There are more and more suspense dramas nowadays, and the audience's aesthetic fatigue is getting more and more serious. Making a suspense drama is not just about increasing the scale or the complexity of the case, but also requires innovation in character setting, audio-visual language, narrative structure and other aspects.
Recently, a seminar on "Sand Storm" was held in Beijing. The creative team and experts and scholars shared their views on the theme of suspense based on the series.
Sandstorm poster
The recently aired "Sandstorm" revolves around an eight-year-long boiler cremation case in the northwestern border town of "Kulu County". In 2004, the body of the widow Cheng Chun was found in the boiler of a heating station, and the case became an unsolved case due to insufficient evidence; eight years later (2012), the murderer who had confessed suddenly changed his confession, and a new corpse cremation case reappeared, forcing the veteran criminal police Chen Jianghe (played by Duan Yihong) and the young police Luo Yingwei (played by Zhang Yao) to restart the investigation and uncover the hidden truth behind the acquaintance society.
Tan Jiayan, the director of Sand Storm, said that one of the issues he wanted to explore in creating Sand Storm is the choices people make under extreme conditions and the causes of their consequences. "We not only want to show the choices made and the results obtained, but also want to reveal the causes behind these choices. We focus on the fictional border town of Kullu. As the wave of modernization sweeps in, what is the fate, predicament, and perseverance of the people left behind?"
Previously, suspense themes preferred the harsh Northeast or the humid South, but "Sand Storm" turned its attention to the Northwest.
Stills from Sandstorm
The creative team chose Guazhou, Gansu as the filming location. "When resources are exhausted, the prosperity disappears like a passing cloud, the crowds retreat, and people come and go according to the seasonality of work. Here we see people, things and objects that are relatively behind the times, and we feel that those people and things in our story seem to have a real foundation." Tan Jiayan said.
Stills from Sandstorm
In order to adapt to the vast and rugged Northwest land while maintaining a modern and independent thinking stance, "we adopted a semi-documentary image style in shooting, and the lighting is closer to the lighting effects of natural light, without too much dramatization. The performance requires the actors to pursue a natural and real life flow performance style." Tan Jiayan shared that at the narrative level, the series also uses "the creator behind and the camera in front" as the creative logic, and gives the audience the right to judge and the imagination space through objective recording and presentation.
Wang Qiang, who plays Wang Liang in Sand Storm, said that the character he plays has a thread in his heart - he lost his parents when he was young and has always longed for home and love, but with his limited cognition, he does not know how to express love. "So in the later presentation, he is the kind of person who sometimes flatters humbly and sometimes violently. He is in a more extreme, crazy and fragmented state. Because of his spiritual poverty, he has turned himself into an evil sandstorm."
Wang Qiang attended the seminar
Wang Qiang believes that during the three months of filming, he was deeply moved by the vastness and heaviness of Guazhou. "Because this story belongs to Wang Liang but not only to Wang Liang, all the people in the script, those individuals who are gradually marginalized in such an environment, their pain and anxiety are always in my heart."
Zhang Jianing plays Liu Yingying, the wife of Wang Liang. In the play, Wang Liang, as an adult, becomes the apprentice of Liu Sancheng, a worker at a heating station. He witnesses Liu Sancheng throwing the body of the widow Cheng Chun into the boiler and burning it. He then gives false testimony under Liu Sancheng's coercion, causing the innocent Ding Baoyuan to be wrongfully imprisoned for eight years. Liu Yingying is Liu Sancheng's adopted daughter, who was married to Wang Liang in exchange.
Liu Yingying has several different stages in the play, from junior high school to high school to college, to marriage and having children. Step by step, her appearance has changed a lot. In her early thirties, she has white hair, nasolabial folds, and eye bags. Zhang Jianing believes that these makeups help her get into the role faster.
Zhang Jianing attended the seminar
Zhang Jianing as Liu Yingying
Zhang Jianing's previous roles were all well-behaved and sensible. "When I got the script, I was attracted by Liu Yingying's complex psychology and character levels. Liu Yingying is like a tough thorn flower, struggling hard in adversity and trying to take root."
