With a production cost of 8 million yuan and a professional team, the "Sword of Death" project has attracted much attention in the industry. As of August 4, the "Death Sword" series of video views approached 50 million, and the upper and lower parts were the first and third in the number of hits on the main film of the whole network that week.
The reporter met Xu Min, the producer of the "Death Sword" series of works and the ceo of Beijing Kangaroo Tribe Pictures (hereinafter referred to as "Kangaroo Pictures"), on the third day after the launch of the next part of "The Rise of the Deadly Sword", "The Blood Of the Deadly Sword". At that time, the number of hits on Tencent Video on the two albums of "Deadly Sword" exceeded 40 million yuan. For this achievement, Xu Min said that he was quite satisfied, but it was also expected. As of August 4, the number of hits of the "Death Sword" series of videos was close to 50 million (according to Tencent Video's public data), and the upper and lower parts were the first and third in the number of online movie hits on the whole network that week.
Last year, Kangaroo Pictures invested in 4 online movies and 1 web series, and "Death sword" was the first of them to be released. Since the beginning of this year, the data performance of online movies has made Xu sensitive to joy - "the three major video websites have successively appeared online movies with more than 45 million yuan in sub-accounts, which is equivalent to the box office equivalent of 150 million yuan in the cinema market." "The rapid expansion of the market volume also puts forward higher requirements for the production level of online movies."
With a production cost of 8 million yuan and a professional team, the "Sword of Death" project has attracted much attention in the industry. Xu Min told Variety News that at the beginning of the preparation, she and her team did not think that "The Sword of Death" would be a hit, it was more of an attempt, an exploration in the context of industry production upgrades.
Good production is a necessary and insufficient condition for blockbusters
With the eight masters dying one after another in their own unique martial arts as the starting point, "The Sword of Death" tells the story of Duan Xiaofeng, the catcher of the six doors of the Beijing Division, who uncovered the secret of the jianghu for twenty years, and his life has also undergone earth-shaking changes. When Ma Wei, the producer of "The Sword of Death", and Zhang Meng, the director, brought the project to Xu Min, the story idea touched Xu Min. "'Deadly Sword' is first and foremost a different martial arts story, it is wrapped in a cloak of suspense, and what I value most is the visual concept presented to me by Zhang Meng and Ma Wei." In the words of Zhang Meng and Ma Wei, the story of "Death Sword" is the "League of Heroes" in the martial arts world. In the minds of domestic audiences, most of the martial arts characters that emerged at the first time may be from the pens of Jin Yong and Gu Long, and "The Sword of Death" tries to make the martial arts characters and jianghu stories new through the superposition of suspense and special effects elements. The eight masters have their own tricks, and their unique martial arts are achieved through special effects, they are like Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and so on in the Marvel Universe. In Xu Min's view, this setting is in line with the demands of the young generation that has grown up in the Internet era on online content.
Most of the production team of "Deadly Sword" comes from the academic school. Director Zhang Meng graduated from the directing department of the Beijing Film Academy, and after "The Sword of Death", he took over the web drama "The Great Lord" adapted by super IP. Director of photography Fan Chao is the cinematographer of this year's first film festival opening film "Elephant Sitting on the Ground", and he and Zhang Meng are brothers. Most of the production team members such as the film's production director and art director are also from the Beijing Film Academy.
In the production and preparation of the film, the main creative team spent a lot of effort. It is reported that excluding the script development, the pre-preparation of "The Sword of Death" took more than two months; after that, more than 100 people in the Duyun Film and Television Base filmed for more than 30 days, and many scenes in the film were reconstructed; in post-production, the film took about 6 months to do more than 400 CG special effects shots. In Ma Wei's words, "The Sword of Death" has touched the ceiling of current online film production - not simply the amount of budget, but the degree of meticulous craftsmanship of the script and picture. This degree of fineness is reflected in the most intuitive effect of the film. Whether it is the picture, lighting, camera scheduling or atmospheric rendering, the texture of "Deadly Sword" is closer to the cinema blockbuster.
However, what makes the main creative team depressed is that due to the color difference rendering problem caused by the size limit of the viewing file on the mobile phone, many light and shadow effects are completely invisible on the mobile phone. These places that really spend money cannot bring better visual enjoyment to mobile audiences.
In terms of special effects presentation, the main creative team said that they also had regrets. At the beginning of the preparation of the project, when Xu Min saw the special effect concept presented by director Zhang Meng, she was very surprised, "The director found a lot of materials to present the special effects and ideas in the film, not only taking into account the effect of presentation, but also considering the executability, which is very rare." "Good special effects require the accumulation of time and money, and subject to the volume of production, the final special effects presented in "Death Sword" are a compromise result.
Quality upgrading is a major trend in the development of online movies in recent years, and the three major video websites are also pursuing online movies with cinema effects. Therefore, in the early stages of preparation, Kangaroo Pictures and the main creative team regarded the sophistication of production as a highlight of the project. After going online, Xu Min still believes that there is nothing wrong with the film's investment in setting, art, etc., "This is a hard cost, which is the basic display of the creative team's creative sincerity," but Xu Min realized, "Production is a necessary and insufficient condition to attract audiences, and to make them pay for your film, the first core is still the story and characters." ”
Taking Duan Xiaofeng's gradual unveiling of the mystery of the jianghu as a clue, the core of "The Sword of Death" is the story of the growth of a young hero. Through the upper and lower works, the film constructs a vast worldview. Within this worldview, "The Sword of Death" presents a variety of martial arts characters, with a variety of clues and a high narrative difficulty. Cloaked in suspense and martial arts, the creative team has added a lot of stylized and personalized expressions to the creation. Director Zhang Meng said that he wanted to present a richer and more different "jianghu" to young audiences through "Death Sword".
Whether the first 5 minutes can make the audience enter the play is especially critical for online movies, because according to the current sub-accounting policies of most platforms, these 5 minutes involve the core of the sub-account. Almost every paid content product of a video website has a trial time of about 5 minutes, which is the key to promoting the user's paid conversion. "Online content must face this challenge, because unlike cinema movies, which are different from products that buy tickets first and watch later, network users can quit at any time, which actually requires network dramas and online movies to be more prominent in terms of rhythm and storytelling ability." Xu Min said.
Strictly control the cost performance of content
Xu Min, who graduated from engineering, has been a film industry reporter for 5 years and has a basic understanding of the film and television industry. After leaving the press, Xu Min entered the financial industry and worked for seven years related to financial transactions. Later, she finished her fmba (Master of Business Administration in Finance) and returned to the film and television industry. Xu Min introduced that Kangaroo Pictures initially just wanted to be an investment-oriented production company, mainly responsible for the investment and publicity of the project. Later, Xu Min found that the most uncontrollable link in this industry lies in production, so Kangaroo Pictures extends its business to pre-development and production, and all projects produced by the company basically require the participation of the whole chain. "We originally wanted to open a supermarket, but we ended up finding the need to farm." Xu Min said.
Engineering background coupled with the financial industry background, xu Min has another perspective on content production, "We are more interested in Internet products, so we will observe and evaluate a film and television project from different dimensions such as users, publicity, budget control and so on." "Kangaroo Pictures has an investment decision-making committee within it, and every investment decision will be generated through this committee. Whether a project like "The Sword of Death" can be invested has several core points to examine: the problem of financial recovery, the proportion of profitability, flatness, and the possibility of loss, the scope of budget distribution, as well as the theme and target users.
In addition to "Deadly Sword", Kangaroo Pictures will also have 3 online movie projects launched on Tencent this year, including both sports-themed youth stories and Japanese comic-style comedies. In Xu Min's view, whether a project can succeed lies in the creativity, story and characters; second, the team's ability to control the creation, and the layers of the creation process should add points to the story instead of subtracting points; third, the completion of the project execution, the rest needs a little luck. "The birth of blockbusters is accidental, and for film and television production companies, the most important thing in content production is cost performance, not output."