Yang Ziqiong's "Instantaneous Whole Universe" exploded, which is a film work with high reputation in the first half of this year. As a film released by A24 company, it embodies the typical taste of A24 selection: minority groups + weird plot + R-rated film + low cost and high quality.
Author | Veronica (Cultural Industry Review Author Group, Researcher of Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Editor| time
Edit | peninsula
Source | Cultural Industry Review
The most popular foreign film in the first half of this year may be "Everything Everywhere All at Once" starring Yang Ziqiong, which was released in North America on March 25, and once it was released, it received rave reviews, with a Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating of 98%, IMDb 8.5 points, and a global box office of 350 million yuan. After the emergence of streaming media resources in May, Chinese audiences finally caught a glimpse of Yang Ziqiong's long-lost screen figure. The Douban score started with 8.9 points, although it has now dropped to 7.8 points, but it is still a relatively high-quality work.
Why did "Instantaneous Universe" explode?
Directed by Dan Guan and Daniel Schnart, "Instantaneous Universe" tells the chaotic family life of Evelyn, a Chinese-American mother played by Yang Ziqiong, a dismal laundry, an incompetent husband, a gay daughter, and an elderly father who has just arrived in the United States. Just when Evelyn was exhausted and broke down, her husband suddenly told her that she was now just one of thousands of universes, and that there were many possibilities for her life in other parallel universes. And, most importantly, Evelyn, who seems to have achieved nothing in this universe, is the only "savior" who can defeat the source of evil forces. However, the source of this evil force is her daughter, and after many fights, evelyn finally reconciles with her daughter and father with love and tolerance, preventing the destruction of the universe.
Although the ending caused controversy, it was considered too bland, not innovative enough, the form was greater than the content, and the new bottle of old wine was new, but on the whole, the word-of-mouth box office double at the beginning of the film was indeed reasonable.
The first is the strikingness of the subject matter.
Minority themes have never become mainstream in European and American film and television circles, but every time there is a new work related to it, it can attract some attention, and this film not only focuses on the Asian community, but also enriches a layer, increasing the narrative of women's identity dilemmas as mothers, making the theme and plot more empathetic. At the same time, it has added parallel universe science fiction elements and kung fu elements, which can be said to have attracted three parts of the fan group at once. Whether it is a fan of science fiction, a fan of kung fu, a concern for women and families, and a fan of racial issues, they will be interested in it and can get thoughts from it.
Secondly, it is the coolness of brain holes and special effects.
Due to the setting of the parallel universe, the creator opened his brain in this movie and imagined her multiple lives for Evelyn, which made the audience addicted. For example, the "stone universe" in which intelligent life exists in stone form:
Human fingers have become the "hot dog universe" of hot dogs:
Due to the excessive scale of some universes, this film has become an R-rated film, but it has well satisfied the tastes of cult film lovers.
Third, the effect brought by Yang Ziqiong.
Although Yang Ziqiong is a big Chinese star in the European and American film circles, in fact, in recent years, there are fewer and fewer good works, and for many post-00s and post-10s, Yang Ziqiong's popularity is far less than Yang Zi. However, for many post-80s and post-90s, being able to see the movie starring Yang Ziqiong again can be said to be "Ye Qinghui". Moreover, Yang Ziqiong's acting skills and kung fu strength have not declined, and she successfully persuaded the audience. (A hot knowledge, the main character of this movie was set for Jackie Chan when it was first started, but it was eventually changed to Yang Ziqiong.) The author believes that cutting in from a female perspective is more fresh and attractive. ）
Fourth, the cost is low.
For a movie with sci-fi, parallel universes, and special effects as its selling points, the cost of this film can be described as low — $25 million. The creators revealed that the film had 500 special effects shots, but only 5 people completed it, especially during the epidemic restrictions, their post-production was almost entirely done by PR software. Industry insiders even said that this film returns to pure editing and jumping shots, purely by editing and smoke, just like the earliest science fiction film "Journey to the Moon", which gave the industry some inspiration.
After combing through these elements, many fans found that the film is very typical, typically a work that A24 will choose to release.
Who is A24?
A24 was actually the name of a highway in Rome, and it has no deep meaning.
It was three founders Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges who accidentally chose it, making it the name of an American independent film company with its own style.
△ Three founders
Hollywood currently has five major studios: Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner, and Sony Columbia. Most of the resources are in the hands of these companies, which can be said to greatly affect what movies we see (from production to distribution), of which the more commercial, artistic and thematic films that are accepted and appreciated by most audiences are more likely to be produced by these big manufacturers. Founded in 2012, A24 started with the distribution of movies, slowly began to expand its business, began to participate in the production and investment of movies, and in just ten years, it became a dark horse that "disrupted Hollywood" in the mouth of the American media.
As an independent film company, they have been focusing on discovering, buying, distributing, promoting or investing in niche films such as independent films, literary films, R-rated films or more artistic films. (The concept of independent films generally refers to films that are not part of any film group, company, or studio in terms of capital investment and production, and cost no more than $15 million; in the United States, it can be roughly understood as films that do not belong to the five major Hollywood film companies.) ）
Take a look at some of the works they have released and produced:
△ Image source: Poison Eyes
I believe that many readers will find that they have more or less seen these movies and are surprised that they are all related to A24.
The A24 team itself is very low-key, basically not interviewed, but with the success of their film works in word-of-mouth, awards and box office, more and more fans began to recognize, expect and even trust A24's production.
In terms of word-of-mouth, many A24 movies can reach a score of more than 7 points on Douban. For example, "Florida Paradise" 8.2 points, "Miss Bird" 7.9, "Swiss Army Knife Man" 7.8 points, "Lobster" 7.6 points, "Ghost floating" 7.6 points, "Moonlight Boy" 7.4 points, and the most recent 7.8 points "Instantaneous Universe". In addition to the movie, this year's popular and well-received drama series "Excitement" is also from A24.
In terms of awards, A24 films have gained a lot. Most of these films are small productions, newcomer directors, no big stars, niche themes, but they have received 30+ Oscar nominations and awards. For example, "Room" was nominated for Best Picture, Brie Larson successfully won Best Actress, "Amy" won Best Documentary, "Mechanical Ji" won Best Visual Effects, and A24's first direct investment in the production of the film "Moonlight Boy", won the Oscar for Best Picture, in addition, "Don't Tell Her" Okafina won the 77th American Film and Television Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, and the work "Minari" produced and distributed by A24 won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Wait a minute.
△ Okafina: The first Asian actress in the history of the Golden Globes
In terms of box office results, the A24 also gained considerable:
△Image source: One Entertainment Observation
While there are currently no more than $100 million in A24 films, it needs to be noted that many of them cost or acquire distribution fees. For example, A24's self-produced and distributed "Moonlight Boy" cost $4 million and grossed $65.04 million worldwide. "The Witch", which A24 bought at the Sundance International Film Festival, paid only $1 million, "Don't Tell Her" cost $7 million, and "Minari" A24 invested 2 million and received 12 million. A24 is responsible for the distribution of "Instantaneous Universe", the production cost of 25 million US dollars, the global box office has exceeded 55 million US dollars, but also has long returned to the cost. Although A24's recent new film "Man" is currently only $3.3 million at the box office, which is an example of failure, but overall, the vast majority of A24's investment has returned.
△ Stills from "Don't Tell Her"
Back in 2017, the A24 had a U.S. market share of 12. What is the current value of the A24? Last year, some media said that the A24 was interested in selling, and the price was as high as $3 billion. In March, Stripes invested $225 million directly in the A24.
While the A24 certainly can't compete with the Hollywood giants yet, we've had to see what they've accomplished.
How did the A24 succeed?
Selection tendency, vision and boldness, focusing on segmentation
If you've seen more than 3 A24 movies, you can clearly see the A24's tendencies when choosing the movies it wants to release or invest in.
"Mechanical Ji" (2014) tells the story of an artificial intelligence robot with independent thinking ability who has the ability to fall in love with humans, thus causing tragedy.
△ "Mechanic Hime"
"The Lobster" (2015) is an allegory about a future dystopian society in which single men and women will be locked up in a city hotel and must find a matching partner within 45 days, and the loser will become a self-selected animal and exiled to the great forest.
Swiss Army Knife Man (2016) tells the story of a man trapped on a desert island who becomes friends with a corpse and then embarks on a journey home with the body.
△ "Swiss Army Knife Man"
The Room (2016) tells the story of a girl who is imprisoned in a room by a neighbor for seven years, during which time she is raped by a neighbor and gives birth to a child. The child grew up in this room and was completely unaware of the outside world.
Moonlight Boy (2016) tells the story of a black boy whose mother has taken drugs and has an unfortunate upbringing and identity dilemma, and finally bravely admits his orientation as a homosexual and gains self-recognition.
"Don't Tell Her" (2020), directed by Chinese female director Wang Ziyi and starring Chinese actresses Okafina and Zhao Shuzhen, tells the warm and sad story of a Chinese-American family, who hides the fact that her grandmother has cancer and lets all the family go home to see grandma for the last time under the pretext of a wedding. Moreover, more than 50% of the Chinese dialogue in the whole film.
Roughly summarized, on the basis of ensuring a certain quality, A24's film selection and production tendencies are mainly: minority groups, marginal people's stories, R-rated films, cult films, and horror films. At the same time, they also pay attention to whether these films are linked and integrated with universal values and current affairs (such as artificial intelligence themes). Rather than whether there are big stars and big IP, how much traffic they can get, they pay more attention to quality and style.
Many directors here have said that many of these stories will not be recognized by Hollywood, and fortunately A24 is willing to buy them for support. This reflects the team's boldness and vision for film selection – as mentioned earlier, many films have achieved fame and fortune.
And they always trust new directors or continue to support directors they've worked with. For example, the first work of the director of "Instantaneous Universe", "Swiss Army Knife Man", was also released by A24. They encourage and affirm the director's personal style to a large extent, and do not give too much interference, and many fans of this genre and genre are increasingly trusting the production of A24.
It can be said that the creators, fans and A24 have gradually formed a cohesive relationship of mutual recognition.
Social communication, Internet thinking
Distribution and publicity are increasingly related, as Yang Hai, general manager of Alibaba Pictures, said, "The boundary between distribution and marketing is becoming more and more blurred, distribution is no longer a problem around the cinema or the film, but both sides must be taken into account, for distribution, now must have the ability to market, distribution is now a comprehensive ability." ”
Although A24 movies are mostly artistic than commercial films, A24's publicity strategy is very commercial and has a strong Internet mindset.
First, A24 places great emphasis on data analysis. They work deeply with operam, a data research company, and typically invest 95% of their budget for online marketing of cinema movies. Through data analysis, movie information is implanted into social networks, and potential ticket buyers on social platforms are locked by generative algorithms. Then let senior fans recommend each other, so that the word of mouth of the movie spreads.
Second, they are well versed in social communication, using social networks to develop movie promotion into "events".
For example, during the release of "Mechanical Ji" in 2014, A24 opened a Tinder account for the ai protagonist AVA in the movie, allowing her to match the audience, have a dialogue, and guide them to see the movie.
When marketing Witch in 2016, A24 also set up social accounts for the movies on major platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat), actively using these software to interact with viewers. In the end, the $3.5 million film grossed $40.5 million. (While this approach may seem unsurprising now, it was quite new 6 or 7 years ago.)
△ They also opened an account for the animals of "Witch" and gained 10,000 followers
For another example, when A24 promoted "Spring Break", it used the characters in it to make a spring break version of "The Last Supper", which caused a lot of repercussions.
Again, they pay a lot of attention to the content of the movie itself, rather than deliberately emphasizing the star cast or giving some exaggerated gimmicks. "Because these rules or routines not only often miss the consumer group of art films, but also discourage art film directors with their own personal styles."
For example, when promoting "Swiss Army Knife Man", they grabbed the prop element of the drifting bottle in the movie, made some real drifting bottles, waited for tourists to pick them up, contacted them, took the opportunity to form news, promotional videos and so on.
For another example, "A Midsummer Night's Horror" is a work that has been jokingly called a "breakup movie", during the release, A24 and the psychological counseling platform Talkspace cooperated to provide three months of free consultation and treatment for couples who commented under the movie advertisement, which can be described as a closely focused operation based on the movie and the audience.
Produced a large number of films around, labeled
A24 is not only adept at promoting movies, but also unique in terms of after-sales service.
They will produce a large number of peripheral products based on the content of the film, forming a small circle of A24 culture.
They have their own auction house, clothing brands, magazines, behind-the-scenes books on movies, their own podcast The A24 Podcast, and a special open-air screening event, Public Access, which specializes in A24 films.
Whether it's clothes, podcasts, magazines, these derivatives, the content is all closely related to their movies.
△ Open air screening
It can be said that A24 is branding itself, and it makes its audience tightly surrounded by its products, forming a strong cohesion. When people think of A24, they quickly think of these movies, think of horror movies, R-rated movies, think of some crazy and funny things.
Although the films produced or released by A24 are not artistically capable of entering the classic level of film history, and even some works make fans think that they are too "politically correct" (for example, "Moonlight Boy", which tells a black same-sex love story, won the Oscar for Best Picture, which caused great controversy), it does enable the public to see more styles, categories, themes of the film, or let these niche films with certain quality get more scheduling, promotion, viewing, and ultimately achieve profitability. This is something that many fans like to hear.
Niche films, art films, "enclosure self-germination" will have unexpected gains
As an increasingly integrated film company, A24's success is multifaceted (production, distribution, publicity, etc.) and difficult to replicate. If the domestic film industry can get any inspiration from it, the author believes that what is more prominent is actually to provide a positive and effective direction for the marketing of niche films and art films in terms of publicity and distribution: instead of striving to "go out of the circle" and make the "enclosure self-germination" to the extreme, there may be unexpected gains.
△A24 representative work "Lobster"
Those films that are not commercial, niche, and more literary are always confused about how to absorb more commercial popcorn fans, hoping to increase the attendance rate in this way. Such an approach rarely achieves the goal, and what is achieved may also lead to some negative effects.
For example, Bi Gan's "The Last Night on Earth" in 2018 was the most classic marketing misalignment case of that year.
The film can be described as a "pure" art film: a non-linear narrative, a 1-hour long shot, a slow pace, poetic language. Generally speaking, the audience of such films is mainly "literary and artistic youth" who live in first-tier cities and have a certain amount of reading.
However, in that year, the film was scheduled for December 31, 2018, and the marketing strategy of the film's distributor was for couples to come to the theater to "kiss new year's eve". The distributor's statement to the theater's event was, "The theater can choose to do the New Year's Eve activities for this film, and can choose to start at 21:50 on December 31, and the end of the film is exactly at 0:00 New Year's Eve." The audience can spend the most ritualful night with the most important people, a kiss on New Year's Eve! And in the form of short videos on Douyin, it was vigorously promoted.
This marketing effect was impressive on the opening day. Pre-sale box office 159 million, premiere box office 261 million.
However, after the premiere, the cumulative box office in three days was only 276 million, the average score of Maoyan was as low as 2.8 points, and 74.2% of the audience scored 1-2 points.
Why?
Because the content and style of the film itself are obscure and dull, and the slogan of a kiss and New Year's Eve gives people the feeling and expectation of romantic pleasure, many viewers feel deceived.
Moreover, the help of short videos has made the premiere attendance and box office in third- and fourth-tier cities amazingly high, and the most anticipated viewing experience of this part of the audience is relaxed and romantic. According to lighthouse data, 48% of the users who bought the pre-sale were from third- and fourth-tier cities, accounting for 48%, and it is conceivable that many of them were attracted by the official large number of Douyin video publicity, and this part of the population is not the mainstream of literary and art films.
It can be said that the failure of this publicity is mainly due to the failure to excavate and highlight the characteristics, shining points and cores of the film itself, and misplaced to attract many audiences who are not the main audience groups of such films, and many viewers retaliated by scoring low scores.
This is not to say that a movie that you can't understand is a good movie. First of all, objectively speaking, although "The Last Night on Earth" is not a masterpiece, its production completion is not low, and it has reached a normal level in shooting technology and film audiovisual language. (Even if it is given a low score by many people, the film still has a Douban score of 6.8); Second, it must be seen that each movie has its own positioning and audience. Audiences who are not in a certain type of film are more likely to evaluate a movie more subjectively. For example, if a large number of literary and art film lovers are deceptively encouraged to see a very commercial popcorn movie, they are also very likely not to see such films, and they will not get the viewing experience they want, thus giving a very poor evaluation, affecting the choice of audiences who have not seen it.
Road Painting Film and Television once released "Thief Family" and successfully marketed it, bringing good box office results. Its CEO Cai Gongming said, "There is often a problem in the marketing of art films, that is, the positioning is not clear. Everyone wants to make box office achievements and strive to make movies out of the circle, but the most important thing is to serve the audience in the circle well. ”
In fact, according to statistics, the domestic art film audience in recent years has three characteristics: youthfulness, large consumption potential, and high loyalty.
To put it more in layman's terms, the characteristics of art film audiences include, but are not limited to: curiosity, like fresh curiosity, willing to spend money, more determined, will specifically look forward to a director's work, will actively discuss on the Internet and even write serious film reviews, like Amway or spit, and so on. From these qualities, we can see that consumers of art have great potential.
In the promotion of art films, word of mouth is the most important. Although the market for art films is not as good as the commercial film market in the world, it will definitely have unexpected gains by deepening it. For example, A24's operations in marketing publicity and making film peripherals are both creative and attractive without masking the core characteristics of the film, attracting the audience of these films themselves.
epilogue
The past and present of A24 have refreshed the film and television industry, seeing a small window and vitality of art films.
In July last year, foreign media said that Apple, which had a partnership, wanted to acquire A24, and American cultural and entertainment magazine Variety reported that A24 itself was interested in selling. In the future, after being acquired by a large factory, can the A24 continue to adhere to its niche route? Will it still be possible to achieve what will be achieved in the decade 2012-2022? After all, being part of the mainstream is likely to mean serving the mainstream. The future of the A24 is for us to wait and see.
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