10 years of companionship, continuous ＂bear infestation＂ and continued to write happy legends at home and abroad.

Original title: 10 years of continuous excitement — — "Bear haunt" continues to write happy legends at home and abroad

On January 31st, Boonie Bears: Time Twist, the 10th film in the series "Bears Come and Go", premiered in Beijing and will be released on the first day of the Year of the Loong’s New Year’s Day (February 10th). Since Xiong Bing, the first film in this series in 2014, except that the Spring Festival movie was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic, a film in the "Bear-infested" series meets the audience at the Spring Festival every year, and parents and children go to the cinema to watch the stories of Xiong Da, Xiong Er, Logger Vick and their new friends, which has also become one of the cultural phenomena of the Spring Festival in China.

Since the official release of Boonie Bears: Time Twist on December 27th, 2023, the cumulative number of people who want to see it on major ticketing platforms has exceeded 900,000, which shows the audience’s expectation and recognition of the series. After 10 years’ development, the series of "Bears Appear" has become the leader of domestic animated films.

Team creation is quality assurance.

"Bears haunt" series releases a movie almost every year, and its creativity and production ability are amazing. This series of films can continue to accompany the audience for 10 years, which is the result of the team creation mode adopted by Huaqiang Fangte Culture and Technology Group and the division of labor by different teams.

In order to ensure the quality of the series of films, Huaqiang Fangte has established a systematic quality review mechanism, from early ideas, outlines, scripts to Taiwanese versions, and has set up a "green light meeting" review mechanism. At the same time, the series of films adopts the project system, and there are two or three fixed teams working in parallel. From creative planning to film production, each film often takes two or three years. Every team will continue to participate in the film projects of this series regardless of creation, production or operation, which has laid a solid foundation for the "Ten-year Covenant". For example, Huida Lin, the director of Boonie Bears: Time Twist, has previously directed bears’ haunting and metamorphosis, bears’ haunting and primitive times and bears’ haunting and returning to the earth.

According to Shang Linlin, producer and producer of "Boonie Bears: Time Twist", they have been thinking about the issue of "what to give back to the audience" since the beginning of their creation, as a blockbuster of "Bears Appear" series. In the past 10 years, each film in this series has created an impressive character, and many scenes are still fresh in the audience’s memory. "The audience grew up with’ Bears’ and should complete the’ Ten-Year Covenant’ together." Based on this, not only the three animated images of Xiong Da, Xiong Er and Logger Vick, which run through the whole series, appear in Boonie Bears: Time Twist, but also more than 240 characters such as Dudu, Feifei, Tuanzi, Abu, Xiaotie, Xiaoluo, Mama Bear, and the villain Donghai in the previous series. Details such as "cutting down trees to save lives" and "crossing just visiting" also continued the previous creativity of Boonie Bears:The Wild Life, such as Return of Bear’s Heart, Bear’s Presence and Primitive Times. The return of these characters and the collection of plots make the audience look back on the time when "bears haunt" and have a different fantasy color.

Boonie Bears: Time Twist also adopted the concept of "parallel time and space", introduced modern time and space concepts such as "time devouring", and constructed three parallel time and space: the modern workplace of the new timeline, the bear hill of the old timeline, and the time-fragmented time and space compatible with the two timelines. The expression and transformation of multi-time and space make its narrative more hierarchical, highlighting the narrative wisdom of the main creation. In terms of content, the film continues the comedy atmosphere and wonderful fighting design of "Bears haunt", which makes children and big friends burst into laughter and gives the film more ornamental value.

Upholding innovation in spreading positive energy

In the past 10 years, the series of films "Bears Come and Go" has focused on the common themes of environmental protection, affection and love, and has been continuously expanded, sublimated and deepened, gradually stepping out of the young, becoming more mature and diversified, and being accepted by audiences of different ages.

"Bear haunt" first appeared in the form of TV cartoons, and its core audience was parent-child groups. Therefore, the first film "Xiong Bing, the Treasure of Bear haunt" was mainly aimed at children and parent-child groups. With the growth of the audience and the concern of more and more young people and adults about "bears", the creative team began to consciously add more themes and elements suitable for the grown-up audience and even adults, and gradually extended to all ages. For example, Boonie Bears:The Wild Life talks about the meaning of happiness, Bears Come Back to Earth promotes the concept of environmental protection on the earth, and Bears Come with Me "Bear Core" takes artificial intelligence as the core of its content. These themes, which are suitable for all ages, are not only constantly breaking through innovation, but also very grounded, and are welcomed by children and adults.

While constantly expanding the world outlook, innovating the story experience and exploring the possibility of the future, "Bear Haunted" consistently maintains the basic characteristics of the brand: insisting on the audience positioning of family fun and the initial intention of "giving positive energy works that touch people’s hearts to everyone".

Boonie Bears: Time Twist tries to explore a profound topic about life: Do you have to live in a defined success? How to make the choice you really want? At the beginning of the film, Logger Vick is set as a member of the modern workplace, going in and out of the office buildings in the metropolis, which has never happened before in this series of films. However, success in the workplace is not Logger Vick’s sincere aspiration. In the film, he keeps dreaming back to the forest where he once lived, worrying about his real friends Xiong Da and Xiong Er. In the time reversal journey to rescue Xiong Da and Xiong Er, Logger Vick led the crowd to defeat the "time devourer" and finally made his own satisfactory life choice. The film also inspires the audience to think about the goal and value of life, and expresses the connotation of more speculative value.

Fantasy creation of visual special effects

Fantasy time and space is one of the core elements of animated films. Creating fantasy time and space is not only the main aesthetic task that creators should complete, but also the key to obtaining artistry and appreciation of films. The series of films "Bears haunt" have made great achievements in this respect. For example, "Bears Coming Back to the Earth" built a strange prehistoric civilization in Laerte with great imagination, and presented scenes such as spaceships and Antarctic regions through more than 2,000 shots; "Bears Come and Go with Me" Bear Core "appeals for realistic companionship with sci-fi imagination, in order to help the robot R&D center — — The panoramic depiction of Zhenxing Island and the presentation of universal robots highlight the creative idea of creating audio-visual impact with animation imagination.

The theme of "reality+fantasy" and the multi-time narrative structure of Boonie Bears: Time Twist provide a large space for the creation of fantasy time and space. This film is also the largest and most difficult special effects production in the series. There are more than 1300 special effects shots in the whole film, and three parallel time and space need a lot of fantasy creation. The plots such as particle shuttle and Armageddon highlight the efforts of the creative team. For example, countless little bears rushed to the screen with more than 30 layers of lens special effects. In order to make each little bear present different expressions and dynamics, the team adopted the newly developed cluster system (a joint system composed of multiple computers for collaborative processing of large-scale computing tasks); In order to make the smoke composed of the final blasting particles have a better shape and level, the team used nearly 200 million special effects particles (a computer graphics technology used to simulate the effects of water, fire, fog and gas in reality), and the loading time of a single particle cache took 2 hours.

Bright exploration of overseas distribution

The series of films "Bears haunt" have been shown in more than 50 countries and regions around the world. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein, The Bears in Primitive Times covered nearly 500 screens, becoming the first China animated film to be widely released in German-speaking Europe. The audience praised the film as "capable of enhancing family parent-child relationship and suitable for the whole family to watch"; In Russia, "Bear with Me" ranked first at the box office on the first day of its release, and the audience commented that "the story is full of kindness and love, which was created by China and well done"; In Turkey, the "Bear Haunted" series of films has attracted more than 600,000 people to watch movies, breaking the local box office record of China animated films; In Africa and the Middle East, a number of series films have been registered on the pay TV and streaming media platforms M-Net and Showmax, and hit … …

With the common comedy types and family theme in the world, popular and brisk animation forms, the continuous output of animated series, and the continuous strengthening of series of film brands, the film and television works of "Bear Haunted" gradually broke through the barriers of art and national boundaries, and made new breakthroughs in overseas distribution, and their influence expanded rapidly. At present, the animated series "Bears Appear" has been distributed to more than 130 countries and regions around the world, with a cumulative export of over 200,000 minutes.

With the continuous expansion of the theme and innovation in narrative and fantasy space-time, coupled with the gradual maturity and precise marketing of China’s animation production industry, the films are increasingly favored by adults and children, especially the young audience, thus gaining strong artistic vitality. The continuous innovation and exploration of the series of films have played an important leading role in the aesthetic development of China animation art, especially domestic animation films, and accumulated rich experience for the creation of China animation films. Its deep cultivation and expansion of overseas markets not only won high recognition from overseas audiences for China’s outstanding original animation works, but also provided a reference path for domestic animation and domestic films to go to sea. (Author: Zhao Weifang, director of Film and Television Research Institute of China Academy of Art and vice president of China Film Critics Association)

People’s Daily Overseas Edition (07th Edition, February 2, 2024)