Text │ Qi Fei
The film and television market is in crisis.
In the middle of this month, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television announced the national TELEVISION drama shooting and production record in November, and the total number of records dropped from 41 in October to 39, while the number of online dramas in the recently announced key online film and television drama shooting filings in October was only 61 at a new low.
Not only is the number of filings decreasing, but the overall operating rate is also declining. According to statistics, a total of 29 dramas started in November, while only 16 new dramas started up as of December 26, and under the pressure of many parties, the film and television market is shrinking.
The other side of the reduction in production volume is the improvement of the "boutique rate", and high-quality IP is further valued by the market. According to the record information of the TV drama in November, among the five award-winning works of the 10th Mao Dun Literature Award, Xu Zechen's "Going North", Liang Xiaosheng's "Human World" and Chen Yan's "Protagonist" have all been determined to be filmed.
The high-quality story foundation of literary IP gives it a certain advantage in film and television presentation, and the competition around literary IP has become increasingly fierce in recent years. Tencent combined with Yuwen and Xinli to create a "troika" big IP ecology, iQiyi continued to develop its reading business, online literature giants Migu and Jinjiang took IP incubation as the focus of business development, in addition, community platforms such as Zhihu and Douban also officially joined the content manufacturer echelon. It can be seen that no matter when high-quality content is always the core competitiveness of the market.
On the one hand, the IP battlefield of the giants and upstarts has increased their size, and on the other hand, it is the shrinking film and television market. It seems that the cake of literary IP urgently needs some new practices other than film and television to be enough.
Nettext, "meta" IP
Literary IP can be roughly divided into traditional literature and online literature, and for subsequent development, the two types have their own advantages. Traditional literature has a deep heritage, often depicting the changes of the times or the lives of small people, which is in line with the trend of serious literary adaptation in the past two years; while the online texts that originated on the Internet and are rooted in the Internet are more likely to be adapted than traditional literature because of their "birth".
In addition, the creative style of online literature "not playing cards according to the routine" often brings "serendipity" to the IP market - this freedom gives the ip of the network more space in the subsequent development: the novel, immersive world view and the characters with distinct personalities are easy to immerse the reader in it, in the follow-up incubation of IP, whether it is to do film and television development, or want to further catch up with the "metaverse" boom, there are advantages that other IP cannot match.
The flexibility and diversity of Ip development has actually long been valued by the industry. In May this year, iQiyi proposed the "one fish and twelve eating" model with "Wind Rising Luoyang" as the vanguard, and in October, Youku did not want to show weakness and proposed to create a "Zijin Chen Universe", coupled with Tencent's "troika", the layout of the three major video platforms for ip diversified development has initially taken shape.
Turning its attention to the upstream of the industry, the major online text platforms as "IP providers" still stay in the IP development model of "signing authors to create and sell copyrights", and mainly focus on traditional development models such as film and television, animation, and audiobooks.
As mentioned above, the competition in the online ip market is becoming more and more fierce, and the playing method of IP incubation needs to be updated urgently, and the concept of "meta-narrative" proposed by Migu Reading may be a signal of change in the upstream IP industry.
The so-called "meta-narrative", according to the understanding of Liu Peiyao, chief operating officer of Migu Digital Media Co., Ltd., is to take the ip of the network as the origin of the world view, and form an "IP brand" through the diversified evolution and development of IP. The "yuan" here refers to the ip brand effect of online text that is composed of various derivative products.
As an upstream IP development platform, at the just-concluded Migu Literary Writers Festival, Migu put forward the idea of "online text label + script + X", combined with 5G technology to promote IP full-scenario development. In addition to the common film and television development of long and short dramas, Migu Digital Media also focuses on offline interactive development models such as script killing and immersive cultural tourism, and enhances the interactivity of readers by virtue of the strong immersion of the online worldview.
With the gradual shrinking of the film and television market, Liu Peiyao judged that the future development trend of online text IP will turn to the direction of interactive immersion. "We judge that in the future, the domestic script killing market will reach the market size of China's film box office." In addition, offline services such as immersive cultural tourism, immersive performances, and immersive hotels also need the support of high-quality IP, and Migu Digital Media can just meet their needs for good content and good stories. ”
Development, pre-production
From the perspective of the IP universe layout of the three major video platforms, whether it is Ma Boyong, Zijin Chen or Tang Jiasanshao, the development of the IP universe of the video platform will mostly pour energy and resources into well-known writers who have formed a personal brand effect.
The fundamental reason for this status quo is that the market lacks works that are truly compatible with diversified development in terms of content, quality, and influence. Observing the above three authors, it can be found that in addition to personal brands, the works of these authors all have the characteristics of constructing a universe of character relationships in different stories under a unified world view.
Liu Peiyao believes that on the basis of high-quality stories, a perfect world view, a distinct character image and a typical experience scene are the threshold for an online article to become a diversified development IP. The "pre-production" development is an effective way to maximize the exploration of such online articles outside the author's personal brand.
Implemented at the specific operational level, it is the four major content labels of "Fantasy Space", "Tianxuan Universe", "Floating World" and "Her Power" launched by Migu Digital Media at the Fifth "Network Literature +" Conference, and explores the IP "potential stocks" with diversified development value by focusing on the four vertical themes of science and technology science fiction, traditional culture, social industry and women's growth.
Migu Digital Media's "pre-positioning" development thinking has been reflected in the choice of label theme.
Among the four major labels, the "whimsical space" that focuses on science and technology science fiction and the "Tianxuan Universe" that focuses on traditional culture are mainly responsible for exploring the worldview framework, realizing the visualization and experience of immersive scenes through the picture sense of science fiction, fantasy, traditional culture and local culture, and further completing the landing combination of IP and immersive interactive content. The two major labels of "Floating World" and "Her Power" are known for their character shaping, and through the distinct characters and the spiritual outlook of the times and the audience, they have obtained the access qualification to become the "meta-narrative" IP.
Within the label, the "pre-positioning" mentality still exists. For example, Migu combined with the "Tianxuan Universe" label launched the "100 Hundred Places" local cultural boutique strategy, that is, to establish cooperation with 100 places to create 100 boutique series of novels that dig deep into the essence of local culture, laying a "tailor-made" IP foundation for the future development of local immersive cultural tourism.
The four major content labels combine the pre-development thinking to form their "online text label + script + X" incubation model. According to the information released, Migu set up a "lantern screenwriting studio", which introduces planning thinking in the early stage of creation, which can effectively improve the efficiency of the whole process of IP development; for some key works, the strategy of script development and literary creation at the same time also effectively ensures the participation of the original author while improving the efficiency of commercial transformation.
With the current positioning thinking involved in literary development, Migu Reading, as an Internet platform for market control and understanding of users, can also provide assistance for the author's literary creation. In the past, the creative idea of "parallel updating of the outline Tunwen multi-line and selecting the highest popularity line to continuously update" has been optimized, which not only saves the time and cost of script adaptation, but also makes the author's creation more efficient.
Copyright, heavy "after-sales"
Authors, as the most upstream content producers, need not only an efficient creative environment and rapid commercial returns, but also the "after-sales" issue of copyright.
This year, a Weibo of writer Tail Fish set off a storm about the ip film and television of online texts, and since then Zijin Chen has directly pointed his sword at the screenwriter, attracting Jiang Guangyu, screenwriter of "Lonely Empty Court Spring Evening", Shang Menglu, screenwriter of "Princess Promotion", Yu Fei, screenwriter of "Never Fade Away", Wang Hailin, screenwriter of "Let's See the Meteor Shower", and others to join the war of words, although it finally ended in apology, but it really made the hot discussion of "IP magic reform" another red.
In fact, this is not the first time that the well-known network text IP film and television has "exploded". In 2015, the author of the "Ghost Blowing Lights" series of novels, Tianxia Baxiang, filed a complaint against Lu Chuan, the copyright owner and director and screenwriter of the film "Nine-Story Demon Tower", and after four years of two rounds of litigation, the court ruled that China Film Company and other defendants infringed the author's right of authorship and protected the integrity of the work, and should stop the distribution, broadcasting and dissemination of the film "Nine-Story Demon Tower" involved in the case, publish an apology statement and compensate 50,000 yuan for moral damages.
Judgment in the "Nine-Story Demon Tower" Copyright Dispute Case
It can be seen that although film and television works are mostly "magic reforms", IP adaptations are not "extralegal places", in addition to facing the complaints of readers and original authors, the iron fist of justice of the law may also be smashed into any link of downstream development. To fundamentally solve this problem, it is necessary to let the author deeply participate in the development process and become a "community of destiny" with all aspects of IP incubation.
The "creative partner" service launched by Migu Digital Media is very much in line with this idea, and the author's right to speak in the subsequent development process is guaranteed by making the author a "partner". This plan has brought a complete change to the development model of net text IP, the author has changed from the previous copyright "seller" to one of the project leaders, and Migu Reading has thus changed from the original literary draft platform to the writer service platform. In this way, on the one hand, the rights and interests of authors are protected; on the other hand, with the deep participation of authors, subsequent development products also maintain the attractiveness of their original IP audiences, with the prerequisites for taking the word-of-mouth route, so that the entire IP incubation process has completed a bottom-up change.
As the most upstream resource of the entire content industry, the quality and development mode of net text IP plays a very important role in the quality of downstream products. The market is not without the evil wind of "only big IP theory", nor has it not gone through the crooked road of "Tun IP" and "shoddy manufacturing", as the bubble of the film and television market gradually dissipates, the blind enthusiasm of the film and television market for IP is gradually calm, whether it is an upstream content platform or a downstream development platform, for IP development have more observation and thinking, for the entire IP incubation industry, it is not a good opportunity to scrape bones to cure poison and optimize the structure.