Chen Kexin: I am ready to make an online drama

We must face up to changes in audience consumption habits. The dilemma of real-world films is global...

Note: This article is a speech delivered by director Peter Chan at the Iqiyi World Conference.

In Hong Kong in the 1980s, when I was about the same age as the post-90s generation, I was already making movies. At that time, I was lucky enough to catch up with the glory period of Hong Kong films, encountered many interesting themes, and made many movies.

But by about 1995 and 1996, the entire ecological structure changed.

Everyone knows that Hong Kong is very small. In fact, Hong Kong films have always been attached to the ecosystem of overseas Chinese to support their creation. At that time, the Chinese market in Xinmatai and Chinatown in Europe and America had been shrinking. Because older audiences no longer go to cinemas, younger audiences have integrated into the local culture and no longer need Chinese films. Coupled with the fact that the Taiwan market was opened to major American film companies in 1995 and 1996, they established their own distribution systems, and import quota restrictions were lifted. Within two years, the market share of Chinese films, Hong Kong films and Taiwanese films suddenly increased from 60-70% to 1.6%.

I was only in my early 30s and had nothing yet, so I kept looking for ways to change my destiny. Unexpectedly, now more than 20 years of movies have been made.

Over the past 20 years, I have changed a lot of the direction of my creation and kept integrating into different markets. I have been to Hollywood, and then worked hard to make pan-Asian films for several years, working with emerging film market countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand. Finally, I came to the mainland and met a good market that I had not encountered in the past ten years.

We must face up to the changes in audience consumption habits

. Over the past ten years, the mainland market has experienced changes in world movies for a century.

We have experienced the transformation from the blockbuster era to down-to-earth comedy and romance films; we have also experienced the transformation of the main audience from the post-70s to the post-80s generation, then to the post-85s, 1995s, and even today's post-00s generation; We have also experienced the transformation from all cinemas concentrated in first-tier cities, serving high-level and highly educated audiences, to now sinking to the second, third, fourth and fifth lines. To cater to the changes of young people in small towns

, these are things that filmmakers are at a loss but still have to face every day.

This change has become more violent in recent years. The Internet and mobile Internet have changed the lifestyle of young people, and the way they consume entertainment has also changed. In the past, everyone gathered in front of the TV to eat and watch TV. Later, with smartphones and iPads, they could watch movies anytime and anywhere, and they didn't even have to watch such a long video.

This change reversed to our industry, and we began to complain that the Internet had robbed our audience. What the audience is actually even more reluctant to pay is the cost of a few hours of time, which is the trouble of going out. For them, it would be better to spend 5 or 10 yuan on their mobile phones to download an Oscar-winning movie.

Audiences are increasingly concerned about their own time costs, and they are always smarter than we think.

At the same time, we have a greater external pressure-we must survive and maximize our benefits. This has led many film content creators to start leaning towards big-star and big-production spectacle movies. In fact, cinemas are also very difficult. They have to face the changes in the current market and the kidnapping of capital and real estate. Their operating costs and distribution costs are very high. It is actually difficult for the entire big film industry chain to break even, not to mention that the past year or two has seemed to have begun another cold winter period for movies.

The dilemma of reality-themed films is worldwide.

However, we see the Internet not because of the instability of the film market, but because we see a more optimistic situation in which the Internet is combined with traditional films.

I often tell my team that we must be self-aware, understand our strengths, and recognize our shortcomings. I know that we are not filmmakers like Tsui Hark and Zhou Xingchi. We are not making spectacle films, nor are we making comedy films that kill all over the first, second, fourth and fifth lines.

So, I will also have my own troubles. Because I have always been filming realistic themes. I used to shoot urban and cultural films in Hong Kong, and I also did when I came to the mainland. In the past decade or so, when blockbusters were fashionable, we also tried to shoot something that was not realistic, but there were always some problems.

Now this change in the mainland film market is in sync with the world. The same is true in the United States, where superhero dramas and animated blockbusters dominate the market. Commercial films with truly mature tastes and deep into reality-not yet art films-actually have little room for survival.

From a market perspective, we feel the increasingly severe current situation. Many times, a movie we spend two or three years making ends up facing two weeks of luck. The luck of these two weeks is often not two weeks at all, but one week, one weekend, or even one weekend, just one day. I remember that my last film was to ask the theater to give me a day's opportunity. After the film was finished, it didn't matter how you wanted to reduce the film the next day.

What is even more terrifying is that movies are often a social topic. What news happened in society this week? Is the weather good? Who is your opponent? Did your opponent hire water soldiers to slander you...

I am very fascinated by online dramas.

How to solve this dilemma? If you look carefully, you will find that although the entire entertainment industry is coming in, in fact, on the Internet, the popular content that young people really like is far from saturated. For example, online dramas seem very popular, but I think there are still limited online dramas that can really make young people applaud.

In fact, I personally am very fascinated by the category of online dramas. This is not because of the rise of major video websites. I have been waiting for this day for a long time.

Back in the 1970s, I grew up heavily influenced by American miniseries. I remember there was only one place in the house with air conditioning, and that was Mom's shop. At night we slept on the floor of the shop, watching the first color TV at home at that time. The TV broadcast American mini-series, such as the famous novel Roots about Africans going to America.

At that time, there were many excellent mini-dramas based on novels in America. They were only six or eight episodes. For a young person, they were even more sticky than those in cinemas. Later, when I was filming in the United States in the 1990s, I heard that there was a very popular TV series in the mainland called "April Day on Earth". I went to buy it and watched it, and saw Teacher Wang Huiling's script. I thought at that time that we China could already make such good TV series, and I would transform into the TV industry whenever I had the opportunity.

Then I came back and started making pan-Asian films. At that time, I also tried to make some co-production dramas with Japanese and South Korean TV stations. As a result, many co-production movies were made instead of success.

In the end, I came to the mainland, and while making movies, I kept trying to ask some experts in the TV industry if we film directors transformed to make TV, would there be any advantages and possibilities? As a result, three conclusions were reached.

First, in fact, in the mainland, the directors who originally made TV series are all film directors, and there is no proposition of transforming to making TV series. The recession of the film industry has led to many film directors making TV series. Moreover, when filming TV series, many directors do it with the mentality of "this is a job", which is completely different from the state of making movies.

Second, like many overseas places, television in China is not an industry that directly faces C (consumers). The decision-makers we are facing are actually toB (industry). Some top executives of TV stations, and a few people decide what the national audience sees.

This reminds me of a very important reason for the decline of Hong Kong films. In 1980, when Hong Kong movies were at their peak, they were all made with toB, not toC. Because there were only 7 million people in Hong Kong at that time, toC could not support Hong Kong films at all. All our films are sold to Taiwan and overseas, so the tastes of a few people who buy them determine the direction of the entire industry. This was once the reason for the decline of the entire Hong Kong film industry, and may also be a hidden danger for the mainland TV industry.

Third, the storytelling method and profit model of TV dramas are completely different from those of movies. Movies pursue quality, but TV dramas actually pursue quantity. Shooting only 8 or 10 episodes will not make money, which is difficult for film directors to adapt to. So I kept waiting.

When the video website came out today, it became possible to create 8 and 10 episodes. I think the time is right.

We should actually face up to the bottleneck of movies, not just the economic bottleneck, but also the bottleneck of storytelling. I often feel that many times when I make a movie, I have to cut out a lot of very good things after filming. Because of those things, it no longer fits the 90-minute to 120-minute release model. To be honest, we can't finish telling stories in 120 minutes, so it's impossible to tell the details when making a blockbuster movie. This is I think the biggest bottleneck in storytelling in movies.

So, I think there is a chance for online dramas. Maybe I think it is naive. I think online dramas should be a movie that lasts as long as you like, 8 hours, and 6 hours. A 12-hour season is now the mainstream mode of American TV series, but you can make it into a two-and-a-half-hour miniseries if you want.

I think the Internet is still a very new industry. We can still innovate many things and face them with a new concept. This may be the most attractive thing for creators on the Internet and video websites.

It is time to forget the fascination with the big screen.

The biggest problem facing American movies today is that theaters are completely dominated by superheroes and cartoons. Directors who have been very popular over the past ten years are now facing creative difficulties. They also need to find some new platforms. In fact, American directors, such as Speier Berg, have been interacting with TV and the Internet more than ten years ago and have produced many different TV and online dramas. I think this is something we can learn from.

In the past few years, the level of American dramas has been improving, and their model has also changed. It does not have to be broadcast weekly, nor does it have to be as long as the original TV series. Audiences will now download the entire season and watch it continuously throughout the weekend. This viewing state is actually the same as in a movie theater, except that he may be watching it on a small screen.

Therefore, we must also start to forget our fascination with the big screen, because young people who grow up now may not have grown up on the big screen, and their understanding of the big screen is different from ours. There has been a lot of controversy in Cannes recently, and everyone is defending the big screen. I think every era has its own habits, and the most important thing is the content.

Looking at the current data, I found that many people now watch long videos on their mobile phones. That reminded me that many times what moved me to tears was the movies I watched on the plane. Although the aircraft screen is small and of poor quality, I am isolated from the world because of wearing headphones. I think this is the same as people watching videos on their mobile phones in the subway now. Don't look at such a small screen, he may be more focused wearing headphones than in the movie theater.

The possibility of the future is very large. As long as we filmmakers, video websites, TV station decision-makers, investors... can put aside some of our prejudices, in fact, the possibilities should be unlimited.

Last year, I produced a movie called "July and Ansheng". This is a movie that young people like to watch more. The subject matter is also dug in a bit deeper, and the audience has a good reputation. Miraculously, we went from only 10 million at the box office on the first day to 167 million in the last, a change rate of 16 to 17 times. In terms of movie data, 16 or 17 times is very worthy of celebration, because usually the curve of movies is 6 or 7 times, and 10 times means a good reputation.

For 40 yuan per movie ticket, the box office of 167 million yuan is equivalent to about 4.2 million visitors. This data is actually good, but when the movie was launched, my Weibo was immediately maxed out. There are 60 million clicks on one platform a week, which also allows me to see more the power of video websites and the power of these movies that can help us.

After saying so much, it sounds like a resentful woman is complaining. But actually what I want to talk about is my sense of crisis and reflection on my career. Nowadays, movies do encounter many problems, but I think there are still infinite possibilities in the future. I see a very ideal C2C world, a world from content creators to users, with no B in the middle and no previous obstacles. I think this new world will really make it possible for me, a filmmaker who was supposed to retire in my 30s, to reach 80 years old in the future.

Editor: jessica