Host: Li Xia, Famous Hostess, Film Producer and Founder and CEO of Rongyi Media
Guests:
Liu Kailuo, Vice President of Greater Youku Group, Alibaba Culture and Entertainment Group
Bai Yicong, Founder and CEO of Linghe Culture Media (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
Yin Chao, Founder & CEO of Tmeng.cn
Bai Yicong: The future of Internet drama will transform from 2B to 2C model
In recent years, we have the most popular and expensive Internet dramas. What we encounter is that the drama with a similar price as ours attracted subscribers greatly different from us. It’s unfair. What’s fair? Users pay for 2C. The film model, online film model and pure 2C model will be fairer to content creators. We hope that we could enter such section, while we just focus on contents. We hope to have such an environment. Now, 2B is dominant in the macro environment. In the USA, most of dramas follow a model that trial broadcasting goes first and then users buy the subscription. Our company wishes to follow this model in the future.
Yin Chao: Online films could bring happiness to users and help young creators to start up
Why do we adhere to online films? Because this market is interesting and growing, providing users with heaps of happiness and helping young people to shoot their first work.
This market is huge and interesting. We could do many genres that couldn’t make in cinemas. Why the cinemas dislike these genres are because they couldn’t earn high box office revenues or even lose money, rather than the disapproval of the State Administration of Radio and Television, such as martial arts film. The capacity of cinemas is limited, in shortage of many contents and unable to meet diverse demands of audiences. We could see a lot of genres such as martial art, action and horror genres to meet audience’s curiosity to the traditional culture. These genres may not be popular in cinemas, but may be popular online.
Online films will give opportunities to many young directors or creators. They may not graduate from the film academy. Instead, they are from other background have such experience as scriptwriter, planner or actor. Also, many non-professional directors could quickly enter the field.
Liu Kailuo: Promote a co-existing and win-win ecological model and embrace market opportunities
2B and 2C prefer a “TV” model and a cinema model respectively. “TV” model refers to that we buy films from you, screen it and then we sell it to the advertisers in line with its traffic flow. This is the basic model.
Cinema model refers to that we send the film to users for screening, and then we share the profit with the content providers by tickets sold to users or contribution to the cinema or platform. We and content providers are binding together. We hope that the content providers could have better profits, larger broadcasting volume, longer time, better performance so that both content providers and us could earn better values. Co-existing and win-win model could more directly connect creators with contents with better profits and improved efficiency. This is the largest change in the Internet sector.
Co-existing and win-win model is easier for all of us. It starts from medium-sized video films and will apply to all types of films.
Regarding policies, our initial title is nirvana, which means experiencing a cycle of death and rebirth. In the initial market, the market was chaotic. Through this round of policy changes, companies are reshuffled in profit allocation, including improving production standards, eliminating disqualified companies and only excellent companies that could survive. The Internet has gone through this stage. Now, online films and dramas sound fewer and fewer and the market seems depressed. On the contrary, the market embraces promising opportunities.
Bai Yicong: Cultural export should really produce value
Domestic films sound good to export overseas, however, there are several problems. First, could export films create more values? Our export films haven’t enough profits, which couldn’t compare to overseas films in Chinese market. They come to China for making money, while our export films are for “face”.
Second, we need accurate self-examination of film export. We see many American and Korean dramas. They also have poor films and dramas. They export their best works which are better than ours. Our export works look similar with foreign films in terms of quality. Does it mean that those films could represent the true standards of Chinese films? There are differences.
We should improve contents in a down-to-earth manner. This is the most important. So, export films won’t lose face. First, does the quality of content production represent a better production level? Second, does cultural export have good values?
Liu Kailuo: Serve users and innovate contents by capitalizing on own advantages
In some ways, all Internet companies provide contents to serve users. What we really do is to serve the bottom institutions. We send the contents to the department and develop new payment methods in line with user’s needs and allow users to watch more their favourite contents.
We are affiliated to Alibaba Group and we have a lot of female subscribers accumulated from our e-commerce business. In the future, we hope to increase communication with cultural, entertainment and commercial sector and innovate contents. We will increase female and young people contents. We prefer female dramas and have an intergenerational strategy of female dramas, including variety shows, iron armour, hip-hop shows. It’s generally believed that iron armour and hip-hop are masculinized. Actually, female users love them.
This is a big trend for us. By contrast, we have a lot of drama series. We will increase more film contents to diversify the contents. We also prefer knowledge-oriented, high-end dialogue programs, such as debate and novels. These are some trends for our platform. We have our focus to meet various demands on the platform, which won’t significantly affect your creativity.
Bai Yicong: The future blockbusters are layered and the opportunities for content creators are coming
I hope to produce some unforgettable films. The most important is to touch audiences, rather than big IP.
In the future, we will do some science fiction, including big IP. We will do some meaningful contents. Although the results may be not good, the whole process is significant, providing experience to us. We need to do this eventually.
The future blockbusters are layered, instead of for the public. The most interesting of Internet is vertical subdivision of people. In the future, the surprise hit that we are not optimistic about may become popular, while the universally popular blockbusters may have no characteristics. However, if we explore certain segments, we may have some classic works.
For real content creators, the good opportunities are coming.
Yin Chao: Online film goes extreme, attentively listening to the voice of the user
We worked for more C-end users over the last two years, focused on research of user psychology and needs. Our Internet films in any genre try to achieve the perfection. Also, we need to listen more audience’s voices. This is a good channel. Many onsite directors would observe the expression and response of audiences when preview or watching films and consider their strengths and weaknesses.
We do some contents that traditional Chinese cinema line-based films won’t do and take some risks. Internet risks are limited. IP iteration is faster. Two or three films or continuous series could be produced within one year. IP will quickly impress audiences. Values and positive energy are the most important, in particular value output. To return to the true contents, audiences will love our contents one day. We will realize our value among audiences.
Liu Kailuo: Using the Internet to gather minority moviegoers and accurately promoting high-quality contents
When we produced commercial films previously, we hope to know more about user’s needs and provide users with their favourite products. If we focus on author expression, the most difficult is to find audiences who want to watch our films. This is also a major reason for why author-oriented films don’t perform well in traditional cinemas. Accurately targeting at audiences is an advantage of the Internet.
Audiences of minority films like CROSSCURRENT may have some similar behaviors. We could find this group of people by using the information and send the film to them to watch. In turn, if we shoot CROSSCURRENT now, how many people will support me and buy the tickets in advance? There are authors to present their understanding and perception or feelings to the like-minded audiences.
Through the Internet and cinemas, more people could watch excellent films. There are many good films that are unknown to the public. Good contents could exert far-reaching influence. What we do is to help you to achieve this.