[Emerging Producer] Ma Zihan: The youngest product manager producer in China

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Ma Zihan is undoubtedly a product manager-type producer in the movie "Mr. Heels". She is a game organizer. She brings together the management, distributor, director, screenwriter, and actors. It is a brick that can be moved wherever they are needed.

Ma Zihan, born in 1989, can no longer be praised by his age in the entrepreneurial circle. After all, there are many entrepreneurs born in the 1990s today. However, as a producer of a movie that has exceeded 100 million yuan, this age is still slightly surprising.

The film project "Mr. Heels", which was first run by Ma Zihan, was released on Valentine's Day this year and has currently reached 130 million yuan. As a small and medium-cost film produced by a new director and producer, this number has exceeded everyone in the industry's expectations.

Of course, the reason why this movie's box office is surprising is not only that the production cost is low and the operators are a group of young people around the past 90 years old, but more importantly, it is deviant inside, and even in Ma Zihan's words, it is a bit "exotic" story.

Coincidentally

, Ma Zihan bought the script for "Mr. Heels" at the Korean Film Festival. Among the five award-winning works at that time, she was deeply impressed by this script. However, because she was relatively young and had few qualifications, it was the first choice by her predecessors. But coincidentally,"Mr. Heels" was one of the remaining works.

"This may be a kind of fate," Ma Zihan smiled."In fact, the main reason is that this story is quite strange. Many people don't accept it and are also worried about the issue of passing the trial. At that time, the author of this script told me that this was his personal true story, which I thought was even more interesting."

To this day, none of the scripts purchased with "Mr. Heels" have been lucky enough to be released.

What

kind of story does "Mr. Heels" tell? Simply put, it is the story of the male protagonist "by any means" dressing himself up as a beautiful girl in pursuit of the goddess who is about to become a lesbian. This movie with a romantic comedy shell not only includes cheating, Internet celebrities, but also lesbians and transvestites. It is simply a masterpiece that challenges the audience's psychology and the bottom line of censorship. In this movie, the male lead spends half the time wearing women's clothes and coming and going in stiletto heels. Please note the cross-dressing scenes here. This is not a flash-in-the-pan cross-dressing for Deng Chao in "The Master of Breakups", but a complete cross-dressing for the most important part of the plot.

When everyone saw this script, their first reaction was that it couldn't be filmed. The story is unreasonable and the male lead is too selective. After Ma Zihan received this script with full confidence, he faced such a realistic situation.

"I remember once, I went to a meeting at a film company in the industry to study the script. In one room, surrounded by a huge long table, I sat on one side, and on the other side was full of professional screenwriters. Almost all of them were not optimistic about this script. I know they all mean well. After all, investment in the film market is too risky. I was quite depressed at the time." Ma Zihan said.

LeTV:

Fortunately, Ma Zihan is a very optimistic person with strong self-healing abilities. She immediately convinced herself,"What is a dark horse? Isn't it just that people are not optimistic about at the beginning? If everyone is optimistic about a project, what kind of dark horse is it? It's not my turn to do it." Naturally, she listened to many suggestions and the script was revised several times, but she always insisted on two connotations unchanged: the relationship between the male and female protagonists, and the other was the scene of a male becoming a female.

Ma Zihan founded the Xiahongchang Company, which was an investment and production company and had no experience in publicity. At this time, LeTV, which had successfully created the "Tiny Times" series, came into view, and the two hit it off.

Ma Zihan generously praised the partners for their help in this project."LeTV is very experienced in publicity and is willing to try new things. The cooperation is very pleasant. In the era of lithography, Zhuo Ran is also very powerful. This project allows me to see the power of unity."

It is indeed not easy for a small-budget film to cooperate with several top resource providers in the industry at the same time. After the success of "Mr. Heels", many managers also came to us, hoping to invest in new projects for the popular pony. Ma Zihan, a young man, keenly grasped a very key principle in the film industry. Movies are a team game that assesses comprehensive strength. Turning resources into stakeholders is more efficient than taking money and buying resources. Higher and more controllable.

Ambiguity in gender concepts is a reflection of social progress

After the script was adapted, Ma Zihan boldly used post-90s director Lu Ke to direct the film. At this point, from producer to director to actor,"Mr. Heels" is almost a quasi-post-90s movie. In fact, Ma Zihan doesn't like to divide the audience of this movie by the post-90s generation. Or, the post-90s generation is not an age concept, but a vague label, which refers to the generation who is still studying or just graduated, and whose thinking is relatively avant-garde and has grown up under the influence of the Internet. "Mr. Heels" conducted a survey and found that the audience who liked this film was the most concentrated between the ages of 16 and 24, of which more than 80% were women.

The reason why Ma Zihan dared to bet that this movie would be liked by people born in the 1990s was mainly based on his grasp of one psychological aspect of the 1990s: the ambiguity of gender concepts. From the popularity of upright girls like Li Yuchun and Zhou Bichang, to the popularity of beautiful men like Lu Han and Wu Yifan, today's audience's aesthetics are indeed becoming more and more neutral. In Ma Zihan's view,"This is precisely a manifestation of social progress. In the past, the division of labor in society was clear, with male bosses outside and female bosses inside. The development of science and technology and the increase in mental work have led to men no longer relying on physical strength to win. Women's sense of independence and greater room for play. Gender has increasingly degenerated into a simple physiological distinction rather than a gap in social attributes. This has given rise to many capable women and more gentle men. A social psychology that combines tolerance and curiosity has emerged in society, and "Mr. Heels" is a story with the characteristics of the times."

When the market is large enough, segmentation becomes possible. The market naturally likes blockbusters, but under the influence of Internet thinking, creating exclusive movie products for segmented groups of people that meet their needs has also become a verified direction. This is what has been verified by LeTV, the partner of "Mr. Heels".

In addition to making wonderful movies with a sense of humor

, what is commendable is that Ma Zihan realized that gimmicks, sluggishness, and crossing boundaries are not all that supports a movie. "Many people think that many movies are sold well because they are comedies. In fact, they are just a shell. What is more important is its core, its sense of humor. It can be a martial arts film, a science fiction film, or a suspense film. So I will continue to shoot wonderful, humorous works that young people like."

Indeed, if movies also have IQ and can be divided into smart movies or unsmart movies, then movies with a sense of humor are definitely smart. No matter whether this humor is explicit humor or hidden humor, black humor or red humor.

As we all know, there are two models for producers, the director-centered system and the producer-centered system. Most foreign countries have the producer-centered system, while domestic countries have the director-centered system. Ma Zihan is undoubtedly a product manager-type producer of the movie "Mr. Heels". She is a game organizer. She brings together the management, distributor, director, screenwriter, and actors. It is a brick to move wherever it is needed. It is a bridge, where it cannot be accessed, communicates and coordinates, and presents a work from scratch.

Xiao Ma is popular and has already begun to prepare for the next work, and the young Ma Zihan is full of confidence.

Editor: queenie