The xuanhuan drama “The Starry Love” is adapted from the novel of the same name by Yi Du Jun Hua (一度君华), starring Chen Xingxu, Landy Li, Luke Chen and He Xuanlin, and is the finale of the “The Honey Trilogy” after “Ashes of Love” and “Skate Into Love”.
With the release of the teaser and poster, the attention of “The Starry Love” is rising, the gorgeous scenes of the drama is particularly eye-catching, combined with the sweet and heart-tormenting mythological story structure, making the drama a must-see xuanhuan drama in early spring this year.
Classic drama nucleus and contrasting personalities
“The Starry Love” only took two episodes to plant a very classic drama nucleus: marrying the right man in the wrong palanquin.
The queen of the human race gave birth to twin sisters, the older sister Qing Kui (played by He Xuanlin) is gentle and kind, admired by the human race, and was registered as a heavenly consort by the gods; the younger sister, Ye Tan (played by Landy Li), is intelligent and cunning, but has been bullied, and she was promised to the demon world as a demon consort.
Their wedding is arranged on the same day. However, the twin sisters' palanquin is accidentally switched. Ye Tan and the Empyrean Xuan Shang (played by Chen Xingxu) become couple, while Qing Kui enters the demon tribe and becomes the pawn of the third prince Chao Feng (played by Luke Chen) to fight for the crown. The two couples made numerous jokes, but also each other's love grew.
At this time, the four realms learn that the identity of the twin sisters is related to the survival of the realms, they want to kill the twin sisters, and the four face a huge test between thinking about world's life and holding on to love. After the sisters to courage to break the situation, ushering in the light after the darkness.
As the grand finale of “The Honey Trilogy” series, “The Starry Love” must continue the core of the series with some innovations and upgrades. Executive producer Liu Ning said: “Although the three works in this series are adapted from the novels of three different authors, we have a structure set by ourselves for this series. The expansions and complements in the adaptation are to fit this structure more closely. In this structure, funny dramatic conflict will be set in the early stage, using light comedy atmosphere to make the audience feel joyful and happy, and then slowly bring out some heart-tormenting parts as the characters grow and change. The first two productions of the series have proven that this structure is very acceptable and enjoyable to the audience and allows them to follow the whole series very comfortably.”
Unlike “Ashes of Love” in which the whole plot is drawn from the perspective of the female protagonist, “The Starry Love” has two contrasting couples. The younger sister, who is intelligent and cunning by nature but has been bullied in her childhood, meets the cold immortal who has lived for 2700 years and has cut off her love for the sake of repairing the ruins of the immortal world. The other pair is a gentle and virtuous older sister, met with Chao Feng who has a deeply concealed to fight for the reserve.
The huge contrast in character makes the roles in “The Starry Love” will be fuller and the narrative tighter. Because of the unique ‘pain connection' between the two twin sisters, the two story lines are closely intertwined. These two originally wrongly married couples will enter into a sweet state after a series of trials, tribulations, tests and rescues.
Scene innovation & romantic four realms
The worldview of “The Starry Love” is based on the “Classic of Mountains and Seas”, and there are four realms: heaven, human, beast and sunken abyss. In addition to the human realm based on realistic aesthetics, the heavenly realm favors blue, the sunken abyss realm favors rich purple and black, the beast realm favors passionate red bamboo, and the special scene ruins uses the Chinese ink colors.
In addition to that, “The Starry Love” has originally designed a flowing smoke and haze system for the heavenly realm, will trigger changes in the weather according to the mood of the character, spiritual and beautiful, but also to create a more romantic atmosphere.
In order to get the best presentation of the mythological aesthetics, “The Starry Love” paid much attention to realistic filming, with a total set area of more than 50,000 square meters. Among them, the crew used an open space of 15,000 square meters in Hengdian to build the complete beast world. The heavenly realm used a 12,000 square meter space, plus a 5,000 square meter studio. The scenes in the heavenly realm, the beast realm, and the sunken abyss required a lot of computer special effects, the total amount of special effects shots for the entire production exceeded 20,000, and post-production took 10 months.
As for the costumes and props, the crew also put in a lot of effort. Thousands of costumes were made and nearly 70,000 props. The costumes, props and makeup for each scene meet three combinations: combined with the description in the original, combined with the actors, and combined with the scenes.
For example, the Ye Tan's styling in the human world is mainly purple, both clothing and accessories are hidden asymmetry, highlighting her rebellious character; and when she came to the heavenly realm, the overall look of the noble and elegant route, the elements are also symmetrical, foreshadowing the changes she will usher in here.
The “The Honey Trilogy” uses the same production team. This team includes not only the director, screenwriter, art director and other people, and even music composition. Only a stable team can be more effective in developing innovations, constantly sum up experience in the review, optimize the content.
Young actors & complex characters
Within the broad category of immortal dramas, ancient costume dramas, and mythological dramas, the characters in “The Starry Love” are relatively complex. In particular, the male lead character, Xuan Shang, is devoured while repairing the immortal ruins, resulting in his mind transforming into three pieces of divine consciousness.
- The fire demon “La Mu”, with hot-tempered but simple-minded.
- “Mei You Qing”, bounty assassin that only wants to get rich and is extremely greedy for money.
- “Wen Ren”, an amorous and talented man who is good at poetry and elegant songs.
Together with Shao Dian You Qin before the split of consciousness and Xuan Shang after the reversion, a total of five different personalities are presented. This is equivalent to one actor having to play five separate characters, which is quite difficult, he made a sharp distinction in the gait, posture, eyes, intonation, speech speed and other details.
As post-95s, Chen Xingxu and Landy Li are both child stars and already have rich acting experience. In the drama, Ye Tan will have an emotional scene with all three consciousnesses of Xuan Shang. This is a difficult part of the performance and a test of the acting skills of the two new generation actors.
Executive producer Liu Ning said: “They are very good at growing and changing their characters throughout the drama. When you watch the drama, you can pay more attention to the eyes, because the eyes can not be influenced by external forces, but belong to the secondary creation of the actors themselves. The eyes of the actors in the drama often leave a deep impression on me.”
From “Ashes of Love” to “Skate Into Love” and then to “The Starry Love”, it has been steadily upgraded with a unified core, constantly pursuing to make the audience enjoy the best watching experience. The beautiful visual system, highly fitting soundtrack, and sweet emotional line make the subsequent episodes of “The Starry Love” highly anticipated.
