As soon as Station B’s self-produced drama "Ancient Lovesickness" started broadcasting, it caused widespread heated discussions because of the reverse order broadcasting method. The producer of the project, Wang Zhejun, said that the way of broadcasting in reverse order is based on the characteristics of the project, "We are a story of reverse time flow, and we hope that more Bilibili users can see our innovations at a glance."

This innovation did arouse the audience's interest in opening the series. The series quickly broke the circle with its novel setting and good series quality, and gained a high reputation of 8.6 points on Douban.

"Ancient Lovesickness" poster

In addition to broadcasting in reverse order, there is another interesting aspect of this project: its idea comes from the original plot of the mixed-cut video of the UP master of station B, "Three Thousand Fish". At that time, this video had a high click-through rate on station B, and many people called for it in the bullet screen. It would be great if it could be adapted into a drama. Unexpectedly, the official of Station B actually did this. Wang Zhejun said frankly that one of the starting points for the project "Ancient Acacia" is based on "respecting the voice of users".

On the other hand, the establishment of the project is also based on the long-term layout of Station B. According to relevant sources, in 2021, the Bilibili film and television production center proposed three points: IP, high-quality, and ecological. Feed back station B to form an ecological closed loop.

"Ancient Acacia" seems to be a typical case in this ecological closed loop. Wang Zhejun introduced that "Ancient Acacia" will not be an isolated case, and works like this "will continue and be screened all the time." The purpose of screening is: the content can represent the needs and aesthetic requirements of young audiences. Secondly, creators are willing to create content with users. "Creating content is not only the main creation. in the creation."

Character relationship diagram in the play

A mixed-cut video made by an UP master has developed into a serious film and television project. This kind of "magic unfolding" seems to only happen on Bilibili, which has a large number of user-generated content and has the courage to innovate. And developing the original content of UP masters into TV dramas, compared with the mode of acquiring novel IPs to adapt screenplays, what is the difference? Wang Zhejun said confidently that from the original IP to the director, screenwriter, editor, actor... almost every creative link of this project has the figure of the UP master of station B, which is why the show can win the audience's approval key. "They are very clear about the ecology and style of play of station B, and the content needs of the audience at station B, and they can create content very accurately according to the audience's preferences. Therefore, compared with other projects or projects with friends, we are more Can grasp the audience's aesthetic preferences and content needs."

For example, Zhizhu, the director of the show, has a large number of fans on multiple social platforms because of the popular short dramas "The Long Princess Is Above" and "Donglan Snow", with more than 1.1 million fans on station B alone. Although this is Zhizhu's first time directing a long drama, "she already has the ability to control the shooting of long dramas, and she is very familiar with the users of station B." Wang Zhejun praised Zhizhu, "So we try our best to Create a safe space for her to use her talent."

At the same time, the play also invited a large number of UP hosts from station B to participate in guest appearances. Their appearances are not only guest appearances, but also bring continuous material output for the later announcement of the play. "Let them produce more relevant materials in a way that is deeply bound to the project. For example, La Hongsang, a famous UP master at Station B, although her role is not many, she has produced a lot of materials, such as her The diary on the set, her experience of the crew. These drama-related materials spontaneously produced by these UP masters have formed a content linkage and also played a very good role in publicity.”

Rahung Sang's group performance experience

The gameplay is novel, and the content must be excellent to form the current word-of-mouth. The misplaced timeline of "Ancient Lovesickness" brings new ideas and also brings difficulty in creation. "The special thing about this drama is that we tuned a scene, which may bring about a chain reaction of many scenes. It is necessary to adjust a few other scenes immediately, but after these few scenes are adjusted, we will look at the rhythm and the context of the whole story, and we may find that we need greater adjustments.”

Therefore, the revisions are almost endless. According to Wang Zhejun, in the script stage of "Ancient Lovesickness", the team retreated three times. It is not a small adjustment, and there are at least six drafts of overthrowing and re-doing revisions. This is for a For a 14-episode low-cost series, it is a relatively rare modification.

"The script is difficult. First, it is difficult at the level of scripting skills. Every time the male protagonist travels, what is the logical reason, what is the key action, what are the goals of the core characters, and what is the impact. We have to take so many things , the integration is condensed into a very short plot time, which is very difficult; the second difficulty is how to present an IP generated at station B to the audience of station B in an original way, we cannot say that after the modification , "Old Acacia" becomes another story."

"Ancient Lovesickness" stills

The filming cycle of "Ancient Acacia" is 30 days, but the pre-production took nearly a year, and the official preparation took four months, which is no less than the preparation time of a large-scale costume drama in the industry. Thanks to the adequate preparations in the early stage, the filming of "Ancient Acacia" went very smoothly, with a high degree of cooperation from various departments, "all fully committed."

Wang Zhejun recalled that there was a scene in the play where the male protagonist traveled back to ancient times for the second time to meet the female protagonist. There was a scene where a street juggler breathed fire. "This scene is not included in our script. When we arrived at Xiangshan and there were still 5 days before the shooting, when everyone read the script for the last time, Zhizhu proposed to add such a scene, which is a metaphor for the hero and heroine at that time. where the characters in the movie go."

Don't look at just adding a shot, it is actually quite a test for the production team. The whole crew is involved in the whole body. The adjustment of a scene and the shot, the actor department, the service department, the venue coordination, and the overall planning and scheduling must all be involved. React and change quickly. However, from the moment the director proposed the idea to the realization of the idea, the entire team only took a day and a half.

Screenshot of "Ancient Lovesickness", the male and female protagonists standing at both ends of the jugglers

In addition to "Ancient Lovesickness", the previous self-produced dramas of station B such as "Sanyue Has a New Job" and "The Sky of the Wind Dog" have achieved quite good reputation and popularity. "Taking "Sanyue Has a New Job" as an example, it was indeed a very innovative theme at the time, and it was rarely touched by people in the funeral industry. We dared to do it. A big reason is because we know that the audience on our platform is very acceptable. It is very high, so we dare to experiment and explore."

For any platform, "breaking the circle" of the series is a difficult problem for every project. For station B, in terms of volume, experience and user base, it is still difficult to compete with Aiyouteng, but as one of the most active online platforms for domestic "tap water" and second-generation UP owners, it has a large number of user-generated content. The blue ocean of IP and the publicity advantages brought by the strong cohesive community culture are its sharp weapons in "breaking the circle" of film and television works. Wang Zhejun said that the special platform ecology can bring help in publicity and distribution, but if you want to break through the circle, you must go back to the basics and the content itself must be excellent. "First of all, it is necessary to make it a good work. This is the first priority. Good content is always the root of breaking the circle, and technical means and channel blessing are second."