Dong Jun of Zhonghui Film and Television: The long road to IP industry development and operation is like crossing a river by feeling the stones

Last week, the time-space love drama "Searching for a Past Life" co-produced by Zhonghui Film and Television and iQiyi held a press conference in Beijing. The play is adapted from the novel of the same name and is a typical case of IP operation.

Last week, the time-space love drama "Searching for a Past Life" co-produced by Zhonghui Film and Television and iQiyi held a press conference in Beijing. The play is adapted from the novel of the same name and is a typical case of IP operation. Since 2015, IP adaptation and IP operation have been the hottest topics on the market. Many companies have hoarded a large amount of IP resources. Every film festival, film companies will always release long and gorgeous films, but after a year, they will finally be implemented. But very few. The reason is that IP itself is important, but it is only the countless zeroes behind it. For the company, its development and operation are the most important. It is only 1. Without 1, no more zeroes are useless.

In April this year, Zhonghui Film and Television, a company listed on the New Third Board, also announced its gorgeous film list, with 12 key IPs and 32 works. Fortunately, under the leadership of Dong Jun, founder and co-president of Zhonghui Film and Television, these IPs are being turned into works in an orderly manner. In the final analysis, the winner of the market is not the one who hoards the largest and most IP, but the one who can use existing resources to maximize the value of IP. What's more, as co-founder Hou Xiaoqiang has accumulated a large amount of resources in the field of literature. Zhonghui itself does not lack good IP. When the baton is handed over to Dong Jun, there is a task: how to build a network with IP resources as the core and Internet students as the main service target, a cultural ecosystem in the form of animation, film and television, games, derivatives, and peripherals, to achieve efficient and diversified realization of IP.

The first thing Dong Jun focused on was people. She boldly cultivated a group of new people. Zhang Wei, born in the 1990s, is responsible for "The Deaths of Suspect X", which will be launched on April 1 this year, and is also responsible for the domestic film section; Liu Yanhong, a newcomer who has crossed the border from the copyright field, and born in the 1985s, is responsible for the company's online drama development and is also the producer of "Searching for a Past Life"; Zuo Qinshu, born in the 1985s, is also responsible for the overseas film section. Her film "Marshall" will be launched in 2017.

As a post-70s generation, Dong Jun is always enthusiastic and diligent. Just like the entire film industry itself, on the one hand, she delegated power decisively, and on the other hand, she managed cautiously, taking care of newcomers like seedlings. Gao Linbao, the director of "A Journey to a Past Life", is a well-known senior in the industry, but Dong Jun reassured him to connect directly with producer Liu Yanhong."I will tell Director Gao that you can communicate directly with Yanhong if anything happens, and she will represent me."

It's not that I haven't encountered problems. Once in the middle of the night, Liu Yanhong and Gao Linbao called Dong Jun back and forth. Liu Yanhong even cried. She comforted the director and Liu Yanhong at the same time,"I can't help it. If I don't experience setbacks and don't follow it down-to-earth, I can't learn anything and I can't be independent."

"Before I became a producer, I thought producers were very high-quality, but in the end I found that producers were the hardest. They had to manage everything, coordinate the interests of all parties, and come to you if anyone had anything to do, like a nanny."

Being a producer is not an easy job. Dong Jun certainly has a deep understanding of it. She is the seventh producer of "Days with a Flight Attendant" and she didn't become one until the seventh. This was an extremely successful TV series seven years ago. It was adapted from an online novel. Dong Jun completed it when no one was optimistic about it. It was also at that time that Dong Jun and Hou Xiaoqiang established a strong sense of trust. It can be said that Dong Jun has rich experience in IP adaptation. In popular terms, she has a good sense of the Internet.

In the final analysis, good IP can truly play its value in the hands of producers with rich experience and mature operating mechanisms. Summarizing more than ten years of production experience, Dong Jun believes that producers must first have an overall view and a future view. When you get a project, you must immediately know what the project will look like in the end. You must imagine its final product form, and have plans in mind at all times during the production process. You cannot modify it at will just because of the opinions of the director, management, and actors. In the end, it is far from the previous idea.

In addition, from the perspective of cost and risk control, we cannot make movies that lose money, and we must ensure the interests of the management, so as to ensure the healthy operation of the company.

Third, know who the target user is and whom to show the photo. Only in this way can the work be more targeted, more in line with the tastes of the target audience, and ultimately obtain the best market return.

The adaptation of IP into a movie is just the beginning. After the launch of IP works such as "A Journey to a Past Life" and "The Dedication of Suspect X", the brand effect gained will also feed back the IP itself, forming a virtuous cycle. Through multiple platforms, multiple batches, repeated polishing and continuous creation of the entire product will allow IP to realize value addition and preservation. However, no one knows how to do all this better."Crossing the river by feeling the stones" is a sentence that Dong Jun repeatedly emphasized during the interview. Obviously, she is a person with strong execution ability. "I often rush to try something that is unbelievable in the eyes of other people," Dong Jun told reporters.

What is more important for the film industry? It is an industry that turns all seemingly impossible into possible, and it is also an era that turns the impossible into possible.

Editor: queenie