◆ “Annual Comedy Contest” uses solid creations one by one, and ran out of the “backwardness advantage” on the “crowded track” of comedy variety shows.The picture shows the posters and stills of this variety show
While the audience is still feeling that traditional comedy variety shows are getting weaker and can only rely on new styles such as “talk show” to be effective, “Annual Comedy Competition” is just like its simple and concise name, using a solid one by one. Creation, on the “crowded track” of comedy variety shows, ran out of the “back-mover advantage”. There is no “top stream”, a group of comedians who laugh at their “waist” and “ankles”, relying on their keen capture of the pain points and popular topics in people’s lives nowadays, they attract the sound of “ha” and charge fees through satirical video sites. Talking about young people’s hair loss and paying attention to a series of topics such as social fear aroused strong emotional resonance among the audience.
“Good literary works can not only bring happiness and emotion, but also have certain effects of the times.” Ma Dong, founder and CEO of Fang Miwei Media, the program producer, said: “Art works should be like a mirror of the times, reflecting the times. A certain aspect of life allows the audience to release anxiety and think about some propositions, and the meaning of comedy will be revealed.”
Say goodbye to the “happy head and sad end”, and focus on the smallest unit of life in the era with “sketch comedy”
Once upon a time, in order to prevent the work from flowing into the superficial level of cute laughter, the usual practice of comedians was to add tear-jerking plots at the end to sublimate the theme to achieve the purpose of “education through fun”. In this mode, there are also classic works. However, once it becomes a creative routine, some of the creations become deliberately preaching and sensational. The basic skill of comedy, the supply of jokes, is actually stretched, which in turn causes dissatisfaction among the audience.
In the face of this, the “Annual Comedy Competition”, which is positioned as the “original innovative comedy competition for variety show”, chose to use “sketch comedy (Sket ch)” as a breakthrough point to capture a certain detail that contemporary people can generally feel in social life. , Carry out full excavation to realize the stacking of jokes. This is the case for the first-issue topical work “Internet Medical Examination”. It leaks user privacy, excessively long advertisements, malicious pop-ups, induces the purchase of members, compulsory software downloads, speed limit downloads, and “sell miserable” live broadcasts. Waiting for the undesirable phenomenon to be satirized over and over again. In addition to arousing the audience’s hilarious laughter, it also poke the audience’s pain points of the “bitter Internet charging chaos”, so that the long-term depressed unhappiness is released and relieved in a concentrated manner, thus becoming the “cool drama in the comedy” described by the guest Li Dan.
This kind of intensive laughter with a unique perspective for a certain phenomenon or topic is exactly the essence of “sketch comedy”. Most of the works in “Annual Comedy Competition” did not spread the topic very broadly, but chose the smallest unit in the life of the times. For example, “The Battle of Sanmao” focuses on contemporary young people’s hair loss due to work pressure; “Idol Waiter” applies for a job in a restaurant, which intensively satirizes the deformed idol ecology and the chaos of the bad meal circle; “The Platform” borrows Zhu Ziqing’s famous “Back View” “The setting of the setting shows the story of how a father who is ashamed of expressing love overcomes embarrassment and embraces his son. It is particularly worth mentioning that in “Platform”, every time the audience thinks that the father and son are about to embrace each other and are ready to be moved, they are amused by a “laughing point”, which greatly dispels the psychological expectation under the inertia of “happy head and sad tail”. . But this does not weaken the work’s depth of thinking about the differences in emotional expression between the two generations.
“There are routines every year, and creators should use them frequently. When the audience can feel that you want to be’valued’, it means that your creation has been eliminated.” Ma Dong said. “Supreme value”, this is the netizen’s ridicule of the topic-strengthening skills that some debaters usually use at the end of the debate. Now it has become the vigilance in the creation of “Comedy Contest”, and this creative consciousness has also received positive feedback from the audience. The program was broadcast for six episodes, and the Douban score reached 7.8 points.
“The audience will find that the topics we create are all happening around them. I may have been puzzled and felt about this in the past, but what is missing is someone to get through this’qi’. And comedy does exactly what it does. This reasonable and unexpected treatment allows the audience to feel positive emotional value while reaping laughter and tears.” In Ma Dong’s view, comedy, like other literary works, is good for answering puzzles and relieving anxiety. Fortunately, to bring a knowing smile, all you have to do is to reflect the age of the audience.
Focusing on the whole process of creation, highlighting the “co-creation” power of comedy art
Another innovative point of “Comedy Contest” is that it is rare to give the screenwriter and performance director to the audience to reveal the origin of creativity and creative mentality to the audience, triggering a collision of ideas. In the age of information explosion, the audience needs to understand the whole process of creation in a more comprehensive and three-dimensional way. Ma Dong said: “A good show is to break the existing theory and the boundaries of content and form. No matter who you are, let the work speak.”
And this is also the bottom-level methodology of comedy creation that the show promotes-co-creation. Compared with previous similar programs, the program group is more deeply involved in the whole creation process, so as to strictly control the quality of the work. In the program, each contestant does not come with a team, but enters the workshop to create a row, and then regroup into a comedy squad. Focusing on the birth of a work, it is up to the participating actors to throw out their own creativity and hand over to the screenwriting team to perfect and enrich it. The improvisational baggage and jokes piled up by the actors in the process of creating and rehearsing are then further sorted and integrated by the screenwriter, and finally there are wonderful works on stage. This process blurs the boundary between actors and behind-the-scenes creative staff, mixing presentation, directing, and acting. The screenwriter Liu Beast who participated in many hit works such as “Internet Medical Examination” and “This Killer Isn’t Cold” is a small well-known actor in a talk show club. However, what is less known is that the Six Beasts initially participated in the election as an actor, and were eliminated after four months of training. He realized that compared with professional actors, there is still a gap in his performance.
Put the right comedian in the right place, and the show will be “good-looking”. It is precisely because of this that the waist actors and veteran talents in other drafts who are regarded as “twisted meat” in the “Annual Comedy Competition” have performed more brilliantly with the blessing of high-quality content.
Can the creation of new “seen” opportunities deliver positive power to the comedy industry?
The need for happiness is inherent. Looking back at the success of “Annual Comedy Contest”, it is the common divisor of the largest audience that comedy has.
Since the creation of the literary style of sketches on CCTV Spring Evening in the early 1980s, it has always been the art of laughter that the Chinese people love to hear. Entering the new century, from “Swordsman” to “Happy Comedian”, “Comedy Story”, “I’m a Comedy Crazy”, “Gold Medal Comedy Class”… the rise of variety show reality shows has greatly increased the “exposure” of comedy.
At the same time, a large number of comedians have also found a new stage in the film and television market. The “Country Love” series has produced 13 consecutive titles, and while popular among comedians, the “Ivory Mountain” in the play has also become the “spiritual hometown” of many contemporary young people. Starting from “Charlotte Annoyance” produced by Happy Twist, the road of comedians to enter the big screen has become smoother and smoother. Until the beginning of this year, Jia Ling wrote, directed, and acted “Hello, Li Huanying”, which was the third largest box office in Chinese film history. We really saw the strong market appeal of comedy.
On the other hand, in addition to comedians who have become top artists by virtue of film and television, more comedians, especially sketch actors, are now choosing to move to short video and live broadcast platforms. Funny short videos taken by senior essayists such as Guo Donglin, Feng Gong, Pan Changjiang, etc., can often easily get “million-level” likes and forwards. Some people regard it as a “dimensionality reduction blow” by professional comedians on Internet celebrities; some people think that a video that is as short as ten seconds is not so much a comedy, it is a piece of drama, which hurts the intensive work of comedy.
Industry insiders pointed out that the new track creates new opportunities for “being seen”, but it would be a pity if it was to squeeze creative and performance space at the expense. As a competitive variety show, “Annual Comedy Competition” won the audience’s initial recognition with good performance, good creation and good works, and completed the mission of the program. However, going further, we look forward to delivering the “new comedy” concept through a series of works and methodology, and blowing a strong wind for the development of the industry.Author: Huang Qizhe
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责编：张晓荣 ]
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