" Annual Comedy Competition " season 2 has come to an end. The "XX" team composed of actors Zhang Weiyi , Liu Tong, and Zuo Lingfeng has become a dark horse and won the annual comedy team championship with its work "Goodbye Lao Zhang".
"XXX", as his name is, he is an unknown person in the comedy circle and a so-and-so among the millions of actors. Liu Tong and Zuo Lingfeng are college classmates and learn how to perform. Zuo Lingfeng graduated from university and met Zhang Weiyi while participating in his first commercial drama. Zhang Weiyi, who graduated from the Central Academy of Drama, debuted several years earlier than the others. At that time, she played the leading role in the play. Zuo Lingfeng took a role in an interview, and the two met from then on. After acting in a drama for half a year, Zuo Lingfeng also called his good friend Liu Tong. The three of them partnered, and in a flash, the days of more than ten years of acting in dramas together have passed like this, doing things that are basically unrelated to comedy.
Zuo Lingfeng (left), Zhang Weiyi (center) and Liu Tong (right) have been partnering for more than ten years. The picture shows the three people in the comedy "Rehearsal Crazy Cloud". (Photo provided by the interviewee/photo)
participated in the "Annual Comedy Competition" by Zhang Weiyi. "I'm a little tired of a constant life," he said. Zhang Weiyi started acting in dramas as soon as she graduated, and later participated in film and television dramas. The normal state of life is to go to various crews, hurry up, hurry up, and grab the scenes. It is a screw on the assembly line. "It turns out there is no way." He said that he had to film like this because he had to live and pay the rent. After years of accumulation, he can say "no" - he no longer has to film a certain movie, and he can live without making any money in a year. When all conditions permit, he felt that he could try to do something he really liked: "Just like when I wanted to learn acting and take the Central Opera , I had to do it no matter how big the difficulties I encountered in the middle, so that I would be alive." When Zhang Weiyi asked Zuo Lingfeng to participate in the competition, Zuo Lingfeng's life just reached the intersection. Due to the impact of the epidemic, offline performances have decreased, and since 2020, he has basically not received any job. He was just 30 years old at that time, and he couldn't stop thinking about everything when he was free, and he was anxious about what to do in the future: "Do I want to continue acting like this? Can I play something else? How should I find opportunities?" In a sense, participating in the comedy competition was Zuo Lingfeng's darkness. "If your road was not blocked, you might not see this road," he said.
Liu Tong is very nervous and doesn't think so much. As soon as Zhang Weiyi invited him, he came with his good buddies. He focused more on the deployment of troops. "What I thought at the time was not to put the eggs in the same basket." Liu Tong explained that in addition to building his own team, the three of them also took turns to form other comedians, and they formed several groups. They thought, "Smash them in together", and there was always one group that could hit them.
Unexpectedly, in the end, these three people who started to do comedy from scratch broke into the comedy competition and laughed to the end with the name "So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So-So- How did they do it?
"It's funny but can't last for 3 minutes", what to do
The interview between Southern Weekend reporter and "XiaoXiao" was completed through video link. It was late at night, and the three of them returned home after a day's work and connected to each other. Zuo Lingfeng was the last to join. In the first few minutes, his video interface was stuck, and the picture was frozen in the frame when he greeted him. The buffer circle icons in the picture kept spinning and running and loading.
"His network is always like this!" The other two were used to it. While joking, everyone played virtual background replacement, replacing their respective backgrounds with bright conference rooms in the morning and retro study rooms stuffed with books. This interview situation unexpectedly brought them back to the original scene of participating in the comedy competition. Their first work, "Rehearsal Crazy Cloud", was inspired by the delays, lags, and disconnections of online meetings, and was full of situations.
Before "Rehearsal Crazy Cloud", they overturned seven or eight works. Although they are all old actors with ten years of experience in drama performance, no one is sure of doing comedy.When Zhang Weiyi recalled that when she was doing a drama, she first thought about the characters. She wanted to write a biography for the characters. She had to think clearly about his past and present life and the entire arrangement. When she came to the comedy stage, she had to think about whether it was funny or not. All arrangements should be based on funny as the starting point.
has different ideas, so you must start from scratch. The three spent three months learning to do sketch (sketch comedy) and learn the comedy structure. Regarding sketch comedy, comedy screenwriter Liushou once had a classic statement. He said: "sketch is to quickly upgrade an idea three times in a very short time. It is very similar to the logic of stand-up comedy, which quickly exaggerates a logic (or reason) we have seen before to highlight the correctness (or mistake) of this logic. It can be without ups and downs. Turn off the lights when the audience laughs the most, and with a loud music, the audience sorts out their moods and continues to watch the next completely unrelated sketch." When
was really practical, "XXX" still encountered many problems. They are not short of things and even often offer suggestions to other teams. "Xiaowan Wind Music" team's "One Thousand Years" is the idea of the exchange of body by the green snake, the white snake and Xu Xian, which was contributed by Zuo Lingfeng. The work "The Heart" that caused heated discussion in the "Cool Tianfang" team uses the concept of "heart" to talk about a romantic encounter, which was originally thought of "Xi-Xi". Zhang Weiyi recalled that what they wanted to do at that time was that three boys entered the girl's heart and told a love story without the girl appearing. But after a long time of deduction, they gave up. Finally, "Cool Tianfang" took this idea and pushed it down and successfully pushed it out.
This is typical in the early stage of "XXX" comedy creation. Their biggest problem at that time was that they lacked comedy experience and could not last for three minutes. The stage of the comedy competition requires more than ten minutes of comedy works. Those works that were overthrown by "XXXX" may be funny to talk about for 3 minutes, but it will not be funny to talk about for 3 minutes. They have been looking for things that can last for more than 3 minutes and continue to be funny. "It makes the audience feel that they are almost done at this point. When they are about to get tired, we will generate another point. This point is not something we change out of thin air. It is related to the previous point." Zuo Lingfeng said.
tried again and again for a month, until they found "Rehearsal Crazy Cloud". At the end of the performance, the three of them sang rap and shouted: "The theater is not open, work is stopped, tighten the belt." This special era product that originated in the epidemic era, and it was difficult for people to meet offline for a time, and could only communicate online, aroused strong resonance among the audience. At the end of the first stage, "Rehearsal Crazy Cloud" directly advanced with the highest score of the first place in the game.
Stills of "Rehearsal Crazy Cloud". (Photo provided by the interviewee/photo)
After "Rehearsal of Crazy Cloud", the three of them gradually found their feelings. Zhang Weiyi found that although the drama stage and the comedy stage are different, one thing is common, that is, to draw nutrients from real and fragmented life. The more things that can arouse the audience's empathy with , the easier it is to succeed. Empathy first - this is what they are good at - and then it's funny.
small questions
Zuo Lingfeng in life is a warm-hearted person, especially keen on being a wingman for his friends (online terms, referring to assists and assists). He remembered that boys and girls were very young when they were student. They obviously liked each other, but no one could speak when they met. One of his good buddies had encountered this situation. Zuo Lingfeng was anxious when he watched the girl and volunteered to bring him next time his buddy invited him to dinner, "You two stay, I will play a big fool to set off your nobleness." This will liven up the atmosphere. The meal was very successful and made a good story.
Later, he participated in the comedy competition and Zuo Lingfeng mentioned the story of being a wingman. After hearing this, Zhang Weiyi felt that this was a bit like a military advisor who was planning. So they incorporated the elements of the Three Kingdoms into the story, and transformed the wingman into a military advisor, interpreting love into a scheming game between boys and girls.
This is a trick Zhang Weiyi learned in the sketch formula, called "Fish Leaves Water". Fish must leave the water before they can be funny.If the wingman story becomes a restored version of a modern dinner party, it is at most a normal story, and is stripped from normal and placed in the scene of the two armies in a fight, there will be a confrontation, war drums, and a general card, a one-time, a second-time, and a third-time gameplay. "Later we found a sentence, 'If love is really a war between the Three Kingdoms', and the comedy effect will come out in an instant," said Zhang Weiyi. This work, called "Military Advisors' Love Alliance", has also become the representative work of "XXX" in the comedy competition.
Stills from "Military Advisors' Love Alliance". (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Comedy is an art of co-creation, which is also what "XXX" has the deepest experience on the stage of the comedy competition. Although it was a competition, the actors contributed ideas to each other's programs. Zhang Weiyi suddenly felt that when she returned to the campus era, everyone worked hard to complete a graduation drama together. "Only everyone can be really good if the work is good," he said.
comedy "Don't Redeem" was born like this. This work was originally the protagonist of the "Xiaowan Wind Music" team, and "XXX" is the green leaf. The story is based on an offline workshop called "Goodbye Best Friend", which tells the story of two best friends reunite in an inappropriate situation - a female robber tied up a man, and the man's wife came to give the ransom, and found that the robber was his best friend who had been separated for many years. But the original work is not mature yet, and there is only one laugh, and it needs to be upgraded to three. On this basis, we keep brainstorming and playing game points for best friend love. "Game dot" is also a term for sketch comedy creation, referring to "the strange dot of the character". The logic of sketch creation is the game, which is divided into "character game" and "setting game". The core of this game is the game point. It can be the relationship between characters and some strange points of characters; it can also be a strange background setting, and then continuously strengthen this point to upgrade, and go to the second and third rounds, and finally end at the highest point or at the turning point.
The process of discussing game points was not smooth. For more than ten consecutive days, everyone discussed until three or four in the morning every day. The more they discussed, the more nonsensical the discussion became. Three days before the performance, there was still no reason why the robbers refused to let the kidnapped loosen their ties. Why can you just show off your best friend’s affection, chat with people coming and going, and ignore your husband’s feelings? The story is deadlocked there. For this reason, Zhang Weiyi and Liu Tong also had a fight. "If I say this work is like this, there is no way to record it. It's too flying and too absurd," said Zhang Weiyi.
After the fight, Liu Tong suddenly found a feeling. He said, is it possible that these people coming and going are Zuo Lingfeng’s relatives and friends? Zuo Lingfeng plays the kidnapped husband in the play. These people came one by one and ignored him. Is it possible that they were the lanterns before the person left? It means that everyone uses all their strength to keep someone who is about to die. Hearing this, everyone woke up and had goosebumps.
Stills of "I Don't Redeem a Person". (Photo provided by the interviewee)
story has not ended here. The script originally wrote this, and Zuo Lingfeng's husband's role was finished after he left, but Zhang Weiyi couldn't stand it: "I said no, he must come back. Maybe it was because I was experiencing some things at the time."
After the husband came back, according to the normal dramatic logic, it was emotional, "My family did not give up on me, I can't leave", but Zuo Lingfeng's performance was to take the weight easily. He understateed the sentence "I won't leave, I won't leave" and dissolved that strong emotion.
Goodbye Lao Zhang
Change the idea, tragedy becomes a comedy. The same is true for the final work "Goodbye Lao Zhang" that sent "Xi" to Qingyun.
This is a work dedicated to my father. "Lao Zhang" is Zhang Weiyi's father. In the play, he died for many years. His son is getting married. On a happy day, he made a wish to let his father come back and witness his son's wedding with his own eyes. Unexpectedly, the "angel" appeared, and the father's soul was actually penetrated into the body of his best man Zuo Lingfeng and "resurrected".The dislocation of soul and appearance has a natural sense of joy. Then, the unexpected encounter between Lao Zhang and his daughter-in-law whom he had never met, the secret competition with his son's stepfather, and the meeting with the "old child" in-laws and the wedding ceremonies. The relationship between the characters in the meeting became a large Shura field, with many jokes.
The unreliable angel forgot to remind Zhang Weiyi that Lao Zhang only had ten minutes of staying in the world. In panic, Zhang Weiyi frequently created problems and gave up her stepfather just to leave time to let Lao Zhang give him a few words at the wedding rehearsal.
Lao Zhang drove the duck to the shelves, picked up the microphone, and asked his son:
Do you feel happy now? Can it be considered happiness? Are you healthy?
That? Any regrets? (Son shakes his head)
is gone, so I have no regrets.
People around you noticed the clues. After seeing off relatives and friends, Zhang Weiyi was about to confess to her "wife". "Wife" took the lead and said emotionally: "Did you see your dad? When I was admitted to college, I also saw my mom." The comedy story of
ended with the long laughter in front and the tears in the last 3 minutes. The guests in the audience Huang Bo stood up and applauded, praising the "perfection"; Li Dan nodded frequently, "too perfect".
Regarding the topic of father-son family affection, Zhang Weiyi wanted to do it since she participated in the comedy competition, and it was inspired by some of his personal feelings about getting along with his father in life. For example, when Lao Zhang used QQ in life, he always couldn't remember his password and always called his son to ask him. At first, his son was very patient, but as time went by, he gradually lost his patience. "I will lose my temper. I think why can't you remember such a simple thing?" Old Zhang also likes to urge marriage. He started from the age of 25 or 26, saying that he must get married before he was 30. Zhang Weiyi promised to carry it every year, and every year he pushed it. In this way, after he was thirty years old, Lao Zhang's wish had not come true. The first draft of the script
is from Liu Tong. At the beginning, the script could not get out of the sad mood. "Because we saw Lao Zhang again, our instinctive reaction was to burst into tears: 'Dad, I'm seeing you again'." Liu Tong said. Finally, everyone finally turned around, "The person you thought you would never see again. Lao Zhang came back and made up for his regret and completed something that could not be accomplished by himself, that is, to attend his son's wedding. We just care about this, and try to ignore other emotions first. This matter can be joyful, or should be joyful." Liu Tong said. Entering from this perspective, comedy became.
"Goodbye Lao Zhang" stills. (Photo provided by the interviewee/photo)
On November 29, 2022, the final of the "Annual Comedy Competition" was recorded, and "Goodbye Lao Zhang" was the finale. The audience laughed loudly and the applause was very enthusiastic. At the end of the curtain call, Zhang Weiyi couldn't speak and kept crying. "Actually, I think back now that when I was going to do this work in the last stage, in Chinese, you may have a certain premonition, so you insist on doing such a subject." More than half a month later, Zhang Weiyi told the Southern Weekend reporter.
The
brought by comedy came from deciding to participating in the comedy competition to completing the finals, in more than nine months, the three "XXX" experienced a comedy in an immersive way.
In Zhang Weiyi's eyes, comedy is "a little safe haven for us to avoid cruel reality occasionally or at some point." Zuo Lingfeng believes that comedy is an angle of view of life: "You can watch it seriously, you can watch it seriously, you can watch it easily, or you can watch it happily. The relaxed and happy angles may be comedy. For example, "Goodbye Lao Zhang", watch it from another angle to make it reconcile with the regret in your heart, or let the emotions in your heart be released. This is comedy."
Liu Tong obtained two mature methodologies from comedy. In the past, he didn't know where the laughter came from. After participating in the comedy competition, he concluded that most of the laughter comes from "optimal violations". In short, it is unexpected and reasonable; he also learned to grasp the rhythm and structure, and these can be used in his future drama screenwriter and performance.
"XXX" transplanted some of their experience in acting in dramas to the comedy stage.Compared with other comedy teams, their works are more storytelling and more complete in structure, and each work is similar to a miniature drama.
Stills from "Resurrection Sky Team". (Photo provided by the interviewee)
"Our method is more like finding friends." Zuo Lingfeng described, "We use our own way to make friends with the audience, which is something we think is funny. I will tell you. If you think it is funny, then you are my friend. We cannot be sure that this thing must be funny, but it will not make everyone feel bad. We will chat with the audience who think we are funny and tell them the jokes. We cannot please everyone."
"It would be nice to have four or five out of ten people who can make friends with us, which means we are not bad and can still get along." Zhang Weiyi continued.
comedy also made the three of them see by the public. Before the comedy competition, Zuo Lingfeng experienced a particularly confused period. He has been acting in drama for ten years and wants to seek better opportunities and a bigger stage, but he has no way to go. "This industry is very strange. If you don't know who you are, you won't get this opportunity, but if you don't give me the opportunity, how can I tell you who I am?" Zuo Lingfeng did not give up on the path of actors. This time, Zhang Weiyi pushed him to the comedy competition, and the teacher said to him, "It's time for you." "I didn't think about what it means, and I don't know what I can get, so just do your own thing steadily. Whatever you should be, is what you should be." Zuo Lingfeng said.
Liu is both a calm school. "I didn't think I had received a salary lower than my strength before, but I was not rich or powerful. Not having rich or powerful is the norm for most people in this world," he said.
Southern Weekend Reporter Li Yilan
