Enough blood! New Gods: Nezha Reborn deserves to be the first in the Spring Festival.
Special feature of 1905 film network When other Spring Festival movies are covered, it dares to be the first movie to be shown nationwide, and it may even be the last one.This behavior itself is very punk.It is an animated film featuring "Oriental Punk" (hereinafter referred to as "Nezha Rebirth").
Perhaps because of "Nezha" and the novel "Romance of Gods", this project has attracted much attention from the outside world since its initial exposure. In addition, the team of this animated film is the team that once detonated the market. When these elements are put together, they have already added value for it to become an explosion.
From the initial stage of exposure, the film has experienced many doubts, such as the heat, magic change … … All kinds of hats are buckled on its head. What many viewers actually don’t know is that as early as the beginning of 2016 — — Three years before the release of "White Snake: The Origin", the director had already started the creation of this film with the most senior animators, the light-chasing animation group.
Even if there were all kinds of voices outside, the team didn’t care. Just because of the force majeure of the epidemic, the film schedule was changed again and again, and finally the film was directly set in the most competitive Spring Festival file.
The various behaviors of the team also carry the "Nezha spirit".
"If Nezha is a modern man"
"White Snake: The Origin" has entered the post-production, so what should be done in the next work?
People including director Evonne have put forward their own ideas one after another, and "Nezha" has become the person with the highest repetition rate in the list of all people. At that time, the IP of "Nezha" was not popular. As a result, the light-chasing animation set up a team of "Nezha Rebirth" with Evonne as the core.
Nezha’s story is not easy to tell. I have seen it after 1980s and 1990s, and most of them grew up watching CCTV’s animated series "The Legend of Nezha" after 1990s. The audience of every era has their own stories about Nezha.
The whole team is almost born in the 1980s, so naturally they have a soft spot for What’s Making a Sea?
At the beginning, everyone intended to make a very traditional story and keep the original framework. However, Zhao Ji always feels that there is almost nothing. After all, being an antique, it will definitely not surpass the version of "What makes the sea" by the Film Studio.
Suddenly one day, he put forward a brand-new concept, "What if Nezha were a modern man?" From the team’s point of view, this idea is so cool that it can give people a chance to sit down and have a dialogue with the immortal character 3000 years ago.
This idea is very similar to "White Snake: The Origin", but the latter has not yet stepped onto the market to get feedback. This adaptation is somewhat risky for the team. Perhaps it is a willfulness. In short, Evonne doesn’t want to simply repeat the story, hoping to do something original. At this point, the embryonic form of The Rebirth of Nezha was formed.
In the movie, the masked man said to the man Li Yunxiang, "When I was a child, did your father put you on his lap and tell you the story of" What’s wrong with the sea? "
It seems that the other person is hinting at Nezha’s reincarnated identity, but in fact, this sentence is Evonne’s explanation of the origin of Nezha’s Rebirth.
"At that time, I wanted to" throw "White Snake."
With this idea, Evonne found Master Gui and asked him to try out a modern version of Nezha. The requirement was very clear. Don’t give Nezha the whole two drags, and then get him a motorcycle.
The whole thing was cool, and Mr. Turtle got high after listening to it. "Great, that’s ok."
Before Evonne found Master Gui, he and the producer decided to make the art of Nezha Rebirth into punk style. Punks’ unyielding and rebellious just fit the spirit of Nezha in their hearts.
This behavior is actually more risky than determining the idea of the story.
The average audience doesn’t know about punk, and even "punk" itself is a foreign word. Until later, because of the variety show "Summer of the Band", the general public began to be familiar with and understand what "punk" is.
But someone always needs to eat the first crab. Evonne and Master Gui decided to give it a try.
Later, they made a short film first, on the one hand, it was an exploration of style and technology, on the other hand, it was necessary to convince more people that punk was ok. "We feel that there should still be oriental elements in it, so as to bring the audience closer and convince them of the possibility of this fantastic idea."
After confirmation, Mr. Turtle, who is very punk in temperament, was excited. "I wanted to put White Snake: Origin aside and start Nezha Rebirth directly." At that time, he was troubled by the artistic modeling of Baoqingfang in White Snake: Origin.
Jokes are jokes, and Master Turtle finally handed over the high-quality White Snake: The Origin. Then, he began to write "Nezha Rebirth". At that time, he was more like the person who was reborn. His art scenes are very smooth, and even many scene styles are published in three versions. "There is nothing unsatisfactory, and each version has its own advantages. Finally, the director chooses according to the plot setting."
"Dragon Palace Office is the only regret"
When it comes to art design, Mr. Gui’s chatterbox is completely opened.
Punk emphasizes contradiction and conflict, and this concept is also embedded in the details of the scene. The city where the story happened is called Donghai City. The team spliced two kinds of urban landscapes, one is old Shanghai in the Republic of China, and the other is new york in the same period. The two forms the opposition between the East and the West, and at the same time creates a huge gap between the rich and the poor.
The main scene of the city actually corresponds to Shikumen in Shanghai. "When collecting wind, we saw those irregular and asymmetrical clothes poles and telephone poles, which made us feel particularly individual."
Besides, the Masked Man Warehouse and the Hanging Temple Hospital are the most satisfying scenes for Master Gui.
"The mask man gave me a particularly broad space to play. In our own words, it is a special character. He can integrate everything into his own environment. This state is especially in line with the art I have done. I can drag everything in and then do subtraction. The last thing that comes out makes me very happy. "
Scene map of masked man warehouse
With regard to the true identity of the masked man, Mr. Turtle put a lot of egg details in this scene, directly or indirectly, and even in one version, he gave instructions very clearly, but Evonne chose the more implicit plate type in the current version for plot consideration.
The masked man warehouse gave Master Gui a lot of freedom, while the Hanging Temple Hospital gave him a lot of whimsy.
"Don’t look at the Hanging Temple Hospital. It looks very mixed. In fact, I designed a set of architectural history for it and used a very complete system to tell why it changed from a temple to such a hospital." Mr. Gui once wanted to set up the hospital in the center of the city, but considering that the city was allocated by four families, he still chose to put this sacred place in the "three-no-care area" which has nothing to do with any rights and interests.
It seems that the whole process is very smooth, but the Dragon King’s office really stumped Master Gui. Although it doesn’t have too many visual elements, from an artist’s point of view, it is something worse after all. Evonne was not satisfied either, and the two men constantly overturned all kinds of plates until the current version was determined.
"Just for now, it has become my only regret for this movie." But after all, movies are an art of regret. If the Dragon Palace will appear again in the future, Mr. Turtle wants to readjust it.
"For the role performance style, please refer to Hot-blooded University"
When the first film "Rebirth of Nezha" was exposed overseas, it exploded on the Internet, which attracted not expectations, but all kinds of spit.
"Don’t talk about netizens, it’s embarrassing for us to watch it ourselves, but the audience who watched the whole film will know that it was an experiment and it didn’t appear in the feature film in the end." Mr. Turtle "started" his own work, and he was not at all polite.
Of course, at that time, the role design was the most criticized — — "The female host is like Alita" and "the male host is too like Wu Yifan". Even in the end, Wu Yifan, the stalk, did not even let the official himself go. The so-called official spit is the most deadly, which shows that this group of people really never play virtual.
Cui Yuemei, the role designer, did not shy away. "The Third Prince did refer to Wu Yifan’s performance. At that time, he looked like a gentleman in the park and had his own characteristics, so we made a reference."
In fact, every time she designs a role, she will look for many different references, such as reference to looks or reference to performance methods. The performance in "Hot-blooded University" is the object that Cui Yuemei has consulted the most.
Under this reference mode, many viewers’ greatest feelings after watching Nezha Rebirth are burning passion and blood.
All character designs are not simple. Li Yunxiang is the first character designed by Cui Yuemei in this work. She, Evonne and Master Gui have thought about many versions of modeling, and even in one version, Li Yunxiang is dressed in a Chinese tunic suit. After polishing over and over again, I finally got the present design.
When Li Yunxiang’s design is confirmed, the characters behind him will be much smoother. Of course, Cui Yuemei, who grew up watching "What a sea", also paid a lot of tribute to her role. "When I was a child, I was particularly impressed by the hag wearing a polka-dot skirt in the animation, so I came up with this idea when I decided on the role."
When it comes to "What’s Noisy about the Sea", we naturally think of such supporting characters as Xia Bing Xie. "We all designed them at the beginning, but in the end, we had to take them away because of the plot and other reasons." Cui Yuemei told us that there are actually "four killers" in the movies at first, including the soldiers and crabs.
"All the deleted plays have become subtitle eggs."
In fact, it’s not just these characters that have been deleted, but also many more exciting fighting scenes.
"When White Snake: The Origin, we cut 126 versions, and this time Nezha Rebirth will only be more." Editor Zhu Keer spent three years around "Nezha Rebirth", and the longest version, excluding the credits, lasted nearly 138 minutes.
This length of time is naturally not suitable for an animated film that wants to go on the market.
At the beginning, there was originally a racing scene with a man and Li Yunxiang. Considering that there was already a racing scene before, Zhu Keer and Evonne didn’t need to do it again, so delete it.
These adjustments are not a pity. When Li Yunxiang went to the Dragon King for the first time, there was actually a drama that was a mirror to the end, but it was finally deleted. "That scene was particularly handsome. We paid tribute to Uncle Face in Kingsman. He played a mirror to the end in the church." Between words, Zhu Keer has a lot of disappointment.
Evonne also loved the scene so much that he finally turned it into an egg and put it next to the film’s credits.
Before joining the light-chasing animation, Evonne had participated in many live-action movies, so this time when editing, he also proposed some editing methods that live-action movies prefer to appear.
At the beginning and end of the animation, Zhu Keer asked the protagonist to try to talk to the off-screen audience and try to break the fourth wall of the movie. "This way is not too much, one end is just right."
The editing work of Nezha Rebirth is actually a great breakthrough for her. As a cute girl, she has to face the rigid style of two men, Evonne and Gui Ye. "I often spit them out, and some things are really too’ straight’."
But it happened to be her presence that made this team a little more feminine.
Animated movies are different from live-action movies, and the editing department usually gets involved during the script. "In the earliest design, we cut out a very’ milk’ version of Li Yunxiang. Emotionally, he was a little biased towards his brother and sister, but in the end he considered his Nezha identity and maintained his current character. "
This time, the team is very restrained in emotional control, and the story orientation is very clear. The core is to do Li Yunxiang’s personal self-growth, not the love story like White Snake: The Origin. Although there are two female characters who seem to have emotional connection with Li Yunxiang in the film, there is no deeper emotional relationship in the end. As for whether there will be a story, "let the audience feel it for themselves."
So, how will the story after Nezha Rebirth develop? The egg at the end of the film has given the answer, and the next film will be about Yang Jian.
Mr. Gui assured us that he would be in charge of the whole series of fine arts and would have a very unified style. But as for what kind of plot it will be, he will not disclose more.
We joked that it is better to link up the first work of the light-chasing animation. After all, the goalkeeper was once a part of the story of "Feng Shen".
Guess is a guess, but at least from this Nezha Rebirth to the subsequent Yang Jian, the "New God List Series" of light-chasing animation is making a real animated film universe. This move may be even cooler than the movie!