For young people to create a romantic ceremony on a screen
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “movie Intelligence Service” (ID: dianyingqingbaochu), Author: movies Intelligence newsroom blank.
“I am waiting for you at the end of time”, “Xibao” and “If the Voice Cannot Remember” broke out one after another, exceeding the expected box office achievements, making love movies once again become the sweet pastry in the film market.
After 2016, the craze for domestic nostalgic youth films has gradually faded, and the creative trend of romantic films has changed in recent years. We can see that love movies no longer rely on traffic stars, and many young artists have entered the public eye through love movies. From content to audience, love movies are younger. More and more love movies are tied to festivals, and going to the theater to watch movies has become a festive ceremony for couples dating. Taking advantage of the short video bonus, more and more romance films sink to the third and fourth lines and even more remote county areas, creating box office hits such as “Predecessor 3: Goodbye to the Predecessor”, “Sad Story More Than Sad” and this year’s love The lively scene of the film market.
So, what are the factors that make the popular romance movies? Based on the analysis of popular love movies in recent years, this article attempts to decrypt the popular secret codes of these love movies from the development of early projects to film distribution and marketing.
Script: Emotionally close to young audiences
Different from strong genre films that focus on creating visual spectacles or focusing on stories, the main selling point of love films is to give audiences rich emotional and emotional experience. Therefore, love movies also pay more attention to interaction with the audience. At the beginning of the film project, it is necessary to take into account the needs of the audience and cater to the expectations of the audience in a targeted manner. The audience is always present throughout the life cycle of the film. The low investment cost and relatively short production cycle of love movies also enable the creators of love movies to effectively grasp market needs and trends, create film works that conform to the audience’s psychology, and ultimately make a big hit with small gains.
Analyzed from the perspective of the audience, the age distribution of the audience of a popular love movie is centered on the young group under 30 years old. In the past two years, it has been increasingly inclined to the Z era under 24 years old. Young couples are naturally the most loyal audience of love movies, and the choice of watching movies is often concentrated in the hands of women. In terms of gender distribution, the proportion of female audiences is much higher than that of men. From the very beginning, the audience characteristics of romantic movies will be taken into consideration by the film creators.
I have already mentioned the sale of love moviesWhat is given to the audience is the emotional experience and the emotional experience, the dream of love created on the big screen. Life is too bitter and love is sweet. Classic love stories are often an imaginative transcendence of class, era and even race. Love movies are a temporary escape from life, so love movies need to continuously create romance.
There are many ways to create romance. The easiest and most effective way is to give the audience sweets and let them eat CP. When it comes to content creation, it is to create a pleasing image of male and female protagonists, compile the sweet interaction between the protagonists, and effectively visualize them to create a romantic visual landscape.
However, for the hottest romance movies, the most extreme romance is not sweet, but abuse. The value of love lies in the willingness to pay and sacrifice for the achievement of each other, as well as the unswerving protection of the lover until death. Classic love stories are often tragedies. The trend of creating popular love movies is changing, and the “abuse” in movies is also changing. The “abuse” of the domestic nostalgic youth films represented by “To Our Dying Youth” is mostly based on the female perspective to cherish the memory of the painful youth that has passed away. “Predecessor 3: Goodbye to the Predecessor” is a regret that love can not finally go away. When it comes to “A Story More Sad Than Sad” and “I’m Waiting for You at the End of Time”, “abuse” becomes a sacrifice and guardian of love. This kind of “abuse and sweetness” is intertwined, and the emotional experience it brings to the audience is moving.
For romance films aimed at young female audiences, it may be more important to create a male image favored by women. Who can resist the charm of the screen image of Liu Beishan who “you protect the world, I protect you” and Ringer who restarts time and space time and space again and again only to meet his lover again. As the slogan of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” says, “Girls care not about being tall and handsome, but about their unique sense of security.” Therefore, popular love movies are increasingly inclined to create a down-to-earth image of a boy who is full of you. In the choice of perspective, it can be a female perspective that makes female audiences more immersive, or it can be expanded from a male perspective to make female audiences sympathize and identify with the male protagonist.
It is true that there may not be so many new stories and new truths about love. But love is an eternal topic, and love movies are still just needed by the market. Even if there is no new story, it can still create a new image, and can bring some aspects of love to the extreme. As for how to achieve the ultimate, the current love movies provide us with two effective ways: one is to add a “fantasy” concept to the movie, such as the constant resetting of time, the use of mysterious power to bind the protagonist’s fate, and amnesia. Is also a good choice; one is to advance with social topicsIntegration of behaviors, such as “Sadness Goes Against the River”, incorporates social issues such as school violence.
Finally, a slightly regrettable ending or an open ending may be more impressive to the audience. After all, there is always pain and regret in youth and love, and this regret has become the aftertaste of the movie.
If you are eager to make a love movie, but you suffer from lack of creativity and material. You can follow the “usage doctrine”, find stories from popular novels, or even draw creativity from a love song that carries youthful memories, or remake a classic love movie. Those Korean classic romance films that have touched countless post-80s and post-90s can still touch the present post-95s and post-00s. Isn’t “A Story More Sad Than Sad” a good proof?
Actor: CP feeling is greater than traffic
For young people, traffic stars and idols naturally have sufficient appeal. Starting from “To Our Dying Youth”, domestic youth films have been concocting nostalgic youth films starring “Little Fresh Meat”. Until now, traffic stars are still an important factor driving movie box office, but traffic does not always work, nor is it a guarantee for hit movies. However, once the charm of the character and the idol’s charm are highly compatible, it will burst out with amazing box office appeal.
Although love movies always create dreams on the screen to satisfy the audience’s romantic fantasy of ideal boyfriends and girlfriends. But the screen image will not only have a single image of a goddess. Compared with the unattainable images of gods and goddesses, sometimes a true and credible boy or girl next door naturally has a more sense of intimacy and substitution, which can make a love story come true.
With the changes in market demand and content creation, the fit between actors and characters is the most important. The shaping of the new screen image gives more choices for love movies in casting. Actors like Li Hongqi may not have absolute advantages in appearance and fame, but they have good passers-by and have online acting skills that can interpret their roles truly and credibly.
There is also a metaphysics in the selection of actors, that is, choosing the right CP partner. Creating a CP with screen charm comes from the charm of the CP character in the movie story on the one hand, and the actors on the other. The actor’s own characteristics must match the character’s characteristics, and the actors and actresses must also match to form an effective interaction. Of course, the more important thing is that actors need to have the ability to shape roles, not only to be able to perform on the screen the extreme sadness and joy in love and the relationship between men and women.Subtle emotions, but also sparks, deduced CP sense.
Director: Comprehension is more important than a master
Compared to the selection of actors, director candidates may be more traceable. For example, compared to male directors, female directors are better at handling delicate emotions and understand the needs of female audiences. In recent years, almost half of the popular love movies are produced by female directors.
In addition, those Taiwanese directors who are good at youth and romance films are also good choices. Although Taiwanese directors have experienced a lot of dissatisfaction when they moved to the mainland, they seem to be more and more adapting to the tastes of mainland audiences. They have created many movies that have responded well to the market. For example, “I heard” director Zheng Fenfen directed Brother take away.”
If you want to have more gimmicks in the choice of the main creative, then choose a romance novel writer or a song original singer with film creation experience to serve as a screenwriter or director across the border.
As a love movie that attempts to make a big difference, whether it is in the choice of starring or director, cost performance is especially important, and it is not necessary to choose the first-line.
Schedule: A sense of ceremony must be sufficient
It may be a misunderstanding that “The Last Night on Earth” is regarded as a romantic movie, but “The Last Night on Earth” provides an excellent example for the announcement of a romantic movie.
First of all, we must choose a suitable schedule, and give this schedule a special meaning to create a sense of ritual for watching the movie. “Last Night on Earth” put forward the marketing concept of “One Kiss”, which can be said to create the concept of “New Year’s File”. “I’m Waiting for You at the End of Time” is the first love movie to watch on Chinese Valentine’s Day in 2020, which is full of ritual.
Times like New Year’s Day, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, 520, and Tanabata are naturally excellent choices for love movies. The sense of festival ceremony makes young couples have a strong demand for social activities, watching a love movie is economical and affordable. The holiday schedule can not only effectively enhance the movie market of the day, but also romantic movies can show box office explosiveness. The single-day box office of Qixi Festival this year was as high as 527 million. I waited for you at the end of the time, and the single-chip accounted for 278 million, accounting for more than half of the market.
Of course, if it is a romance film that can directly hit the audience’s pain points, it can have a continuous attraction to the audience, and even become a long-term dark horse, and continue to harvest the box office.Schedule. It takes a long time to choose Lunar New Year files, summer files, etc., and the overall box office volume is large. It is more appropriate to have less competition for single-week film schedules. If you don’t have the inherent advantage of selling, it’s okay to choose an unpopular schedule. The important thing is to be able to fit the schedule, create a concept, and give the audience an indispensable reason.
Short video: The bonus has not faded away
Short video platforms, especially Douyin, are self-evident for romance movies to effectively reach the audience and sink to third- and fourth-tier cities. Short video marketing is precise and direct, with a single method, but it is very effective. However, not all films can take advantage of the wind of short video to achieve box office skyrocketing.
To concoct a popular love movie, it needs to be announced beforehand, and how to impress the audience should be considered in the content design. To a certain extent, it is to customize a movie for the typical audience of a specific publicity channel. After the content is highly compatible, publicity is nothing more than delivering these contents to the audience through the short video platform in the form of different materials, and guiding the audience to carry out secondary creation and dissemination.
The main content delivered through the short video platform includes: golden sentences to attract the audience, these golden sentences can be a value orientation conveyed by the film, can also be a reason for calling the audience to enter the theater, and can come from the content of the film itself It can also be just a generalization and generalization; the highlight moments in the content of the film, especially the moving moments, can lead to the topicality of the film and arouse the audience’s expectation; the audience’s crying in the theater watching the movie feedback, mobilize the audience’s emotions, Tell the audience that in this movie you will laugh and cry with the protagonist, especially crying. Resonance and emotional management are the core of short video marketing.
Theme song: The best medium to convey emotions
A golden song is very necessary for the marketing of romance movies. Before the screening, the dissemination of a good movie promotion song or theme song can not only effectively increase the popularity of the movie, but also convey emotions to the audience through accurate lyrics, triggering audiences to speculate on the content of the story. Similarly, if the melody of the song is infectious enough to brainwash the audience, it can also become an excellent BGM for carrying short video promotion. After the screening, when the audience heard the familiar melody again and recollected the plot, they found that the truth of the original film was in the song, so the music became the aftertaste of the film and the weapon for the spread of film reputation.
Title: Seven or eight characters are also good
The title of a movie is the first medium through which viewers come into contact with a movie. There will always be viewers who are willing to pay for the movie because of a title. Compared with the simple and direct titles of other types of movies, the names of love movies are more “faithful and elegant”, not only need to firmly convey the message of the movie content, but also create a little romance for the audience and leave room for the audience to think about . If there happens to be the name of a golden song or a lyric in a golden song just suitable for the name of a love movie, then it might be it. The title of a romance movie can be as long as possible.
How far can love movies go?
From “Predecessor 3” to “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, love movies that capture young and female audiences with short video marketing appear more and more frequently.
These romantic movies, from content to marketing, are closely watching the younger new market, especially the female audience. At present, we see that through the precision marketing of short videos, these increments in the movie market are constantly being transformed into the audience of love movies. When the increment becomes constant, is the routine still valid? Once the audience changes, the stereotyped love movie will fall into a dead end.
Whether it is content or marketing, a single model does not always work. Creativity and uniqueness are always the magic weapon for literary works. A love movie still needs variation under the genre mode to give the audience a sense of freshness. To find the uniqueness of the movie itself, to write a more vivid and true love story, to firmly touch a certain aspect of love, and to touch the secret emotions of the audience.