Liu Xufeng, Chairman of Yongxu Liangchen: Building a film production factory

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You must think this is an old-fashioned film company that is out of touch with the market, but in fact they are aggressively trying new genres that many film companies dare not try.

It is hard to imagine that there is such a film company on the market. Their boss never talks about big IP, fan movies, Internet +, big data, film product managers and other concepts, and even excludes speaking in any film-related forum. You must think that this is an old-fashioned film company that is out of touch with the market, but in fact they have aggressively tried new genres that many film companies dare not try. You probably have not heard of the name of this company. It is called Yongxu Liangchen, but you must know the projects produced by this company, such as the "Pen Fairy" series,"Fuck Off, Tumor King","Twelve Citizens", and the recently released controversial "My War". I have to say, interviewing such a company is really interesting.

Abandoned business and went into the film industry stimulated by a bad movie.

Lu Xun watched the onlookers and abandoned medicine and turned to literature. Many people have heard of the story. For Liu Xufeng, chairman of Beijing Yongxu Liangchen Cultural Development Co., Ltd., this story has another version. In 2010, he went to the cinema to watch a thriller."I was really angry, how could it be so bad", so he came up with the idea of making his own movie. "The original intention is particularly simple, just to do a good job in content."

At that time, he owned a listed company in Shenzhen and had no worries about food and clothing. However, he ignored the persuasion of the people around him and decisively sold the company and returned to his hometown, Beijing, to start making movies.

For a layman, starting is not easy. After saving his first script,"The Pen Fairy", he found that the domestic film production technology was not mature enough and did not meet his requirements, so he hoped to cooperate with Japan and South Korea. He used what seems foolish today and hoped to contact Japan and South Korea through the embassy in China. Things did not go smoothly. Since Japan had just suffered an earthquake at that time, the embassy had no time to take care of movies, while South Korea responded quickly, so they established a cooperation with South Korean director Ahn Byung-ki, who later became the director of "The Pen Fairy". The cooperation between the two sides continues to this day.

Content first creates the market rather than catering to

the market. From the beginning, Liu Xufeng regarded movies more as works of art than commodities."Movies must be like this. Many years later, you will still shine and still have a very profound meaning and value. This is a good movie, rather than blindly catering to market demand. Many times the audience doesn't know what they want. You create something new for them, and they realize that they like it too. If we blindly cater to the market, the market will become more and more dead, and nothing new will be produced."

At present, there are indeed a number of movies on the market that cater to audiences, especially various fans. Such movies may seem to be flattering, but in fact they may not be recognized by the market. Audiences are not stupid, they are often very smart, and they are becoming increasingly difficult to fool. This year, several fan movies have received flat box office and even lost miserably. As for "Twelve Citizens" and "Get Out of the Storm!" Yongxu Liangchen had done before Projects such as "Tumor King" have instead gained market recognition. "Sometimes the box office of a movie is like fame and fortune. The more you ask for it, the less you can't get it. You hide, but it pursues you instead."

"My War", which is currently being released, can obviously show his style. This kind of war-genre movie is indeed not very pleasing in the current market environment."I just hope to try more new genres."

"Get lost! Tumor King is barely the only IP project Liu Xufeng has operated, but he did not buy it because it was a big IP. Liu Xufeng and the original author Xiong Dun met during his lifetime and had a good relationship. After her death, Liu Xufeng was very sad, so he wrote "Get lost! The copyright to the comic book "Tumor Jun" was purchased, hoping to adapt it into a movie and put it on the screen. Later, considering the funding and distribution, Wanda Films and Television introduced "the lines are extracted from the comic book one sentence by one." It was this kind of sincerity that made this film a great success, with high reputation and box office.

Don't support creation, support production, and be good at discovering good stories from social news

. In addition to daily maintenance positions such as personnel administration, there are two main types, one is development and the other is production. Development is mainly project planning, etc., but there are no full-time screenwriters."We don't support creators, but producers, because creators are more unrestrained, very free, and not easy to manage. After the project is planned and the outline is written, the screenwriter will be asked to write it."

But unlike other companies, Yongxu Liangchen has a huge production team. The film company has always been unable to raise production personnel, including life production, photography, clothing, props, lighting, etc. The crew is usually set up temporarily after the script, investment, and director are confirmed. The so-called "straw team" takes time to find the right people for temporary construction. In addition, it will have to go through a running-in period and the efficiency will be relatively low."It takes about half a year to build a crew from scratch." Many mature directors and large company projects will work with their own "dedicated" teams, but for new directors and small companies, setting up teams often requires a lot of energy.

In order to solve this situation, Yongxu Liangchen "raised" such a group of relatively mature production staff."We are very fast, we are all ready-made, and we have cooperated many times. We said we wanted to start the machine, and we could do it immediately. There is no need to go to the market again."

Take "My War" as an example. The core production staff are all Yongxu Liangchen employees."With a crew of 3,000 to 4,000 people, hundreds of kilograms of explosives were buried in six to 700 explosion sites, and there were no casualties. This is very difficult."

Although he does not raise creative staff, Liu Xufeng himself is a very good creative person. He and his employees are very good at discovering good stories from social news, and they are truly capable of doing everything. For example, LeTV recently bought the copyright of "The Pacific Escape" for a high price and was about to change the movie. In fact, Liu Xufeng had paid attention to this theme three years ago and hoped to make it into a movie. Later, he gave up considering censorship issues, and so on.

Yongxu

Liangchen's current model of making a film production factory is difficult to characterize, classify, or find a benchmark. Film companies such as Wanda, Alibaba Pictures, Enlight Media, and China Film are beginning to look more and more like Hollywood's blockbusters. The core lies in distribution rather than production capabilities. They rely on channel and financial advantages to obtain project investment rights and producer identities. This method of making money is indeed more labor-saving and more efficient. This is understandable. This is the mainstream business model of Hollywood's current top studios. Companies like Yongxu Liangchen do not have the distribution capabilities of the above-mentioned companies, nor are they completely divorced from the market like independent film companies, so it is difficult to be summarized.

While many companies in the industry are actively expanding the industrial chain, Liu Xufeng hopes to cut off irrelevant business and concentrate on project development and production. "We hope to change the current chaotic and opaque situation in the film production process, make production more transparent and standardized, and the concept of becoming a film production factory." Liu Xufeng said.

It is understood that in addition to the current production team of Yongxu Liangchen, Liu Xufeng also hopes to continue to expand the team of production staff, adopt the traditional teaching method of "master leading apprentices", cultivate some production talents, and "gradually start training this area."

Indeed, for asset-light film companies, talent is the most important resource, and there is no one.

Editor: queenie