On the one hand, it is to give professional guidance to newcomer directors, and on the other hand, it is to help young directors to connect with the market as quickly as possible.
Text/One-by-one
The value of market thinking is highlighted.
At present, the large-scale director's reality show "Director Please Advise" is about to enter the end, the program in the maximum simulation of the real film industry ecology at the same time will also allow young directors to face the test of the market directly, the third stage of the short film from the overall temperament is closer to the real cinema film.
Unlike previous episodes, producers are no longer just providing a producer's perspective. In the seventh program, Chen Zhixi popularized the entire film production process in almost every detail. Moreover, in the short film shooting of the three directors of his studio, Chen Zhixi's "market thinking" production mode has played a maximum effect.
In particular, according to the style of director Channing Huang's past works, "Everyone Loves Charles" filmed by the director has received high praise and successfully won the first place in the third stage. At the same time, while personally singing the theme song to director Wang Wenye, he helped the young director adjust the shooting plan according to the temporary situation on the spot, and "First Love" also received a good response.
For the current newcomer directors, the biggest pain point is how to quickly integrate with the market. The producer's duty is precisely to help trust the director grow through his past production experience and professionalism.
1
—Market-oriented production thinking—
Balance.
This is the key word that Chen Zhixi emphasizes the most in this show, and the balance of artistry and commerciality is the core of Chen Zhixi's production thinking. In the previous episodes, Chen Zhixi also repeatedly stressed the need to respect the market and respect the audience. For this show, the core is to fully simulate the real film industry ecology, and the producer is precisely a bridge between the commercial film market and the public.
Judging from the real feedback from the film industry, the importance of high-quality producers and producers in the past two years has been greatly highlighted. This is the inevitable result of the continuous expansion of the market market and the continuous increase of the single-film box office. With the continuous improvement of the audience's aesthetics in the domestic film market, as long as the films with relative "balance" of various dimensions can be achieved to break the circle.
For newcomer directors, "balance" is actually the most lacking. Judging from the feedback of the film market in the past two years, new directors, new genres, and new themes are indeed hot spots in the market, but the works that can really quickly flood into the market and become the head blockbusters are often works that achieve a relative balance between artistry and commerciality.
Therefore, after entering the third stage, Chen Zhixi put forward higher requirements for the three directors he worked with in the studio. For example, at the beginning of the project, Chen Zhixi used the production case of the "Detective Chinatown" series to make newcomer directors realize that compound genres are the key to breaking through the bottleneck at the box office.
Nowadays, "Detective Chinatown" has become the most successful series of domestic films, and even this IP has begun to develop web dramas and animations simultaneously, with the prototype of the so-called IP universe. The reason why the first "Detective Chinatown" was most popular with the audience was because it achieved a "balance" of the film genre, balancing its artistry and commerciality.
But for the vast majority of newcomer directors, due to the lack of sufficient market experience, they actually do not have a superimposed type of project thinking at the beginning of the project, which requires the producer to play a role to help the newcomer director.
Compared with Bao Bell, who has relatively rich experience in the studio's cinema films, Chen Zhixi's focus is tilted to Channing Huang and Wang Wenye. For Channing Huang, as the director who was "resurrected" in the first stage, Channing Huang's "Everyone Loves Charles" shot in the third phase received unanimous praise and was considered to be the most comprehensive director. But in fact, in the early days of the original project, it was not the project that Channing Huang longed to shoot.
After director Channing Huang elaborated on the creative script, Chen Zhixi strived to direct the Nebula Award-winning short story "Everyone Loves Charles", which he bought a few years ago. According to Channing Huang's previous style, he is able to master this sci-fi genre, and from the overall evaluation of the project, it is obviously more marketable than Channing Huang's envisioned script idea "Everyone Loves Charles". Judging from the feedback from the results, the word-of-mouth and box office of this short film were fairly acceptable for offline screening, and it also received high praise on the spot.
It can be seen from the case of "Everyone Loves Charles" filmed by Director Chan Ning Huang that Chen Zhixi has always used market-oriented production thinking to help newcomer directors grow.
2
—The "Golden Rule" Behind the 10 Billion Box Office —
"Values".
In the program, Chen Zhixi emphasized more than once that "sincere emotions can move people". For movies, in addition to genres, casts, and stories, what can really make movies break the circle lies in emotions.
In this year's Spring Festival file, Chen Zhixi participated in the production of "Hello, Li Huanying" successfully counterattacked, and finally won 5.413 billion box office. This family comedy is the "composite type" that Chen Zhixi has always advocated, but it amplifies the family element on the simple drama film, and the comedy is the biggest advantage of this film.
Nowadays, the penetration of comedy in the genre has always been the strongest domestic film in the cinema film market, especially Shen Teng and Jia Ling have a strong market appeal. Emotionally, family love films have been relatively few in domestic films before, but family love is undoubtedly a wide range of emotions, especially in the Spring Festival file such a period has a strong emotional orientation.
The film can go out of the circle because the emotions of the film itself can run through the market, although this film is Jia Ling's debut work written and directed by herself, it is also based on her own personal experience. Therefore, the emotions in the film, especially in the second half, are extremely sincere, which allows the film to stimulate the emotional resonance of the audience to the greatest extent.
In the newly announced Sina Film Selection 2021 Top Ten Chinese Cinema Films, Chen Zhixi participated in the production of a total of three films, namely "Auspicious Ruyi", "Send You a Little Red Flower", and "Hello, Li Huanying". The combined box office of three films produced in a year reached nearly 7 billion. Although these three films are different in genre, their values are consistent with the starting point of Chen Zhixi's films, sincere and kind.
Chen Zhixi's real emergence in the production field was the release of "Man Re-Journey of Tai Yuan" in 2012, which once broke the box office record of Chinese films. In 2015, while participating in "Detective Chinatown", he also participated in Dapeng director's debut film "Pancake Man".
One of the characteristics of Chen Zhixi's early works is that they "fight big with small". "The Tai Lu of The Man Again" was invested in a total box office of 1.27 billion yuan at a cost of 30 million yuan, and "Pancake Man" was exchanged for a box office performance of 1.16 billion yuan at a cost of 25 million yuan, with a box office investment ratio of 23.2 times, becoming one of the films with the highest investment and return ratio.
The reason why it can be small in the market is that the film must resonate with a wider audience and break the circle in the market. In addition to the genre dividends of the early domestic film market, films that want to break the circle in the market must attract audiences through emotional resonance on the basis of content protection.
3
— "Throwing people" logic —
Pitchers don't cast scripts.
In an early interview, Chen Zhixi said that he was "casting people without casting scripts." In the current domestic film market, talent is still the scarcest resource, whether it is the company or capital is still built around the talent system. Before the epidemic, Lin Li, a new director, also made the entire industry aware of the importance of cultivating new directors. This is also one of the reasons why directorial variety shows have begun to appear at present, and the core purpose is to hope that more new talents will feed back into the film market.
Judging from Chen Zhixi's past production experience, he has unearthed many high-quality newcomer directors. In 2010, he participated in Xu Zheng's "Tai Lu of Man Again", although this work became the first Chinese film to break through the box office mark of 1 billion, but after all, it was Xu Zheng's directorial debut, and it was extremely difficult to fight for funds in the early stage without sufficient endorsement. "Tai 囧" ushered in a new era of Chinese cinema, with a large number of cross-border directors pouring into the film market and achieving success.
Similarly, during the production of "Pancake Man", Chen Zhixi did not hesitate to advance funds to help Dapeng complete his directorial debut, and this film also made Dapeng the youngest director in China to exceed 1 billion yuan at the box office.
Since then, Han Yan, Chen Sicheng and Jia Ling, who have cooperated with Chen Zhixi, have all entered the ranks of directors with a box office of more than 1 billion, and Chen Sicheng and Xu Zheng have already exceeded 10 billion yuan at the cumulative box office.
But looking back, it is no accident that new directors who can repeatedly dig out a single film box office break of 1 billion or even 5 billion. It is not easy to find a new director, because new directors are often not all good at comprehensive ability, but are more prominent in a certain item. At this time, the role of the producer is fully magnified, through its own professionalism to escort the newcomer director.
On the variety show, Chen Zhixi said that she also has a reverence for the film and her original intention, which can be seen from her past works, such as accompanying director Dapeng to complete the short film "Auspicious", which won the Best Drama Short Film Award at the 55th Golden Horse Awards; and developed into a long-form cinema film "Auspicious Ruyi", which also won the Top Ten Douban Movies of the Year and the Top Ten Chinese Films of Weibo Film in 2021 at the end of the year. From commercial films to literary and art films, Chen Zhixi has also tried and explored in different fields.
When helping newcomer directors choose projects, Chen Zhixi let his film team join him. Director Channing Wong's short film "Everyone Loves Charles" is an IP project that Chen Zhixi once purchased, and the project director proposed this IP at the meeting. Judging from the results, the reason why director Channing Huang was able to control this short film is the ability shown in the second stage of the show, and the soft science fiction genre of "Everyone Loves Charles" can have the completion degree of the third stage, which also allows some professional judges to see the ability to direct this type of feature film.
Director Wang Wenye is the youngest of the surviving directors of the show, and the "First Love" directed by wang wenye has received unanimous praise in the third stage, and the role of this short film in the production process is indispensable to Chen Zhixi. First of all, in the process of shooting, due to the extreme bad weather, Chen Zhixi helped the director quickly adjust the shooting plan. Secondly, the performance suggestions for the actor's performance are also clearly given. On the most critical theme song, the invited band could not complete the work of the theme song due to the epidemic, and Chen Zhixi personally sang the theme song.
This short film is also considered by professional judges to be the best of Wang Wenye's three works, and the attendance rate of offline screenings has also entered the top four.
In the third stage, producers with market thinking can obviously help newcomer directors more effectively, and from a long-term point of view, professional producers will inevitably need to help newcomer directors connect with the market more smoothly through market-oriented production thinking.