On October 13, during the 7th Pingyao International Film Festival, a forum with the theme of "Words and Audiovisuals" was held in the foyer of Pingyao Film Palace. Novelist Ban Yu, director and screenwriter Liu Miaomiao, film producer, screenwriter and planner Wang Hongwei gathered together. The conversation was hosted by poet and critic Ouyang Jianghe. He said that literature has transformed into film and television, and in turn, film and television may also transform into literature in a more complex dual sense. "The transformation between the two is dual and mutual."

According to reports, the Pingyao International Film Festival has set up a "Migration Plan·From Literature to Film and Television" unit since the sixth edition to promote the development of films and TV series based on literary masterpieces of different types and styles. This year, 16 more literary works suitable for film and television adaptation and seeking film and television copyright transactions have come into the spotlight and attracted much attention. At the same time, the Pingyao International Film Festival specially invites writers who have experience in film and television adaptations and screenwriting of their works, as well as people in the film industry who have participated in the creation of literary adaptations, to discuss the migration from words and phrases in books to audio-visual language at a practical level.

Forum site

"Movies will be finished if they don't follow literature."

Liu Miaomiao got straight to the point when he spoke, "My mentor, Mr. Situ Zhaodun, a senior professor at the Beijing Film Academy, once said that movies will be finished if they don't follow literature. My second work "Crashing Horseshoes" was produced by the Nanjing Military Region It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Jiang Qitao, a writer in the Creative Office of the Political Department. At that time, the writers adapted their novel into a movie called 'Electric Shock', but people generally have a fear of 'Electric Shock'."

She said that at Xiaoxiang Film Studio back then, there was not only a literature department, but also a deputy director of literature who was responsible for script creation. "Usually they are held by some famous writers, such as Hunan writers Tan Tan and Mo Yingfeng, who have been leaders of our Literature Department. At that time, the Literature Department took a very long time to compile manuscripts, because most of the supervisors were also writers or came from the Chinese Department, which was very I have a vision. The script does not mean that I will shoot it this year, but just write it last year. When I find good works in publications, I will invite the corresponding writers to the studio to discuss the script. Maybe three or four years ago, the literary department of the film studio and someone The writer said, we have drafted your work, but it has not been filmed in the fifth year, or it is still being revised repeatedly. Writers are very afraid of this. Almost all writers know that whether their novels or scripts, in the end It was a very long process to be made into a movie by a state-owned film studio. At that time, there were only a few studios that could make movies."

"In the early 1990s, the birth of a film script, I think, is more of a process of spiritual communication between a literary creator and a film director. I am very grateful to all the writers who have collaborated with me. A film director must obtain literary The nourishment of the Writers Award and the Literature Award must be like this, and I have always benefited from it." Liu Miaomiao said.

Director and screenwriter Liu Miaomiao

"The first label of "The Long Season" is life"

With the popularity of this year's online drama "The Long Season", the writer Ban Yu who participated in the script planning has once again entered the public eye, and the movie "Xiaoyao·You" adapted from his novel of the same name has also been shortlisted for this year's Pingyao Film Festival "Hidden Dragon" unit.

Ban Yu said with a smile that fate is a wonderful thing. "In 2004, Xin Shuang brought his band to Shenyang to perform, and I went to see it. Unexpectedly, when we met again in 2019, he was already the director. At that time, he had just finished filming "The Hidden Corner" and it had not yet been broadcast. I am very interested in my novels "Panjin Leopard" and "Winter Swimming". At the end of 2021, his producer called me and asked me to go to Beijing to discuss the adaptation of the "Long Season" script."

The web drama "The Long Season" is adapted from the novel "The Blade of Winter" by writer Yu Xiaoqian. Ban Yu asked Xin Shuang what point in the original script he was most interested in. "He told me that it was not those cases that moved him the most, but rather a scene in them: a corpse case occurred in Hualin, policeman Ma Desheng showed up at the factory living area, and the car's spare tire was stolen. This When Wang Xiang appeared, he was the master of this area. He knew who liked to do sneaky things, and he quickly found the spare tire. Xin Shuang said that he especially liked this kind of scene, a life-oriented one. Details can establish characters. In fact, every drama will have several labels. For example, in "The Long Season", the first label given by the director is life, then plot, and maybe suspense or crime in the end. This one In the play, the answer to the case is not its most important expression. The director wants to talk about the era, the emotions of the era, and the scars on the people who have been crushed by the era. This is the part that interests him. Later, we added the details of the script to the story. The timeline, some plots, and character relationships have been reorganized," Ban Yu said.

Ban Yu participated in the second creation of the script for "The Long Season". "One of the things I talked about with the director at the time was that I really wanted to write these characters in the play as my own family, and the feelings of family are not just your parents, uncles, and uncles in the Northeast environment. It seems to be abstracted and condensed from every life. The image that comes out is a kind of lively and sincere existence that is close to you and sometimes incomprehensible to each other. We discussed for a long time, the last set of snow falling scenes in "The Long Season", Xin Shuang said The feeling on the cover of the novel "Winter Swimming" is a bit similar, and my feeling comes from Joyce's "The Dead". In the end, a heavy snow fell on the land of Ireland, falling on every living and dead person. Everyone There is always such a falling snow in life.”

Talking about this collaboration with Liang Ming, Ban Yu introduced that the director had made a special trip from Beijing to Shenyang to play his previous film "Under the Sun" for him. "There is one thing about this movie that particularly touched me. The Northeast that Liang Ming shot is not the old Northeast that everyone thought of in the 1990s, but the current northern environment that is both white and a little dirty, both cute and a little disgusting. , and the stories of those people. This is where he uses images to explain and solve contemporary issues."

"When it came to the script adaptation of "Xiaoyao·you", our cooperation was very smooth. I adhere to an idea. There is often such translation and transformation between literature and movies. The director has the director's ideas. That is not what I am best at. . The script was written by the director himself, and everyone would revise it. Because the story of the movie takes place in Shenyang, I may be more familiar with what Shenyang people are like, how they speak, and what their emotions are, so I provided some suggestions."

Novelist Ban Yu

"'Words and audio-visuals' are the ontology of the two art forms of literature and film"

Wang Hongwei’s speech started with the literature department in the state-owned film studio era and the corresponding planning department today. "After the reform and opening up, with the rise of literature, the concept of film creators at that time was to be close to literature. It was an era when films derived nutrition and roots from literature. Now the film and television company has changed the literature department to planning The Department, or the Development Department or the Project Department, seems to be responsible for the functions of the Literature Department before, but the nature is actually different. Now they are all looking for projects. From the low to the high before, I feel that I have to trace the source to find the big river. The idea of Yuan Yuan has become to look down from high to low, go hunting for various IPs in the sand, and look for ideas that can be adapted into movies in the future and make money. The key difference behind this is that movies are works of art after all. Or entertainment products?”

"The reason is that after the 1990s, domestic films were once facing a situation of dying. At the same time, the literary works of Yu Hua, Su Tong, Mo Yan, etc., including Wang Shuo, gradually became unreadable. This double fault It was only after the 21st century that it gradually recovered. What was restored first was the so-called marketization and commercialization of movies, and everyone wanted to make genre films. In this way, all film directors and screenwriters have to retake lessons to learn the rules of genre films. There is no good way You can copy the text, but you can only edit it yourself. In the era of planned economy, the film studio system gradually collapsed, private companies emerged, and the words "Literature Department" began to disappear. These problems are actually connected together. "

Chinese films have accumulated over the past ten years in the new century. Although there has been a crazy bubble, the number of screens in the film market has become one of the best in the world. "Audiences are beginning to be willing to spend money to watch movies. When watching commercial Chinese-language films, they will face a new shortage. Movies need to get nutrition from literature again. At the same time, a group of new writers have also emerged, such as Shuang Xuetao, Ban Yu, Zheng Zhi, etc. In recent years, many movies have been adapted from literary novels. You said that whether movies and literature are combined or complementary, this is actually the inevitability of the times."

In Wang Hongwei's view, the two words "words and audiovisual" are the essence of the two art forms of literature and film. "Since two words can be used to identify their respective ontological concepts, the ultimate goal of our discussion is not to compete between these two arts. Why did Wang Shuo not write a novel for a long time before "My Thousand Years Cold" ? It’s because he can’t write novels after getting more involved in movies. When a writer already has a relatively complete film and television thinking, it will definitely affect his novel thinking as a writer. So whether he is a literature lover or a filmmaker, he must be determined Make your own choices. You must understand very firmly that literature is literature and movies are movies. As long as you understand these two things, whether you are a writer or a director, you can create works that best suit your art form. "

Screenwriter and planner Wang Hongwei