China News Weekly reporter/Li Jing
Published in the 1080th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on February 20, 2023
"At the end of time, when spring comes, she goes away, so why stay any longer..."
When the singing sounded and the subtitles were played, Yang Lei still couldn't hold back his tears.
"I don't know why. I have watched this movie dozens of times during the entire production process. I remember every line and even every breath of the characters. However, the first time I saw those images as an audience, tears I can't stop." He called Bai Yicong and Lu Beike, and found that they were the same as him.
On January 15, the TV series "Three-Body Problem" started broadcasting.
Only one hour after it was broadcast online, the popularity on the Tencent website exceeded 25,000, breaking the first-day popularity record of Tencent's video series.
Douban's score has remained at 8.1 for three weeks. On February 3, Tencent opened the finale screening, and some viewers unlocked the full episode in advance, and the score rose to 8.3.
The team will be formed in 2019, it will be launched in 2020, and the TV series will be broadcast in 2023. Chief director Yang Lei and visual director Lu Beike have accompanied this drama for more than 1,000 days and nights.
Chief producer Bai Yicong took over the project in 2016, and it has been 7 years.
"In the past few years, it's been about opening and closing my eyes every day." Yang Lei told China News Weekly. A special effects shot has been revised hundreds of times, and more than 20 days of meetings have been held for one episode... Few TV dramas can be put into production with such resources.
The show was aired, and the "Three-Body Problem" fans, who have always been picky about their tastes, expressed their sympathy this time. Among the more than 200,000 people who participated in the ratings on Douban, more than 45% gave 5 stars. These 5 stars do not mean that the show has already Perfect, but because it accurately captures the complex temperament in the book "Three-Body Problem" that is difficult to visualize.
A high praise comment on Douban said: "He really read the original work! I cried." If the audience knows the story behind this group of people who created China's first true sci-fi drama, they will understand why this drama Can get the approval of the original fans.
Because they don't just complete the work, let alone take on a "job", but from the moment they receive the project, each of them has entered a long-awaited dream. They use their own image language, For every audience, tell this dream.
"About 1/3 of the shots we never did"
In the midsummer of 2020, on the bank of a river in Yao'an Village, Xianju, Zhejiang, a group of strange people can always be seen. They are on a large lawn surrounded by mountains, controlling drones to run around to take aerial photos, and even start bulldozers , and later, hundreds of twisted and deformed strips of steel were piled up.
This is the location of the whole drama of "Three-Body Problem" and also the climax of "Operation Guzheng" in the original work.
In the story, the more than 200-meter-long "Judgment Day" cruise ship was cut into pieces by nano "flying blades" at a distance of 50 centimeters in the Panama Canal.
The film crew who originally wanted to go to the Panama Canal to shoot scenes were disrupted by the epidemic.
Therefore, 20 or 30 people from the main creators went south from Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guangxi, which have similar vegetation, to Hainan, and searched along the Fujiang, Lancang, and Changhua rivers, searching for a river environment similar to the Gaillard Waterway.
It took 3 months to finally select a 2-kilometer-long lawn in Xianju Village as the filming location for the wreckage of the "Judgment Day" after the ship was cut off, plus rivers and forests in various places in Zhejiang. Several types of location, a little bit of real shooting, and then post-production special effects, stitched together through lens editing.
The hardest part was not the scouting, but how to show the ship in its cut-up form.
The assumptions in this novel, looking at the world, have neither references nor precedents, even the physical deformation research in the field of ship design industry will never consider this possibility.
What kind of stress and deformation will occur when a huge amount of hull fragments fall on the shore?
Lu Beike, who was born in science and engineering, also had no idea, "It's hard to imagine how to do this."
Yang Lei and Lu Beke took several main creators to the open class of ship design of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and then simplified the material grade of the ship's steel body, and used the computer to perform dynamic tests over and over again, simulating the real scene of the "Judgment Day" falling over.
Finally, according to the collision and distortion effects of the steel body simulated by the computer, the wreckage of the ship island was built on the large grassland in Xianju.
This pile of wreckage, the movement of each fragment and the final form of falling on the shore have been individually designed, and the most complicated shot has been changed more than 400 times.
When setting the scene, the art department extruded hundreds of long strips of steel with a width of 50 centimeters with an extruder one by one, and then assembled them into a state where the local ship islands were distorted and spread out. In front of the scene, the pre-shooting was completed.
Chief producer Bai Yicong told China News Weekly that the 25-minute scene of "Guzheng Action" came about after more than three months of scouting, 23 days of shooting, and two years later.
Not only "Operation Guzheng", "About 1/3 of the shots in "Three-Body" were never done by us, and we couldn't find any experience reference, so we could only cross the river by feeling the stones by ourselves. A lot of shooting required a lot of pre-production Research and design, but when it came to the actual shooting stage, it was found that more than half of the previous research did not match the actual shooting situation, because the environment of live shooting will always change a lot.”
It is undoubtedly not the most convenient and cost-effective solution to present a sci-fi theme with a large number of live-action shooting. It not only costs money, but also requires a lot of time investment.
This most cost-intensive way of presenting realism is not determined at the beginning, but a choice after continuous trial and error.
In 2016, Youzu Films was looking for a platform and production company to jointly develop the TV series "Three-Body Problem".
Both Tencent and "Linghe Culture" have become partners. An important reason for being selected is that Sun Zhonghuai, vice president of Tencent and CEO of Tencent Online Video, and Bai Yicong, founder of "Linghe Culture", are both "die-hard book fans".
Bai Yicong has been a fan of science fiction since he was a child, and he has subscribed to "Science Fiction World" since elementary school. In 2006, when "Three-Body Problem" was serialized in "Science Fiction World" and had not yet been published, he had already become a "fan of the original book".
In 2006, the movie version of "The Three-Body Problem" was filmed, but it was not released due to various reasons. The failure of the movie version made "Three-Body Problem" a "difficult problem" for many film and television drama creators to bypass.
Before Bai Yicong took over "The Three-Body Problem", he often expressed his views on forums, film festivals and other events that Chinese film and television professionals should make science fiction. In his opinion, science fiction film and television dramas can best drive the industrialization of the entire industry forward.
As a "three-body fan" and a film and television practitioner, he couldn't accept that he was only an audience. At the beginning of contacting the project, he joked with Kong Ergou, the then CEO of Youzu Films: "This will be considered ruined. It must also be destroyed in the hands of our 'three-body fans'."
All joking aside, when it came to the stage of actual text planning and research, Bai Yicong didn't want to give up at all, so he made a difficult decision. Given the size and attention of "The Three-Body Problem", there was no successful experience to follow. He and the chief screenwriter Tian Liangliang Looking at each other: How should this story be told?
"Only when you are wrong do you know what is right"
The first version of the script plan is "Marvel to".
In addition to marking the countdown on Wang Miao's retina, Sophon also showed more "miracles", such as the cognition of the nature of the world. For example, Wang Miao knew many events before they happened, and he became a prophet with superpowers.
Tian Liangliang told "China News Weekly", "We were obsessed with this plot at the time, because it was very sci-fi and very suitable for shaping characters. The characters would struggle and struggle with such abilities, and their positions would change." But soon, they discovered this There is no way to go, because whether it is wonderful or not, it is no longer "Three-Body Problem".
So it switched to a Hollywood-style suspenseful criminal investigation route, strengthening Wang Miao and Shi Qiang's undercover and case-solving scenes.
There is also a version that tries to add exaggerated and cool sci-fi elements, pushing the time of the story back to 2037. The small stewed restaurant where Wang Miao and Shi Qiang eat is full of robots.
I even thought about letting Yang Dong return to the real world in a quantum state to increase the emotional drama...
When it came to those original ideas, Bai Yicong himself was happy: "It looks silly now, doesn't it? But these trials and errors are not in vain. Only when you make mistakes will you know what is right. If you don't take this part, It’s hard to appreciate the power and essence of the original.”
During that period of various trials and errors, Tian Liangliang called the entire screenwriting team, boarded and lived in his own home, and spent time brainstorming except for eating and sleeping every day, either arguing or getting stuck together, "I can't figure out what to do. What to do" anxiety made her face acne, until now did not go down.
After more than a year of tossing and trying more than 20 versions, the entire planning team is no longer unconstrained, and they have formed a consensus-honestly return to the original work, presenting a "Three-Body Problem" with enough weight.
"It's not easy for us to tell the original work well, so don't make more unnecessary additions. It is disrespectful to this work to continuously strengthen the plot to increase the highlights and selling points for the sake of traffic." Bai Yicong said.
He remembers that after the project was completed, at the creation meeting attended by the platform, the copyright owner, and Liu Cixin, the author of the original work, the filming plan that faithfully took the original work as the keel was determined, which was affirmed by everyone.
"Three-Body Problem 1: The Earth's Past" describes not the distant future, but Beijing in 2007 and the Northeast Forest Farm in the 1960s and 1970s. The way of thinking and presentation logic of this work are both realistic.
The planning team set a direction of being loyal to the original work, which means that from script adaptation to filming, the principle of realism must be followed in order to fit the temperament of the original work.
Bai Yicong got in touch with some director teams, including the head director, but many people still dare not touch "Three-Body Problem", and Bai Yicong is also worried about the other party's understanding of "Three-Body Problem".
In June 2019, at the Shanghai TV Festival, Bai Yicong, who was in trouble for the director of "The Three-Body Problem", met Yang Lei. He suddenly felt that the candidate was right in front of him.
"I have worked with Yang Lei before, and I know him very well. He has filmed "Crossing Guandong 2" and "Red". Director, he can endure hardships with us, suffer very hard."
Bai Yicong was right. Yang Lei and his partner Lu Beke were both "hardcore fans" who watched "Three-Body Problem" in the era of "Science Fiction World". 》 produces an intersection.
Therefore, when Bai Yicong said to Yang Lei, "The director of "The Three-Body Problem" has not yet been found, is there any interest?", Yang Lei was immediately confused.
"At that time, my first reaction was that I had to go home and read the book again, and think about it." Yang Lei recalled to "China News Weekly".
When Lu Beike heard that Yang Lei had the opportunity to film the Three-Body Problem, he didn't take it right away, so she became anxious.
This science student, who is usually known for being calm, rational and non-emotional, yelled at Yang Lei: "Pick it! Hurry up! What else can you think about?" Yang Lei still ran home, closed the study door, took out the book and read it. I re-read it seriously, forming an image in my heart while reading. I didn't go out for a few days, and Lu Beike didn't answer the phone.
Just when Yang Lei already had a good idea of how to present 70%~80% of the content in the book, he received a 20,000-word long letter from Lu Beike. He still remembers a sentence in it: If our life can be as good as If "Three-Body" overlaps once, there will be no regrets in this life.
With such eagerness, Yang Lei and Lu Beike joined the group.
Absolutely faithful to the original and using realistic shooting methods are two requirements of Yang Lei, which coincide with the planning team.
Before getting the script, Yang Lei said to Bai Yicong: "Anyway, I am the director now. If the script is not close to the original, I will fight with you." After getting the script and reading it through, Yang Lei was at ease: "I saw it, Okay, come on, it's almost from the original book."
On the basis of being loyal to the original work, Tian Liangliang made a few adaptations and additions for the film and television adaptation of the novel.
For example, Pan Han has more roles than in the book, and his appearance is also earlier. Tian Liangliang explained, "A lot of content is easy to express in words. Sometimes a person suddenly appears, and a little explanation is enough, but TV dramas are not good. In order to explain Pan Han's coloring Plans, TV dramas must have a foreshadowing in front of it, and a new face cannot suddenly do a big thing.” The character Xu Bingbing was briefly mentioned in the original work, and the greatest significance of adding it was to explain some obscure science to a wider audience than book fans. principle.
Although the fans of the original book are the main targets of the creators, under this premise, they also hope to popularize it as much as possible to ordinary audiences who have not read the book.
Writing science fiction on the basis of realism
On the first day Yang Lei joined the group, when he participated in the first creative meeting, he made a request to the whole group: "From now on, please forget for a moment that we are filming a science fiction drama, but use a realistic attitude. Come face it." Because this is the core of "Three-Body Problem" - writing science fiction on the basis of realism.
Reality also means the true restoration of the scene.
Before the filming started, the crew made preparations for a year. The first thing was to do interviews and seminars one by one along with all the real scientific departments involved in the novel, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nano Center, Radio Astronomy... Yang Lei wrote down several big books Science notes.
"We have to understand everything written in the book, what kind of equipment, how to work. If we don't understand, we don't know what to shoot. It can be briefly mentioned in the text, but it must be clearly presented in the film and television. "Yang Lei said.
The solar calendar formed with the coordinates of the sun, cosmic flickering, 3k telescope principles, and even a large number of formulas that need to appear in the picture...all of them do not require rigorous scientific guidance, although some shots are just flashing and very detailed.
Real shots are always the first choice.
The high-energy particle accelerator and Wang Miao's experiment on nanomaterials are all shooting opportunities obtained by the props team from the research center after many times.
For example, the filming scene of the particle accelerator can only allow the crew to use a few hours of maintenance time per week to complete the filming.
Beijing, Zhoushan, Ningbo, Hengdian, Heihe... There are more than 270 scenes for "Three-Body Problem", and the environmental conditions range from minus 40°C to minus 40°C.
Heihe, located at the northern foot of the Xiaoxing'an Mountains, is close to Siberia. This is the location for filming Ye Wenjie's youthful life.
As soon as the winter of 2020 entered, the north ushered in a large-scale snowfall.
The crew who had been waiting to shoot the snow scene immediately rushed to Heihe in several ways. The heavy snow in various places kept blocking the vehicles pulling props and equipment. After the entire crew was assembled, more than 20 days passed.
Many cities in the Northeast have reached the blizzard level, but Heihe has no snow at all.
The production crew was in a hurry, dispatched urgently, and found all the snow guns and snow bubble machines in Heihe and surrounding cities.
Finally able to make snow by myself.
Yang Lei, who has filming experience in Northeast China for "Crossing the Guandong 2", thinks he has prepared a wealth of cold-proof equipment for the crew, but the polar weather in Heihe still gave them a hard time.
On the first night of filming, the sun had just set, "I saw everything start to freeze", the camera was still working, but the water in the snow machine froze to death, and the phone shut down after a few seconds after taking it out. As soon as he exhaled from the mask, his mouth was immediately filled with icicles.
Preparations for the night scene began at noon, and they continued to toss until 12 o'clock in the morning without a single shot being shot.
The next day, Yang Lei asked the crew to quickly buy a batch of industrial-grade heaters and hot air cannons that can spray fire. Every time they actually shoot, they have to blow hard at various machines.
The limited heating equipment gave priority to ensuring the operation of the equipment, and the crew could only try to wrap themselves into cotton buns as much as possible.
In Heihe in November, the sun went down at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and they had to stay outdoors for more than ten hours every time they took pictures. In the extremely cold night, their eyelashes, eyebrows, and hair were all covered with a thick layer Frost kept sniffing and stamping her feet.
However, looking up at the starry sky and looking at the "Red Shore Base" that seemed to come out of a book amidst the snowstorm, they felt it was worth it again.
In fact, regardless of winter breath or snowflakes, CG can be produced, and studio shooting is not impossible.
However, the subconscious reaction of people when they come into contact with the cold air, the state of snowflakes blowing on people's faces and melting and freezing instantly, special effects cannot be done, and whether a scene is true or false is often composed of these details.
"Since we have said that we must pursue realism, we must do our best to achieve the ultimate. The charm of the real scene is too great, and it has an unparalleled sense of reality." Bai Yicong told China News Weekly.
In order not to float every detail of the "Red Shore Base", before setting up the scene in Heihe, the main creator did a lot of research in advance, and saw more than 4,000 photos, each of which had details with the corresponding experts: What kind of clothes, what kind of hair, what popular songs are sung, how to walk, what is the daily routine... They looked at these more than 4,000 photos for a week, and they almost lived in these photos.
It is also in every real scene that the creators have more different feelings about the world of "Three-Body Problem" than when reading books.
Before the "Judgment Day" was cut by nanowires, whether it was Evans' cabin or the captain's command island, they were all real shots.
The crew found a large cargo ship in Zhoushan. The crew rarely set foot in the cargo ship's bilge because it was too hot. It was close to the engine and the temperature was close to 50°C.
Lu Beike walked among them. For a moment, he suddenly forgot the unbearable high temperature and turbid air in front of him. In the roar of the machine and the claustrophobic hot space, he seemed to see Liu Cixin who wrote "Three-Body Problem" in Niangziguan Power Plant.
"Who is not ideal"
At the end of December 2020, the real shooting that spanned half a year ended.
Immediately afterwards, there was a three-year post-production process, and the first episode was cut for several months.
Different from those dramas that rely on character relationships or strong plots to promote the plot, "The Three-Body Problem" needs to match the atmosphere and rhythm of the original work, who should give each shot, how to cut the next shot, and the music and tone that need to be matched are all important.
Especially in the first few episodes, the horror and suspenseful plot of "Scientist Suicide" needs to convince the audience and have a sense of involvement.
On the other hand, on the basis of impressing fans of the original work, they did not give up on ordinary audiences.
Bai Yicong found a few editing experts, and said to them: "There are no requirements, you can cut it yourself, you can do whatever you want." People who haven't read the original work asked for their impressions.
They hope that while fans of the original book will recognize it, ordinary audiences will also be willing to take a look.
Bai Yicong said with emotion: "How to find a balance in it is really difficult, and it took a lot of time to adjust slowly." At the same time, the production of special effects is not easy.
The game-related part of "Three-Body Problem" is more than 100 minutes long, which is equivalent to an animated feature film.
In order to achieve the effect of alienation from the audience and fit the characters at the same time, this part is all shot by motion capture + facial capture + CG animation.
Although it is a game, it also takes "reality" into account - the game is designed to be similar to the 2007 3A game masterpiece, and the animation 3D effect in the game is also achievable in 2007. The more advanced technology fully fits the time background.
When deciding to use this method for the game part, Yang Lei and Lu Beike predicted that it would be difficult and the workload would be huge, but it was still far beyond imagination when it actually landed.
During the later stage of work, Yang Lei sent messages to Lu Beike no matter what time, and found that he could reply in seconds, even at three or four in the morning.
Some shots were revised and adjusted repeatedly. Yang Lei reviewed it more than 400 times, and Lu Beike reviewed it more than 1,000 times.
There is a long shot of "Operation Guzheng". The data volume reported by the cooperative special effects company is as high as 60 terabytes. With such a large amount of material, it takes three days to render the post-production effects. Another month passed.
Of course, there are also regrets, and some shots can be added with more details after half a year.
But we can only stop here, after all, we have to consider the whole big plate.
Yang Lei said, "The two elements of time and money have to be taken into account. You have to constantly make judgments and balance. Where is the 'blade' and where may be the 'back', and when can only stop here." Within the limits of some resources, they have done their best.
Now Douban's 8.3 points, they feel that the audience has realized the sincerity of the film and given encouragement.
In Lu Beke's view, this will also bring comfort to other creators and special effects production companies that develop similar themes, and they will also be willing to spend more energy to make the project better, so as to attract more audiences.
Sci-fi themes need audiences, and only with audiences can more resources be invested, forming a positive cycle.
At the beginning of 2023, the successive high reputations of the TV series "Three-Body Problem" and the movie "The Wandering Earth 2" seem to be bringing Chinese science fiction film and television into a new era.
According to incomplete statistics, there will be nearly 10 sci-fi dramas coming online on each platform, including "All Stars", "Abyss of Time", "Ball Lightning", "The Metaverse of Love", "Bionic World" and so on.
According to data from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, from January to October 2022, the number of recorded and publicized TV dramas filmed and produced nationwide was 398, of which 8 were filed with contemporary science fiction themes, accounting for about 2%.
Yang Lei revealed that "Three-Body 2: Dark Forest" has entered the preparatory stage and is working on a text outline.
Compared with the first part, it will be a bigger adventure, after all, the protagonist Luo Ji will see the world 205 years after the Crisis Year, where there are forest-like underground cities, fantastic speeding traffic, water droplets and doomsday battles .
This group of creators still remember that on the day of the launch of "Three-Body 1: Past Events on Earth", they wrote a sentence on the cake: "Who is not ideal yet!"
"China News Weekly" Issue 6, 2023
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