Winning the new financial era

Chapter 552 Investing in the Future
The CEO of Digital Domain was very enthusiastic about the arrival of Zhang Yida and Bao Fan.

He took a few company employees and waited at the door early.

Seeing Zhang Yida and his party walk out of the elevator, they immediately greeted them.

"Mr. Zhang, welcome to guide us."

Xie An's posture is very low. Through several friends, he is also very clear about Zhang Yida's background and energy, not to mention that the other party also controls Ruixiang, the third largest technology company in China.

A boss of this level, even if the business cannot be negotiated, he must form a good relationship.

Zhang Yida sized Xie An up. He was wearing black-rimmed glasses, with a round face and a slightly raised hairline. He looked very ordinary.

But Zhang Yida will not be fooled by his appearance. Can an ordinary person be the CEO of one of the top special effects companies in the world at the age of 28?

"Mr. Xie, please be polite. Speaking of which, you are still my senior brother."

Xie An was overjoyed by Zhang Yida's statement.

He knew that Zhang Yida had graduated from Peking University, but he was not good at making connections hastily.

Since Zhang Yida voluntarily recognized this relationship, he followed suit.

"Hehe, Mr. Zhang, you are too polite. No matter what kind of senior is not a senior, the one who is the best is the first. You can just call me Lao Xie."

Zhang Yida chatted with him for a few words, and said with a smile: "I'm going to bother senior brother today, and show us this famous special effects company."

Xie An really wanted to refute this sentence. Now their main label to the outside world is not a special effects company.

The main reason is that special effects companies have been losing money year after year, and they can't bluff stockholders.

The concept they are currently focusing on externally is: the only AR/VR concept stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

However, he didn't forcefully defend them, he just thought that he would introduce them later to change Zhang Yida's view of them.

After all, a special effects company and a VR company have different prospects and valuations.

"Mr. Xie, don't patronize chatting, show us how Digital Domain's technical achievements are?"

Bao Fan reminded aloud.

"Hey, that's right!"

Xie An patted his head and made a "please" gesture, "Guys, please come inside!"

Xie An first took Zhang Yida and his party to an exhibition hall, and the walls were densely covered with movie posters.

Xie Hai pointed to the advertising wall and introduced, "These are the works of Digital Domain over the past 25 years. There are hundreds of them in total. We have participated in the special effects work and won 10 Oscars."

"Hey, you also made the figure of "Gulu"?"

Zhang Yida saw his childhood nightmare, which was the deformed monster "Gollum" in "Lord of the Rings".

When I was young, because of this character, I was a little afraid to watch this magical movie.

Xie An smiled and nodded, "Yes, Digital Domain did it. We also made Thanos in the recently released "Avengers", and "Ready Player One" also participated.

In the industry, "Gulu" is called "virtual human" technology.

The young and old Brad Pitt in "Rejuvenation", and Paul Walker, who died unexpectedly after only filming 7% of the scenes in "Fast and Furious 10", are all created by virtual human technology.

At present, our company has relatively rich experience in the production of biological special effects such as monsters, animals, and characters.

The biggest breakthrough in technology is that, in addition to the most primitive face scanning through several sets of systems, we can also make it old or young, or even revive it.

In 13, we "resurrected" Teresa Teng and let her appear in Jay Chou's "Magic Tianlun" world tour concert. "

Zhang Yida thought about what effect this technology could have on Ruixiang.

It's a pity to just create content. It would be nice if virtual idols could be made into IPs.

Xie An said: "In fact, Digital Domain is a technology-driven technology company. The NUKE we invented is the most used visual effects software in the world, and won the 2017 Academy Award for Science and Technology.

We also have a large number of software technology research and development teams, respectively from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Jet Research Laboratory, etc. "

Zhang Yida nodded. The reason why he fell in love with this company was the accumulation of industrial technology and talents.

Whether it is rocket video, station B and several short videos, the requirements for content quality will only become higher and higher.

Winning a special effects company can not only save some content production costs, but also realize an ecological closed loop.

As for the VR industry, it is also supplementing the content ecology and investing in the future.

Xie An brought Zhang Yida and others to a video studio, and played several special effects videos that Digital Domain participated in.

"Take this scene in '2012' where the plane crashes into the White House."

Xie An introduced the process of realizing the special effects, "To show the scene of the building collapsing, bricks, tables and chairs, and glass shattering, it is unrealistic to rely on the artist to draw the fragments one by one in the later stage.

So we generated a self-learning program DROP Rigid Body Dynamics, which can calculate the order of falling objects and the motion state of impact and rebound by the computer. "

Zhang Yida nodded slightly. It could be seen that Digital Domain's special effects production requirements are very strict.

It's better to be strict, at least there will be no special effects scenes like "throwing a grenade and blowing off the plane", it must be logical and not insult the audience's IQ.

Xie An went on to introduce, "Digital Domain Group has reorganized its business and divided it into four sections: visual effects, virtual reality, virtual human, and original IP.

I will focus on the virtual reality sector. At present, our VR business has covered three sub-modules: hardware, channels and content.

The hardware includes VR headsets and 3glasses. In terms of channels, we have cooperated with Poly to build an offline VR space DD Space, which has been implemented in more than 50 commercial real estates across the country in the form of VR experience halls. In the future, we want to build a VR content distribution platform.

In terms of content, it is our own research and production.

The long-term development direction is to connect these four major business segments with each other, and further consolidate the operating model including technology research and development, content production, and multi-channel distribution.

Build a virtual world for the consumer market - "oasis" before 2045. "

Ambitious, Zhang Yida naturally knows what this "oasis" is, like the world in virtual online game novels.

Whether things will be realized technically after more than 20 years is not very sure.

Zhang Yida nodded, "Good idea! However, according to last year's financial report of Digital Domain, the company's annual revenue was 7.03 million Hong Kong dollars, of which visual effects revenue was 6.06 million Hong Kong dollars, accounting for 86%.

In addition, the business teams are mainly located in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Hyderabad, London and other places.

The main income of the business comes from doing special effects for movies, right? "

Xie An said with a smile, "After all, the transformation has just begun, and special effects companies still account for the majority of revenue, but in two or three years, the situation will be different."

Zhang Yida had almost counted. He took a long breath, looked at Xie An, and said calmly, "Ruixiang has traffic and content carriers. Would you like to cooperate with Senior Brother Xie?"

(End of this chapter)