Generation Z Artists

Chapter 328 Smooth Sailing, Starting the Offensive

Filming The Return of the Condor Heroes was not a particularly complicated process, but it required a great deal of patience.

At the director level, Fang Xinghe's approach was to use more camera angles and less flashy techniques.

"Less technical skill" means using complex directing techniques with restraint, prioritizing that everyone can understand the story, using conventional narrative, and only creating suspense through editing at crucial moments.

Among the audience of "The Return of the Condor Heroes," at least hundreds of millions are people with low comprehension levels—this is not to belittle them, but an objective statement.

The information age is approaching but has not yet arrived. Most people grow up in closed environments and receive less external information in their entire lives than a Gen Z child spends a month scrolling through Douyin (TikTok).

Make a show for them, but don't make it unnecessarily mysterious.

The fabricated "Kangxi's Private Visits" had viewership ratings more than 100 times higher than the rigorous and insightful "Ming Dynasty." Regardless of right or wrong, good or bad, just looking at reality, which is the good drama in the context of popular aesthetics? Which is the niche classic in the elite paradigm?

Film and television are all about fulfilling spiritual needs. There's nothing wrong with pursuing depth, and there's even less of a problem with entertaining the masses. Just make sure you know what you want and don't be pretentious.

Therefore, Fang Xinghe decided to restrain his artistic instincts.

With 91 points in director attributes, cutting it by one-third and using 60 points is just about right.

Of course, this does not mean that he does not pursue quality, but rather that he intends to enhance the quality of the series in a more intuitive way.

From a technical standpoint, it boils down to four words: add more camera positions.

When filming indoor scenes in a typical TV series, there are usually only one or two camera positions.

One camera position creates a fixed frame, where the actors talk and chatter.

At most, some push-pull, panning, and tilting movements can be added to coordinate with the actors' movements and create relatively vivid and lively scenes.

Two-camera setups mostly use reverse shots, switching back and forth, to save actors from having to rehearse the same scene multiple times.

When there are three or more cameras, the situation becomes quite complicated.

The team skillfully switched between long shots, medium shots, close-ups, and extreme close-ups, adapting to changing angles (level, low, high) and lighting conditions, and constantly adjusting lighting from the front, side, back, top, and bottom. This process was extremely demanding on the team's comprehensive abilities.

The lighting and photography teams were kept extremely busy, and the production assistants were even busier than usual. If it weren't for the fact that Changchun Film Studio and Beijing Film Academy had brought in so many key personnel, a production company of Zhouyi Tangren's caliber simply wouldn't have been able to meet Fang Xinghe's requirements.

With such a huge investment, the results are naturally very beautiful.

The most obvious enhancement is in the composition.

Taking the scene where the adult Yang Guo appears as an example, Fang Xinghe filmed it like this:

Yang Guo was hanging from a tree branch when a reproachful voice called out from the woods, "Guo'er!"

As Yang Guo turns around, the camera immediately cuts to his subjective perspective: the camera is suspended above the tree branches, shooting a panoramic view of the forest.

Viewers can immerse themselves in Yang Guo's perspective and see a white cloud drifting out from the forest and heading straight for him.

This creates a sense of joy in being cared for.

During post-production, there will be a close-up of Yang Guo's eyes before he looks back, and the subjective perspective shots after he looks back will be color graded with a high saturation and bright colors.

The implied meaning is that, from Yang Guo's perspective, when Xiaolongnu arrived, the whole world was bright.

Her clothes are whiter and the trees are greener; she is like a fairy coming towards me.

In another wide-angle shot, the composition focuses more on the overall artistic conception.

Yang Guo stands on a treetop in the upper left corner of the screen, turning around in surprise. Xiaolongnu, dressed in white, enters from the lower right corner of the screen, making several turns in the forest, shooting like a white rainbow, her figure appearing and disappearing under the cover of the trees.

In such a vast environment, the figures are very small, like mayflies in the vastness of the world. Although the details of the figures are not clear, one can feel their free and easy spirit, as well as their carefree and unrestrained freedom as they roam among the mountains and forests.

A few seconds of macro shot, then cut to a medium shot of Xiaolongnu alone, focusing on her figure and highlighting her exquisite lightness skill as she leaps through the forest.

Finally, the two reunited, and the camera switched to a wide shot with a rule-of-thirds composition. Yang Guo was still in the upper left, and Xiaolongnu was still in the lower right, only much closer.

Then Yang Guo floated down and quickly stepped forward, and the camera returned to center.

From a visual perspective, the earlier scene of Xiaolongnü coming to find Yang Guo represents her rushing to him; the later scene of Yang Guo going to meet Xiaolongnü represents his response.

It implies a passionate mutual attraction, where both parties are interested in each other.

Of course, the two did not express their feelings at this time and remained master and disciple, but the audience could feel the beauty of the scene and feel happy.

This is a complex cinematic language rarely seen in TV dramas. Don't think it's useless; the power of visuals is universal. Whether it's a naive teenager or an old farmer in the fields, even if they can't express it verbally, they will feel it when they see it.

Adding such a small detail makes the experience even more memorable.

Although watching on a small CRT TV will inevitably lose a lot of the artistic conception, even if 90% is lost, the remaining 10% is enough to set it apart from those dull and clumsy dramas.

This is a superior product in terms of composition, aesthetics, and artistic conception. The audience may be confused at this moment, but one day they will suddenly realize in their research that they were eating so well when they were young.

Well, but from another perspective, the better they ate, the more exhausted the Condor Heroes team was during filming.

Fang Xinghe was alright; as a director, he put forward the ideas and set the direction, and then let the rest of the team implement them.

As the male lead, he spent a little longer hanging in the tree.

The more troublesome one is Zhao Xiaoding, who has to personally take charge to meet those shooting requirements that demand extremely high aesthetics.

But the one who was most tired was Nenxian.

Although her movements are not as demanding as Fang Xinghe's, which are complex and abnormal, requiring only beauty and grace, her actual strength is still far from comparable to that of a cheat-like character.

She had to put in five times the effort for the same movements, but she still couldn't do them as effortlessly as Fang Xinghe. She had to rely on a long white dress to cover up the imperfections in the details of her movements.

However, this girl really has a lot of tenacity.

Watching her suspended on the wire all day long, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. with only three or four hours of her legs touching the ground, yet never uttering a word of complaint or fatigue, Fang Xinghe's eyes were filled with melancholy, and his thoughts drifted back to those days in the training camp.

Before filming began, Fang Xinghe organized a large training camp, with all the stuntmen from Xinghe Pictures participating to provide rigorous training for all the main actors.

On the first day of the camp, Fang Xinghe personally oversaw the operation.

He came downstairs at 8:30. The other actors had probably just eaten breakfast and were getting used to the environment, but Nenxian was already sweating profusely in the equipment room.

Fang Xinghe's eyes narrowed: "Who taught you to train your abs?"

Liu Yifei frankly said, "Sister Hong said that my core strength is not good enough, so some of my movements are stiff. She told me to strengthen my core muscles."

"pretty good."

Fang Xinghe nodded, then casually asked, "Have you been sticking to what I taught you before?"

"Yes!" Nenxian raised her little face. "I've been practicing Longhua Fist and basic acting skills all along!"

"very good!"

Fang Xinghe glanced at the other actors—especially the actresses—before smiling at Nenxian.

"It seems you have realized this, and your efforts are worthy of the title of Cannes Best Actress."

Before the foreign actors' translators could even relay the information to them, Fang Xinghe's smile already made them extremely resentful.

Why does Fang Xinghe only smile so warmly at that woman?! Clearly, that bastard Fang is up to his evil tricks of raising Gu poison again…

You know what, it might be a bit of a dog, but it's actually quite effective.

In front of all the girls who have a crush on him, if he praises any of them, it sets up a target, and these girls are really easy to fall for.

Is that a bit narcissistic of me to say it?

But this is a fact that has been verified multiple times.

It's often said that women in the entertainment industry aren't judged by their looks, but what about when you add power, talent, wealth, and the sexual allure brought by hormones? No one can easily resist that allure.

Suddenly, the training camp started to get busy.

From any perspective, the Condor Heroes training camp should have been a success from the start. In such a super project spanning three countries and two regions, it could have made a name for itself, swept the market, conquered the audience, and won over Brother Fang. Wouldn't that have been the best career path?
Not being able to snag the lead role already made them feel like they'd missed out on hundreds of millions, and then training in the same camp as Liu Yifei only fueled their determination.

Everyone was working themselves to the bone, but as time went on, the gap inevitably widened.

Zhang Baizhi was the first to be defeated. After three days of perseverance, the training intensity was reduced to that of the children.

Jun Ji-hyun was the second to fall behind. With her success and her body shape already set, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep up.

The remaining girls are all ruthless.

Sometimes you really have to admire the endurance of Japanese and Korean stars. For example, Yui Aragaki and Son Ye-jin, even though they don't have many action scenes, they still participate in every single one of them.

Zhang Junning looks artistic, but her physical strength is at the level of a female beast. She is also stubborn. She went from zero to having beautiful sword skills in just over half a month.

However, Nenxian still became the king of rolls in the camp.

Every day, I spent most of the day suspended on wires doing various training exercises, followed by learning horseback riding, swordsmanship, choreographing moves, memorizing lines, practicing sleeve flicks, and perfecting my posture...

I even rediscovered the routine of eating six nutritious meals a day, a dream that comes back to you.

Of course, her mindset was quite different from Chen Nian's.

The production team allowed Ms. Liu to join the crew of "The Return of the Condor Heroes," and she even made a cameo appearance as Mu Nianci. With her mother by her side, the young fairy was in great spirits.

Furthermore, her physical condition was quite good—because the crew used wire rings, which are much more comfortable than rope-suspended wires, so even with long training sessions, the actual load wasn't too heavy, and she wouldn't end up covered in bruises after being suspended for a long time.

The invention of this system enabled all the young actors in "The Return of the Condor Heroes" to have the ability to personally film some of their action scenes.

To use a somewhat inappropriate analogy: even veteran non-action actors like Lin Gengxin and Zhao Liying, with their aging bodies, were able to personally deliver quite impressive action scenes with the support of complex wire work systems. If young people put in the effort to practice, the results will only be even better.

When it comes to high-difficulty action scenes, using professional stunt performers will further enhance the overall smoothness of the action.

Therefore, at the actor level, the bigger problem is the performance... but actually, that's not really a problem.

Liu Yifei goes without saying; she was the chosen one, the Little Dragon Girl. Even with only her performance in her previous life, she would have been enough to become the white moonlight of a generation, not to mention that her acting skills now are so much more solid than in her previous life.

Zhang Baizhi was a pleasant surprise that Fang Xinghe had not anticipated.

Actually, he didn't know much about this willful older sister's abilities. It wasn't until filming started that he realized she seemed to have been held back quite a bit by her personality.

Judging solely from her acting talent, she far surpasses the post-85 generation of female celebrities in the Chinese entertainment industry, such as the Tang Dynasty poet.

With just a little guidance from Fang Xinghe, she can deliver an excellent performance.

For example, in the scene where she publicly mocks Yang Guo and his master for their "unclear" relationship, she raises an eyebrow and glares at him, her arrogance and jealousy perfectly conveying a natural blend of seven parts arrogance and three parts jealousy. While her behavior is extremely annoying, the subtle, elusive emotions she displays also make her understandable, even poignant.

This is the casting logic for Fang Xinghe: she must be both hateful and pitiful, making the audience both furious and unable to help but sympathize with her. Zhang Baizhi perfectly achieved this.

By the way, in this version of "The Return of the Condor Heroes," all the female supporting characters of the same age secretly admire Yang Guo.

While the plot of a light novel may be clichéd and commonplace, it's something the masses enjoy. Fang Xinghe wouldn't deliberately offend the audience or pretend to be high-minded in this regard.

Janine Chang's portrayal of Cheng Ying is not only more beautiful than the original, but also more fitting in terms of temperament.

Therefore, she was the one with the least performance difficulty, as the voice actors bore all the challenges.

Yui Aragaki's Guo Xiang, compared to the original Xiao Mi, has its own unique characteristics.

The gentle nature of Japanese girls perfectly complements the poignant beauty of unrequited love; in the later part of the story, she seems to truly transform into Guo Xiang.

As for the spirituality of the young Xiao Dongxie, both of them possessed it, though there were slight differences in the details of its presentation, but it wasn't a major issue.

Therefore, Wei Lai's loss was not unjustified; she is truly not suited to share the stage with Bei Nian anymore.

After that, Jun Ji-hyun's portrayal of Lu Wushuang was incredibly effortless; this role was no longer just in her comfort zone, it practically dominated her circle.

Fang Xinghe's main job was to control her Korean-style performance habits.

Some overly intense expressions, even in TV dramas, should be toned down and softened.

Apart from that, there's nothing else to worry about.

Finally, there's Son Ye-jin's Gongsun Lü'e, a pitiful, devoted lover, and yet another character she dominates.

Her temperament is naturally suited to tragic roles; that gentle yet slightly melancholic feeling, coupled with a hint of tears, immediately creates the perfect atmosphere.

When acting opposite her, we almost never need to film a fourth take.

Usually, the first one gets 90 points, the second one is slightly adjusted, and the third one is guaranteed to be perfect, and that's it.

To be honest, Fang Xinghe was surprised by how easy these actresses were to manage.

Did I not know I was so good at organizing parties?

Oh, so it was bought with money... Never mind then.

If the female supporting character is fine, then the male supporting character is even less of a problem.

Apart from Ming Zong being a bit oily and Nai Liang being a bit too cutesy, Fang Xinghe really doesn't need to worry about the other veteran actors at all.

When these big names start acting, Director Fang can just sit there and doze off.

Chen Baoguo, Feng Yuanzheng, Wang Jinsong, Watanabe Ken, Cui Minzhi, Leung Ka-fai... Do you have 20 trophies at home?
In order not to waste their strength, Fang Xinghe even had to further polarize the characters' personalities.

In contrast, Master Yideng and the Old Rascal are somewhat stereotypical and not as memorable.

But that's enough; the mad and chaotic world of martial arts has already taken shape.

With no problems on any level, filming proceeded smoothly. As early as March 2004, only the final hurdle remained in the filming of *The Return of the Condor Heroes*.

The two battles to defend Xiangyang, as well as those complex action scenes that couldn't be filmed on location.

The super studio at Qingdao Xinghe Film and Television Industrial Park has finally been put into use, with a 20-meter-high super green screen erected, equipped with the world's most advanced wire rigging system, more than 70 special effects artists from Industrial Light & Magic deeply involved, and tens of thousands of soldiers on standby...

This is an unprecedented battle in the history of Chinese TV dramas, and it is also the first step in the rise of Chinese dramas.

The stark difference between "The Return of the Condor Heroes" and other martial arts dramas will officially begin at this moment.

**********
I won't write about the plot details now; I'll write about a few highlight scenes when it's released.

(End of this chapter)