The key to the Spring Festival 2020 is whether the mainstream values can release a new round of energy.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account Yuemu Chinese Film Watch (ID: yuemuchina), author Pang Hongbo. The original title “Chinese Stories Are Rising”
Look at the Spring Festival file in three dimensions.
In the Spring Festival file of 2018, the non- “family-friendly” “Red Sea Action” relied on “stasis” to surpass “Chinatown Detective 2” and eventually became the annual box office champion of the year. In the Spring Festival of 2019, “Wandering Earth” shortened the counterattack cycle and eventually won the championship. In the extremely fierce competition of the 2020 Spring Festival, there are also “Emergency Rescue” produced by People’s Communications Publishing House, China Television Fashion Film and Television, and Tencent Pictures, as well as “Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team” produced by Jiaying Spring, our production, and China Film. “Similar to this kind of film, but the competitors it faced have clearly risen to a new level in terms of quantity and quality.
So, whether this year’s Spring Festival will continue the breakout of the “main theme” movie has become a focus worthy of attention.
If you look at the changes within one year, whether it is “Red Sea Action” or “Wandering Earth”, it is the performance of the market to feed back better content. But if you look at the growth in three years, this may be the inevitable trend for mainstream values and mainstream audiences to “docking” smoothly.
The box office energy released in the context of “internal and external gifts” during the National Day in 2019 actually far exceeded everyone’s expectations. Behind this “surprise”, if you go back, you may return to the breakout of the 2016 “Mekong Operation”. The changing market position of the main theme film is worth looking at to lengthen the cycle.
Chinese films based on the National Day files in 2019 will definitely extend the “main theme”. among them. There are market foundations laid by the National Day files in 2019, and there are market precedents for the first two Spring Festival files. However, the main theme is no longer a genre definition, and the main theme movies based on ordinary people’s perspective and mainstream ideology can be collectively referred to as Chinese stories.
Where the rise of the Chinese story will take the Spring Festival stalls is actually far more interesting than the Spring Festival stalls themselves.
1 Resonance: From story identity to emotional identity.
The Spring Festival is essentially a very special one, because in this highly condensed and intensive season, the “half wall” of the Chinese-language headline movie is bet on throughout the year.
In 2019, the outbreak of “Nezhao” in the summer and the “collective gifts” of the National Day file weakened the existence of the Spring Festival file slightly, but “Wandering Earth” still won 4.68 billion box office, and “Crazy Foreign” Star Man and Speeding Life respectively ranked sixth and seventh at the box office of the year, winning nearly 4 billion box offices in total; in 2018, Operation Red Sea and Detective Chinatown 2 ranked first and second in the box office of the year. ; In 2017, “Kung Fu Yoga” and “Journey to the West” were also ranked fourth and fifth.
In any period of the year, the energy release of the Spring Festival is the most amazing. In the most golden period, a new round of change is bound to usher.
The inevitable result of the prevalence of circle culture throughout the film market in 2019 is the audience’s eager desire for resonance. This is the “main theme of the times” that will inevitably return after low-price ticket supplements and high marketing. From the final result, the key to the film’s breakthrough is precisely the resonance.
In the Spring Festival file of 2019, “Homeland Feelings” in “Wandering Earth” finally won; in the summer season, “My Life” and “I Ca n’t Help You” finally broke out; in the National Day file, the “little people and The Great Era Collision was a complete success. The breakthrough of the focus film has changed from genre to content and from story identity to emotional identity.
The Spring Festival in 2020, due to the macro-control of the pre-sale time, makes the starting line of all movies tend to be consistent. In the context that high-quality content is bound to break through, it is clear that high-quality content that is easier to sink and more likely to resonate with the audience can finally explode. As Lin Chaoxian’s masterpiece after Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea, Emergency Rescue has become the “seed player” for the Spring Festival.
In the previous “Operation on the Mekong River”, Lin Chaoxian gave the anti-drug police a high degree of public attention, and “Red Sea Operation” also brought the Dragon Dragon Commando in front of the public. In “Emergency Rescue”, Lin Chaoxian focused on the “salvage” group, on the one hand because the image of China’s salvage people is not known to the public, on the other hand, he thinks that this group of indomitable and fearless salvage people deserves to be public attention.
The difference from the first two is that Emergency Rescue is clearly focused”Sink more” on the group. In fact, the most worthy achievement of “I and My Motherland” lies in the “main tone” of giving gifts from the perspective of civilians. Nowadays, the main melody films have basically returned their sights to ordinary heroes, actively looking for identity with ordinary audiences. It is based on real maritime rescue incidents, but focusing on more ordinary salvage crews has become the key to the larger imagination of Emergency Rescue.
Putting it on the Spring Festival, this group-focused “resonance” became the biggest X factor of the movie. Similarly, the subject matter and the crowd shown in “Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team” have the same reason. Because of this, more equal starting lines and more competitive cores make it difficult for the Spring Festival stall to make predictions through experience and data derivation. This kind of unpredictability is actually the progress of the market.
2 Behind the scenes: Pushing hands changes.
The behind-the-scenes pusher of the main melody movie, in fact, has already completed the G to B turn. However, due to the proliferation of crowds and the broadening of themes in today’s main theme films, it is difficult to be dominated by a single private film and television company.
So, the traditional “national team” has become a model of full cooperation between the national team and private film and television, Internet companies.
In the public information disclosure, there are 7 producers of “Emergency Rescue”, among which the top four are People’s Communications Publishing House, China Television Fashion, Emperor Pictures and Tencent Pictures. Bona ranks fifth, and it is not Bona Film Group Co., Ltd., but Zhejiang Bona Film and Television Production Co., Ltd., which is wholly owned by Bona Film.
The behind-the-scenes pusher of the main melody movie, in fact, has already completed the G to B turn. However, due to the proliferation of crowds and the broadening of themes in today’s main theme films, it is difficult to be dominated by a single private film and television company.
So, the traditional “national team” has become a model of full cooperation between the national team and private film and television, Internet companies.
In the public information disclosure, there are 7 producers of “Emergency Rescue”, among which the top four are People’s Communications Publishing House, China Television Fashion, Emperor Pictures and Tencent Pictures. Bona ranks fifth, and it is not Bona Film Group Co., Ltd., but Zhejiang Bona Film and Television Production Co., Ltd., which is wholly owned by Bona Film.