【Writer and Art View】
Authors: Sun Weichuan (Professor of the Department of Film and Television, School of Arts, Nanjing Normal University); Jiang Shan (Doctoral student in Film Studies, School of Arts, Nanjing Normal University, lecturer of Henan University)
On the “June 1st” International Children’s Day that just passed, many parents walked into the theater with their children. In fact, not only festivals and holidays, watching movies together as a family has become a leisure and entertainment activity for more and more Chinese families to exchange emotions on a daily basis. Therefore, family carnival movies suitable for all ages are particularly popular with the public. However, compared with market demand, the creation of family carnival movies has not yet taken shape. Because it is not easy to meet the multi-level viewing needs of family members of different ages and identities, effectively connect their cognitive levels and emotional appeals, and make them all enjoy aesthetic pleasure during the viewing process. Therefore, it is worth thinking about how to solve the difficult problem of unanimity and create a family carnival movie that the audience loves.
Starting from “combination”, find the balance between the demands of children and adults
A major feature of family carnival movies is that they are of all ages and cover the widest range of audience groups. Therefore, it should not only allow children to enjoy artistic enjoyment in the spectacle of visual effects and educational guidance in simple and complete stories, but also provide an entrance for adults to watch movies, so that they can gain ideological enlightenment and spiritual guidance. From this perspective, animated films that focus on parent-child viewing are the easiest to achieve this goal, and have always been the main type of family carnival films.
However, for a period of time, some creations with the market goal of “little hands holding big hands” simply catered to children’s viewing tastes, but ignored adults’ aesthetic appeals, resulting in works that looked lively, but in fact the stories lacked depth and connotations were empty and shallow. Even if it is shown to children, it will not leave any useful thoughts. The “big hand” who was pulled into the cinema by the “little hand” was even more reluctant, and regarded the one or two hour viewing time as suffering. Therefore, how to make animated films be loved by children and at the same time be accepted by adult audiences has become a difficult problem that creation needs to focus on solving.
Animated film IP took the lead in making an attempt. They changed the previous setting that the target audience was low and young, and on the basis of retaining the content rich in innocence and childlikeness, they used action, science fiction, love and other types of elements to bring adult audiences a richer viewing experience. For example, the “Bear Infested” series of big movies, the first three are mainly aimed at the younger market, and the room for box office improvement is getting smaller and smaller. So from the fourth “Bear Infested Fantasy Space” to the family carnival creation, on the basis of trying to make the narrative more ingenious, the structure more complete, and the visual effects more exquisite, more innovative explorations are incorporated. For example, “Bear Infested: Stay with Me “Bear Core””, which will be released in the Spring Festival in 2023, combines adventure, action and other elements in the sci-fi theme, and uses strong plots and reverse narratives to tell about the abandoned Xiong Da, Xiong Er and Mama Bear. , and the story of saving each other. Mother Bear began to appear as a villain, and after some twists and turns, she recognized the two brothers. Just when the audience thought the story was coming to an end, the real villain, Professor Donghai, appeared on the stage and threatened Mother Bear to abandon her child, starting a new round of ups and downs. This nested structure breaks through the previous flat or progressive narrative methods, and firmly catches the attention of adult audiences.
Of course, in order to achieve family carnival, animated films cannot simply superimpose the perspectives of children and adults. Instead, they must be accurately positioned according to the physical and mental characteristics of children’s development and growth, and tell an entertaining story with imaginative audio-visual spectacle. Topics that fit the current social hotspots allow adult audiences to obtain rich cultural information and extend different views and perspectives. For example, in the cartoon “Deep Sea”, the small audience mainly watched the beautiful underwater world created by the particle ink animation, while the large audience felt the protagonist’s psychological problems caused by the original family through the visual expression of oriental aesthetics And the process of self-healing, and these plots related to real life trigger philosophical thinking. Similarly, “Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World” and “New God List: Yang Jian” boldly use CG special effects to attract the attention of young audiences. On the other hand, they extend the core narrative layer to show social hot issues such as parent-child relationship and life value. It can be seen that unconstrained artistic imagination cannot be divorced from the soil of real life. The creation of family carnival films should consciously maintain a close connection and positive interaction with social reality, and endow the creation with multi-layered cultural meanings, so as to find the right balance between the needs of children and adults. point.
Using “huan” as a method not only makes the audience happy, but also opens the audience’s heart with empathy
Family carnival is destined to have an indissoluble bond with comedy. Relaxed, humorous, lively and interesting comedy plots are often highly compatible with the psychological appeal of people who desire to relax, soothe the spirit, and generate joy and excitement when watching movies with their families, so they are widely loved by family-based moviegoers . From “Unfamiliar Life” and “Lonely Walking on the Moon” to “Hello, Li Huanying” and “Great Dad”, these comedies or dramas rich in comedy elements can be included in the category of family carnival.
However, unlike general comedies whose main purpose is to make people laugh, comedies in family carnival movies pay more attention to their social function of emotional connection. The family carnival movies that have been widely loved by audiences in recent years have all wrapped up “meaningful” connotations in “interesting” concepts-in the story setting, the characters are usually set up as a family unit, using their identities, occupations, educational backgrounds, ages The differences between them create dramatic conflicts, expressing the sincere and beautiful emotions between family members and even between people. For example, “Exchanging Life” on the surface tells the fantasy journey of an adolescent boy in pursuit of ignorant love, but as the two-line narrative of life exchange emerges, it is actually about the warm memory of family, as well as the support and companionship of family and friends. Another example is “The Faithful Dog Hachiko”, when showing the warm interaction between pet dogs and people, it draws out the poorly expressed Chinese paternal love and the implicit but sincere emotions among Chinese family members. Similarly, whether it is the conflict and reconciliation between father and son in “Mozart in Outer Space”, or the emotional interaction between mother and daughter in “Hello, Li Huanying”, these works still make people laugh a second ago, The next moment brought tears to the eyes, not only making the audience happy, but also opening the audience’s heart with empathy. In laughter and tears, each sample of imperfect but warm and beautiful family life tells the truth of life, allowing the audience to release the pressure of life from family, school, and workplace through the process of empathy, and then form a A more positive and optimistic attitude towards life.
Stills of the movie “My Motherland and Me”
With “home” as the core, let the main theme and patriotism resonate at the same frequency
As the saying goes, a family is the smallest country, and a country is made up of thousands of families. The “family” in the family carnival is not only based on the concept of blood relationship, but can also be extended to a broader concept based on factors such as ethnicity, history, and cultural identity. Therefore, family carnival movies should not only include comedies and cartoons that make the whole family laugh together, but also include the use of family and country feelings to ignite the patriotic enthusiasm of the public, so that the mainstream values can be recognized by a wider group of people, thus cohesive in society. A film with the main theme that works together.
Movie “Lonely on the Moon” poster
In recent years, the transformation of creative concepts has made more and more main theme movies have the characteristics of family carnival. Some creators have changed the traditional thinking of focusing on heroic narratives and grand perspectives, and integrated the feelings of family and country into the life stories full of fireworks of ordinary people, turning them into the emotions of countless ordinary people, which aroused the emotions of audiences, especially young people. resonance. For example, in “Holding You Through the Cold Winter”, when he was serving as an anti-epidemic volunteer, Ah Yong delivered food to his wife and son, and Brother Wu bravely pursued love. In “The King of the Sky”, Zhang Ting, a soldier who died heroically during the flight test mission, also had a warm family life and a sweet love story. These vivid details tell the audience that the reason why ordinary people can stand up and make selfless dedication at critical moments is the strong support of the motherland and family behind them.
The concentrated release of this kind of family-themed movie with the characteristics of a family carnival can often create the phenomenon that the three generations of the old, middle-aged and young people bring their families and compete to watch the movie, making the family carnival attribute of the movie schedule more prominent. This trend has been particularly prominent in the National Day files in recent years. From “My Motherland and Me”, “My Hometown and Me”, “My Fathers and Me”, to “Winning the Championship”, “The Way Back Thousands of Miles”, “Ordinary Heroes” and “Iron Will”, the films released on the National Day file have stories that fit the situation Responding to and creating a good social atmosphere for the national celebration of the National Day, it has achieved good box office results and social response in the National Day file. “Everyone said that “Winning the Championship” is very educational, so I took my child to see it and let him know how the women’s volleyball girls won glory for the country.” “My Parents and Me” evoked the youthful memories of parents, After watching the movie, they have been telling me the story of their contribution to the construction of the motherland.” “After watching the movie, the audience in the whole theater sang “My Motherland and Me”. It is found that the family and country feelings that these main theme movies emphasize give the family carnival a richer and deeper ideological connotation, and even extend to the direction of “whole society participation” and “national celebration”.
All in all, in order to achieve the goal of a family carnival, film creators need to seek the greatest common divisor of the audience in terms of subject matter, theme, and values, and genre hybrids, comedy narratives, and family and country feelings are all problem-solving methods for calculating this greatest common divisor . Therefore, family carnival movies should continue to cultivate in these aspects, accurately meet the aesthetic expectations of the audience, and more effectively play the positive social functions of family carnival movies.
“Guangming Daily” (version 15, June 7, 2023)
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责编：张悦鑫 ]