The second major challenge for the film comes from the overall length of the film.

In Peng Yichen's previous life, "Journey to the West" was divided into two parts, one is a moonlight treasure box, and one is a great sage marrying.

On average, the duration of each film is about 90 minutes, and the two together give the overall length of the movie nearly three hours.

The plot content of these two parts is coherent, there is no time difference, if the two are connected, even if it is regarded as one, it is completely feasible.

Therefore, Peng Yichen plans to combine the upper and lower collections and directly synthesize them into a movie for release.

The reason why this must be done is that Peng Yichen mainly has the following considerations.

First of all, if it is released separately, it will inevitably lead to the audience still having to recall the plot of the previous episode when watching the plot of the next episode, artificially creating the illusion that the plot of the movie is incoherent, which is not conducive to the movie to mobilize the audience's emotions and directly affect the audience's viewing experience.

A complete story is simply split in half, and whoever reads it will be unhappy. In the previous life, the reason why the box office of Journey to the West failed miserably was that in addition to the fact that the film was not suitable for that era, the film was split in half, which was also one of the reasons.

Secondly, if it is released separately, there will inevitably be a vacuum period in the time when the upper and lower episodes are released. All the publicity and promotion done before the release of the last episode will inevitably not play much role when the next episode is released.

Therefore, before the release of the next episode, another round of publicity and promotion must be carried out, which will cause a great waste of film publicity costs and resources.

Finally, and the most important reason why Peng Yichen wants to be released together, is that Peng Yichen is in a hurry to marry Yu Jing. If the upper and lower episodes are released separately, the shortest release cycle of "Journey to the West" will take three months.

Even if the film is released immediately after production, it will not be released until June 2009. This made Peng Yichen, who was in a hurry to marry Yu Jing home, unable to accept it at all.

Therefore, it is imperative to merge and release.

But the three-hour length of the film is obviously not in line with the current law of film market viewing.

Then, there is only one way left, and that is to make a proper reduction of the original plot.

So the second major challenge in front of Peng Yichen is how to reduce part of the plot of the original "Journey to the West"?

In Peng Yichen's mind, the first Moonlight Treasure Box basically plays a role in foreshadowing and character shaping for the entire story framework of the movie.

And the second Great Sage's marriage is the essence and soul of the whole movie.

Therefore, on the premise of not affecting the character image and the development of the plot, Peng Yichen's method of reducing the original work is mainly to directly cut out a large number of clips in the moonlight treasure box that are irrelevant to the plot and not too funny.

Then, most of the plot of the Great Sage's marriage was retained, and only some irrelevant shots were compressed.

Among them, in the second part, there are a lot of nonsensical dialogue plots, which occupy a lot of time. These dialogues are not very funny, and at the same time they don't have much of an impact on the plot.

Therefore, in the end, it was simplified by Peng Yichen.

Journey to the West is a comedy, but it is also a tragedy.

The comedy part is supported by a nonsensical funny style, and the tragedy is supported by the plot.

The reason why "Journey to the West" can impress moviegoers is actually because this movie leaves you with an unforgettable tragic ending in the joyful atmosphere of comedy.

And after the tragic ending, he used time and space to travel to leave the audience with a "happy" ending. (Samurai and Zixia at the head of the castle)

This kind of plot setting, which constantly switches between comedy and tragic plots, will drive the audience's emotions to follow the ups and downs.

Therefore, there must be a nonsensical plot, and it is indispensable, but Peng Yichen only chooses the most classic nonsensical bridges to retain, otherwise a large number of nonsensical jokes dilute the sad tone of the whole movie.

In Peng Yichen's view, because "Journey to the West" in the previous life wanted to attract audiences, it added a lot of nonsensical and funny scenes that had nothing to do with the plot.

This makes the whole movie become "four dislikes", in terms of funny, it can't compare to those pure funny movies, after all, the tone of this movie is heavy.

But because too many funny scenes were added, and the humanistic connotation of the whole movie was covered by funny clips, so that when this classic movie was just released, it failed in both word-of-mouth and box office.

It wasn't until the advent of the Internet era that this movie continued to spread on the Internet, and after the interpretation of many movie lovers, the public re-acquainted itself with this "bad movie" that had "failed".

Let it not be dusted forever as a classic movie.

But reality will not give Peng Yichen a few years to be interpreted, and in this increasingly impetuous era, people may not have so much patience.

Now Peng Yichen has much more resources and funds than Liu Zhenwei at the beginning, and he also has a lot more advanced special effects shooting technology than when he was filming "Journey to the West" in his previous life.

In order to retain the profound connotation of "Journey to the West", it can also achieve profitability at the box office and commercially.

Peng Yichen finally decided to minimize the nonsensical scenes in the film and instead use a lot of special effects shots and visual spectacle to attract the audience.

At the same time, in terms of plot, increase the proportion of the plot about love, life, and philosophy in "Journey to the West" as much as possible.

Let this movie be funny and heavy, maintain a delicate balance, and truly show the uniqueness of "Journey to the West" to the audience!

is the only way to make a love that spans time and space and a tragedy of fate in life, while tearing apart the hearts of the audience, it can also use top-notch special effects to attract them to continue to buy tickets.

Not only to make you laugh and cry, but also to show you what is the naked reality!

This is the effect Peng Yichen wants to achieve.

……

The desert is lonely, and the sun sets over the long river.

Peng Yichen was a child of the Northwest in his last life, so the desert life in the Northwest made him like a fish in water.

But for the rest of the crew, the temperature difference between day and night was exaggerated, and the dry air was everywhere

Two days ago, in order to speed up the filming progress, the crew was divided into two and formed two shooting teams, led by Zhao Zexin and Xu Dayong, two assistant directors of Chenjing Film Company, to shoot some natural scenery shots without people around Yingchuan, and find a suitable shooting location by the way.

In between daily performances and shooting, Peng Yichen also asked the special effects artist of the Digital Technology Center to discuss the shots of special effects synthesis in the script.

And most of these special effects artists are urban children who have returned from studying abroad. It was also the first time to come to the Northwest Desert.

I am very curious about the customs and environment of the Northwest.

Therefore, in addition to talking to Peng Yichen about the production of special effects, they traveled in Yingchuan whenever they had time, ate Northwest food, and saw the unique beauty of Northwest China.

What surprised and admired them the most was that Peng Yichen, who was a native of Shanghai and had lived in the Star Banner Country for more than ten years, actually knew the situation in the northwest very well. You can also sing a song of Xintianyou.

This made the relationship between these young people and Peng Yichen, a younger boss, gradually closer.

And the rigorous attitude of these young people at work also made Peng Yichen very satisfied.

Every character modeling setting, every special effect model, they can be completed according to Peng Yichen's requirements, and even put forward their own opinions to make it more perfect.

In Peng Yichen's view, the effects of several special effects shots they initially produced have even surpassed the level of special effects production in Huaxia in 2017 in their previous life.

There may be some gaps compared with Hollywood's top special effects production level, but it must have reached the level of general Hollywood special effects blockbusters.

As for the current film special effects in Huaxia, to put it bluntly, they are already ahead of them by an era.

A few days later, all of the film's characterless scenery shots were shot.

The filming locations for several important scenes were also chosen. Peng Yichen finally went out in person and chose the first scene he was going to shoot in a deserted small village in the desert.

Here, it is suitable for use as a bandit den in the movie.

……