Small investment and big return - the box office performance of "Fame and Fame" is worth learning

Recently, China Film News reported that the global film box office list in 2021 was released. Among the top five global box office, three are domestic films, namely "Chosin Lake", "Hello, Lee Huanying" and "Detective Chinatown 3". Among them, "Chosin Lake" won the global film box office championship. If you only look at the Chinese market, among the top ten box office in Chinese film history, domestic films account for nine.

Last month, the latest work of the 007 series " No Time to Die" was released at the same time in China, an unknown small-cost production film "Fame and Fame". One is a mature commercial film, one is a debut of a new director; one is a well-known IP work with 50-year-old Hollywood stars, one is an original film without IP foundation; one costs nearly 400 million US dollars and one invests less than 50 million yuan. However, the box office of "Fame and Fame" has exceeded 700 million, far higher than "No Time to Die". Before the release of the film "Fame and Fame", the box office forecast given by the ticketing platform was less than 100 million. In the general impression, films produced at small cost are either of poor quality or too niche to be applauded. How did "Fame and Fame" spend a small amount of money to achieve applause and popularity?

First, without the need for big stars, this can save a lot of money. In addition, the most powerful way to save money in this movie is to limit the story to a single scene. 90% of the time in the film, these seven or eight actors hold script meetings in an abandoned mansion to deduce the case. In terms of cost, it saves a lot of costs for scenery and special effects. Commercial films cost very much to set, and in Hollywood movies, it's common for a scene that appears for a few seconds to cost millions of dollars. Another big money burner is the special effects, the current market is calculated by hundreds of thousands of dollars a second, and the special effects of one minute will cost tens of millions. And this movie saves all these costs. The film works the painting style and uses luxurious sets to express it. The story takes place in the mansion of the Republic of China, and the film party uses palatial decoration and a large number of famous paintings, sculptures and furniture. Although these things look luxurious, they actually save a lot of money than setting up locations and doing special effects. Where props can't be taken into account, photography and lighting are used to create a strong color contrast. In short, the film maintains a luxurious metropolis style from beginning to end.

Second, the use of a single scene means that it is not possible to advance the plot through transition scheduling, how to ensure the excitement of the story? The biggest feature of this movie in terms of plot is that it designs multiple reversals. In general suspense films, reversing twice can be regarded as brain-burning, and this movie has been reversed a total of 4 times. Even 5 minutes before the end, when everyone thought they already knew the truth, there was a biggest reversal, directly overturning all the reasoning of the previous two hours. Through such a design, the film has been grabbing the audience's attention and moving forward. Moreover, the closer to the end, the deeper the audience's impression, and the final reversal directly pushes the audience's experience to a new level.

Third, without money to carry out large-scale publicity, how can we expand the spread of the film? The discussion of this movie is very hot, there are more than 100,000 comments on Douban, and those who have not seen it are participating in the discussion. It's hard for suspense films. For suspense films, many people will deliberately not go to the film reviews, because after watching the film reviews, spoiling the murderer, it is not interesting. But the movie is different, it uses one trick – active spoilers. At the beginning of the movie, the murderer is revealed, but the audience does not know his modus operandi and motives. Therefore, the suspense of this movie is the process of finding the murderer's means and motives through reasoning, finding the answer and constantly overturning. With such a design, the film is not afraid of spoilers, and even the more spoilers, the more it can stimulate the audience's discussion. In addition to douban, there are also many people on Zhihu and B station who analyze the "hidden ending" of this movie, and everyone's interpretation is different, but everyone can justify themselves. It can be said that this film has become a hot spot for communication by stimulating the audience's enthusiasm for co-creation.

Sometimes, limited resources are not necessarily a bad thing, in despair to find hope, but will be more exciting, we in life, when encountering problems, sometimes more optimistic, more brains, more think of ways, the solution is always more than the problem!