As the "Immersion+" team continues to grow, so do the industries involved, such as immersive music meals. Immersive art exhibitions, etc., Meituan's big data shows that immersive experience has become a fashion and leisure entertainment project that people of all ages can accept and are willing to participate in.
Among them, 75% of the relevant consumers are from young people between the ages of 20 and 35, who are very interested in immersive experience, story, gameplay, artistic sense and other elements.
Not only that, dramas and cultural tourism projects on the market have also begun to slowly approach "immersion", such as Meng Jinghui's immersive drama "Mermaid by Backwater" launched in 2016, "Chengdu Stealing Heart" in 2019, "Kafka's Dream" in 2021, etc., all of which are displayed in the form of immersive drama.
Immersive entertainment projects have driven economic development and allowed more people to be nourished by the beauty of art in entertainment. In the cultural tourism industry, more and more cities take "immersive XX" as the first choice for cultural tourism projects.
On November 25, 2022, the 4th China Immersive Industry Development Forum was held online, which mainly focused on the three major directions of "immersive + cultural tourism", "immersive + urban renewal" and "immersive + metaverse".
For example, "Chang'an Twelve Hours" and "Tang City That Never Sleeps", which were selected by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as the best innovative achievements in culture and tourism in 2022, combined with the geographical background of Xi'an, show Datang culture with immersive experience and panoramic view.
Combined with the IP of the TV series "Chang'an Twelve Hours", it integrates a series of scenes such as immersive drama, Tang music song and dance performance, entertainment and leisure, and reproduces the unique scene of the Tang Dynasty. Among them, "Miss Tumbler" is even more popular on the Internet.
Since its opening, the average daily passenger flow has continued to reach 7,000, the cumulative number of tourists has exceeded 1 million, and the Internet exposure has reached 7.5 billion, occupying the first place in the national hot search list of Douyin and Weibo, boosting the confidence of the cultural tourism industry and the market heat of Xi'an's cultural tourism economy with good results.
In terms of professional talent training, Shanghai Theatre Academy opened an immersive drama creation training class in 2021 and an immersive interpretation training camp in 2022, and graduation dramas from many art colleges and universities were also presented in an immersive form.
For example, "A Hundred Years of Fucheng Memory" and "The Voice of the Wind" directed by doctoral students of Shanghai Theater Academy, and "Ordinary World" by Zhejiang Academy of Arts.
These works are enough to show that the immersive industry is gradually emerging as a mainstream entertainment project, and more and more people are beginning to understand the immersive industry. This can not only train more professionals for the industry, but also make the industry gradually formalized and high-quality.
In terms of scientific and technological development, the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Innovation and Development of the Digital Cultural Industry" issued by the Ministry of Culture in 2017 proposed to "enhance the strength of the digital cultural equipment industry."
Adapt to the development trend of immersive experience, intelligent interaction, and combination of software and hardware, promote the development of the digital cultural equipment industry, and strengthen the collaborative innovation of standards, content and technical equipment. ”
Taking the immersive art exhibition "Meet Van Gogh" as an example, in the exhibition, not only the scenes in Van Gogh's paintings are restored in the landscape, but also a "light and shadow house" is set up, using holographic projection, AR, VR and other technological means to display Van Gogh's paintings, making immersion more deeply displayed in the dimension of "five senses".
Now more and more immersive entertainment projects have also begun to use high-tech means to create immersive space space, I believe that with the development of science and technology, it can drive the development of immersive entertainment projects.
Conditions necessary for healthy development
Since the development of the theatrical immersive entertainment industry is still in its infancy, the following conditions are needed to ensure healthy and high-quality development:
From the perspective of policy orientation, the implementation of the digital strategy of the cultural industry and the acceleration of the development of new cultural enterprises, cultural formats and cultural consumption models during the 14th Five-Year Plan period were written into the strategic deployment to meet the cultural needs of the people and promote the construction of a socialist cultural power.
Immersive experiences represented by immersive cultural tourism, immersive performing arts, immersive exhibitions, immersive entertainment, etc. are becoming an important step in expanding the development of the entertainment industry.
The 14th Five-Year Plan for Cultural and Tourism Development and the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Cultural Industries announced by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism both set out the goal of completing "100 immersive experience projects" during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
However, due to the uneven development of the region and the industrial scale has not yet formed, the formulation of relevant industry standards as soon as possible and the introduction of a series of normative documents will play a great guiding role in the development of the industry.
It is believed that with the support of the government, the theater immersive entertainment industry will usher in unprecedented development opportunities.
Regulation of the market
As theatrical immersive entertainment projects become more diversified, and the supervision of content has been paid attention to, in April 2022, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and other five departments jointly issued the Notice on Regulating Scripted Entertainment Business Activities (Draft for Comments), which clearly states:
Scripted entertainment business units shall adhere to the correct orientation, establish a content self-examination system, and conduct content self-examination on script scripts, performances, scenes, props, costumes, etc., to ensure that the content is legal.
As mentioned above, due to excessive catering to the market and the pursuit of economic interests without a bottom line, some projects with vulgar content and incorrect values have emerged.
Projects that copy other people's works for the sake of rights, as well as the production of crude and inferior works, will inevitably discourage consumers' enthusiasm and disrupt the healthy development of the market after entering the market, so effective market supervision is very necessary.
Provide more jobs
According to statistics, the unemployment rate of mainland acting graduates is as high as 80% every year, and major crews give priority to graduating from prestigious schools in the selection of actors, so the problem of employment difficulties in acting majors has continuously appeared.
The emergence of theater immersive entertainment programs has undoubtedly provided more employment options for acting graduates. Not only performance practitioners, but also a large number of them are needed in the development of the immersive entertainment industry
The professional staff of his department carry out the work, especially in script writing, stage art, etc. Therefore, in the long run, the healthy development of the theater immersive entertainment industry can provide more jobs for professional college graduates.
It is conducive to the integration of cultural resources
As mentioned above, the theater immersive entertainment industry is a new form of entertainment and drama combined to form a new form.
On this basis, IP sharing is achieved through the integration of other art forms, such as the role-playing work "Changing Face", whose story background mainly tells a series of stories that happened to the Sichuan Opera team in the Changgu Theater.
The feature of this work is that the traditional Sichuan opera face change is integrated in the play, allowing consumers to see intangible cultural heritage up close, and this cross-border integration method not only enables consumers to get a better experience.
On this basis, consumers can feel the steps that the opera team has to go through before the performance through the process of the game, and feel the spirit of the opera actors "the drama is bigger than the sky", so as to realize the social function of the drama.
epilogue
With the rapid development of science and technology, consumers' entertainment life is becoming increasingly rich, and the emergence of theatrical immersive entertainment projects has enriched consumers' vision.
In the author's opinion, the emergence of immersion in today's stable development of traditional drama undoubtedly provides a new development idea, that is, from the development of the stage to the development of the relationship between spectators and performances, which enriches the form of theatrical expression and increases the sense of participation of consumers (audiences) in drama.
However, due to the wide variety of categories and excessive commercial attributes, the level of immersive entertainment projects in the theater category is unstable.
However, under the promotion of the state, with the gradual improvement of policies and regulations, the continuous improvement of technical means and creative concepts, and the gradual improvement of the market environment, drama immersive entertainment projects will usher in new development opportunities and feed back the great traditional art of drama.