Henan Satellite TV's "Fu of Luoshen Water" hits the entire network, Beijing News reporters talk to the director and performer of the show
"What goes out of the circle is that the work is Chinese culture"
From receiving the task of creating "Dragon Boat Festival" to the on-time broadcast at 4:30 pm on June 12, Henan Satellite TV director Chen Jia worked hard for more than 20 days, and his heart was also suspended for more than 20 days.
For this 41-minute Dragon Boat Festival, which consisted of 7 programs, Chen Jia led the team to go to many locations to shoot, and set many firsts: the first one to be created in a combination of "Web Syndicate + Web Drama" mode. The evening party, the first show to put an underwater dance performance on the screen, the first attempt to "translate" the actors in the water with a fishing line...The popular "Fu of Luoshen Water" on the whole network was only filmed 4 days before the broadcast .
"Every day is the same as fighting. I really don't know what to do." Chen Jia said.
According to the official statistics of Henan Satellite TV, since its broadcast, "Dragon Boat Festival" Weibo related topics have been read 3.5 billion, and it has been searched 19 times within 48 hours, and the number of videos played has exceeded 100 million.
After the show was broadcast, people kept telling He Haohao, the dancer of "Luo Shen Shui Fu", "You are on fire".
But in He Haohao's view, it is "Luo Shen Shui Fu" that is the fire, and it is the traditional culture behind it.
Talk show
Scarred by the fishing line
The Beijing News: When I saw the photo you posted on Weibo, one of the eyes was bloodshot, and everyone was worried.
How are you feeling now?
He Haohao: In fact, red eyes are a normal reaction. If you have experienced water in your eyes in a bath, you know it will be uncomfortable. I just spend a longer time in the water.
In fact, as a professional, I have become more accustomed to this intensity, so everyone can rest assured that my eyes are now good.
Beijing News: Regarding the rehearsal process of the show and the show, what do you want to share with you?
He Haohao: The preparations for this time are very intense.
I only received the notice on May 23, confirming that I would participate in the show.
Unlike many group performances, "Luo Shen Water Fu" requires me to jump from start to finish alone, and this is the first time that underwater dance has been shown on a star program. I did bear a certain amount of psychological pressure.
On May 24, I went to dance overnight.
After the dance practice, the choreographer felt that the overall effect of the dance might not be very shocking, so I bought a ticket to go to Shanghai to train with a dance teacher.
The first revised dance referenced "Beauty Walk", but it collided with another show in the party, so it could only be overturned and re-arranged. By this time, it was May 30.
The final version was finalized by me flying to Shanghai on May 31. The makeup photo was taken on June 1. It took a day to practice dance on June 2 and the shooting started on June 3, and it was not completely shot until June 8. Finish.
Beijing News: "Luo Shen Shui Fu" dance is 1 minute and 54 seconds long. Are you really holding your breath for 1 minute and 54 seconds and go through it again?
He Haohao: When shooting, there is a sub-shot script, which can be shot separately, but I have to sink to the bottom when shooting each shot, and then the assistant of photography will help me lay out the yarn for my clothes, and then the director will start shooting.
So maybe it’s just a 10-second shot, and it will take us forty to fifty seconds.
It’s important to have clean underwater movements, because I’m a “god” and cannot be indecisive, so my movements will not be muddy, but whenever there is a bit of lag, or where the expression is not in place, I have to retake it.
If you are lucky, at least two. If you are unlucky and the yarn is very tangled, we need to take 5 to 6 shots.
During the shooting, we had at least more than 200 times of going up and down. The actual shooting time was about 30 hours. On average, I spent five or six hours underwater every day.
In fact, the water temperature has been increased to 30 degrees Celsius, but in the previous interview, Director Chen still said that I was "particularly pitiful and shivering."
Beijing News: How do you move laterally in the water?
He Haohao: It was pulled by fishing line.
The fishing line has better toughness, not so easy to break, and it is relatively thin, and the effect is good in the later stage. We use 5 fishing lines stacked on the waist and dragged away.
But if you drag it away underwater, people will turn involuntarily, so I have to use one hand to pull the fishing line.
There are many small wounds on my arm, all of which were marked out by fishing lines.
Talk popular
"Life has reached its peak" after being recognized by idols
The Beijing News: How do you ensure that your actions are clean and neat and in place at one time?
He Haohao: We can only rely on continuous training.
There is no shortcut to anything, just practice makes perfect.
I started swimming at the age of 6 and learned synchronized swimming at the age of 8. I started diving in 2013 and have completed hundreds of underwater dance works.
I vomited all the water I drank. It is estimated that there will be a swimming pool, and my lung capacity is also suppressed.
The Beijing News: How do you feel when you see your work being named and praised and being forwarded by Hua Chunying?
He Haohao: I saw the "groundhog screaming" the moment I saw it because I was so happy, and then the tears flowed down in the next second, and I felt like being "turned over" by the idol.
Maybe many people don't know what it feels like to dance underwater, too few people are doing it.
For so many years, I don’t want to give up, and I have no other choice but to persist, but no one can understand the pain and difficulties of persisting. So at the moment when I was recognized by my idol, I felt, “Heaven Well, life has reached its peak."
And I think Hua Chunying recognizes more than just this work.
What she promotes is the Chinese culture that we represent behind our backs.
Beijing News: After the show went out of the circle, did you realize that you are very popular?
He Haohao: Many people say that I am hot, but apart from some interview invitations, I don't think my life has changed much.
For example, I’m bare-faced, don’t wear a mask, and I’m standing on the road. Passersby won’t recognize me. I’m still an ordinary "mermaid" coach, and my life still revolves around my job. .
But I am very happy that everyone likes and agrees with this show.
I think it is this work that is actually popular, it is our Chinese culture, not me.
Talk show
The protagonist of the original design is Qu Yuan
Beijing News: The name of this dance is "Luo Shen Shui Fu", but its shooting angle, including He Haohao's dress, is more like the "flying sky" scene in Dunhuang murals.
How did you think of combining the two?
Chen Jia: At the beginning, the party was a scene of worship at the pier, so I decided to make a show about water.
I have done a lot of water show before, this time I want an underwater show, and it can't be performed before. If it is innovative and unique in the country, this will determine the style of the dance show.
In our traditional culture, the god of Luo is actually the god of water, and Qu Yuan's article contains a lot of description of the god of Luo.
In my earliest design plan, the protagonist of this dance was not Luo Shen, but Qu Yuan. I wanted He Haohao to dress as Qu Yuan, but after collecting various materials, I found that the female Luo Shen image is more suitable for this show.
In Qu Yuan’s "Heavenly Questions" and other materials about Luoshen, her clothes are much more gorgeous and complicated than they are now, but they can’t be photographed underwater, they will entangle all people, and they will not show underwater. The graceful feeling of dancing.
We thought of another relatively fluid image-"Flying". We combined the image of "Flying" and Luoshen to create costumes for actors, so that we can complete underwater dances.
Beijing News: I heard from He Haohao that the filming was actually very intense this time, and the dance version has also been revised several times?
Chen Jia: Yes.
This show should show the image of an underwater god, very abstract and beautiful.
The first version is too down-to-earth. The second version uses the actions of "Beauty Walk", which conflicts with the following programs, and most of the actions of "Beauty Walk" are small and fragmented actions, which are of the kind. Lazy, with a lot of facial expressions, it's not the kind of self-confident woman I want, the performance of a "god" who is in the water with great enthusiasm.
In fact, this concept was not finalized until the overnight meeting on May 28 until 3 am.
Beijing News: Are there any headaches during the filming of "Luo Shen Shui Fu"?
Chen Jia: We wanted the pool to look borderless, so we covered the bottom and surroundings of the pool with blue cloth to ensure that the entire background was clean.
"Luo Shen Shui Fu" should be linked to the previous plot, so we have to create an environment.
The earliest design idea was to lay a layer of sand under the pool. I think this might be more magical.
But when communicating with the dancers, the actors said no, they would scratch their feet. Sands didn’t know how many times it would take to clean it without impurities. I had to give up this plan.
On June 4th, it has been shooting for nearly two days, and I think that is not what I want.
Our art teacher paid his own money and ran to Hengdian by plane to see if he could find something to show underwater, such as broken walls, bead curtains, etc., but I still felt that the fireworks were too fierce.
Later, I kept discussing with the visual director, and decided to present "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" as the background, because it has the kind of discoloration of blue and sparkling, plus the golden color in it. The particles will expand the underwater scene infinitely, which is very magical.
Beijing News: During the shooting, was there any action that impressed you?
Chen Jia: If you want to show a sense of elegance, such as moving horizontally underwater, I asked our camera team to bring it up.
But the reason why dancers can get into the water is because they have weights on them, but they cannot move sideways. I am very domineering. I said that I must have a movement like translation to show the feeling of God.
Both the actors and the cameramen tried very seriously and created a first-of-its-kind method in the country: using fishing lines to make such movements.
Beijing News: The final dance work is 1 minute and 54 seconds. How many minutes are there to shoot the material?
Chen Jia: The last shot was about 30G when we copied it. It only took three or four hours to upload it to the network disk.
I shot this material three times in total.
Talk about work
Reluctant to copy and insist on innovation
Beijing News: There is a demonstration of programs like "Tang Palace Night Banquet". As the director of this evening party, what kind of pressure do you feel during the production of the entire evening party?
Chen Jia: The most stressful thing is how to complete the project in the shortest time.
After May 1st, the leader approached me to discuss the Dragon Boat Festival. There were only more than 20 days.
The gala projects that have continued this year are all very large. The dance of the Spring Festival Gala "Tang Palace Banquet" went out of the circle, and the Lantern Festival and Qingming gala are also connected in the form of "animation IP".
The previous party was done by other director teams. When it was handed over to me, if I used this kind of IP animation image to string the show, it would just be a copy.
I have been working as a director for 20 years, and my requirement of myself is to be worthy of myself. Whenever I make a program, I don’t copy others, nor copy what I’ve done before.
Therefore, we decisively proposed to use the model of "web comprehensive + web drama" to create our current seven programs by telling stories and acting by real people.
In the past, we were just doing shows, and after we finished the show, we thought about connecting, but now that I have a plot, then all the programs can't be creative at first, and must follow my plot.
But the pressure has increased again. No one has done this before. I have no idea about the innovation of such a program style. I am afraid that the audience will not like it or accept it, and I am afraid of being scolded by the audience.
So the pressure is here.
The Beijing News: How did you feel after seeing that the show was well received by the audience?
Chen Jia: The first day of the party was June 12, and the webcast started at 4:30 pm.
I probably watched it on the client of the TV station, and when everyone said yes, no one scolded me, I was very happy, and I told my team directly, brothers and sisters, my sister can't stand it anymore.
I went home before reading it, fell asleep without eating, and woke up hungry after 4 o'clock in the morning.
After waking up, I took a look at my mobile phone, and suddenly found that there were overwhelming news on several commonly used software.
The Beijing News: In fact, not only "Luo Shen Shui Fu", other shows, such as "Lan Ling King Into the Battle", also became a hit.
How did you come up with such an idea to adapt a piece of history from the Tang Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty in China into a story and extend it to the creation of the entire show?
Chen Jia: We have a total of four Tang Xiaomei who strung up the plot. One of them is Tang Xiaocai. Her character is the daughter of a Tang Dynasty messenger Leguan.
In the Tang Dynasty, Tang Xuanzong Li Longji played the pipa very well, and the pipa was also a popular instrument at that time. We decided on this performance instrumental music.
"Lanling King Entering the Battlefield" was also popular in the Tang Dynasty, and was banned during the Xuanzong Dynasty, and it was slowly lost.
In 1986, the cultural relics of our country retrieved this song through Japanese experts and brought it back to China.
We want to show how our fathers in Japan miss their daughters, their country, and even their traditional culture.
Regarding this paragraph, we actually want to tell everyone that our country’s culture has spread throughout Asia, and we also want to talk about the concept of cultural output.
We also want to tell everyone in the world that the Dragon Boat Festival belongs to our country and the culture of Dragon Boat Festival is exported from our country. We have national and cultural self-confidence.
Beijing News: If you were asked to rate this party, how many points would you rate?
Chen Jia: 95 points.
Beijing News: What kind of surprises will be launched next?
Chen Jia: Our theme this year is the series of traditional Chinese cultural festivals in 2021. The "Dragon Boat Festival" Gala is the fourth, followed by Qixi Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Double Ninth Festival, and finally the 2022 Spring Festival Gala.
There will be many such good-looking traditional Chinese cultural programs to meet with you in the future.
Beijing News reporter Li Yuning Yang Donghao
Picture of A08-A09 Edition / Picture courtesy of interviewee