VietNamNet Bridge – HCM City Television has begun broadcast of several serials based on the lives of urban school students and their families during summer.

Targeting teens: Popular young actress Phuong Trinh (left) in a scene from Tieu Thu Di Hoc, a new TV series targeted at young viewers. (Photo: VNS)

Phieu Luu Mua He (Summer Adventure) produced by HTV’s in-house Television Film Studio (TFS) focuses on the changing relationship between a group of urban students and their new-found friends they meet in a remote village.

The 15-episode film on HTV9 has already become a hit.

TFS’ 50-part Luc Lac Huyen Bi (Magic Tintinnabulum) is about the life of a bunch of school-going friends, their dreams, and conflicts at home and in school.

It will be on HTV 3 from late August.

“We hope our TV serials will be entertaining enough to lure away young audiences, particularly high-school students, from the slick South Korean and Chinese productions that dominate Vietnamese channels,” My Khanh, director of Luc Lac Huyen Bi, said.

“We do not have serious ‘messages’. We just hope viewers will learn simple but useful lessons from our film.”

TFS has invested a lot of money in both human resources and high-tech equipment to make the films.

In Phieu Luu Mua Heø, director Minh Cao and his crew cast amateur actors, all students based in HCM City, in the leading roles.

“It is the best way to ensure [the] characters strike a chord in teenagers,” he said.

TFS’s competitors, Saiga Film and Phuoc Sang, have produced comedies for the summer.

Saiga’s 30-part Gia Dinh Teo (Teo’s Family) is about a rural boy named Teo who like to explore and dream about the world.

Tieu Thu Di Hoc (Young Girls Go to School), Phuoc Sang’s 30-episode show, is about schoolgirls who face problems while on the threshold of life. It features young singers Phuong Trinh and Hoang Thien Long, who are popular among teenagers.

Both serials hit screens next month.

Vietnamese filmmakers face difficulties in making serials for children and teenagers though there is a big demand for them.

“We do not often receive quality screenplays suitable for such viewers,” Do Phu Hai, a director and producer at TFS, said.

“We cannot make feature films or TV serials spending billions of dong with these lightweight stories.”

But he pointed out that the genre was very difficult to make, explaining “We [also] need skilled filming crew and young actors who can infuse life into children’s roles.”

Young people have their own way of perceiving the world, and this is “not always easy to understand”, he admitted.

Many viewers write in to complain that the characters in films are “silly” boys and girls and “we never think or act like them”, he revealed.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News