Author | A Po
"There is no conflict between ratings and word of mouth, and even a win-win effect can be achieved. I have been thinking about the subject of individual content creation and large-scale production, and how to use scientific and technological means to combine the laws of film and television creation to help content production and improve the quality of works. "
Zhao Wenzhu, as the president of Relay Entertainment, mentioned the new changes of Relay Entertainment in 2021 when interviewed by Entertainment Unicorn.
"I think that on the basis of good content, we should do a good job in transmitting works produced by entertainment. One is a personalized’ Michelin drama’, that is, a quality word-of-mouth drama that is closer to the creator’s personal subjective concept and gives him creative space; One is a pan-family drama that can maximize the audience and can be developed on a large scale. I define it as’ McDonald’s drama’. "
From the early summer, the youth drama Wit Love Life and the popular variety Meng Detective Detective Case were almost simultaneously released, to the industry drama Ideal City of the summer magnolia award cast, and then to the legendary Oriental puppet drama Lady Huzhu.Throughout the whole year of entertainment, dramas, variety shows, national TV dramas, pure net vertical categories, traffic explosions, and word-of-mouth explosions have not fallen behind.
Delivery Entertainment was officially renamed from Tianma Film and Television on April 13, 2018. It has not yet reached its third anniversary by the end of 2021, but it has already experienced three strategic upgrades and has fully evolved into a content production company with a complete industrial chain.
Executive Director of Delivery Entertainment, President of Delivery Entertainment,
Zhao Wenzhu, General Manager of Houhai Culture
How does the young but mature delivery entertainment achieve the entry with high-quality copyright, two years of open cooperation, learning experience, two years of optimizing self-control, and a stable place for drama and drama? To C perspective and semi-industrial model are very important. The market is also looking forward to whether the delivery entertainment will be the next "explosive manufacturing machine" with stable output.
From copyright development to self-control,
Why did the S+ Ideal City become a highlight in one fell swoop?
"Ideal City" is the first TV series independently produced by Houhai Culture, a film and television production company under Entertainment, but it is not the first "explosion" to convey entertainment.
In 2020, the high-profile online drama "Chess Soul", as the first successful adaptation of Japanese IP in the field of domestic drama, made Houhai culture famous in the film and television drama industry.
At that time, Houhai Culture still used high-quality copyright procurement as an entry ticket for the industry, and began to contact the new companies of film and television production. After cooperating with the excellent production team Xiaotangren Film and Jiaxing Media respectively on Chess Soul and Lady Huzhu, the entertainment of "learning on the shoulders of giants" quickly evolved.
"I think the thick sea culture after 2019 is the best incubator for the project" Ideal City "."
Besides the cooperation experience of Chess Soul and Lady Huzhu, as well as the self-made experience of two light weight projects, The Tale of Young Jianghu and Smart Love Life, Ideal City, as the first S+ level heavyweight project, has actually been accompanied by Houhai culture for a long time.
Because the contents of the original novel Su Xiao’s War and the story outline are very bright and solid in Zhao Wenzhu’s view, Houhai culture, which was originally created as a helper, communicated with the Chinese brothers with a try attitude after consciously undertaking the Ideal City. It was also based on mutual trust in the previous cooperation and was recognized by the other party. Houhai culture also had this self-made experience.
"At the beginning, we also hoped to make it a benchmark for industry dramas."
So when director Liu Jin mentioned that he wanted to try to replace the traditional green screen shooting with LED special effects screen, the production team of Houhai also seriously considered the possibility of this challenge.
Fortunately, we have to rely on the relatively mature production system within Transmission Entertainment to make a strict cost calculation. Although the LED special effects screen itself has increased the budget, it has been placed in the whole production cycle, saving a lot of time for the crew to change the scene and set. From the past, the whole team moved the venue to just moving one LED special effects screen and the picture on the screen. At the same time, the actors have a picture reference when shooting, and the sense of substitution is better than that of green screen shooting, and the quality of special effects in the later period has also improved. It can be said that the quality control has been improved on the basis of controllable budget.
The experience gained from this new technology attempt can be applied to other projects in the future., especially costume dramas with large special effects.
The broadcast results were also expected. Douban scored 7.7, with a peak of 7.8, and has remained above 7.5 so far, ranking within the Top10 of China Audiovisual Big Data (official CVB) ratings for the whole year, and the long tail effect is remarkable. Douban has become one of the ceiling works of domestic industry dramas in recent years, and it has also become the first highlight moment to convey the road of entertainment self-control.
The resumption of the project is multi-stage and multi-dimensional. From the pre-script to the mid-production, to the late broadcast and even the long tail stage, whether the financial overrun, the performance of the broadcast volume and the public opinion feedback will be included.
It is true that in the production process of "Ideal City", the team had a little struggle, that is, as a popular TV series, should it be understood by more people of all walks of life or focus more on the industry itself? However, since the IP foundation is already very solid, we will simply make the industry the ultimate.
Zhao Wenzhu believes that,This is to think clearly about positioning and what to do before doing the project.The positioning of "Meng Detective Detective Case" is an absolute universal entertainment variety show, that is, it can tolerate the fluctuation of its word of mouth, and it has absolute advantages in terms of popularity and discussion volume; And "Ideal City" is a relatively threshold TV series, especially in the first few episodes, and its absolute stable reputation is its standard criterion.
Michelin Drama and McDonald’s Drama,
Two-line play from the perspective of to C
The different emphases of "Ideal City" and "Meng Detective Case" just represent the two "alternative" tracks laid out in the next content output, and they are also two types launched by Zhao Wenzhu based on the brand-new strategy of the company’s third upgrade: namely"Michelin drama"and"McDonald’s drama".
Compared with many film and television companies, they are positioned by the types of themes they are good at when they are incubating projects.Transmission of entertainment will more broadly classify all kinds of theme types into projects mainly aimed at audience or projects mainly aimed at creative mode:A quality word-of-mouth drama that is closer to the creator’s personal subjective idea and gives him creative space is "Michelin drama"; A pan-family drama that can maximize the number of viewers and can be developed on a large scale is called "McDonald’s drama".
"Of course, the core of every project must remain the same, whether it is Michelin or McDonald’s.Good content and characters are prerequisites.. "
This is especially good for companies that started with IP incubation, such as Delivery Entertainment, because it is possible to conduct targeted evaluation and differentiation from the IP source.
The first selection criterion is the story itself., you will definitely choose an IP that is different from most stories and has distinctive highlights. In this layer of screening, you will determine whether the story foundation and character setting are solid. If it is an overseas IP, you will confirm whether it is particularly suitable for China’s localized adaptation. These are the major premises.
The second selection criterion is the story type.Whether it can be hatched into a "McDonald’s drama" for national entertainment on a large scale; Or impress a group of the best directors and screenwriters with the story core, and add points to IP empowerment with their secondary processing, and finally complete a word-of-mouth quality "Michelin drama".
If the scope is narrowed down once more in the existing two-level screening criteria, it will be accurate to some stories with strong plot themes and some stories with emotional themes, and there will be a certain amount of stories that tend to be "other themes" of women’s strength.
Zhao Wenzhu bluntly said that the film and television winter has not passed, and when the market is cold, both project production and IP procurement will enter a cooling-off period, and blind price wars will no longer be fought. It is the current status quo to start from the IP source. Fortunately, after the continuous IP adaptation of delivery entertainment, more domestic and foreign IP platforms have included it as the first choice, which also means that delivery entertainment will be exposed to high-quality IP resources faster than most film and television companies.
Talking about how the relay entertainment, which has always focused on "all-round drama", will be laid out in variety, Zhao Wenzhu said,Different from the content diversity and target diversity of film and television dramas, variety itself, as a type of mass entertainment, will be positioned as more universal content and tend to be more happy for the whole family at the beginning of planning.
The existing "mystery", "Meng Exploration" and the amateur love variety "Like You, Me, too" are based on "family fun", which redistributes the different practices of being relatively partial to the public and small to the public in terms of guest selection and the theme that the selected guests can adapt to.
“In any case, what the audience likes to watch from the perspective of To C will always be our first priority.I hope that every project launched can get high marks in the professional evaluation department within the company, reaching a level that can be worthy of the audience’s IQ and EQ. "
Multi-link division of labor and cooperation,
Internal self-circulation of industrial chain
Why can the delivery entertainment achieve successive explosions in five years, and it is even expected to become the next "explosion manufacturing machine"?
"Different from some workshop-style productions of traditional domestic dramas, such as entrusting the budget to a production director, who will go to every link of the’ code plate’ saving process.Transmission entertainment has its own semi-industrial production process system.. "
Under the semi-industrial production process system, the complete production team will be the company’s own team, and the production progress of the project will be fully scheduled by the production management center, and collected and calculated by a computer system program of the production management system. In this system, the daily flow, budget and detailed rules of the project will be transparent, and the process cycle will also be transparent.
Why is it called "semi-industrialized" production process system? Zhao Wenzhu believes that the story from the source IP to the film and television drama project, in addition to following the inevitable creative laws, is rich in more elements of "moving people with emotion", and emotions will vary from person to person and from time to time. Therefore,From development to production, the combination of "manual+system" such as "strategic system+production process system" is more scientific and applicable at present.
Under the strategic system of delivering entertainment, the internal professional strategic analysis team will summarize and analyze the audience’s preferences on an annual basis, including different audiences covered by different themes, and make real-time corrections and adjustments. At the same time, the company’s internal evaluation team will make subjective evaluation for the stories in the copyright stage and the outline stage based on the strategies of "Michelin Drama" and "McDonald’s Drama", supplemented by objective systematic evaluation, and combine the projects with the most development potential to incubate.
"Of course, the delivery of entertainment is now a series of industrial chains of a certain scale, including producers’ teams, directors and screenwriters with fixed cooperation, and subsidiaries focusing on artists’ brokers.There are two standards for cooperation in different links. First of all, everyone’s ideas must be consistent, so that in the process of division of labor and cooperation in all links, it can be harmonious and smooth; The second is that we prefer to grow with young potential people."
At present, the delivery entertainment is based on Houhai culture, which mainly focuses on content production and IP development incubation, supplemented by two content production companies which are deeply bound to high-quality screenwriters and directors, two artist brokerage companies, namely Li Yitong and other artists, and Wenlan Culture, which is mainly based on YCY, and the delivery love entertainment MCN company, which is a joint venture with iQiyi, to form a complete internal self-circulation.
As for the production of Houhai culture, there is a system of China-Taiwan to complete production and publicity business. Further specifically, at the content production level, there are four producers who are responsible for the types of projects that they are good at.
Among them, the light and sweet pet drama Embrace koi fish "xianggong", which was just finished one month ago, the suspense criminal investigation drama "Black Soil is Silent", the 12-episode short drama "Locar’s Law" adapted from the hot Japanese drama "Unnatural Death", Xian Xia’s drama "Half the City with a Romantic Moon", the realistic drama "Never Live with Spring" and the amateur love network comprehensive "Like You" which will be launched this year.
Getting rid of workshop operation, clear structure and clear division of labor are the only way for every film and television company that reaches a certain scale to mature.
"In order to convey the current system collocation and rapid development rhythm of entertainment, it really needs some young and challenging teams to dare to try. It happens that our four producer teams all have such adventurous attributes. After trying, everyone really benefits a lot from the brand-new system."
This may be the instant innovation needed in the era of science and technology Internet. As Su Xiao, the hero of Ideal City, said, "Is it always right?" The entire film and television industry also needs more entertainment, such as the head company that constantly realizes self-evolution to lead everyone out of the cold winter and into the formal.
