Exclusive analysis ｜ Why does script killing make film writers so ＂top＂？

Special feature of 1905 film network "From’ killing’ last night to three o’clock in the morning," before entering the recording studio, screenwriter Ke Zhang took the lead in sharing the latest experience of script killing. "To tell the truth, it was really top-notch."

As a new offline social game in recent years, script killing, which takes reasoning as the axis and takes into account the interests of different types, has not only become one of the best choices for the general public in leisure, but also won the favor of professional screenwriters.

By the end of 2020, there have been more than 30,000 offline stores nationwide. According to Jia Tongtong, the owner of Beijing You Mao Ni Script Reasoning Agency, every weekend and other holidays, there are almost as many players coming to the store, and it is not uncommon to make an appointment.

Meng Xin, who was regarded by friends as an "hardcore" script to kill players, is still worried about the last experience of trusting the "murderer". Regardless of victory or defeat, that immersive experience is still the driving force for her next save. "The script kills me. What attracts me most is that I can immerse myself in my role and enjoy a different life."

As few as one person, more than ten people. Just a relatively closed place, carefully read the unknown scripts assigned or chosen by yourself, and sometimes even put on special costume props, and an average of four to six hours of puzzle solving tour will begin.

Ke Zhang, who had participated in the script creation, often discussed relevant work with his peers around the round table of script killing.

"We will instinctively have the sensitivity of a narrator." In his view, script killing is essentially an art of narration. "The young audience killed by script is also highly coincident with the target audience of movies and TV series. For our screenwriters, it is necessary to fully understand their aesthetic needs and hobbies for narrative models."

Hard core book, emotional book, fun book, horror book, drinking book … … With the gradual expansion of the script killing market, a wide variety of script killing books emerge in an endless stream, which has a fuller packaging outside the reasoning core. In essence, this is also approaching the type of film and television.

Under this wave, many screenwriters have been involved in or devoted to script writing full-time, among which there are many professional screenwriters with well-known works.

Beichen, who has participated in the scriptwriting of a series of films, is one of them. In the connection with Today’s Film Review, he also gave three reasons for his "career change":

First of all, script killing has a higher degree of creative freedom, and you can create your favorite world freely; Secondly, the creative cycle of script killing is "comfortable", which can directly establish a feedback mechanism with players, and there is no interference from the management in the film and television field. Third, and most importantly, the project money goes directly to the author, and the time for payment back is much shorter than that of film and television projects.

"On average, the (script killing) circle is getting along well, and there are 100,000 and 200,000 people every month," he joked with a smile in response to the rumor that the script killing screenwriter earns 50,000 a month. "Of course, I am not (monthly) 50,000, and I may have to earn 200,000 or 300,000."

However, this seemingly easy "earning millions a year" high salary temptation is not so attractive for most screenwriters who like script killing. At the scene of the "Today’s Film Review" program, Ke Zhang also calculated the account for himself:

Take the script killing of five people as an example, five characters have five manuals, each of which is 100 pages in total according to 20 pages, and the writing volume is nearly 200,000 words. At the same time, a 90-minute movie script is only 30,000 to 40,000 words. According to the "cost performance", a successful professional film writer still earns more than the script kills the author.

Of course, he is addicted to the mechanism of script killing game, and admits that it is very difficult to write script killing that often needs to take into account multiple perspectives. "The Sacrifice is only three perspectives. If you give me ten perspectives, I will be crazy."

In fact, even the super IP in the film industry, such as "detective chinatown", has been defeated in the field of script killing. According to Beichen, the return rate of the script-killing work "detective chinatown 3: Seven Stars Lost" derived from it has reached the peak of the script-killing history, and nearly 500 stores have joined forces to ask for a refund, which shows the degree of acclimatization.

Even so, the connection between script killing and film and television circles is still strengthening. Following Detective Chinatown 3’s launch of script killing derivatives, the upcoming film will also launch offline theme script killing activities. In Ke Zhang’s view, this may be a useful supplement to the film announcement matrix and even the subsequent series of films, but before doing it, we should carefully examine whether its content is suitable for transformation, and we should not have a "harvest" mentality.

For the script killing industry, the screenwriter gives an image analogy: a kind of "drama karaoke". In his eyes, the brilliance of the script killing industry will make the audience pay more attention to the story content and improve their own level of watching movies, thus forcing the film and television industry to further improve.

In this regard, Ke Zhang, as a first-line creator, also quite agrees. "Killing the script is that we want to be close to our audience without distance." When watching his own movies in the cinema, he always chooses to "secretly observe" any feedback from the audience in the corner. The script kill, also extended by the script, also gave him a similar mirror.

"If we are not present, we will be abandoned by the times, so we will not only go to the top, but also go to the top."

Director’s observation:This is the first time to explore the connection between script killing and film writers. This program explains from shallow to deep whether a film screenwriter should change careers to be a script killer. Many wonderful contents can’t be completely covered due to the length of time, and I hope they can be supplemented in the next topic. (Tommy)