**: Entertainment.
In the drama market in 2024, comedy is setting off new waves.
During the broadcast of "Don't Panic King", many viewers felt a new comedy temperament, which allowed the talented actors with niche styles to be released, and the plot and laughter were natural. As a comment from a rating** said: "These two living treasures have found the most suitable genre for themselves." ”
In fact, director and screenwriter Kim Chol-yong told Entertainment Studio that "Don't Panic the King" was originally tailor-made for Tudou and Lu Yan, which is not only the luck of the actors, but also the luck of the directors who love their comedy style very much.
Of course, the lucky ones are the audience in front of the screen.
An episode that is often mentioned by entertainment is that around 2016, Ma Dong, who gained a firm foothold in the variety show market with "Wonderful Story", once found comedy screenwriters Yu Ao and Tie Nan to discuss making a sitcom together, but in the end they had to run aground. The script of the twenty-four episodes was given to the platform, which did not arouse much interest from the other party.
In the eyes of the platform, the screenwriters, directors, and actors, including Yu Ao and Tie Nan, are all newcomers, and no one dares to make a decision about this. At the same time, fairy tale dramas, fantasy dramas, and sweet pet dramas are popular on the Internet, and the platform cannot use big data to prove that sitcoms can attract users and make money.
And this embarrassment doesn't stop at sitcoms. Looking back now, the booming drama market has not produced more praised comedy works, but the audience's demand for comedy has always been there, especially in the past few years when emotional comfort is extremely needed.
Annual Comedy Contest", "Laugh! In the nearly 3-hour dialogue between Piolević and Kim Chol-yong, we found the reason why "Don't Panic", which involves the integration of choreographers and directors, the mutual trust of the actors, the high degree of participation of various types of work, and the high degree of unity between the platform and the producer's concept.
It is also these necessary conditions that make comedy series still so difficult.
Decide on the actors first, and then write the script.
At the end of "Don't Panic", the undercover agent of Flower Neck Mountain is confirmed to be among the king (played by Lu Yan) and the mole master (played by Tudou). This familiar scene made many "Erxi" fans dream back to "Codename Big Ben", and the barrage instantly brushed up: "Three thousand miles from the homeland, codenamed Big Ben." ”
In fact, when Kim Chol-yong wrote this paragraph, he wanted to deduct this stalk in the end. In his words, "I just have the mentality of a half-fan and try to create in their image as closely as possible." ”
The opportunity for creation also starts from the end of the "second happiness". At that time, iQiyi was planning spin-off episodes for the three groups of comedians in the show, and found Kim Chol-yong and asked him if he was interested. Coincidentally, Kim Chol-yong is a fan of the show, and he especially likes the comic talent group of Fat Daren, "Their first work "The Strange Neighbor on the Bus" amazed me, and it turned out that the comic talent can really be established here. ”
Soon, Kim Chol-yong took over the drama projects of Tudou and Lu Yan, with a clear goal - to create a comedy that fits their comedy style. In order to involve more audiences, in mid-to-late March last year, the big story framework was finally set as "Journey to the West + Big Ben".
No matter how you look at it, this kind of comedy creation is rare. Not to mention that the supporting roles in the play are also created with the characteristics of "gratifying", and they are all actors that Kim Chol-yong loves. Yang Yuguang, who came out of the circle with the sentence "Lao Li" in "Father's Funeral", was also invited by him to play the role of the land duke, and there is still a scene of "shouting".
In addition to "writing close to faces", the logic of comedy is equally important.
From the previous "Animal Control" to the current "Don't Panic King", Kim Cheol-yong, who was born in the later period, has always valued the film and television logic of the story, and comedy is just an element. For example, "Animal Control" is essentially a "story of the police station", and the comedy story is still valid after removing it, while "Don't Panic King" is "a story of undercover apostasy", "its background color is "Lust Caution", and it is "New World".
Comedy is certainly an important weight, but it can't be just comedy, it needs something more conflictual and high-concept. What I'm better at is the small people in the big genre, looking for a sense of life in the high concept, making contrasts, and if there is a contrast, there will definitely be absurd and ridiculous things. ”
Therefore, some people call Kim Chol-yong's works "life stream comedy", to a certain extent, this is also the reason why "Don't Panic", "Don't Panic", is no longer a blunt conflict and scratches you to make you happy, but comes from life, and uses emotional resonance to make Bojun laugh.
If you take a closer look at what happened in Huaneck Mountain, the essence is the story of a startup company that is on the verge of bankruptcy and revives its glory, which of course has all kinds of allusions to the modern workplace.
There is also the Monkey King who "sits and appears", which is also a reasonable imagination of Kim Cheolyong after connecting with actual life, who can stand and walk immediately after being pressed for so long?
Sun Wukong sat on the ** and walked not just for fun, because he was really anxious to return to Huaguo Mountain after taking the scriptures, and he was in a hurry to 'get off work'. In the end, he let go of the group of little demons in Flower Neck Mountain, and he also remembered the little monkeys on his mountain. All the comedic stuff is transformed into a kind of plausibility, and when you look back at it, you find that the logic is all valid. ”
There is no position, only the burden does not sound.
When it came to the shooting site, the benefits of "face creation" were further demonstrated.
Usually, after getting the script, the actor will have a process of entering the role, making a strong connection between himself and the character in the text, to put it bluntly, to become that person. Once it fails, the performance in front of the camera will be unimaginable.
And "Don't Panic, King" almost omits this step. Kim Chol-yong recalled, "When I first polished the script of the first three episodes, I showed it to the people around me after writing it, and they said that it felt like a potato and Lu Yan wrote it himself, and I said that it would be great, which means that they can enter the story without obstacles at all, and the emotional part can be slowly added to it." ”
When the actor does not have too much psychological burden when creating the role, the focus will be on the polishing of the baggage. This also makes "Don't Panic, King" a rare crew with no internal friction and no traditional positions.
Shooting on the spot, whenever the camera shoots someone, the rest of the people gather around to check each other, once the performance is not good, "what are you doing" and other complaints come and go. The actors pad each other's rhythm and sew seams on the spot, just to maximize the laughter in the text.
The atmosphere of our crew is very similar to that of college students making graduation short films, everyone is coming up with ideas, and they don't leave the scene after filming, and there is no such thing as 'going back to the RV'. So it's really hard to replicate this vibe. More often, actors and directors are all gathered together from all over the world, and it is impossible for them all to be so familiar. Kim Cheol-yong sighed.
One of the consequences of unfamiliarity is the inability to be open and honest about shortcomings. This has also led to a lot of comedy works not achieving the desired effect.
An actor once told Yu Li that the most fearful thing on the shooting scene is not that someone scolds you, but that there is no one who scolds you if the shooting is not good. "You go and ask the director what is wrong with me, and the other party thinks about it and says, 'It's nothing, it's all good. That's the scariest thing. ”
Shoot a short drama with S-rated standards.
Don't Panic, King is the fastest production project Kim Chol-yong has experienced since he entered the industry.
After writing an outline and sending it to the platform, I was notified that it was over after more than half a month, and I could start writing the script. Two or three months after the script was written, the crew was already preparing and preparing for filming. ”
Before that, more projects were written and written without a follow-up, and the stories that were said to be done would not be met with the audience one day. And around the projects of the "Annual Joy Club" of the Little Comedy Theater, iQiyi's promotion attitude is very resolute - it must be done, and it must be placed in the "Spring Festival file".
Therefore, although "Don't Panic King" is only a short drama, each episode is 20 minutes, a total of 14 episodes, but the production team invites the main creators of the S-level project. Everyone is trying their best to complete this "experiment" and see if it can be accepted by the market.
In other words, this "all-or-nothing" mentality also makes "Don't Panic", the king, likely to become a "lonely product" in the industry. Once the goals of all parties cannot be achieved.
First, the script cannot convince everyone, or the production cost is difficult to increase, so it will turn to a common "do the work to make money" model.
Kim Chol-yong bluntly said that in fact, all departments have basically done a lot of work far beyond their duties this time, "Because everyone likes this script very much and thinks it can be made (color), so they are willing to give up some of their interests." ”
For example, the sofa department, in order to make costumes that meet the characteristics of the characters and have a texture at the only cost, took the initiative to learn 3D printing technology, and the ears of the rabbit and jackal were glued by hand after 3D printing, and they were glued for more than two weeks. Styling director Wang Haiting said that there are hundreds of handmade props and accessories like this.
In the crew of "Don't Panic King", modeling, art, and photography are all "highly involved in the narrative", which is what Kim Chol-yong particularly emphasized, "You can't be sure that the funny point will come out of the **." ”
From the barrage, you can see that some viewers will laugh because of the jackal's family's "zipper sportswear", some viewers will laugh because of Daji's realistic chicken mouth, and some people laugh heartily when they hear the white version of "Farewell", which can be effective in all aspects.
From another point of view, this goes back to the above-mentioned "law of familiarity", the director and actors are familiar with each other, and various types of work are also extremely familiar with the shooting content, and everyone is in the same direction, and the effect produced is bound to be "1+1>2". It's also very similar to the creative atmosphere of the early sitcom era.
In Kim Chol-yong's words, whether it is "I Love My Family" with Yingda and Liang Zuo as the core, or "Wulin Gaiden" with Shang Jing and Ning Caishen as the core, they are "a very familiar group of people who get together to specialize in one thing".
At present, many viewers are calling for the second season of "Don't Panic". In Kim Chol-yong's view, this still depends on the word-of-mouth and popularity of this time.
Only when more people click** can the series have more possibilities for commercial returns, and the platform will have enough confidence to continue to do it. It is impossible to "experiment" every time without asking for anything in return.
Although this ** is over-regulated (production) in all aspects, it can still see a lot of stretched, after all, it is just a micro-short drama, and the volume is still too small. If the platform can't run a circular profit model in the future, it is impossible for everyone to stick to it only by relying on the 'comedy spirit'. ”
The future of comedy is in**.
It can be seen that if you want to see more high-quality comedies in the drama market in the future, the determination of the platform is very important.
For now, only the best platform can mobilize so many resources to supply a comedy work, which is something that production companies and professional screenwriters in the market cannot do independently.
From the content level, the comedy of the future is bound to have new upgrades.
Director Shang Jing once told Yu Li that "Comedy +" may be a new way out for sitcoms - adding comedy elements to other types of dramas, and no longer creating single-episode series. This actually coincides with Kim Chol-yong's "film and television logic".
And around these "new comedies", they must be supplemented by richer audio-visual means. It can be seen from "Don't Panic King" that many laughs are not directly given and said with the actor's mouth, but are presented in the language of the camera, which is also more in line with the current audience's habits.
To this day, compared with other types of dramas, the "rate of return" of comedy is really low.
It's too difficult to make people laugh, especially in today's rapid development of short **, which makes many comedy creators rack their brains and can only get a "passing grade".
Comedy, on the other hand, is subjective and has a strong personal touch. There is no standard yardstick for judging whether it is funny or not, just like some viewers have not yet gotten the Jackal family's sportswear to be funny. And urban dramas, idol dramas, suspense dramas, etc. are relatively "standard", whether a ** is enough to be thrilling and brain-burning, you will know most of them after watching it.
What's even more helpless is that once a comedy story can run through all circles and achieve the greatest common divisor, it will go to the screen and become a movie, seeking a greater market and returns, rather than a series, let alone an innovative short drama.
The market for comedy dramas is far from mature, and the road is long and difficult. We can only hope that in the future, more platforms and creators will devote themselves to the development of comedy, so that the sprout of new comedy will continue to grow until it ushers in the real spring.
Some movies in the 2024 Spring Festival.