"Falling into the Mortal Realm" has come to an end. How far has the "industrial school" model of Guangdong animation gone?
2024-08-21
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Recently, the movie "Falling into the Mortal Realm" came to a successful conclusion, but the model of school-enterprise cooperation it represents is a new starting point.
In June 2019, the graduation project "Falling into the Mortal World" produced by Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts teacher Zhong Ding and his student team was launched on Bilibili in the form of a movie PV short film. After the short film was launched, it won wide attention and praise for its unique creativity and excellent production. In 2024, "Falling into the Mortal World" successfully landed in theaters, becoming the first theater movie in China incubated by a graduate work of an academy.
As a model of the integration of industry, academia and research, "Falling into the Mortal World" not only presents a unique narrative charm and exquisite production technology, but also provides a new model to promote the innovative development of the film and television industry. With teachers and students as the team, the core work of the most core creative story script, storyboard, visual development, 3D testing, etc. was completed. Students partially participated in the subsequent animation, synthesis, special effects and other execution work, and Yongsheng's Iron Fan Studio provided technical support at the time.
Director Zhong Ding introduced that from the beginning of the short film, there were two teachers as instructors, and the director led 13 students from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts to develop it. When it came to the film stage, more professionals joined in, and finally two students persisted to the end. The entire project involved more than 2,000 artists and more than 50 outsourcing companies in the film production stage to complete it together.
Content incubation: cooperation between college creativity and market guidance
As soon as the movie "Falling into the Mortal Realm" was released, it captured the hearts of the audience with its clever narrative structure and outstanding art style. This is the first theatrical movie in China that was hatched from a college graduation work. Its successful release is inseparable from the in-depth cooperation between the school and the enterprise.
In fact, as early as 2017, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts had a trial cooperation with Yongsheng Animation, but it did not achieve a commercial breakthrough. In 2019, theatrical animation works continued to emerge, and the team rekindled the dream of making theatrical movies. Based on the previous cooperation foundation, the school and the enterprise optimized the cooperation model and process, and promoted the school-enterprise cooperation in the form of theatrical film projects from the beginning.
"Falling into the Mortal World" is based on the traditional story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. It not only benefits from the market guidance of the enterprise, but also has the innovation of academic works.Director Zhong Ding admitted that in the school-enterprise cooperation, the importance of enterprises lies in providing market guidance. "Since we want to create product-level content, we must pay attention to the market trend." Zhong Ding recalled, "At that stage, the company's judgment was that content adapted from folk tales and myths was a hot spot. We also think this is a good trend and hope to follow this big market development trend."
"Of course, we certainly can't do the same thing over and over again. What we should do is put new wine in old bottles and make some innovations on this basis." Zhong Ding believes that "the production of cinema films is a long process. In three to five years, the market will also change, so it is important to find another way. We avoided popular IPs such as Journey to the West and Fengshen, and were more fortunate to find a creative gap in the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. There are both folk tales that are familiar to the audience as a foundation, and there is room for the development of new characters and stories."
The final effect of "Falling into the Mortal World" not only takes into account the characteristics of academic creativity and design aesthetics, but also reaches the industrial level to a certain extent. "The latter is actually very important. If we want to promote a project to the market and win the favor of investors, we need to have more commercial operations and present it in a more mature appearance." Zhong Ding said.
School-enterprise cooperation: talent training and new track development complement each other's strengths and weaknesses
"Falling into the Mortal World" was originally a graduation project led by Zhong Ding and his students. When it was actually put on the screen, Zhong Ding was sincerely pleased: "These graduation projects are projects that students have devoted a lot of youth and blood to complete. The school-enterprise cooperation provides them with a way to realize their dreams." Zhong Ding feels sorry for his students' graduation projects every year, because most of the graduation projects can only be used to find jobs or as a summary of four years of study in college, which is limited to the scope of the "ivory tower" of colleges and universities. He believes that "there are actually many good ideas and good presentations in it, which can be seen by more people and even have great commercial development potential."
At the same time, he also believes that students can gain an in-depth understanding of market demand, industry conditions, and industrial processes through school-enterprise cooperation, and truly embed themselves into a complete and mature industrial system, laying a solid foundation for future career development. "For example, the tool software and production concepts used in the production process can only be understood after entering the enterprise." Students can also clarify their role in this process based on their early exposure to the entire production process, and have a clear prediction of their future.
On the other hand, students can also witness the entire production process of their creative designs and the iteration of production results. "In this process, they can also prove their ideas and even adjust and optimize some of their designs. I think this kind of feedback mechanism and experience is also very rare," said Zhong Ding.
In Zhong Ding's view,School-enterprise cooperation is actually a process of learning from each other's strengths and making up for each other's weaknesses.Both enterprises and colleges have their own strengths and limitations.The strengths of colleges and universities lie in the creativity, design, innovative experiments, and practical ideas of teachers and students; the strengths of enterprises lie in their relatively complete industrialized production mechanisms and market-oriented project development experience. School-enterprise cooperation combines the advantages of both and forms a benign cooperative production mechanism.
For enterprises, the demand for internal research and development is large, but the cost is relatively high. The cost of trial and error in colleges and universities is relatively low, which can effectively make up for the R&D gap of enterprises. "Yongsheng Animation has actually always wanted to open up its own path in the track of 'youth-oriented Chinese animation films'," said producer Huang Long. "Although we have achieved great success in traditional children's content, when developing new routes, we still need some forward-looking research or some trial and error. These trials and errors are relatively costly for enterprises, so our cooperation with colleges and universities can actually be more controllable in terms of costs. Of course, colleges and universities can also break away from the rigid thinking of enterprises and generate new ideas and new ways of expression, which is very beneficial to enterprises."
Unique advantages of Guangdong animation: openness, diversity, tenacity and daring spirit of Guangdong
Zhong Ding believes thatThe advantage of school-enterprise cooperation in Guangdong lies in the relatively complete cooperation mechanism and platform."Excellent colleges like Guangdong Academy of Fine Arts have many outstanding talents. Moreover, the school is relatively open-minded and supports the school-enterprise cooperation model. The supporting measures are relatively complete and can understand the needs of enterprises." On the other hand, Guangdong's original power and manufacturing industry are very developed. Whether in the field of games, film and television or toys, there are excellent companies working on it, and the companies are willing to do some forward-looking research and development projects, which provides a good opportunity for school-enterprise cooperation.
In terms of academics, the school also actively absorbs the nourishment of traditional culture and local culture and conducts research and creation. "For example, we have tried to create the lion dance culture." Director Zhong Ding said. The movie "Falling into the Mortal World" actually contains Guangdong elements. In addition to herbal tea, the tolerance of Guangdong people and the combination of modern and traditional are also reflected in the film. "Although there are no direct elements or iconic pictures, the influence of the land of Guangdong and some influences on concepts are still very profound for us. The core of the film is still very Guangdong spirit."
In the opinion of producer Huang Long,The unique advantages of Guangdong's animation industry lie in its diversity and resilience.Yongsheng Animation's IP layout and matrix are very diverse. Huang Long said: "We have produced many nationally famous industrial IPs, such as Peppa Pig, Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, and Boonie Bears. They have formed a very good closed loop and created a variety of gameplay. At the same time, insisting on content is also a major feature of Guangdong animation companies. For example, Peppa Pig will be 20 years old next year. It is not easy for an animation IP to remain evergreen and be loved by young people in the past two years."
"There is also the way Cantonese people tell stories. We hope to focus more on oriental aesthetics and express oriental emotions." Huang Long said that Chinese people care a lot about the concept of family, so in the narrative of "Falling into the Mortal World", the director and producer also showed more stories of brothers and sisters, and the stories of the entire family. He hopes that every audience who sees "Falling into the Mortal World" can cherish the people around them and convey the power of family affection.
Nanfang.com, Guangdong Study reporter Zhu Qilin and Cao Xiaojing
Intern Editor Chen Kunyue Xiang Junhao
