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In the increasingly lively summer season, the animated film "Falling into the Mortal World" has been squeezed by several blockbusters, and its share of the screening schedule has been reduced to 3.1%. As of 21:00 on July 17, the cumulative box office of the film was 20.18 million yuan. The Lighthouse Professional Edition predicts that its total box office will be 38.29 million yuan, which is a big gap from the pre-release expectations. In contrast to the sluggish market performance, "Falling into the Mortal World" has won good audience reputation, better than the films released during the same period, and the single-day box office has also reversed the decline.

In recent years, first-tier domestic animated films have made visible progress in terms of technology, and top-notch technology can lead creators to any place they imagine. After the technology matures, audiences' demands for animated films are no longer limited to exquisite pictures and high-energy action scenes, but a good story that touches people's hearts.

During the release of the film, Yicai.com interviewed the director Zhong Ding and screenwriter Kang Fu of "Falling into the Mortal World". In the conversation with them, we can feel the importance that this creative team attaches to characters and stories. They hope to help the narrative and character creation of animated films to match the visual effects by introducing the method of film screenwriters. From this perspective, "Falling into the Mortal World" has done it. It tells a complete and smooth story with sincere emotions, and the animation technology serves the character creation and the plot.

Like many domestic animated films, Falling to Earth is also a new myth, but it bypasses popular IPs such as Investiture of the Gods and Journey to the West, and chooses the less popular legend of "Cowherd and Weaver Girl". It uses the unnamed descendant of the Weaver Girl in the legend as the protagonist, telling the story of the bond between the brother and sister. Therefore, Falling to Earth faces certain obstacles in opening up the market and getting the audience interested in watching the film. It is tantamount to a completely original new IP.

The current market performance sometimes makes Zhong Ding doubt whether the initial choice is a risk, but the original intention of telling a story about healing rifts and protecting family affection has never wavered. The difference of "Falling into the Mortal World" is that there is no hot-blooded young man leveling up to fight monsters, nor the impulse to fight against heaven and earth to become a god. It provides a gentle perspective on the world and life.

From graduation project to cinema film

"Falling into the Mortal Realm" was derived from a six-minute animated short film of the same name created five years ago. It is a graduation design work collectively created by 13 students from the 2020 Digital Entertainment and Derivative Studio of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.

This short film skillfully combines traditional Chinese embroidery techniques with the culture of the stars, with a lively and elegant style. The protagonist is a deity in charge of the stars, who uses water as silk, gold thread as a pen, seals the stars, and turns them into galaxies. The film has no dialogues, and uses animation language to outline the personalities of the hero and heroine, one cold and one naughty. After the short film was released on Bilibili, it has been played over a million times. The blank space at the end of the film where the stars break into the mortal world gives people a sense of reverie, revealing the possibility of it being developed into a movie.

Four years after the short film was released, the movie "Falling into the Mortal World" was released on July 12, and it has grown from a short film to a 118-minute feature film. On the basis of retaining the core creativity of the original work, it enriches and expands the worldview, creates a group of three-dimensional and vivid characters, and expands the scale a hundred times. Zhong Ding, who teaches at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, is the instructor of the short film "Falling into the Mortal World" and the director of the movie "Falling into the Mortal World", which is his first animated feature film. For him, four years is also a process of continuous learning from the academy to the industry. During this creation, the scrutiny of the script took the longest time.

Zhong Ding told Caixin that animated films place high demands on screenwriters, who need to have both animation thinking and film screenwriting skills. The current shortcoming of animated films in terms of storytelling is the lack of such talents. "At present, the domestic live-action film industry is relatively developed, and most directors and screenwriters are concentrated in this industry. The animation industry has just begun to develop and is in great need of outstanding talents. In fact, there are not many people who can really master it."

The addition of Kang Fu, a writer and screenwriter with experience in non-fiction writing and ghost novels, helped the animation team to establish the skeleton of the story for "Falling into the Mortal World", enrich the characters, and adjust the plot in accordance with the needs of animation creation and performance, so that the pictures and the story complement each other.

This was a collective creation with mutual respect. They reached a consensus on character creation and core expression. Compared with many domestic animations that emphasize the passion of fighting against heaven and earth, "Falling into the Mortal World" is a story about integration rather than confrontation, about tolerance rather than collision. The main plot tells the story of the children of the Weaver Girl - Jinfeng and Yulu, who searched and stumbled and found their home and relatives in the fireworks world. The line "Emotions are the magic of mortals" is the footnote of the whole movie, telling that there is love in the mortal world and the world is worth living.

Bridging rather than confronting

Different from the previous narrative convention of rewriting myths, the focus of "Falling into the Mortal World" is not on becoming a god, but on "becoming a human being". It unfolds from the encounters and experiences of Jinfeng, the descendant of the Weaver Girl, in the world of gods and the human world, telling the story of how a god becomes a mortal. In Kangfu's view, real life and emotions, joys and sorrows, separations and reunions, and setbacks and difficulties can better connect with the emotions of ordinary people than the ethereal stories of gods.

In terms of art style, we can also clearly feel the creator's preference for the human world. The God Realm is cold and solemn, with strict hierarchy, while the human world is bizarre and full of fantastic ideas. When Jinfeng was carrying out the task assigned by the God Realm to capture the stars, he came from the lonely God Realm to the gorgeous human world, and his clothes and state also changed from restraint to relaxation. The younger sister Yulu, who ignored the rules of the God Realm and had her own set of life wisdom, was lively, cute, and eccentric. The two experienced and experienced the cheerful city life together, overcame various difficulties and obstacles, and realized that their home and fetters were all in the mortal world, not in heaven.

The story tells the story of the Weaver Girl in a short space and few words. Different from the female image as a symbol in folk legends, the Weaver Girl in "Falling into the Mortal World" is both gentle and strong.

There have been folk legends about the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl since the Spring and Autumn Period, and each dynasty has different versions of the story. Kang Fu feels that in this legend, the Weaver Girl's face is always very vague, "You can't see her personality, she has no language or voice, only the beauty of a symbol. She was forced to marry the Cowherd at first, and then she was forced to separate from her children. During the process, she seemed to have no choice but to accept everything that fate brought her." In this era, based on the cognition of love, family and women, they created a new image of the oriental goddess.

The Weaver Girl in "Falling into the Mortal World" has a short screen time, but she has earned enough tears from the audience. The embroidery-style animation also brings a fresh and flowing visual experience to the audience. In the film, the Weaver Girl is a priest in charge of the twenty-eight constellations. In times of crisis, she resists the threat of the more powerful god of war with wisdom and courage. She falls into the mortal world not out of necessity, but an active choice. She protects her family and protects the people. In Kangfu's view, the duality of the Weaver Girl is worth writing about. It takes great courage to choose to fall into the mortal world, form a family with mortals, and have children. "She sticks to her duties as a priest, and bravely faces real life, experiencing birth, aging, illness and death."

The shadow of the Weaver Girl, the gentleness and broad-mindedness of the Golden Wind, and the wisdom and courage of the Jade Dew can be seen in the brother and sister to varying degrees. At the end of the story, the two join forces to repair the sky, using the magic tools and spells left by their mother to make up for the damage done to the human and god worlds by the God of War. It is very touching.

Kang Fu said that the character creation of "Falling into the Mortal World" tries to be closer to the texture of real-life movies, and there are many expressions of the characters' subtle emotions, which puts higher demands on animation technology, and its difficulty and cost are close to those of producing special effects scenes. "Animated movies are good at showing big scenes, the characters' great joys, sorrows and great love. "Falling into the Mortal World" expresses more of the protagonist's forbearing emotions and complex inner world, and such details are actually very expensive."

Driving the industry forward

As an animation teacher, Zhong Ding has been working hard to promote cooperation between the college and the industry. For the short film "Falling into the Mortal World", students are the main creators of the short film, and the animation company Yongsheng Animation provides technical support for the production. After the short film gained popularity on the Internet, it also attracted more investors to join, making the transformation of short films into feature films possible.

Zhong Ding believes that students are unrestrained in their creativity and their ideas are fresh and young, while enterprises rely on high costs for R&D. In the case of a lack of talent and limited costs, school-enterprise cooperation can make up for each other's shortcomings. "Students' ideas also have an ivory tower idealistic side and lack the awareness of commercial development. Mutual cooperation can promote the progress of the industry." "Falling into the Mortal World" is also the first work that has developed from a college graduation project into a theater movie.

Zhong Ding hopes that the movie "Falling into the Mortal Realm" can bring some confidence to students who are interested in animation creation. In the past few years, considering factors such as remuneration and prospects, it has been common for animation students to choose to work in game companies.

Zhong Ding told China Business News that most of the 13 students who participated in the short film went to game companies after graduation, three participated in the creation of the film project, one of them left the project team after completing his work, and two students stayed until the end. As the people who know "Falling into the Mortal World" best, they brought the genes of the short film to the feature film project, and worked as core creators with more than 2,000 other outstanding practitioners. In Zhong Ding's view, they experienced the development and production of the animated feature film throughout the process, and grew from graduates to excellent animation artists, which is also the value of this project.

Kangfu said that the creative team hopes to use this attempt as a case study to provide a reference for the industry. That is, to combine the dream-making skills of animated films with the delicate performances and character creation of live-action films, and put the story in a more important position. "We don't want to completely repeat the more reliable routines before, and want to create a more complex image. Now it seems that the market is indeed not very familiar with such products."

The Easter eggs in "Falling into the Mortal World" revealed that the story is yet to be continued, and Yu Lu's story is expected to be enriched and expanded in the sequel. The current box office performance is indeed lower than expected. Zhong Ding revealed that the cost of "Falling into the Mortal World" is at the level of first-tier animated films. Although investors and creators are willing to develop a sequel, the subsequent progress of the project will also depend on the final box office performance. The feedback and unremitting support from the audience still give Zhong Ding and Kang Fu confidence. They believe that as long as they can attract more audiences to the theater, "Falling into the Mortal World" will definitely resonate with more audiences. "We have been trying to get more people to see it."