A New Form of CCTV-10 Spring Festival Event (Excerpt)

A New Form of CCTV-10 Spring Festival Event

- Story and Audience Looking For True Love

Music Life Newspaper

A new documentary feature event during Spring Festival without traditional forms of singing, dancing or comedy sketches would accompany the TV audience to spend a “sensational” night on lunar January 5th this year. It is a fascinating cultural feast during Spring Festival designed on the basis of the CCTV-10 program Story.

TV Rating of Story Ranks first in CCTV-10

Since CCTV-10 began broadcasting on July 9th of this year, the program Story has moved and won praise from audience with its correct positioning and its form of telling a true life story every day. Its audience rating has been ranking on the top of CCTV-10. The program Story is divided into daily editions and weekend editions. After broadcasting, some programs aroused keen public response and established regular audience groups.

Consequently, when considering the general structure of Spring Festival documentary event this year, staff members in CCTV-10 thought that in such a special moment, Story should open the door to fulfill a dream of gathering and reuniting for the audience.

Looking For True Love in Long Years

Telling True Feelings Recalling Long Life

This documentary feature event during Spring Festival will follow the theme of “Looking for True Love”, focus on kinship, friendship and love so as to show the true, the good and the beautiful in the world as well as to show noble characters, conducts and deeds of people with a loving heart and a sense of social responsibility.

So far, writers and directors of the event have carefully chosen hundreds of stories. The shooting crew has already traveled around the country on the basis of determined content of shooting.

It is worth mentioning that this event has also opened a voice hotline-16899678 in cooperation with China Telecom, so as to collect stories about true love around the country and listen to audience’s advice about and demand for this Spring Festival documentary event.

In order to correctly express the theme of the event, writers and directors of the event have also carefully designed a couplet with the first line as Looking for True Love in Long Years, the second line as Telling True Feelings Recalling Long Life and the horizontal scroll as Looking for True Love. They wish the audience of Story to actively recommend themselves and tell their own stories on TV.

Sisters off the Stage, Partners on the Stage

The chief directors of this event Sha Bihong and Sha Bifang are sisters. Previously, they had closely cooperated for many times in various TV works like Social Care - A Follow-up Interview of a Female Reporter on the Campaign Against Human Trafficking, and they had been called Golden Partners as Sisters. The younger sister Sha Bifang said: “I am nine years younger than sister. Our ages differ us by nearly one generation, and our cooperation is also complementary. Sister’s rich life experience and thoughts make programs more profound, while my diversified ideas and vigor make programs more edgy. Moreover, this time sister also acts as hostess of the event with a heavy workload. Being too tired will influence the effect of hosting, so she emphasizes more on designing, while I focus more on implementing.”

As chief director and host of the event, Sha Bihong is a writer and directress who have created over 500 documentaries and feature films. On the screen or off the screen, she always talks neither too quickly nor too slowly. As a result, many people have a sense of security when listening to her. Sha Bihong is adept at focusing on women and common people. She knows how to reveal their living conditions and inner world through the nearest mind collision and the narrative perspective of first person.

In this Spring Festival event, Sha Bihong would integrate the realistic style and dramatic element of documentaries, highlight the features of Story and create a new form of Spring Festival event for the audience. Sha Bihong introduces the program like this: “This program would first appear on TV on lunar January 5th, a time when the audience are just about to finish paying new year calls, visiting relatives and playing with friends, but are going to gather to eat dumplings. We would mainly tell stories about common people. A few celebrities would also take part in the program, but just as embellishments. When organizing this two-hour-long event, we draw materials from the life itself, adopting authentic characters and incidents. However, we would not tell stories in a simple and straightforward way. Instead, we will create suspense and expectation for our audience. We would also make appointments with some audience to interact with them and best mobilize them to take part in the program.” Sha Bihong also emphasizes that each person has a spectacular moment in his life, which is the essence of drama after being summarized. Integrating dramatic elements into the event is not mannerism, but to create lasting charm for this event in form. The event would avoid artificial sensationalism. Even if the audience would weep during the event, their tears are not bitter. Instead, they would weep because they are deeply touched at that moment. Life is so beautiful, which is the inspiration of life that the special program of Story during Spring Festival is trying to bring to TV audience.

The special program of Story during Spring Festival would not only achieve innovations in content, but also strive to meet the aesthetic concepts of modern people in stage artistic design. Huge Chinese ink paintings, traditional Chinese knots, smiling or weeping faces of people of all ages, photographs named Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter that present the beautiful landscape of our country… The audience would follow the footprints of Looking for True Love, participate in the special program of Story during Spring Festival and stroll into the soul-stirring stories about true love.

TEXT/Xiao Mu