Rhino Entertainment Original
Wen | Xiaofu Editor| Park Fang
Let's talk about the quality of online movies.
It has been two or three years since the network movie was put forward. In this ever-changing online film industry, in the face of such an industry pain point, practitioners have never stopped groping, but they are still unresolved.
Online movies with short cycles and low investment have a FMCG temperament that is difficult to hide, and it is doomed to be difficult to compare to film and television projects that need to be polished for a long time. This is also why, although the investment scale of many head online movies is considerable enough, it is still difficult to get wide recognition in the market on word of mouth.
However, after coming this year, with the release of "Tough Guy Gun God", which created the highest score in the history of online movies with a Douban score of 8.3 and a box office of 31 million, and "Blood Battle Tiger Gate", which became the highest score in the history of online movies with a Douban score of 7.0, our inherent understanding of online movies began to be broken. Interestingly, these two high-quality films are from Baima Meteor, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese Imaging.
Data as of writing
As of now, "Tough Guy Gun God" and "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" still rank in the top two of this year's new online movies with Douban scores of 7.1 and 6.8. The birth of a high-reputation online movie may have its accidental factors, but the emergence of two consecutive high-reputation online movies must have its commonality of being accepted by the market.
Before that, we mentioned that the young company of Chinese Imaging is mostly in the field of cinema films, and now, in addition to frequent investment in theatrical film explosions, we have found a new focus of this company: how to break the "law of the online film market"?
With these questions in mind, Rhino Entertainment met with Qian Shansen, the producer of "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" and the president of White Horse Meteor, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese Imaging, and had a good chat about the story behind the film and the higher vision of White Horse Meteor in the field of online movies.
The birth of "Blood Battle Tiger Gate"
In the past two years, the main theme of the network movie has gradually entered the audience's sight. However, compared with the cinema films with more adequate budgets in similar genres, the main theme is a hard bone for the online film industry with greater objective conditions and limited experience in personnel creation. This also means that the creation of the main theme network movie will test the trading ability of the main creative team of the project.
The "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" project was born in 2019. Initially, the main creative team originally intended to create a national hero work around Lin Zexu. Because that year coincided with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the patriotic enthusiasm of the whole people was high, and in the same year, there was a fierce confrontation between China and the United States, and the Canadian drug dealer was sentenced to death in China, but was obstructed by the Canadian side, the main creative team saw the resonance of "Humen selling cigarettes" and reality in many current affairs news, and then determined the current direction of adaptation.
On the issue of weighing the historical theme, the main theme and the commerciality of the work, the creator of "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" does not seem to have been entangled for too long. In Qianshansen's view, "According to the requirements of the company, whether it is a very commercial theme or a main theme, it must be a good work." "The main theme is not where the difficulty lies.
"When we interpret history, we must match today's values." If we only mechanically retell history, then the adaptation will also lose its meaning, "so we changed a Humen tobacco sales with Lin Zexu as the core of the 'what great people do' to a Humen tobacco sales that 'the people do'." ”
In the end, the main creative team decided on the theme of "spark of stars, can burn the plains", taking Hua Jiliang, played by Xie Miao, a representative of the small character, as the entry point, and borrowing the historical incident of Lin Zexu Humen selling cigarettes to tell the historical moment of the awakening of the consciousness of ordinary people. In terms of content packaging, by deepening the action elements and character settings to "artisticize" the story, this high-quality work with both commercial value and social value has been made.
In fact, such a highly completed main theme network movie is actually not much different from most online movies in terms of shooting and production cycle. This is mainly due to the main creative team from White Horse Meteor and the entire group of Chinese Images, which has been practicing the film and television industrial production process.
The high standard of production specifications has also been highly recognized by the industry superiors. It is reported that in the process of creating "Blood Battle Humen", it was not only guided by the Beijing Municipal Radio and Television Bureau, but also supported by the Beijing Radio and Television Network Audiovisual Development Fund.
Whether in "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" or in other projects, creativity first is always adhered to the concept.
"In the process of making this project, the first thing is to find a screenwriter to create a draft of the script after determining the idea. After reconfirming the content orientation and project feasibility according to the first draft of the script, we found core creators such as director Zhang Zhe and screenwriter Yang Bingjia to continue to follow up and revise the script, and finally xie Miao, Yao Qiu, Du Yuming and other actors joined. Qianshan Sen introduced to us.
In addition to strictly controlling the level of the play, the time control in the actual shooting and post-production links is the second requirement of the main creative team. It is reported that the filming of "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" totaled 25 days, and the production cycle was comparable to most of the works in the industry. However, the texture of the finished film presented in the end is unambiguous, the story is tightly paced, the action scenes are all in one go, and the costumes are not cheap. It has been online for more than a month, and the score has always been maintained between 6.6-6.8, which is relatively stable, which is enough to support the high completion of "Blood Battle Tiger Gate".
"At the beginning, empathy was found accurately, and the follow-up work became much smoother." Senyama Mori Road.
Quality is the same original intention
Since entering 2021, the number of new online movies has further declined, and the average number of new movies per month has created a new low in the past three years, falling near the initial level of the development of online movies. At the same time, the effect of improving quality and reducing quantity is gradually highlighted.
As of November 1, 7 works in the online movies launched this year have reached the Douban passing score or above, of which "Tough Guy Gun God", "Blood Nameless River", "Son-in-law's Lucky Star Gao Zhao" and "The Legend of the Hunter of Xing'anling" are among the few word-of-mouth box office double-receipt works in the market.
Behind these head projects, the professionalism of its main creative team has also been fully reflected. Just like the producer of "Tough Guy Gun God" and "Blood Battle Tiger Gate", which received the top two ratings of the online movie Douban, The White Horse Meteor. The birth of these two films, adhering to the unchanged Chinese image and the white horse meteor has always had high requirements for quality, which is also the original intention they have been emphasizing.
In Qianshansen's view, in the current online film market, it is easier to create a movie with a good box office than to create a good word-of-mouth movie, and there are many good box office movies every year, but it is not enough to do a good box office. As a new player who has recently entered the network movie, White Horse Meteor urgently needs to find its own characteristics.
"Online movies are in a period of transition, we might as well run a step faster and take out the high-quality products first." Really good products will be recognized by the audience and the industry. Qianshan Sen said.
The birth of the two works of "Tough Guy Gun God" and "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" has actually reached the original idea of the white horse meteor, and initially completed the establishment of the company's production ability and reputation and the construction of brand recognition. Through these two projects, Qianshansen also has a new experience summary of the upgrading of online movie content.
In his view, the real sense of the online movie content upgrade, can not be separated from two points.
The first thing should be the theme of empathy. Whether it is a commercial film or the main theme, no matter the size of the project, it can grasp the empathy and effectively express it, and only then can the first step of content upgrading be achieved. "Most online movies now encounter this problem, only if the content of the expression is clear and common, the audience can quickly understand the connotation of the film."
The second is to find empathetic elements with reality to construct a worldview, which is actually a concretized derivative of empathy. After finalizing the theme of the project, combined with the current society to derive the elements of reality, and then enriched into the story and characters, this can really achieve the resonance of the audience and the film. Qianshan Sen said modestly, "In fact, "Blood Battle Tiger Gate" still has some room for growth in empathy, and this story can also be refined, and now we have done almost 60%-70%. ”
Next, White Horse Meteor will continue to increase its full horsepower in the field of online movies, not only to create high-quality projects with high reputation, but also to create some commercial films for the market. According to Qianshansen, next year, White Horse Meteor will launch about 6 projects by itself, of which there will still be high-level works such as "Tough Guy Gun God" and "Blood Battle Tiger Gate".
In terms of project production, it will also be further optimized. In the future, all the project scripts of White Horse Meteor will basically come from the planning and screenwriting company "Dansha Into Gold" under Huawen Imaging, which shortens the entire creative cycle while creating works that are more in line with the expectations of the main creators as much as possible.
Industrialization is the unchanging vision
Controllable.
This keyword will be the core of the creation of the Hakuba Meteor future project. "Quality controllable, time controllable and process controllable, model controllable, capital controllable, creative controllable, all things are controllable, then this controllability establishes the core of industrialization," Qianshan sen explains.
In fact, in the previous stage of the White Horse Meteor's plan, box office performance was not the main appeal. The strategic goal of the first stage is to pursue the controllability of word-of-mouth, complete the industrialization model of high-reputation projects, and continue to carry out the second stage of product creation after establishing the foundation of the industrialization model.
Relying on the business layout of Chinese Imaging in film and television investment, content production, screenwriter, director, actor, production management, publicity, equipment leasing and other fields, White Horse Meteor uses online film projects to take the lead in exploring and constructing the industrialization model.
As we all know, online movies have the characteristics of short cycle, small volume and low threshold. In the past many years, this seems to have become a shackle to the development of online movies, but now more and more practitioners are beginning to realize that in the quest for film and television industrialization, online movies are actually a good touchstone.
In the future, after The First Phase of Model Exploration by White Horse Meteor, the drama production company under Chinese Image is also expected to reuse successful experience in new content categories, such as online movies, dramas, and cinema movies. In this way, the complete form of China's film and television industrialization is gradually pieced together.
In the long run, the establishment of the film and television industry system will not only greatly improve the efficiency of project production and talent circulation, but also become a boost for "telling Chinese stories" and cultural going to sea.
Film and television industrialization is still on the road after all, just like online movies on this road. Online movies have a history of only 7 years, not only the birth of the single-platform box office miracle "The Great Snake", the industry-wide box office ceiling "Qimen Dunjia", the women to the network movie "pioneer" "Qiannu Ghost", but also the birth of "Tough Guy Gun God" such as the word-of-mouth box office double-score innovative theme works. Compared with Chinese films that have been around for a hundred years, the growth rate of online movies can be described as a leap forward.
This is also the reason why Qianshansen focuses on online movies, "I hope that the depth and breadth of online movies can continue to increase in the future." Expand the audience of online movies, further break the boundaries with cinema films, and carry out industrialization and quality improvement to the end. "I believe that White Horse Meteor will continue to create high-quality online movies and escort high-quality online movies."
"I believe that with the joint efforts of my peers, all this will happen soon." Qianshan Sen said confidently.