Yi En expert Shang Dan: The misunderstandings and harms of over-screening of domestic films

When it comes to the word "screening", I believe that filmmakers in every link in the film industry chain are familiar with it. So, is it necessary to do screening? Is the more screenings the better? What can we do to be more scientific and effective?

When talking about the word "spot screening", I believe that filmmakers in every link in the film industry chain are familiar with it. It seems that it has become an indispensable synonym in current film publicity strategies. Some people say that the concept of on-demand movie screening started from the "heart-to-heart" era. In fact, it is not the case. The concept of on-demand screening has become very mature in the Hollywood market. It is called "Advance Screening", which means that the film is fully and officially released. Before the film is released, the producer designated several city theaters to release it in advance. In the American film market, differentiated screening of films has been achieved among theaters. For producers, in addition to the necessary steps of marketing promotion and media strategy, on-demand screening is of great significance to the formulation and implementation of distribution strategies. Especially for some art films, there are many successful cases where strong word-of-mouth screening is done through very few screens, thereby influencing theaters and expanding distribution scale (the American market pays more attention to distribution).

The purposes of Hollywood screening are generally: first, to promote marketing and expand word-of-mouth promotion; second, to further formulate theater distribution strategies through the information feedback collected after screening, that is, to determine the film's target audience by analyzing the post-screening data? Can it enter the mainstream market for issuance? How many screens is it appropriate to show it on? Will the issuance scale gradually increase or decrease? What is the distribution cooperation strategy with different theaters; Third, some participating films need to meet the standard and conditions of "already released to the public". For commercial reasons but unwilling to fully release them in advance, the producers also adopted early screening and other methods.

So, does it have to be done in the spot screening? Is the more screenings the better? What can we do to be more scientific and effective? I have the following views to discuss with all my friends:

1. Correctly understand and distinguish the significance of pre-screening, spot screening and public screening

1. Pre-screening: generally refers to unfinished films. When the film is in the post-production stage, experts or some audiences are invited to conduct small-scale screenings, and the unfinished films are corrected in a targeted manner based on the feedback and evaluation of viewers, so as to help the film more meet market demand after it is officially released. At the same time, I believe that pre-screening activities such as media venues and expert venues for completed films should also be included in the scope of pre-screening. The common feature of pre-screening is internal viewing and no external ticket sales.

2. Screening: For the completed film that has obtained the public release license, the film company will show it to the audience or designated group of people in certain cities and at a certain time point in advance before the film is officially released, focusing on creating reputation for the film. The screening site can be sold to the public, or it can be viewed by specific groups in the form of renting venues. The common feature of screening is that the film has entered the commercial screening stage, and the box office of screening should be included in the total box office after screening.

3. Public screening: As the name suggests, the film has entered the market screening stage on a large scale, and the theater has officially included the film in its commercial screening plan. Here, we should distinguish between the different meanings of "premiere day" and "premiere"."premiere day" refers to the first day of the film's release;"premiere" refers to a film marketing activity to make the final preparations for the release. It is a large-scale event that gathers multiple stars and celebrities to jointly promote the film, thereby attracting media attention. Under normal circumstances, ordinary audiences cannot attend the premiere.

2. Misunderstandings and harms caused by excessive pursuit of spot screening

1. Spot screening results cannot be used as the only basis for evaluating the proportion of movie theaters

. Unlike the U.S. market, the movie theater structure in the China market has not formed differentiated movie layouts, nor has it developed to the level of market segmentation. The channels for small word-of-mouth communication are not mature, so early screening is only for publicity services in China and is of little significance to the distribution strategy. However, screening of domestic films has become more important means for film companies to compete for movie schedules in theaters. For example, self-purchasing movie tickets to fill the attendance rate at the screening venue, cooperating with e-commerce to implement a large number of ticket replacements, etc. Although this will cause a "fake attendance rate" on the first day of release of the film in a short period of time, with the large-scale popularization of this ticket replacement method and the comprehensive analysis of each film by theater professionals, the schedule and reduction of the next day will inevitably be processed in advance with the decline curve of the "fake attendance rate", so ticket replacements are not used as a core means to improve the number of movie theaters in the later stage.

2. A large number of ticket subsidies have greatly increased the film's publicity costs

. The current ticket subsidies range from a few million to tens of millions. Although they have brought benefits to the audience, there are only a handful of producers who have really benefited. Most of the producers 'ticket subsidies have become self-produced and sold, which not only consumes a large amount of publicity costs, but also does not effectively increase the box office and audience numbers of the movie, which is not worth the gain.

3. Ticket replenishment becomes a trend and conceals the fact that the publicity and release effect of the film is correctly evaluated

. In essence, before each film is released, the publicity and release team will formulate and implement a series of publicity and release plans according to the time points. The most important purpose of spot screening is to test and evaluate in advance the actual effects brought by the film's early marketing activities before the official release of the film, and correctly analyze the film's viewing popularity, audience attention, interest, etc. Once the real data of spot screening is collected, you can accurately analyze different feedback information from various regional cities. For areas with poor feedback or weak publicity, the film company can also use the period before the official release to make up for it, and even adjust the corresponding distribution plan. While reducing the cost of publicity and distribution, it can achieve precise and targeted marketing in important areas. However, a large number of ticket supplements and self-purchase of games will obscure the real data of screenings, making it impossible for the film to judge and evaluate the true effect of the series of marketing work done above.

4. Excessive consumption of viewers makes it difficult to ensure a steady increase in the box office in the later period

. Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, we had deeply realized the current situation of extreme decline and diving in the market. Even the "Div 5" with good reputation and the "Xiao Huang" with high market expectations failed to save the market from continuing to decline. The reason is that, in addition to some objective factors, a large number of ticket replacements are concentrated on the premiere day (or the first three days). At the same time, low-ticket activities also caused the audience to quickly rush to expect blockbusters and over-consume in the early stage. In the later stage, with the increase in ticket prices and the decrease in interest among price-sensitive audiences, the number of visitors dropped rapidly. With the average number of visitors present at the meeting being low, it was impossible for the studio to increase box office revenue by increasing the number of screenings, thus entering a vicious cycle. This situation is also common in domestic films where ticket replacement is a common practice.

5. Vicious competition for screenings, and the film schedule has been damaged.

Looking back at the China film market, the competition for screenings is getting worse, with gods from all walks of life facing each other and each has unique tricks. It is said that China people like to follow suit and be good at imitating, and I think the same is true in the current film market-once a certain genre of film is successful, the IP of the same kind will be looted until the theater is in a "different shirt" and the audience is boring; The movie "Wolf Warrior" was a great success, and in an instant, pre-screening roadshows emerged one after another until the main creative platform was overwhelmed, and the smiling muscles of the actors, big and small, were stiff and their legs were numb; Today's on-demand screenings have also changed from one or two fights at the beginning to a few hours or even full-time open keys at present. What's more, different cinemas are allowed to start films in advance in the same city by means of binding film arrangement times, which not only monopolizes the film arrangement space, but also ignores the concept of film schedule. In the long run, vicious competition will definitely cause great damage to the market, which is not conducive to the healthy and benign development of China's film market!

To sum up, I would like to make the following suggestions to all production friends, hoping that they can follow scientific screening:

Recommendation 1: The significance of screening blockbuster films is to collect the real publicity effect rather than the screening method of release and self-purchased screenings of small pieces is of little significance;

Recommendation 2: Limit the screening times in advance, and one screening is better. Too much will not only easily cause theaters to schedule at the same time, but also a large number of screenings in advance will increase the number of pirated recordings;

Recommendation 3: blockbusters generally have higher publicity expenses, and the early marketing actions have basically laid a fixed number of movie-watching people and the foundation for the first weekend of the film's release. However, too many ticket replacements in the early stage will lead to low ticket prices and a large consumption of existing audiences. Therefore, whether the ticket replacement strategy for blockbusters should focus on the late release of the film (meaning three days after the release) so as to achieve sustained and stable output at the box office should be the top priority for the film.

In short, only by focusing on the long-term can we develop steadily!

Editor: vian