China's themes have become the darling of the international documentary industry, integrating media to help open up a new pattern in the documentary industry

Original title: Integrating media helps open up a new pattern in the documentary industry

China themes become the darling of the international documentary industry

During the Spring Festival this year, the British BBC broadcast the documentary "China Spring Festival-The World's Largest Event", which showed the customs, food and festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival in a live broadcast manner, and was well received by overseas audiences. In recent years, more and more documentaries with China themes have attracted attention overseas, and co-productions of Chinese and foreign documentaries have gradually become a trend. Last year,"We were Born in China", co-produced by China, the United States, and the United Kingdom and directed by Lu Chuan, was released in many countries around the world. The American film review website "Rotten Tomatoes" gave a test review of 83% freshness, far exceeding other films released during the same period.

Overseas media platforms have also become more positive and open towards documentaries with China themes. China content and the face of China are increasingly being presented to audiences on overseas mainstream media platforms in the form of documentaries. "Confucius" broadcast by the French cultural channel ARTE is co-produced by the British Lion Company and the CCTV Science and Education Channel. The film tells the story of Confucius and his theories from multiple perspectives of history, biography, doctrine and influence;"The Shocking Secret of the Mausoleum of the Qin Emperor" broadcast by the National Geographic Channel, co-directed by British producers Hummy Brantan and Chen Kaige, uses modern remote sensing technology to detect the undiscovered Mausoleum of the Qin Emperor;"The War That Changed the World" broadcast by Australia's Foxtel History Channel was collaborated by CCTV Science and Education Channel and Australia's Wild Bear Company to make Western audiences realize the important role played by China in the world anti-fascist war.

"The international production and dissemination of documentaries in China is no longer an accident, but has become the norm." said Zhang Tongdao, director of the Documentary Center of Beijing Normal University.

Great times should produce great works. As a documentary that faithfully records and presents the context of the times and historical trends, this mission is particularly important. During this year's Beijing Film Festival, French documentary master Jacques Behan said he would focus his next documentary on China. "This shows that China has now become a treasure trove of content for world documentary filming. We are in it, why should we not record the tremendous changes in this country?" Gao Changli, director of the Propaganda and Management Department of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, said.

In fact, compared with the fact that historical and humanistic themes occupied the absolute mainstream of the China documentary market for a long time in the past, there are currently a significant increase in documentaries focusing on the reality of contemporary society, and documentary practitioners 'attention and sensitivity to real life have been significantly enhanced.

Since the beginning of this year, the documentary "Aerial Photography of China" has been broadcast three times in a month on CCTV. Good reputation and high ratings from viewers are key factors in promoting reruns. Previously,"Super Project","A Bite of China" and "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" presented the connection between contemporary China and history and the future from different dimensions. It is also understood that a number of documentaries focusing on major national issues are also under intense filming-through the stories of two villages, it shows China's current poverty alleviation work, and a new documentary will soon be filmed in Yunnan; Concerned about the storms of rural reform, the documentary "The Fields of Hope by the Lalin River" is being filmed in Heilongjiang..."Today's China society has more thrilling things happening than in any country in the world. It depends on whether the documentaries have vision, whether they have a mind, and whether they have the ambition to create an epic." Gao Changli said.

The overall development of my country's documentary industry is currently improving and

Chinese-themed documentaries are becoming popular around the world. On the one hand, it is certainly due to the rapid development of China's economy and the improvement of its international status; on the other hand, the domestic documentary broadcasting pattern has expanded in recent years, which has further leveraged the development of the documentary industry. The large-scale development has also objectively promoted the appearance of Chinese documentaries on the international stage.

The 2017 "China Documentary Development Research Report White Paper" shows that China documentaries have formed a basic pattern with professional documentary channels and satellite TV integrated channels as the main force and new media as the support. Professional documentary channels form the main force of China documentaries, but it will take time to create a brand.

On January 1, 2011, CCTV Documentary Channel officially launched. As the first professional documentary channel in China, when it was created, most of the domestic documentary creation concepts still stayed on the outdated concept of "promotional films." The market expansion concept of documentaries was almost zero, and there were few broadcast platforms. In recent years, with the introduction of relevant management policies, the number of documentaries broadcast by various satellite stations has increased day by day, and many professional documentary channels have also emerged one after another. This has cultivated a large number of documentary viewers and opened up potential markets for the development of documentaries in the China market.

Data shows that the overall development of my country's documentary industry is currently improving. In 2016, the industry's investment was 3.47 billion yuan and revenue was 5.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15% and 12% respectively. In addition, the total length of documentaries broadcast by satellite TV channels and professional documentary channels in 2016 totaled 77600 hours. Among the top ten works ranked in the communication effectiveness of domestic documentary TV broadcast platforms in 2016, 4 were from CCTV channels and 1 was from Jiangsu Satellite TV.

However, new challenges are constantly emerging. Among them, the new media challenges faced by television media around the world have also become challenges and opportunities for the development of documentaries.

Are the dissemination laws of documentaries broadcast on the Internet different from those broadcast on TV and the big screen? The answer is yes. It is understood that in 2016, the top two best broadcast effects of domestic documentary online broadcasts were works produced by Internet companies. The third place was "Always on the Road" premiered by CCTV Comprehensive Channel, and the fourth place was the movie documentary "We were Born in China". What is particularly noteworthy is that the two medical-themed documentaries,"Human World" and "Life Gate", have achieved very good results in online communication. Industry insiders analyzed that there are obvious differences in content and subject preferences between documentaries broadcast on Internet platforms and those broadcast on TV and big screens. Since there are more young people on Internet platforms, the demand for natural science documentaries is greater. "This is actually a great promotion to the development of domestic natural science documentaries to a certain extent." Zhang Tongdao said.

Improving communication efficiency is a required course in an integrated media environment

. However, for the entire documentary industry, just doing good content is not enough. How to improve communication efficiency is also a required course. The significant increase in paying users of new media since last year has also brought changes to the dissemination of documentaries.

Steve Burns is the chief content officer of CuriosityStream.com, a U.S. documentary pay-for-payment platform that produces and purchases 600 hours of documentary programming every year. In his view, the focus of China's documentary industry on documentaries is very different from that of its foreign counterparts."In the past few years, even this year, some documentary practitioners in China have still been discussing the 'authenticity' of documentaries, but in the face of the current integrated media development environment, the profit model of documentaries may be a practical issue that we should pay more attention to." Steve. Burns said.

In the era of integrated media, new media is highly developed, and traditional media is facing new opportunities and challenges. An excellent documentary must be broadcast both on TV and on new media platforms. However, the profit models of the two broadcast platforms are completely different: the revenue on the TV side is realized through the agreement between the producer and the TV station, while the revenue on the new media platform is often realized through user clicks.

Wu Wenfeng, editor-in-chief of iQiyi Documentary Channel, regards paid viewing as an inevitable trend in the development of documentaries. He introduced that since last year, iQiyi Record Channel has converted some classic documentaries from free viewing to paid viewing, but this has not led to user loss, but has opened up new revenue channels for the channel. "In other words, we have extended the paid share model to documentaries. If this model continues to be successful in commercial cooperation, it will greatly promote the entire documentary industry."

However, the development of new media does not mean that traditional carriers of documentaries such as television and big screen will inevitably decline. Industry insiders believe that it is precisely from TV to movie theaters and big screens to the overall construction of online platforms that the entire industry chain of documentary broadcasting patterns can be built in the context of integrated media.

The documentary "Materia Medica China" produced and broadcast by Shanghai Documentary Channel in 2016 was successful in both content and dissemination, creating a "hit" for TV documentaries of that year. Talking about the success of the film, channel president Gan Chao said: "Before filming" Materia Medica China ", we conducted a survey. In the industry where advertising on TV, the first place is pharmaceuticals. There are many opportunities hidden behind such information." Why are there few successful cases of China documentaries in movie theaters? But why is the ticket rate of the 100 documentary films screened during the Shanghai Documentary Film Festival higher than that of feature films? Gan Chao believes that the reminder this brings to the industry lies in the importance of planning itself and the importance of identifying the right target audience. "Where the market is, who will become the customer paying for content? With good content, target users, identify the right advertisers, and combine these three to create a high-quality documentary product."

Zhao Shuqing, dean of the Internet Research Institute of Communication University of China, believes that the current discussion of the survival and development of documentaries must be placed in the context of media integration, and CCTV Recording Channel, as the industry's flagship, should play a key role in the "aggregation platform in the all-media era", making systematic and ecological considerations from content, broadcast, channel distribution to IP development. In addition, the flagship channel should also become an incubator, investing sufficient funds in incubation teams, projects and talents to lead the entire industry to create a new ecosystem.

Editor: Nancy