Why are there no good movies? Several changes are taking place in China's film market

Nowadays, in addition to doing the work at hand, filmmakers can only change their mentality and tell themselves not to worry too much, but history has taken a detour. But on this corner, many people who were left behind could no longer turn over.

At the Shanghai Film Festival, some people still talk about the scenery of Shanghai films back then. At that time, Shanghai was Oriental Hollywood, giving birth to almost the entire China's movies.

Nowadays, the scenery is no longer beautiful. No matter in terms of capital, technology or talent, Beijing is a unique center. Almost all of China's important film companies have their headquarters here. Usually Huayi goes to the theater to discuss film arrangements, and people who see the light may come out.

Colleagues are enemies, especially when two films collide. Therefore, although they are familiar with each other, they are often opposed to each other because of their work. In 2016, these contradictions were further amplified due to the sluggish market. A gathering of film promotion practitioners in early 2017 actually became a hot topic in the film industry, which shows how much these people communicated.

Fortunately, there is the Shanghai Film Festival. There is no conflict that cannot be solved by a meal of crayfish. A group of people hardly interact with each other in Beijing, but during the Shanghai Film Festival, crayfish banquets were held one after another to build friendships and chat about the market. The big shots, who usually rarely sit on the same stage, finally sat down at the Shanghai Film Festival to guide the industry. "Film companies want to work for BAT" and "China's film market is about to become super beautiful" were all born at previous film festivals.

But this year, whether at the crayfish banquet or the big shots forum, there are many less grand propositions.

2016 ended in disappointment. For the first time, the entire industry realized that the direct dividends brought by relying on movie theaters had ended and that relying on buying low and selling high for profit from existing resources would be unsustainable. The film industry must change, and the film company's operating methods also need to be adjusted.

At the Shanghai Film Festival, changes have begun.

For audiences, the most intuitive change in the film industry over the past year is that there are no good movies anymore. The audience will say that the screenwriter is not good, and the screenwriter will say that the director changed the script indiscriminately. If the director's name is Feng Xiaogang, he will say that the garbage audience raised the garbage movie. In short, each has its own reasons, but no matter how many reasons there are, it cannot produce a good movie.

Investment that is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain

is now making it even more difficult to make good movies. The reporter heard many practitioners complain that there is basically no way to get investment from investors this year, and they are particularly vigilant about film projects.

Two years ago, a group of investors crossed the border and entered the film industry and easily obtained high returns. Without other investment targets, wave after wave of investors came forward. Some projects even only required PPT and a simple sentence. You can get the money. These investment trends have also attracted a pile of bad films, and a large group of investors resolutely selected and funded a number of congenitally deficient projects.

These bad films hurt the film market, and it is difficult for movies to get a return, so investors run away. Sane investors are also wavering because of the new Sino-US film agreement that has not yet been implemented. They go back to choose safer investment products. As a result, there are forums on the site of the film festival to discuss how to make online dramas and Internet University. This would have been regarded as heresy in the past. More and more money is flowing to online dramas and animations. Huayi's Wang Zhongjun had to pledge 88.5% of his shares to keep Huayi running.

It's difficult to get money, but it's not easy to find good actors

. Feng Xiaogang scolded the audience and did not forget to scold the actors. He named Sun Honglei and criticized him, saying that he was busy doing variety shows all day long and stopped acting. Senior producer Huang Jianxin also said that variety shows left many actors without time to film."After all, variety shows make ten times more money than movies in the same amount of time." This makes it difficult to determine the schedule of actors in China. For popular actors, they have to "make an appointment 12 to 18 months in advance." He lamented,"In China, suitable actors are as scarce as pandas."

Huang Jianxin is particularly envious of Hollywood, where actors can make appointments a month or two in advance. Hollywood casting director Sarah Fein said that in the United States, there are about 700 professional casting directors, and their main tasks are to "recommend the most suitable candidates to the director from thousands of candidate actors" and "Promote cooperation between actors to form a tacit understanding."

Movies are being eroded by other entertainment consumption,

variety shows and movie actors are being robbed. This is actually a microcosm of other entertainment consumption competing for movie consumption. In 2015, countless people recounted the phenomenon discovered during the Great Depression of the 1930s: when the economy was depressed, the box office of movies improved. But now the box office is also in a slump. Is this wrong?

It's actually true. During the Great Depression, people tended to choose movies because movies were a cheap way of entertainment that could relax for a few nickels. But in the current environment, taking into account transportation costs, time costs and movie tickets themselves, this is really not a cheap way. What's more, a lot of film and television content can be easily obtained on the Internet, and most legitimate resources only cost 15 yuan per month. The entertainment attributes of movies are getting weaker and weaker, and the social attributes are getting stronger and stronger. Most movies that can get high-box office must be on Social networks.

As entertainment products, movies face competition from TV series, variety shows, games, and live broadcasts. As social products, movies have more competitors. So it's not surprising that people don't go to the cinema.

Under such circumstances, even film companies began to stay away from content.

On the first day of the film festival, Yu Yongfu said that Alibaba Pictures would not participate in competition in the film industry. The next day, Zhang Zhao also said that LeTV Pictures is no longer a pure film company.

"Alibaba Pictures is positioned as a non-traditional film company and must be a service provider of the film industry, not a competitor." At the opening forum, Yu Yongfu said that Alibaba Pictures should build three major infrastructures: user access, commercialization and content industrialization, so as to serve the entire film industry and become the "infrastructure" of the film industry.

LeTV Pictures plans to transform into an IP operating company that uses film and television content as the main medium for users. For example,"Assassination" plans to shoot super online dramas + movies. At the same time, LeTV Pictures will also launch various cooperation models such as game development, real-life entertainment, derivatives development, radio dramas, and brand joint ventures around this IP.

Alibaba is already a world-class Internet company. On this platform, there are data portraits of almost half of China's population. For example, when Alibaba Pictures started operating "A Dog's Mission", it analyzed the main characteristics of several groups of people, such as the people who bought pet products on Tmall and Taobao, the people who watched "The Story of the Loyal Dog Eight Men" on video websites, and the people who were marked in the ticket shopping tickets to see it, and drew conclusions."A Dog's Mission" targets pet lovers, young women, and family audiences, and carries out targeted publicity.

"From the perspective of distribution, our colleagues in the industry predict that the box office will be about 50 to 80 million yuan." "In the end, the film grossed more than 600 million yuan in China," Yu said.

It seems that this is not much different from traditional publicity and distribution, but it just adds more data analysis factors. However, Yu Yongfu used two points to show that he is different from the previous one. First, these services can be opened to all film companies, and secondly, Alibaba Pictures will not participate too much in upstream content.

"From the perspective of upstream content, I actually won't compete." Yu Yongfu emphasized at this forum,"If we cannot expand the industry through infrastructure, I would rather do something else."

Shortly after this forum, Zhang Qiang, co-president of Alibaba Pictures, resigned. Alibaba Pictures once again made it clear to the outside world that its main future battlefield will be in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain. Zhang Qiang was originally the deputy general manager of China Film Corporation and joined Alibaba Pictures in August 2014. After that, Yu Yongfu entered Alibaba Pictures and Zhang Qiang became co-president. In Kasri of "The Ferry Man" and "Tsundere and Prejudice", he is the producer. These two films probably strengthened Alibaba Pictures 'determination not to follow the content route.

Infrastructure is also a platform, which still follows Alibaba's consistent thinking-Taobao is a big platform. But this idea has not been successfully verified in the entertainment industry. Ali also said that he would build a music platform and a sports platform, but the Ali planet has come to an end. There are only shrimps left of Ali music, and Ali Sports is still in the planning.

Yu Yongfu dared to say these words because he took a fancy to the broader non-ticket market.

Generally speaking, the reference to the "movie market" is just the "movie box office market", but in the United States, box office only accounts for a small part of movie revenue, and more of the revenue comes from copyright sales and derivatives. This is why Disney still makes money on Frozen.

Wang Changtian said that the mature film market only accounts for 30%-40% of the box office. Other income comes from copyright sales, on-demand shares, derivatives, etc. He predicts that in three or four years, China's box office and non-box office revenue will be half and half. Zhang Zhao also mentioned the film and television company's dream company: Disney. He said that Disney has formed a model of IP+ media + content + theme park + technology, with a market value of US$180 billion.

Yu Yongfu feels that non-ticket income is an opportunity for Alibaba Pictures."The commercialization of non-box office is actually an advantage of the Alibaba system." It is precisely because of this that he dares to say that he only works as services and platforms and "will never participate in the competition of content companies."

"I believe that Yongfu will one day take back his words, just as I will take back my past words today." Wang Changtian said that before he said that the focus of Light was publicity, but now "we are not only doing marketing and distribution, but also doing production. We have also invested in 60 content companies."

The implication is that ultimately every company will have to do content.

"Because this industry is actually very small, everyone will become the same company as they do it." Wang Changtian said.

Whether box office revenue or non-ticket revenue, in the final analysis, it still depends on content. Although Hollywood does not rely on box office revenue, the content of the movie affects the popularity of the movie, which will be reflected in the box office and affect subsequent sales of derivatives.

Ye Ning welcomed Alibaba Pictures to build infrastructure, but also said: "This year is a clear year for the film industry. In the past few years, everyone was so impetuous that they couldn't find their way. For any film company, everyone has their own characteristics and resources, but in the end, we will reach the same goal and use our own resources to achieve good content. Content is king.

"Alibaba Pictures said that it would leave the content, but as long as the name still says" Film Industry ", in essence, it still has to rely on content to make a living, but from the perspective of the entire industry, how to make content well is still an unsolved mystery.

The Shanghai Film Festival is a reasonable place.

Someone told reporters at the crayfish banquet that the Shanghai Film Festival is a reasonable place, not a place to do things.

There are not many real deals in China's film festivals. They are a good place for movie fans and more like industry gatherings for practitioners. What is said on Taiwan every year makes sense, but the film industry itself will not change anything because of these chicken soup.

It's not what you say, but what you do that determines who you are. Nowadays, apart from doing the work at hand, all filmmakers can do is change their mentality and tell themselves that everything is normal and not to worry too much. It's just that history has taken a detour.

But on this corner, many people who were left behind could no longer turn over.

Editor: jessica