Magnolia jurors call for script excellence in surge of realistic TV dramas

By Alex Miao

Magnolia Award jury members discussed the importance of scripts in the increasing number of realistic dramas being produced, and how to improve them, at the ongoing Shanghai TV Festival on Monday.

The Jury President Masterclass included Magnolia Award jurors, actor and jury president Chen Baoguo, scriptwriter Gao Xuan and director Kang Honglei.

Chen Baoguo, a respected screen veteran, noted the phenomenon of “rewatching old dramas” in pointing to the need for the standard of TV drama scripts to continually get better.

“Actors rely on their roles to tell the story, and the roles come from the script,” Chen said, “For example, ‘The Grand Mansion Gate,’ I was lucky to take this script, which I knew at the time would be a rare 50-year occurrence.”

Screenwriter Gao Xuan, who wrote the 2023 series “Imperfect Victim,” said, “We have to keep renewing ourselves.”

“Nowadays, the audience's aesthetics are changing, becoming more diverse, and our creations should also become more diverse.”.

She encouraged young scriptwriters to focus on society, to pay attention to issues and characters that concern everyone.

“As a scriptwriter, you have to respect the times and the characters of those times, get close to them, and turn yourself into a character among them,” Gao said.

She said she has become “less courageous over the years,” and that every step of her creative process relies heavily on life experiences and interviews, focusing not just on a single character or story.

Kang Honglei, director of the 2023 series “A Long Way Home,” agreed with Gao, saying “a good script can't just be about men and women, but some other things mixed in besides emotions.”

He emphasized that how to present people “on our artistic platform is something that directors and scriptwriters have to think about.”

While scriptwriters and directors emphasize the creation of realistic themes, actor Chen Baoguo pointed out that actors often have the problem of “not acting from the heart.”

He emphasized the importance to acting of learning to become skilled in the use of characterization. “Acting is a study and a science,” Chen said.