Film and competition linkage: looking for the integration point of film and television drama and e-sports
Sun Xiaofei
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With the help of the film and television industry, the public awareness of e-sports can be improved and the e-sports industry chain can be improved; with the help of e-sports, film and television dramas are expected to achieve narrative innovation and breakthroughs in themes.
In recent years, film and television dramas with the concept of e-sports have appeared frequently, such as "Crossing the Line of Fire", "Full-time Master", "Dear, Loved", "Small Smiles Are Allure" and "Along with You to the Top of the World" and other works have appeared one after another. "You Are Beautiful When You Smile" and "You Are My Glory", which were launched one after another, aroused heated discussions among the audience as soon as they started.
Some of these dramas have a good reputation and become a hit; some have bad reviews and are accused of "disrespect" or even "insulting" e-sports.
The popularity of e-sports dramas is firstly due to the fact that, after more than ten years of development, the e-sports industry, which condenses many elements such as digital technology, competitive sports, and media culture, has become an important part of China's digital economy industry, and it has become a cultural industry that cannot be ignored. One of the new business formats is written into the cultural industry development plan, and it develops in an orderly and healthy manner under the guidance of the government.
As the influence of the e-sports industry continues to increase, e-sports is achieving innovative integration with the technology, cultural and creative, film and television industries, and continuously expanding the radius of development.
At the same time, the current domestic film and television drama creation is inevitably falling into a narrative bottleneck, and the homogeneity of subject matter and plot content is serious. It is urgent to drive content creation through new things and new topics. E-sports with its own entertainment attributes has naturally become film and television. The play expands the new goal of narrative genre.
At the moment when the content of domestic e-sports dramas is homogenous and the quality is scarce, how to link e-sports and film and television dramas to create high-quality, explosive e-sports dramas still needs continuous exploration and experimentation.
The rules of industry drama creation should be followed to ensure the professionalism of content
E-sports is a formal profession, therefore, e-sports dramas also belong to the category of industry dramas.
In recent years, the output of domestic industry dramas is not low but the overall quality is not high. Works such as "Hunting Ground", "Negotiator", "Perfect Relationship", "Settlement", "Hello, Flame Blue", "Don't Say Goodbye" and other works have all encountered word-of-mouth Waterloo for common reasons. One is the lack of professionalism in the display of industry-related content in the play.
The e-sports drama "You Are Beautiful When You Smile" has suffered a lot because of the "unprofessional" display of the e-sports game interface, the rules of the game, the rules of player selection and promotion, the attitudes of the heroes and the heroes to the game, daily training and management, etc. For the bad reviews, only 3 points on Douban, nearly 300,000 viewers gave a one-star evaluation.
After all, most of the current e-sports dramas repeat the story core of idol dramas and sweet pet dramas, and only use e-sports as an external decoration.
If only the protagonist’s professional identity is changed, and the professionalism of the e-sports content in the play is ignored, not only will it not be recognized by the audience, but to a certain extent it will also lower the overall level of the e-sports drama and the audience’s preference for e-sports itself. Sensitivity.
E-sports has been controversial since its inception because of its own electronic game attributes, and it is often linked to terms such as "Internet addiction" and "electronic opium".
As it has become a formal sports competition, e-sports has become more and more recognized by the country, and its stigma gradually faded.
Although it is different from other industries, the unique professionalism of e-sports, whether as a sports event or an emerging industry, cannot be questioned.
The professional development law, daily training method, competition mode process, and competitive sports spirit of the players are no different from other competitive sports.
Idol dramas wearing the garb of e-sports cannot become real e-sports dramas. The main creator should maintain the most basic respect for the e-sports industry and ensure the professionalism of the content presented in the play. This requires the film and television main creators to conduct in-depth learning and Research and invite professional e-sports people to get the pulse.
As a new thing, the screenwriter and director may not know enough about e-sports itself, but this should never be an excuse for making up indiscriminately.
From another perspective, if e-sports is replaced by other sports events, I believe that screenwriters will not dare to create scripts based on their own imagination.
Just like "One, two, three, start a team!" in "You Are Beautiful When You Smile", if you change to a football match, the screenwriter and director will never shoot a few strikers with the ball in front of the opponent's goal. Then waited for the captain to call out "one two three, attack!" this paragraph.
You can try different narrative strategies to find the type adaptation of the e-sports drama
Looking back at the film and television works of competitive and sports themes, the growth motif is the most common and main narrative type. Movies "Win the Championship", "Broken Wind", "Tekken" and "Wrestle!" "Dad", anime "Slam Dunk", "Prince of Tennis", "Initial D" and other works mostly follow specific narrative laws: the protagonist's low starting point and high cultivation potential, the help of the guide, the failure of experiencing hardships, setbacks, and self-denial. Give up, rekindle your fighting spirit, and turn against the wind to complete the hero naming. In the story with growth as the motif, the love element is usually only used as an auxiliary material and condiment, and exists as a sub/dark line. However, in many domestic film and television dramas, sports and sports stories almost all use the love motif as the main line of the narrative: the hero and the hero meet in a certain way, encounter love resistance, persist and give up, until they finally get married/regret to break up . And the content of the competition is just the way the two meet, the element of hindered love, and the motivation for returning to the good. In recent years, the low-ranking dramas such as "Blooming Waves", "Tornado Girl", "Blood Maniac Basket", and "Sweet Crit" almost all follow this model to develop narratives. Just like the recently aired "You Are My Glory", if the mobile game of "King of Glory" is not used as the medium for the character acquaintance in the play, the play is actually a standard urban romantic drama. From the narrative level, the role of the mobile game "Glory of the King" in the play can be replaced by any element, and will not affect the main line of the story and the development trend. Although the producer did not emphasize the theme of e-sports, and his own fans also came out to refute the rumors, but in the information of many websites, the show is still labeled as "e-sports drama", and this additional keyword has indeed brought the show A certain degree of attention. As a competitive sport, e-sports, growth, youth, and enthusiasm seem to be its due labels. In the current environment of the film and television industry, the growth motif will not and cannot be the only narrative template for all e-sports dramas, but the love motif is also It should not become the standard "formula" of e-sports dramas.
For a long time, the production of sports-themed film and television works in my country has been low, the themes are single, and the stories are the same.
Characters usually pursue the personal growth of family and country, and strive for honor for the country and the collective through their unremitting efforts and undefeated sportsmanship.
Therefore, patriotism and national glory are usually common themes of sports-themed film and television dramas, which limits the innovation and breakthrough of sports-themed film and television works to a certain extent.
As a new thing, e-sports is still in its infancy, and its development path is still not very clear.
E-sports itself, athletes, practitioners, audiences, and fans all have their own "network" attributes. The youth subculture has obvious characteristics. At the same time, its own entertainment and commercial characteristics make traditional sports-themed film and television themes and narratives. Strategies are no longer suitable for e-sports-themed film and television works, which also provides more possibilities for the upgrade of e-sports-themed film and television works.
Therefore, as a derivative of e-sports, e-sports dramas should actively try different narrative strategies and techniques, and find more suitable narrative methods and typographical rules through constant exploration and trial and error.
Must seek to reverse the wall, try to blend the flavors of the circle
At present, the target audience of e-sports dramas can basically be divided into three categories: e-sports fans, idol drama audiences and celebrity fans.
It is generally believed that e-sports fans should be the main audience of e-sports dramas, and it is difficult for other circles to integrate.
But the fact is on the contrary. In addition to e-sports fans, the other two types of audiences don't really care whether the content of the show is e-sports or not.
Then, for e-sports dramas, after serving the two types of audiences, it seems that they can achieve better market performance. Therefore, the "sweet pet idol drama + traffic star" model, and then decorated with e-sports elements, has become the current e-sports The general formula for solving problems in the drama.
This seems to be an innovative and typified approach, which happens to be an important reason why e-sports dramas are often criticized by e-sports fans.
Therefore, an interesting and embarrassing question facing the main creator at present is how to reverse the "wall" to the e-sports circle.
The current audience of e-sports dramas is dominated by women, and it is difficult to say how many of them are truly from the e-sports cultural circle.
The number of viewers watching e-sports events is much larger than that of e-sports drama audiences, and the crowd portraits are more diverse. If this group of people can be transformed into e-sports drama audiences, it will be a very large audience group.
E-sports is using the cooperation with cross-industry IP to continuously promote the convergence and integration of the e-sports circle with the entertainment, cultural and tourism, two-dimensional industry, and even the rice circle.
In the context of pan-entertainment, re-recognizing the target audience of e-sports dramas, trying to meet the tastes of different cultural circles, may be able to produce more popular works.
E-sports has become an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the world, but as a new thing, whether it is the layout of the industrial chain or the formulation of industry standards, it is still in its infancy and exploratory stage.
The popularity of the e-sports industry has caused many film and television drama practitioners to have illusions and self-confidence. They blindly follow the trend, get together to remake, and imitate plagiarism. This will not only hurt the audience, but also hurt the infancy of Chinese e-sports.
With the help of the prosperous film and television industry, e-sports can enhance the public's understanding and popularization of e-sports. While improving the e-sports industry chain and increasing revenue from derivatives, e-sports can also be widely promoted to tap potential users, fans and audiences.
On the other hand, film and television dramas use e-sports to achieve narrative innovation and theme breakthroughs, which can attract more audiences, promote the rapid integration of the two cultural industries, and achieve a win-win situation.
E-sports drama is a link in the e-sports industry chain, and it is also an important node in the pan-entertainment structure of the film and television industry.
With e-sports drama as the point of integration, and finding a suitable method to break through the barriers between the two, can the two industries be smoothly connected, innovated, and expanded in a network.
(The author is a PhD in Film Studies and an associate professor at Shanghai Sport University)