Source丨 Traffic Park (llpark001)
Author 丨Guan Xiaobei
In July, the long-lost Hu Ge made an entertainment news: the online movie "Invisible Man" directed by him was launched, which was also Hu Ge's first feature film in many years.
During the interview, Hu Ge was asked a question: "Have you ever thought that if the popularity of "A Bloody Case Caused by a Steamed Bun" is moved to the present, you may gain more than just the fame of that year." ”
After all, the path that can be imagined is: with the works of the whole network, Hu Ge account harvests tens of millions of fans, self-organized MCN or joins MCN to become a partner, sign a platform, receive advertisements, go on programs, go on hot searches, live stream with goods, and become a new generation of traffic gods...
However, Hu Ge rejected this imagination and directly interrupted: "This is difficult to say, this cannot be assumed..."
He did reveal the news that after many years, he not only made feature films, but also prepared to return to the mobile Internet and become a creator of a video platform.
This first-generation video influencer is coming back.
15 years ago, the number of Internet celebrities
As with the interview with Hu Ge more than a decade ago, the words seemed to have entered the quick answer session, and the interviewee was dull all the way, and did not want to say more than half a sentence. Instead, in his work, you think this person is a sullen other side, funny and chattering.
Hu Ge said: "The biggest influence of that "Steamed Buns" on me at that time was that I knew a lot of people, and they also brought me a lot of opportunities. ”
Lest the post-90s generation do not understand, we still start from 15 years ago.
In December 2005, director Chen Kaige planned to shoot the film "Wuji" for 3 years and spent 340 million yuan to shoot. This movie is known as the "Oriental Fantasy Epic", the cast is strong, coupled with publicity and media momentum, Chen Kaige does a master every day to point out the country, directly giving people a sense of urgency that life is incomplete without watching this movie.
As a result, "Wuji" was a word of mouth, and countless people joked about the film's pretense in blogs.
At that time, Hu Ge, a grassroots and audio and video editing enthusiast, watched "Wuji" and had a deep idea of re-creation, and 10 days later, he used the film gun version clip, "China Rule of Law Report", and the Shanghai Circus City performance as material to make a 20-minute short film, "A Blood Case Caused by a Steamed Bun".
At that time, watching the video also needed to be downloaded from the Internet, "Steamed Buns" began to spread, and became a phenomenon-level work, with the current standards, "Steamed Buns" brushed the screen, and brushed for more than a month, from the New Year to the Spring Festival, becoming one of the hottest topics of the year.
Chen Kaige and his wife became angry and embarrassed, preached everywhere that they wanted to sue Hu Ge, and also broke out the annual harsh words that "people cannot be shameless to this point". Hu Ge saw the situation and apologized, and people from all walks of life also launched a group mockery of Chen Kaige, and the matter was not resolved.
As a result, there is one more bad film with a Douban score of 5.4 in the world, and there is also a nonsensical and funny "director". In the next few years, Hu Ge successively invented works such as "Bird Cage Mountain Bandit Record", "007 Great War Pork Prince", "Spring Festival Empire" and other works, which were called "Steamed Bun Sect Leader" by the media for a time.
The brother named Gong Geer, who made the spoof with him at that time, worked as the screenwriter and producer of a film called "The Wandering Earth" in 2019.
"The Wandering Earth" producer Gong Geer
Internet viral advertising director
The spoofing, splicing, editing, and scoring techniques in "Steamed Buns" still have an impact on video creation. More than ten years later, cecilia Cheung's stripping and dressing shots are still widely used on platforms such as B station, and if you go to see the original film, you will know that it is the originator of the ghost animal. It is speculated that in an era when broadband was not yet fully popular, it received hundreds of millions of views.
This short film, which almost everyone has seen, did not bring much benefit to Hugo.
On December 21, 2006, Youku ended its public beta and officially launched, and three months later, Baidu also announced that it had entered the video field. In 2007, Youku grew 25-fold, also known as the Year of Video. Looking back at the situation of that year, the platform did not have rewards and shares, the cost of filming was too high, the degree of user aggregation was insufficient, netizens could only pass on the work from forums, blogs, QQ and other channels, and early creators like Hu Ge, although their fame was once in the sky, did not earn any money from it.
After 2008, Hu Ge gradually disappeared from the public eye, for him, the road of funny video seems to be narrower and narrower, and the dream of film directors is difficult to achieve overnight. Fortunately, in the second half of 2009, Alibaba's advertising department approached him and asked him to shoot creative ads.
"I've been shooting commercials since 2009, also to make a living." So far, Hu Ge's main label is "advertising director", and he has also placed a large number of advertising videos on his personal site, and his Tencent Video account profile also has such a sentence: "Mainly shoot online virus ads.".
Shooting advertisements is a handy thing, a script can be written in 2 days if it is fast, and his Qixi series has also won the Golden Pupil Award, the highest award in Chinese advertising, including Ning Hao, who has made cameos in his advertisements. Hu's advertising is in line with his spoof short films, he believes that LeiRen's exaggerated style can achieve the effect of viral spread, "try to do strange things, do not think much about artistry, how strange how to come, so that people can take the initiative to spread", for this concept, he is still quite confident.
In an advertisement for a washing machine cleaner, he arranged for a group of concubines to compete to wash Gong Geer's "dragon underwear", and finally found that everyone had crossed from modern times, everyone knew the washing machine, and knew what to use to clean the washing machine. In the Seven Joys Christmas Wishing advertisement, the technique of crossing is used to the extreme, and the protagonist continues to send letters to modern times from ancient times, just to bring toilet paper and drinks to ancient times.
In 2015, he also filmed a "Rise of Pan Feng in the Three Foreign Legends", "Admiral" Pan Feng constantly encountered Lü Bu being cut, and finally realized that being in the game, can be upgraded, because the performance and plot are very funny, this small film is still circulating in many WeChat groups.
Filming of the first feature film begins
In between shooting commercials, Hu Ge's creative desire was continuous, and he had been writing his own script.
In 2013, Hugo raised funds to make a science fiction film written by himself, "The Invisible Man". Since then, he has maintained the output of science fiction themes, and in 2019, he shot the science fiction micro-film "Human Body Express".
It's a brain-opening story. A medical expert in Beijing wanted to return to Chengdu in the fastest time, so he bought the 10-minute transportation service of the human courier company, but in fact, the company was a cloning company, and their routine was to copy a clone at the destination and destroy the original person. This micro-movie has a compact plot, the picture and technology are online, getting rid of Hu Ge's previous spoofy and exquisite style, and the high score of 7.3 is given on Douban.
In July, Hugo's first feature film began. Regarding this new film, Hu Ge specifically said that he can't talk about it, and we can only know from public reports that the title is still called "Invisible Man", which should be a remake of his early works. After becoming famous, his creative ability did not decrease, in addition to spoofing short stories and advertisements, he also wrote seven or eight film scripts before and after, but either did not pass the review, or did not get investment, and even once wrote a script of more than 100,000 words and analysis still failed to pass, this time finally started shooting smoothly, it is also a dream.
Someone asked in Zhihuli: "Is Hu Ge forbidden to make movies because he was banned by Chen Kaige?" He ran over and replied, "No, no. It was my bad luck that I always wrote a script with a relatively high cost, and I failed to find investment, and it took a lot of time and energy. From last year to this year, I wrote several very low-cost online movie scripts, and finally found the investment, and now I am doing pre-preparations. ”
Hu Ge is a heavy user, Sony machine out of stock, what is the gap between the new and old Three Kingdoms, the publicity controversy of "Eight Hundred", what advantages does Surface Duo have, how to write the script, and even Which pair of Decathlon shoes is cost-effective, he has to come to chant and nag - in addition to premature fame, in reality, he does not like to talk, likes to spoof, he is not much different from an ordinary netizen.
Return to the short video platform
After the film, Hu Ge's plan to land on the short video platform also began to advance.
Before this, he was already an old user of short videos, "When I was fine, I also watched Douyin and Kuaishou, I had an account, but I didn't send anything, but I would watch, and I liked to watch knowledge and talent shows." ”
Why haven't I published a work before? Hu Ge explained that on the one hand, he still likes to make longer films, what he wants to shoot is very difficult, and the requirements for the work are very high, and the general team can't do it. On the other hand, he doesn't like the process of running an account, "I don't want to be an internet celebrity, I don't want to be in the limelight, and I don't want to work in vain." Maintain the heat, suck the fans, and then advertise to the customer after the fans are more, which is not interesting. I've been shooting commercials for ten years, and I'm really tired of this model of advertising to companies to make a profit, and I still want to rely on my work to speak. ”
Hu Ge, who wants to speak from his works, has taken a fancy to Kuaishou's paid video model. His reasoning is: "Kuaishou provides a platform, does not interfere with the work, and can earn as much as it can rely on its own ability." So I still like the Kuaishou model, and I prefer to face the audience directly. ”
Recent photo of Hu Ge Source: Provided by me
Now, he has the script, find a friend's investment, the goal is to make a dozen or twenty minutes of drama, positioned as a sci-fi adventure comedy, of course, the production cost will be very high.
Expecting viewers to pay directly for the film, rather than raising a number to receive advertising, Hu Ge remains optimistic about this return after many years - "I am quite confident." I still have some research on the current netizens, and I will make films according to their preferences. But my films are not the same thing as the current short videos, I do long stories, I hope that some netizens are directly willing to pay. Appeal is actually useless, I have not done anything on the video platform, because I like to be direct, like a movie, you are willing to pay for the film. ”
The comedic style he has always been good at is not suitable for this era, and we are full of curiosity, after all, even he himself has repeatedly mentioned the issue of age - this first-generation Internet celebrity born in 1974 has now entered middle age.
Hugo revealed that his paid video will be online in about two months. At that time, people who said that his "Steamed Buns" far exceeded "Wuji" did not know whether they would give him a "ticket".