The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 493 The gap between us and DreamWorks is not only technology

"9.4?"

In an office of the headquarters of the United Cinemas, one of the six major film studios in Huaguo.

Sun Liheng, chairman of the board, was a little unbelievable: "Douban's rating inflation is too fast? "Inception" 9.5 doesn't say anything, and an animated movie also comes here? Is this robot animation really so good?
Isn't it only a few minutes past eight in "The Return of the Great Sage"? How much is "Kung Fu Panda"? "

Fang Tao, the director of the marketing department, hurriedly said: "So far it is 8.4 points, and it was 8.7 points when the painting started."

Sun Liheng was full of doubts: "So "Wall-E" is directly higher than "Kung Fu Panda"? It is directly higher?"

During the Spring Festival holiday, most companies will be on holiday, but film and television companies are not included.

Not to mention the participants of the Spring Festival stalls like United Cinemas, they are even busier than usual during holidays.

Even he, the man at the helm, must always pay attention to market trends and digital changes.

This year's Spring Festival, United Cinemas has participated in the production of three films, one is "Tang Detective III". There are many producers of this film, and United Cinemas is the largest producer of this No. Highest.

One is "Parallel Mission", which is jointly produced by United Cinemas, Penguin Films and Hong Kong Island's Cheng Long Emperor Films.

The last one is "Dinosaur Adventure: Tyrannosaurus Crisis".

But this animated film was produced solely by United Cinemas.

The year before last, Sun Liheng made a decision to acquire a well-known animation company.

"The Adventures of Dinosaurs", which has been on the air for three years during prime time on CCTV Children's Channel, is the company's pillar work.

Sun Liheng bought this company for the purpose of adapting this cartoon into an animated movie to get a share of the Spring Festival.

At that time, DreamWorks' "Your Name" and "The Return of the Great Sage" had already proved the domestic box office potential of animated films with box office of 7 million and 15 billion.

"Dinosaur Adventure" is an animated film produced solely by United Cinemas. Sun Liheng's attention to this work is no lower than the two blockbusters "Tang Detective III" and "Parallel Mission".

Even more important.

After all, all the proceeds and copyrights of "Dinosaur Adventure" belong to the United Cinemas. Although the production cost reached [-] million, it is still less investment than "Tang Tan III" and "Parallel Mission", and the profit margin may be even lower. will be higher.

Although Sun Liheng could have imagined that DreamWorks' "WALL-E" would be the biggest competitor, especially the online marketing of "WALL-E" in recent months did make the company nervous for a while, but he is still confident.

In fact, judging from the film schedule and early market response, "Dinosaur Adventure" still surpasses "Robot Wall-E" by a head.

The most important thing is that "Dinosaur" has a strong mass base. It has been broadcast on CCTV for three consecutive years, and it has been the animation rating champion for three consecutive years. It can be said that there is no child in China who has not watched this animation, and it is not accompanied by this animation. grew up.

Such a movie adapted from an extremely national animation, the starting line is not at the same level as "WALL-E".

It would be another story if DreamWorks came up with a sequel to "The Return of the Great Sage" or "Kung Fu Panda" this year, but an original robot animation film without the blessing of myths and legends really has no mass base.

In fact, he has an accurate positioning for his own animation film. Currently, due to the investment risk and technical level, it is impossible for United Theater to invest huge sums of money to produce an animation of the level of "Kung Fu Panda" like DreamWorks.

But "Dinosaur" is aimed at the parent-child movie viewing market. According to market research, this part of the market is worth [-] billion to [-] billion.

Of course, to reach more than one billion box office results, adults must be attracted to watch the movie.

But the United Cinemas is self-aware and not arrogant. It has carefully created such a parent-child movie that Sun Liheng thinks is very delicate based on the resources it has mastered, which is enough to dominate the parent-child movie viewing market. The arrogant DreamWorks has torn a large piece of meat from the animation market.

No matter how ruthless "Wall-E" is in online marketing, no matter how cute it is, it is justice. In fact, it attracts young people, who are anime fans, and it is unlikely to attract children.

And if parents want to ask which animation their children want to watch, it must be "Dinosaur", and the adults' wallets have to go with the children.

But apparently things didn't go as he expected.

Unlike "Dinosaur" which was screened in advance - which is one of the reasons why "Dinosaur" can get the highest ranking among the three animated films - "Wall-E" was not screened, but at the beginning of the new year yesterday After the first two games, before the golden game came at night, the high reputation was released quickly, and it became the first movie to stand out by word of mouth among the heroes of the Spring Festival.

The popularity and topics of "Wall-E" on the Internet are also growing rapidly.

As of the second day of junior high school today, in addition to further fermentation on the Internet, Douban also scored the first score for "Robot Wall-E", with a score of 9.4.

This score surprised Sun Liheng.

It's not that the Douban score is so important to him, but it reflects a dangerous signal.

Word of mouth gap!

High scores do not necessarily represent danger. There is no saying that the box office of high-scoring films must be higher than that of low-scoring films. market effect.

A seven-point movie and an eight-point movie usually do not bring about a favorable effect in public opinion, and it is unlikely that the box office will be divided just because of the difference in quality.

But when this difference is large enough, and it is the same type of film that crashes in the same schedule, the division of word of mouth will easily lead to a large-scale division of public opinion evaluation, forming a sought after + stampede effect, which will directly affect the subsequent box office curve.

If Douban hadn't had a convulsion, the score of 9.4 would have been a masterpiece or a classic among the animated films released on a large scale.

What Sun Liheng cares about is not the score itself, but the meaning behind the score, which means that the quality of "Wall-E" may be to such an extent that it puts all similar crash films in great danger.

In the eyes of the audience, it is a level higher than "Kung Fu Panda". What kind of concept is this?
Such word-of-mouth is enough to create public opinion topics through social platforms, and let the audience vote with their feet with their children.

There are such animated movies in the world?
"You said you watched this movie during the day, what do you think? Is it so much higher than "Panda" and "The Great Sage"?"

Sun Liheng stared at his right-hand man, while Fang Tao, who was in charge of the marketing department, continued to ask questions.

As a big man who manages a lot of things, he hasn't watched this magical animation that makes him feel a little unbelievable.

Fang Tao did not answer directly, but turned to look at another participant sitting opposite him, the animation director and the producer of "Dinosaur Adventure".

Like him, the animation director also watched "Wall-E" today, and the other party is a professional in the animation industry, so the evaluation should be more accurate than him.

However, the animation director didn't seem to receive his wink, and in a daze, Fang Tao could only bite the bullet and express his opinion: "Well... how should I put it, the story is very simple, but the telling is very sincere and can directly impress the audience heart, whether it is an adult or a child..."

Facing the sight of the boss frowning again, Fang Tao exhaled, and continued: "The technology is very good, the cg effect is very good, it is completely ahead of us-"

"Just a level ahead in technology?" Sun Liheng interrupted Fang Tao impatiently: "How does it compare with "Kung Fu Panda"? You mean it is higher than "Panda"?"

Sun Liheng is naturally aware of the gap in technology, let alone the gap between animation talents and DreamWorks, the production cost of "Dinosaur" is only [-] million, although it is not cheap, but in the field of [-]D animation, especially the theme of [-]D animation movies Still not enough to watch.

If it was just a technical gap, Sun Liheng would not be so afraid.

Could it be another "Gravity" in the field of animation?Great visual spectacle?

But it can make up a lot by spending money. The gap between 50 points and 90 points can be seen at a glance, but the gap between 80 points and 90 points is not so obvious, and it doesn’t have to be a hair in Hollywood. To the extent that they have to be done.

Animation technology has a marginal effect. It is difficult to achieve a technology score of 90, but it is not impossible to approach a technology score of 80 by spending money. This is enough. The audience is not Leeuwenhoek, and the intuitive difference will not be so obvious.

Technology is enough.

"It's not about technology!"

The animation director who had been silent all this time finally spoke up, making the boss Sun Liheng and Fang Tao look at him together.

His tone was a bit bitter: "This is not a technical gap at all..."

……

"This is no longer a gap in technology!"

In an office in a building in Hangzhou, more than 1000 kilometers away, similar conversations were happening at the same time.

This is the headquarters of Helios Animation.

Helios is also a newly rising star animation company in China, and it is one of the main winners in this wave of investment in the animation industry brought by DreamWorks.

Big companies such as Penguin and Tianrun Pictures have all bet heavily on Helios, setting a record for the largest financing in the domestic animation industry.

One of the three animated films for this year's Spring Festival, "Young Lei Zhenzi", was produced by Sun God.

Of course, the ambitious Sun God has raised a huge amount of money. Of course, this is not the only project. Five or six animation projects such as Monkey King, Nezha, and Fengshen are all in progress.

It's just that "Young Lei Zhenzi" was completed first, and the investment amount was not high, less than 1 million, so it was pushed to the crowded Spring Festival stalls to test the waters.

Even on the second day of the new year, there was still a small meeting going on.

The protagonist of the topic is still the bomb "Robot Wall-E" that DreamWorks dropped on the entire animation industry during the Spring Festival.

In addition to the company's top management and marketing department, there were several project team leaders present at the meeting.

The director of one of the animation projects still seems to have not woken up from some kind of shock, and he spoke with a strong exclamation: "This is no longer something that can be achieved simply by catching up with technology..."

"Old Zhao, you have watched it too, do all the lines that appear in the whole movie add up to one page?
I watched it twice, and I checked my watch on the second pass, and there was no real dialogue for the first 10 minutes of the entire movie!The two robots, and almost all the robots that appear in the film, only have particle particles of tone, only stumbling and chanting each other's name..."

Old Zhao, who was caught by the cue, nodded silently to the curious gazes in the conference room who either had watched the movie or hadn't, and said, "Indeed, the plot is very simple, and I don't even think there is anything to spoil it. And it can almost be regarded as a silent film, especially the first 10 minutes, I even think this plot can be included in the history of film, please note that it is not in the history of animation, it can be left in the history of film.”

"This is an animation that you only need to feel. If "Kung Fu Panda" is an animation with a kingly plot, DreamWorks' performance in this movie is a top-notch master.

Then this "Robot Wall-E" has reached perfection. I can only describe it as a master-level storytelling ability.

I am confident that I will be able to catch up with the technology gap in the future. I am also an old classmate with Xiang Xuan from DreamWorks. When I was in the United States, my position was higher than his. Of course, the company has to provide enough funds.

But no matter how unconvinced I am with this storytelling ability, I have to admit that I don’t think that my peers and I can reach this level, and I don’t even think I can reach this level in the future.

Including Xiang Xuan, including those people in the animation department of DreamWorks that I know, these are the top animators in our country, and everyone actually knows the basics. degree.

The gap between us and DreamWorks in animation is not us animators, I'm not trying to shirk responsibility, I'm just telling the truth.

The gap between me and Xiang Xuan is not in technology or teammates, but in Chen Jingxing, or the legendary powerful screenwriting team in DreamWorks.

I suggest that if the company's ambition is to compete with DreamWorks in the animation industry in the future, I think at least one or two screenwriters from DreamWorks should be recruited.

I'm also very curious about how their ideas for these animation works came from, how the project was established, and how the script was completed. "

Old Zhao's words with strong unwillingness were loud in the office, but the response to him was silence.

(End of this chapter)