair and face makeup of the clay dolls will fall off when shooting, so every shot needs to be repaired, just like a real actor. Weng Jie introduced.

In this regard, the "squid who loves diving" said that he did not know much about clay sculptures before, and after seeing the short film produced, he found that this cultural expression was very interesting, and he felt that it was a good thing to combine online text and intangible cultural heritage to everyone.

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Short article short film to create a short IP is worth trying

For the rapid development of short IP situation such as "Jujube Knows", "Squid who loves diving" said that he first felt that Tencent and the project team of Yuwen were very attentive, spent a lot of energy, and the project advanced very quickly, from the project to the short story, it was only a few months, which was unexpected. "Now this form is also a better way to quickly incubate short story creations with various cultures of clay sculpture and ink painting."

At the same time, in his view, this short IP development model for short content will have some influence on online literary creation and the entire industrial chain: one is to promote the creation of short stories in online texts, and the other is to combine many excellent and interesting things in online texts with other cultural things, and quickly push them to the public, which is also an attempt worth looking forward to.

The Beiqing Daily reporter also learned that this year's Tencent New Cultural and Creative Competition has received nearly 7,000 works, including many good works created around Chinese cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage such as the Qinling Terracotta Warriors, the Summer Palace, and shadow puppetry. When it comes to the development of digital content forms, in fact, "Jujube Knows" is the first attempt of the "World Cultural Heritage New Cultural Creation Plan", which has also planned to launch a series of new creative works by young creatives during the Spring Festival in 2021, allowing everyone to "cloud tour" the World Cultural Heritage at home.

In this regard, the "squid who loves diving" interprets history through the perspective of contemporary people to obtain some of the things they hope to get. In his view, all our history is to make the contemporary people live better, he makes the cultural heritage live in the present through literary creation, gives some contemporary spiritual nourishment and can soothe his heart, which is one of the reasons why he participated in the New Cultural and Creative Competition.

Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang En