Levi's words made Bob stunned for a long time, he really didn't know what the word royal road meant.

It's normal for him not to understand, in fact, what Levy said was not originally a word for TV script creation, but a script creation in another field. He was referring to the creation of manga by the Japanese, and the word "royal road" was originally a concept that was put forward by the Japanese when discussing the creation of manga.

The manga industry in Japan is extremely developed, and in the 80s, they began to replace individual heroes with team combinations. In the long-term comic creation, Shonen Jump summed up the so-called royal road: blood, friendship, and hard work. And in order to achieve these three elements, they also have the so-called royal road comics: by building a team, to show all three elements.

Generally speaking, as a Japanese comic, the protagonist needs to be single-celled, the supporting role needs to be a handsome guy, and the three-person person plus a hot-blooded part-time funny teenager - such a four-person group, this is what the Japanese call the royal combination.

Such four people can be hot-blooded, can work hard, and can brush each other's favorability, among these people, some people are cool, some are cute, some are funny, and there are beautiful characters to attract popularity. At the critical moment, the handsome guy is in trouble, and the hot-blooded protagonist comes to the rescue, full of basic feelings...... Oh no, friendship. Because it's easy to use, so this model is spread across multiple universes, and the foursome may be a man who dreams of becoming the king of the pirates, a great ninja with a mouth, or a high school student or a superpower who plays basketball, but such a fixed combination model will generally not change - so this is the so-called royal road, blood, friendship, plus handsome, cool, funny and other elements, which is enough for comics.

For comics, there is such a royal combination, but in the 90s, in American dramas, there was no concept of such a combination.

There is the problem that TV series creation is more difficult than comics - comics are drawings anyway, and they are all controlled by the author's pen, while TV dramas require multiple actors, and multiple actors are always more difficult to control than one or two people. Before the 90s, pay stations in the United States had not developed as much as they did in the future, and public stations faced little market pressure, and there was not much motivation for TV drama production. The team-type protagonist has appeared in all the more exaggerated sitcoms, but in terms of crime dramas, there are still relatively few.

But Levy is well aware of the upside: there is a market for the team's depiction. Describing a character that can't please all audiences, developing a protagonist into a team of multiple people, so that the problems that were originally focused on one person are scattered among multiple people, can be better related to reality.

If the assignment work is done well, it can be done so that each character has their own charm, so that each of them has an attractive brilliance, which is the so-called royal way.

And how do you write directly about a team that appeals to everyone? It's actually very simple: highlight a certain trait of each person, and then downplay the other trait, so that several people form a team, and you can form a good team.

Creation in this area, at least in the 90s, still had no rules for forming. Not to mention those big TV series that highlight individuals, even Friends, at the beginning of production, also wanted to use Ross and Rachel as the absolute protagonists, and everyone else was a supporting role. The concept of team characters, they don't have yet.

Now, Levy wants to change their minds and let them create a routine: a routine that can be used to put on all the teams of American dramas.

What Levy wants to do is to give a framework combination of group characters in the TV series. Such a framework is actually a routine, not an innovation, but if it is applied well, it can make the TV series gain a basis for success.

It is not so easy to create routines, and those who have the ability to create routines are often strong. For example, the royal combination of Riman, the one who created this routine was Fujian Yoshihiro.

In terms of American dramas, what is needed now is also a routine.

Unlike Japanese manga, when making a TV series, of course, you have to consider who is watching it. Of course, it is not possible to copy the blood, friendship, and hard work of Japan. Treat one situation at a time, juvenile comics of course consider blood, if it is a domestic TV series, you have to shoot a soap opera for your mother-in-law and mother-in-law, and the United States also has special requirements for this location.

"As a TV series, the main concepts that need to be reflected, that is, several: family, mid-life crisis, and good retribution. The so-called golden rule, the prominent character of the protagonist, is also for these services. What we need to do now is to break down the characters and disperse them to each person, so that these problems can be more prominent and attract more people's attention. ”

American TV dramas are shown to people in the age group of 18-49 - because people at this stage have purchasing power, advertisers like them the most, so TV dramas have to be made for them. Therefore, in American TV dramas, the emphasis is always on the concerns of people of this age group. On the one hand, people of this age group have families, so it is necessary to emphasize loving the family, having a good family, and from time to time showing how empty and lonely the dandy's life is, which is one of the main tones: because most people have families, they have to find happiness by themselves. Secondly, many times in TV dramas like to emphasize various crises after people reach middle age, family, body, work, interpersonal communication, all aspects - because the audience in front of the TV also has similar problems, showing such problems, they are very concerned and have a sense of substitution - so in the end, no matter how serious the crisis, it is best to let the protagonist be able to get through it, so as not to make the audience feel sadistic. And how to spend it? One is naturally the support of the family, and the other is to solve this problem with unrealistic good people and good rewards: the audience has to have a room to dream, life is so unbearable, don't add to the blockage of TV series.

TV series are made to be watched. Is Playboy really empty, lonely, and cold? Are good people really rewarded? Can the crisis that people are experiencing really be solved? Why should you care about those things? Anyway, it's enough to convince people that it's true.

The so-called golden rule is to gather all these problems into one person: he has to have a family, psychological problems prompted his midlife crisis, plus the retribution of good and evil for the protagonist's friends and rivals, these things are also made up into a TV series.

But now, Levy was going to take it apart.

"Several main characters, each with a different task. The male protagonist is responsible for mental illness, and this character needs to be older, so it is best to take on the task of a midlife crisis. And his assistant, another main character, I suggest that he be set up as a woman, so that he can better focus on the family, and it is easier for women to take care of the family and be recognized by the audience. Then, several agents under two people, one of them has to be in the team for a long time, responsible for all kinds of entanglements, finding awkwardness in work, in short, let people see that there are troubles in the work can be overcome through hard work. On the other hand, there are young people, who have just entered the workforce, and let people see the progress and growth of a person - these people, who shoulder all the main things that everyone has to write, and each person is responsible for a part. And then there's a gag with chicken soup for the soul, and a more asshole detective to get them in trouble, and that's pretty much all of it — the villain on the criminal side, we can shape it later, because that aspect can be a little more flexible. ”

Levy wrote and drew briskly on the paper, writing down all his thoughts.

Focusing all the highlights on one person can certainly increase a person's role and charm, but doing so may also make the plot tilt too much towards a certain person, causing the structure of the whole show to get out of control. In the later stage of many American dramas, all of them are starring in a person's ridiculously high salary, which is caused by this loss of control. Moreover, in this way, the characters are too similar, and each protagonist is psychologically problematic, family disputes, and all-round work, which is also easy to make the audience have aesthetic fatigue - the inevitable premise of becoming the protagonist of a TV series is to have a miserable childhood?

"Finally, for the character of the team leader, I suggest using a pedantic character, the advantage is that it can deepen the plot, and the part of the leader's talent can be assigned to the female character, so that the female character will not be reduced to a vase of soy sauce."

In the end, Levy put forward the idea of the protagonist again: in his memory, there are three different bosses in the three parts of CSI, but Levy believes that the most able to reflect the difference is the protagonist of the LV chapter.

It's time for Hollywood to change. If I am not mistaken, with the increase of pay TV stations, when the production of pay TV stations was more sophisticated, the scale was larger, and the actors were better, the public station appeared as a team character, and it began to transform into a pedantic protagonist. Paid stations with money can only fight for production costs, while public stations without money can only fight for storylines, and they can only squeeze out the market by further storylines. It's just that these things, Levy gave him in advance. Others have no pressure and don't want to forge ahead, but Levy has pressure.

"However, this does not fit the Bruckheimer model." Bob was still a little worried.

Bruckheimer is one of Hollywood's top producers, and he has been a top figure in Hollywood since the 70s. He has many legends, including the Bruckheimer model in film shooting and the Bruckheimer model in TV drama production, which appeared for the traditional Gao Daquan protagonist. Before him, most of the protagonists of TV series still liked to create all-round and comprehensive characters, and his initiative was to develop a new mode: **Hero mode. When the protagonist is a hero, he always has some ** aura on his body, but he can get closer to human beings and make people like it more.

In the 70s, because they were used to seeing the image of Gao Daquan, people were not satisfied with the omnipotence of the protagonist, and at that time, the ** hero mode that was born out of thin air solved this problem and made Bruckheimer an immediate success. And in the 90s, people are actually not particularly enthusiastic about the **hero mode - almost all the protagonists of TV series are **, and people will naturally rebel. When many people have enshrined the best hero as the golden rule, then something new should come into being.

I have no people, I have good people, and I turn around if people are good -- this is the law of business. When everyone else can already play the ** hero mode well, then there is no need to keep this mode alone. The first one to be researched is a genius, and if you don't let go after using it for twenty years, it's a fool.

His model is regarded as a gem by many and strictly adhered to, but in the eyes of Klevy, it is outdated.

"Hero...... It's really interesting, though, now I'm not thinking about it. Levy smiled, "Since I'm filming the TV series, then, let's make a Levy model - if you don't even have your own model, what kind of successful producer is it?" ”