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In 2019, the three-episode documentary "Haihunhou" was broadcast with overwhelming success. Now when you open Bilibili, the screen is full of comments and the rating is 9.8. The film meticulously records the entire process of the archaeological excavation of the Haihunhou Tomb over the past three years, with suspense after suspense, like a high-quality suspense novel.

"Haihunhou"

The documentary opens with a "suspense story".

Xiong Jusheng, a villager from Guanxi Village, found a huge hole on the mountain. The soil at the entrance of the hole was new, and it was obvious that it had been dug not long ago. The villagers had a hunch that something was wrong, because they all knew that there was an ancient tomb on Dingdun Mountain. So the villagers immediately called the TV station's news hotline.

Just like that, "the richest krypton gold boss in the Han Tomb world" - Liu Momo (Liu He) turned out to be born.

Zhang Li, the film's director, said in an exclusive interview with The Paper, "Throughout the ages, not only documentaries, but all literary and artistic creations, including news, all use the same technique - what the ancients called a phoenix head, a pig belly, and a leopard tail."

"Revealing a secret around the gold and silver treasures that tomb robbers might have stolen naturally creates a suspenseful story that will grab the audience. The villagers reported that when the archaeological team arrived, they found a very valuable tomb. The audience was attracted little by little. This is a storytelling method, which is the beginning part. What methods are used to attract the audience? They are similar. The difference lies in whether they are used properly. "Haihunhou" is a relatively standard work, which completely follows the model of the "Discovery Journey" column in the past, which solved historical mysteries layer by layer."

Afterwards, Zhang Li gave another counterexample.

"A bad production technique is to rush in and talk about big principles and meanings, and put a big hat on first; there is also a routine technique, the so-called 'inspiration', white clouds are floating, spring breeze is rippling, and people are already expressing their feelings before they know what happened. They don't know whether it is beautiful or not, and after singing and sighing for a while, they will tell you what happened. In fact, the audience knows, but they have already left. So we will avoid this kind of 'big beginning' storytelling. If we want a good ending, we still have to use a very specific thing to keep people."

Zhang Li graduated from the Chinese Department of Beijing Normal University in July 1984. After graduation, he was assigned to Beijing Science and Education Film Studio as a director. In 1988, he filmed large-scale scientific documentaries "The Price of Growth" and "The Vast Land and the Chinese People". Among them, "The Price of Growth" won the Best Science and Education Film Award at the 9th China Film Golden Rooster Awards. In 2004, he served as the director of the editorial office of Beijing Science and Education Film Studio and the producer of CCTV's "Journey of Discovery". After 2012, he served as deputy editor-in-chief and art director of China Film Group Corporation. From 2021 to now, he has served as a senior consultant of Bilibili.

As a "Xinjiekou craftsman", Zhang Li, on the one hand, retains the solid creative skills of a craftsman, and on the other hand, always seeks innovation with an open mind.

"Peel off the layers and grab them layer by layer"

"Nowadays, when it comes to topic selection, major platforms pay more attention to the audience's feelings, especially online media. Bilibili pursues general knowledge, breaks through limitations, and is not bound by them. Why are the contents produced by Up masters so good? Because they dare to break the constraints of rules and regulations. Of course, it is not ruled out that some content is similar to clickbait and sensational, but they are more flexible and skilled in how to tell stories." Zhang Li said.

20 years ago, when the high-quality science column "Journey of Discovery" first debuted, it tried hard to explore the way of "storytelling".

From the "Deep Space Star Hunter" about chasing supernovas, to the "Sword of the King" about solving the mystery of the owner of the ancient sword, to the "Solving the Mystery of Hate" about searching for the world's earliest flowers, it can be said that every step is a lotus.

"Sword of the King" temporarily participated in the China Television Association Documentary Academic Award and won the second prize and the Best Writer Award. "Solving the Mystery of Hate" won the first prize in the Science and Education Film and Television Association's Science and Education Program Category.

Zhang Li recalled: "When Discovery Journey was first created, archaeology was not the primary content. It was an all-round science program, and archaeology was classified as a social science. The rise of archaeology programs is more importantly related to the audience's expectations. Archaeology is easy to tell stories, and it is not deliberate. It gradually became the focus of the column."

Every archaeological discovery is like opening a blind box. After revealing the secrets layer by layer, you can trace back history or even reshape history.

Zhang Li believes that archaeology provides hard evidence, and the information brought by unearthed cultural relics is first-hand, not word of mouth, nor relying on more subjective texts; after scientific analysis and demonstration, it can be closer to the truth. The practice of opening blind boxes in archaeology coincides with the creators' "storytelling" skills.

Step by step, it attracts the audience like a hook. When one hook starts to loosen, another hook is thrown in. The creative principle is simple to say, but it is not easy to implement. Zhang Li calls this "peeling off layers by layers and grasping them layer by layer."

As we all know, whether it is documents, unearthed cultural relics, or expert research papers, they all provide arguments.

"The evidence only makes the thesis more tenable. What needs to be made clear is that what really attracts the audience is definitely not the evidence, which sounds boring. What really attracts people is the process of argumentation. In the final analysis, these are the requirements for middle school essays, but few people can do it well. How to use evidence to prove the thesis? Your thesis must also be tenable, so there is the 'leopard tail' of the syllogism. What does 'leopard tail' mean? After watching the film, it feels like being whipped by a leopard's tail. The pain lasts for a month. To put it another way, it lingers in the ears for three days, which can evoke endless aftertaste. Only this kind of thing is perfect."

Approaching Science

Maintaining diversity is more in line with the conditions of modern society

You can tell a story for one thousand and one nights, but if you can't be eloquent, how can you strike the right balance in suspense?

Zhang Li believes that at a certain stage, when ratings become the primary evaluation indicator, the more miraculous the deception, the more people will watch it. By the time the audience realizes they have been fooled, the ratings have already been collected. The platform's first mission is to educate, but it also needs to make a profit, which depends on advertising, and advertising depends on ratings. This seems contradictory, but it is actually a system problem.

Zhang Li believes that "if you want to achieve self-consistency you must stick to the core principles."

"Good content and good techniques are not contradictory. It's just that the techniques are used inappropriately, and the pursuit of ratings is pure, which leads to vulgarity. After Bilibili started to engage in general knowledge, there is a common principle. The first principle is not science itself, but the scientific spirit. We always talk about using the scientific spirit to make documentaries. With this attitude, you will not go astray. Things that violate the scientific spirit may be popular for a period of time, but they cannot stand up to scrutiny."

Since 2018, science and technology programs have appeared in large numbers. Traditional TV stations have launched a number of science programs at once, but most of them have low ratings. Whether it is "Geeks Go", "Go! To the Future", or "I Am the Future", none of them has exceeded 1. They have been well received but not popular. The overall performance of science and technology programs is not ideal.

There are even fewer documentaries on science and technology. Apart from a few obvious IPs such as the engineering science documentary "Super Project", "Super Equipment" which presents China's heavyweight industrial manufacturing, and the artificial intelligence documentary "Innovative China", there are also rare ones such as the environmental and natural ecology documentary "A Global Community of Common People", and the ten-episode documentary "Exploring Artificial Intelligence" produced by "Yang Lan Interviews", Chinese documentary makers rarely involve this field. On the one hand, it is because the subject matter is difficult to grasp and the technical threshold is high. On the other hand, it is because scientific discoveries and achievements are not easy to explain in a simple and easy-to-understand way.

"The poor ratings for hard science content, is it a problem of audience preference or a problem with the creators?" the reporter asked.

"We don't need to be too anxious about hard science content. The general direction is definitely good. The platform will have its own audience diversion, and the up-host will naturally select his group. Those who like to watch entertainment will go to this platform, and those who like hard-core knowledge will go to that platform. There is no need to worry about the audience's appreciation level. We can see the changes in recent years with our naked eyes. Of course, it takes time to improve the average scientific literacy of the public. Just like looking at the comment area at ordinary times, there are also good and bad. I think maintaining a kind of diversity may be more in line with the situation of modern society."

What did the world's earliest flower look like? When and where did it originate? More than a hundred years ago, when Darwin asked himself this question, he never expected that it would become a "nasty mystery" that puzzled later generations for more than a century. Later, the "Liaoning Ancient Fruit" unveiled the mystery and became the world's earliest flower with definite evidence to date.

Talking about paleontology, Zhang Li talked about the documentary called "Searching for the First Flower" (also known as "Solving the Hateful Mystery"). Because they needed to find reference images at the time, the team looked for them in Spielberg's movie "Jurassic Park". In the Jurassic period, there were early angiosperms, something that looked like fruit, but without flowers. The director searched frame by frame, but didn't see a single flower.

Zhang Li sighed, "It can be seen that director Spielberg also adheres to the scientific spirit in his creation. Later, the director of "Searching for the First Flower" made "Where Did the Dinosaurs Go?", which talks about the closest relationship between today's birds and dinosaurs. 10 years ago, we made quite a lot of paleontological films, but the Internet was not well developed at that time, so not many people watched it. Secondly, compared with other themes, paleontology is indeed more expensive to produce. Going back 10 years, we had to rely on 3D animation to draw dinosaurs, and the problem of dinosaur hair could not be solved. Once it was done, it would look fake. Now that AI technology is constantly improving, I believe that there will be more documentaries on paleontology in the future."

There is a threshold for the production of history

Science programs always give people a stern impression. Should they be entertaining? Where is the right limit for entertainment?

"From the perspective of production, entertainment is definitely a very good means of creation. Some foreign platforms have even shouted out such a slogan, 'No entertainment, no death'." Zhang Li believes that "it still has a basis, it can popularize science, but it must comply with the scientific spirit. For example, "Historical Matters" produced by Bilibili is very entertaining and even contains ridicule, but it must not violate historical facts. You can't talk nonsense about history that didn't happen, and you can't say that white is black. Academic disputes are allowed, but they must be real disputes, not made up disputes. This is a standard for definition. Entertainment means should basically be We should encourage them. This includes the hosts. Audiences will say that there are no good hosts for science documentaries, either because they are too rigid or because they have poor scientific literacy. In fact, we should try more and be bolder. Many knowledge-based hosts are refreshing. Some international media have been training in this area for a long time and it has become a viewing habit. For example, Sir David Goldberg is almost 100 years old. For a while, he was replaced by a middle-aged person, and the ratings immediately dropped. This is the formation of an appreciation habit. Even if he is inconvenient to move and can only talk symbolically, I still want to watch it because it is a kind of trust that has been established over a long period of time. "

"Historical Things"

Zhang Li said that archaeology, history, and cultural relics are definitely an important direction for B Station documentaries. "This year, B Station launched "My Home is a Museum". We intervened from another angle, that is, ordinary people, can they have a pursuit of cultural relics? From an individual perspective, a love for collection, history, and cultural relics is more close to the people. "But There Are Still Books" talks about the Beijing Library, which is actually a museum. There is also "Only the Fragrance Remains the Same", which has a good Douban score. It uses incense to run through historical figures. I think it is also a breakthrough. B Station's historical and cultural up masters sometimes rank first in traffic. What does it mean? There is indeed a hard demand, but the historical category has a threshold in production, and not all teams can shoot it well."

My Home is a Museum

Only the Fragrance Remains the Same

Before the 1990s, cinemas would play extra films before playing each main film. These extra films were usually news films and science and education films. The state stipulated that the extra film duration could not be shorter than 20 minutes.

Why can't we continue?

Zhang Li said, "The cinema system relies on box office revenue. If we remove the extra films, we can show at least two more feature films a day. Any change is a market choice. In the past, film studios declined and TV stations prospered. Now TV stations are facing challenges. The Internet is changing with each passing day. Communication media has been changing all the time. It is a choice of social development, and production units must keep up with this change. Is it wrong to remove the extra films? Not necessarily. The Internet has a wider range of communication and a greater impact. Is it good or bad for the works? For creators, they can receive feedback as soon as the film is released. In the past, they thought that the barrage was annoying and always interfered with watching the film. Gradually, they started to watch it twice. The first time was without the barrage, and the second time they had to turn on the barrage. Later, they could watch them at the same time. The reason is very simple, they can know the user's evaluation of the film at the first time. Users are actually very powerful. They can often pick out some flaws from the film, which is definitely a boost to creation."

Zhang Li finally emphasized, "On the one hand, state support is good, but relying solely on support is indeed a challenge. On the contrary, using audience demand to promote the development of things is often more effective than subjective drive. Even if no one asks, we have to do it. Therefore, demand is always an important driving force for development. In fact, it also proves that the choice of society is a very real choice. All content has a corresponding market, as long as our creative level can reach it."