This epidemic has blurred the boundary between online movies and cinema films. The current predicament may be the opportunity to embrace the Internet.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Luming Finance” (ID: luminglab) .
Author | Zhao Songshan
Edit | Chen Lan
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In the beginning of 2020, affected by the “black swan” of the epidemic, all walks of life have been impacted to varying degrees. Among them, the film and television industry is considered one of the affected areas.
Affected by the epidemic, movies such as “Auntie” and “Detective Chinatown 3” have been withdrawn. They should have been the most popular Spring Festival files of the year, but they have become particularly deserted. They have experienced the “strongest in history in 2019” The film and television industry after the “National Day file” has invested in the 2020 Chinese New Year file in exchange for a hit.
According to the data, the box office revenue of the Spring Festival in 2017 was 3.38 billion yuan, the revenue of 2018 was 5.7 billion yuan, and the revenue was 5.9 billion yuan in 2019. Originally, according to industry estimates, the total box office revenue of the Spring Festival 2020 was expected to be around 7 billion yuan. . However, under the epidemic situation, the gross income of the box office at the beginning of the year of 2020 was only 1.81 million yuan. After that, theaters across the country announced that they were closed. The box office totaled no more than 10 million yuan, causing heavy losses.
After the Spring Festival stalls in Waterloo, the major crews also face downtime. In order to fight the epidemic and ensure the safety of personnel, major film and television bases and crews that have already started up have issued announcements to stop shooting. Due to factors such as venue, personnel, equipment, etc., filming and filming will no doubt be a major test of the film’s economic strength.
It can be said that the offline production of the entire film and television industry under the epidemicThe industry is already at a standstill.
For online platforms, the epidemic is not all bad news. Segregated homes and closed-door vaccination policies have brought more viewers to online platforms. According to the data, iQiyi’s members increased by 1079% month-on-month, Mango TV members increased by 708% month-on-month, and Tencent Video members increased by 319% month-on-month. The daily average online hours of major video platforms increased. Works that have already been online, such as “The Next Stop Is Happiness”, “Peerless Pride”, “New World”, etc., also gained higher attention and popularity during the epidemic.
The favorable form of the online industry in the epidemic has also caused some of the offline industries that suffered heavy losses in the epidemic. While seeing the hope of getting out of trouble, they are further thinking about the changes and possibilities of the entire industry.
Who can cross the border of the discharge line
How to break through the offline difficulties of the film and television industry during the epidemic, and for a while, became a topic of concern for film and television practitioners. The director Xu Yan, who was one of the biggest victims of the Spring Festival stall, gave a different answer.
On January 24, the movie “Aunt” originally scheduled to be released on the Spring Festival file announced that it would cooperate with the platform of Byte Beat, which will be broadcasted free of charge on the whole network on the New Year’s Day. With the news, the audience naturally enjoyed the movie for free, and the boring home life had a lot more fun. Just a few days after the opening of “Aunt”, the online broadcast volume exceeded 600 million, which can be described as gratifying data. However, some offline cinema practitioners couldn’t laugh anymore. The aunt’s early heat was inseparable from the publicity of offline cinemas. I didn’t expect that the bamboo baskets were flooded, and the publicity expenses were spent, but the movies went to the line. Free screenings. For this reason, Xu Yan has received much criticism and criticism from the industry.
With online broadcasting, Auntie has killed the epidemic, and the new form of online broadcasting has also been widely discussed. However, after the epidemic, can online broadcasting become a new trend in the film and television industry? The topic of the blockbuster has not been discussed before, but there are many reasons for it.
The cost of making a movie is one of the factors. Film and television has always been a very costly industry. For objective reasons such as venues, equipment, personnel, post-production, etc., a crew of hundreds of people, the basic daily expenditure is only calculated in millions of yuan. Looking at the popular domestic movies in recent years, the production cost of War Wolf 2 is about 200 million yuan, the production cost of Operation Red Sea is about 500 million yuan, and the production cost of Wandering Earth is about 320 million yuan. The production cost of “Mom” is 210 million yuan.The production cost of Detective Chinatown 3 is as high as 1.3 billion yuan.
Even “I’m Not a Medicine God”, which has been categorized by major media as a small-cost god, has a production cost of more than 60 million yuan. Compared with the high cost, the average length of the movie is more than two hours. The length of stay and economic benefits are not cost-effective.
But this does not mean that the movie has no place online. As a large film and television country, China has a large number of film and television institutions. In addition to industry giants such as Huayi and Wanda, there are also a small number of film and television institutions. Of the tens of thousands of movies that the industry outputs every year, it leaves a deep impression on the audience, and the well-known head movies only account for a small part after all.
These top-heavy headliners with rich financial resources and cast members are not suitable for online release due to production costs and viewing effects. Are there any opportunities for those movies that were originally at the waist or later?
Opportunities of the film and television industry on the Internet: niche themes are sought after
The films that are mainly played online without offline theater are not the first. “Aunt” was not the first. As early as the first two years of the concept of the big movie on the Internet, this form of movie played only on the Internet has already been demonstrated. In front of people.
“With the Internet as the starting platform, more than 60 minutes, well-produced, with the structure and capacity of a complete movie, in line with relevant national policies and regulations.” This is the current general definition of big movies on the Internet. Compared with traditional cinema films, the production cost of large-scale online movies is lower, most of which are between 3-10 million. The production cycle is shorter, the output is faster, the broadcast is faster, and it is more in line with the needs of the network platform.
This kind of film for online movies has considerable revenue compared to offline movies. Take the well-known “Soul Ferry · Huang Quan” in recent years as an example. “Soul Ferry · Huangquan” was launched on February 1, 2018, and the account was broken through 10 million in 5 days. The traffic was nearly 80 million in more than 10 days, and the final account was 45.47 million. Dozens of box office nowFor the billion-head movie, more than 40 million may not be enough for production costs, but as a low-cost movie with a production cost of only about 8 million, its yield is not bad compared to the cinema head movie.
The same example is also called “The Great Snake”, which is called the Chinese version of “The Cataclysm”, with a balance of more than 50 million, and the sequel “The Great Snake 2” has been released for 20 months. In the big online movie market in 2019, nearly 40 works exceeded 10 million at the box office, creating good results.
If these movies are shown in theaters, while facing the pressure of head movie competition, due to production costs, the cast and special effects will inevitably be spit out by audiences who buy tickets and watch movies, but on networks with lower movie viewing costs On the platform, the audience seems much more tolerant. At the same time, the pop-up function of the online platform now also creates a better communication atmosphere for the film. More importantly, the restrictions on the online platform in terms of subject matter are much looser than those in cinema movies. Fantasy, adventure, thriller, history and other themes are able to flex their muscles on the online platform, making up for the lack of cinema themes. One of the important reasons for the rapid development of Internet movies in the past two years.
Many industry experts believe that “this epidemic has blurred the boundary between online movies and cinema films, opened windows, and new profit models will continue to emerge in the future.” For those non-head movies, online platforms Maybe it can be a new option. The current predicament may be the opportunity to embrace the Internet.
It is both an impact and an opportunity
Without dying in silence, erupt in silence. The shocks facing the Chinese film and television industry have also brought many opportunities.
The movie “Hero” was released in 2002, which opened the curtain of Chinese commercial films with a sensational 250 million box office at that time. It was a year when Chinese films were facing development opportunities, but the industry suffered from the SARS epidemic. The same closed doors, the theater closed.
It was just after SARS that the industry ushered in policy support. The movie