A few years ago, movie actors were still shooting TV series, and this year, the director is not exempt from vulgarity.
The popularity of Feng Xiaogang's filming of "Echo" in the Misty Theater has just passed, no, the news that Zhang Yimou started filming "League of Legends" in September also floated over.
Zhang Yimou, e-sports drama "League of Legends".......
A lot of distractions rushed into the braincase at once: Is it starring Yi Yangqianxi? Liu Haocun or a new girl? One shot to the end?
Peach reacted the same way: silence, confusion, questioning. Trying to imagine, not imagining, giving up.
Isn't it bold? Bold or not?
Admittedly, how many people subconsciously rejected it when they first saw Zhang Yimou supervising the production of the "League of Legends" live-action series?
Peach's first reaction was: This TM is onion news, right?
The degree of shock is comparable to watching Ryan Gosling play Barbie boyfriend Ken, Park Seo-joon playing Captain Marvel's husband, and watching the live-action trailer of "The Little Mermaid" for the first time.
I just couldn't understand it, but I was shocked.
The reason is simple, "League of Legends" is indeed too incompatible with Zhang Yimou.
"League of Legends", the MOBA game comes, belongs to the male and female majors who stay up all night and are passionate, the dormitory is dark, the "golden rain" on the field, what "eternal god" and "what champion you are", is the temple of young people and the birthplace of new trendy black words.
"National Master" Zhang Yimou, the fifth generation of directors at the master level, the works are casually brought out of the two are that particularly majestic atmosphere, pay attention to nationality and criticism, what "Red Sorghum", "Alive", "Big Red Lantern Hanging High", although it has recently become synonymous with "bold", a comedian.
Artistic achievements and commerciality, Mozi is also known for his diligence, humility and energy, serving as the director of many national galas and opening ceremony performances, and the world's first director to direct the opening and closing ceremonies of both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
One is a game for young people, and the other is a 73-year-old national film director, which really has a very different painting style.
But if we look farther away, maybe this matter is quite normal, that is, "Internet drama" and "film director".
How many film directors have already filmed, or are preparing to make online dramas?
Very, very much.
Recently, Feng Xiaogang filmed the Misty Theater drama "Echo", and he also has the women-themed drama "North and South", which is caricatured as ungrounded.
Director Chen Zhengdao, whose masterpieces "Hypnosis Master" and "Midsummer Future", has two popular dramas: "Love is Delicious" and "Skyscraper".
Wang Xiaoshuai filmed "Octagon Pavilion Fog", Wong Kar-wai served as the producer and director of "Blossoms", and John Woo filmed the drama version of "Red Cliff"...
Zhang Yimou himself was rumored to shoot the adaptation of Mao Dun's literary award work "Protagonist" before "League of Legends".
Abroad, this trend was even earlier.
The most capable of making TV series is ghost director David Fincher, who filmed "Fight Club" and "Social Network", and took over three series of online dramas, one more heavyweight than the other. House of Cards (2013), Mind Hunter (2017) and Love Death. The popularity of "House of Cards" made "Netflix" enter the hall, and the stock price directly rose by 26%, and "Love Death" made Netflix great again.
Martin Scorsese, Quentin, Spielberg, Spike Lee, Wachowski sisters and other big directors are also "crab eaters", Woody Allen also said when filming "Six Dangers": The series may feel inferior, but make money!
"Six Dangers"
Directors make real money, film and television companies and platforms are also iron-hearted, and there is no ambiguity when throwing money.
In order to let Wong Kar-wai feel at ease to shoot "Blossoms", Shanghai Film Company spent 500 million yuan to buy a film and television base for the crew to shoot and use; Fincher's Mind Hunter used a lot of CGI technology and was cut because the budget was too high and did not match the attention; In other words, as long as there is enough return, it is not impossible to want a bigger investment.
The employers of these directors, with few exceptions, are Internet platforms. Whether it is Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, or other new and old platforms, or iYouteng, their ultimate belief is that they are users of their own platform.
As of the third quarter of 2022, Netflix's global subscribers exceeded 223 million, and the total number of subscribers of Disney's streaming media division surpassed Netflix's, exceeding 230 million.
In December 2022, the size of China's Internet users reached 1.067 billion, and the size of the online drama market has grown exponentially since 2016, from 3.2 billion in 2016 to 16.8 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach an unprecedented 21.2 billion in 2022.
If there are users, there are users who are willing to pay. The number of paying online video subscribers increased from 170 million in 2016 to 690 million in 2020.
And this number, there is still room for growth. As we said when we were kids, "If everyone in the country gave me $1, then I would be a monopoly."
In the online drama market, this is not a fantasy, but a reality, "If 700 million people are willing to give me 15 yuan a month, then I..."
The core competitiveness of making such a large number of users continue to pay is the platform's original dramas.
As a movie number editor, Tao himself has at least 3 video platform members, just like this, but also often because the ×× platform this drama and this variety show is popular, must go to see and temporarily charge a one-month membership.
Netizens who like Tao, who love to chase dramas like Tao, but are a little more critical, have developed a variety of wool methods: there are video members of ex-boyfriends who have been blackened by white; There are three WeChat people who change wool, and there are ruthless people who walk 10,000 steps a day for a week's free membership.
How good is the online drama that keeps us hooked so far? Or to put it another way, how cool can online dramas be?
If you put a few years ago, especially in 2013 and 2014, you said that domestic Internet dramas are a very "cool" thing, I am afraid that no one believes it, to describe the Internet dramas at that time, perhaps a more accurate adjective is: low-cost, entertaining, dirty, sometimes even vulgar, but make money, very, very profitable.
"Disi Men" and "Never Expected" were representative works at that time, Sohu's "Disi Men" had more than 1.4 billion online views in the three seasons, and the second season of "Never Expected" with an investment of only tens of thousands of yuan per episode, advertising revenue alone had more than 30 million.
In 2015, after Li Moufeng Yang's version of "Tomb Robbery Notes" was launched, iQiyi's server crashed.
The server crash made iQiyi the first video app to enter the top three (second) best-selling lists of the App Store, after iQiyi had just announced that the number of its paid members was 5.017 million. The reason for this collapse was that after the official launch of "Pirate Pen" that day, there were more than 2.6 million requests for instant viewing and playback, and more than 2.6 million requests for opening members to pay orders.
Since "Tomb Robbery Notes", the platform's self-made dramas have begun to follow the model of large IP+ traffic stars, and the problems with this model are often criticized: acting plastic, special effects garbage, quality that is called a poor, pursuing audience does not like to eat paid.
The eyes of the people in charge of the platform lit up: understood, arranged.
"Inferior" online dramas, after making money, began to emphasize "boutique" and "cinematic sense", with these two things, TV series cool.
In 2017, iQiyi CEO Gong Yu said: In the future, the super online drama model that can benchmark American dramas will become the mainstream. He also predicted that a large number of film talents will flow into the online drama industry in the future, including but not limited to directors, screenwriters, and actors.
iQIYI's online drama project with a high investment in 2017 has begun to contact the film team, and in 2020, they launched "Hidden Corner", which established the benchmark for film texture online dramas.
Quality, that is, short and concise, strong information, each episode to increase investment. "Hidden Corner" has only 12 episodes, "The Beginning" has only 15 episodes, although there is no specific cost information of "Hidden Corner" on the Internet, but according to producer He Junyi, iQiyi's investment in "Hidden Corner" is three times that of "Undocumented Crime", or reaches the ceiling of online drama investment in 2019.
Not to mention the sense of cinema, directly find a film director to shoot, heavy tone, composition, audiovisual language, so that the shots of the TV series look effective, emotional, and flavorful. How many viewers remember the shock of watching Zhang Dongsheng take off his wig, the creepiness at the end of the first episode, and the numb scalp every time "Little White Boat" sounded later?
The addition of film directors is an important part of the filmization of online dramas. After all, no one is more familiar with how to mobilize a person's senses with a lens than a film director, for example, the curiosity we are aroused when watching "Manjiang Red", the cold we feel when watching "Above the Cliff" and "Sniper", the complicated mood when watching "Alive"...
Instead of asking why film directors are going to make online dramas? It is better to ask, why is it Zhang Yimou's turn until now?
Design/Vision: Strong