Online Movie： Sticking to Film Quality and Giving Full Play to Network Advantage
The spring of online movies comes earlier and stronger than the natural spring in Jiachen. According to incomplete statistics, as of March 26th, Iqiyi, Tencent Video and Youku have accumulated 89 new online movies this year, with different types and excellent productions, which are welcomed by the market. Among them, the box office champion has accumulated more than 34 million yuan, and "The Story of Qiao Feng with Eight Dragons" has reached the big screen in some overseas countries and regions, becoming the box office champion of Malaysian New Year films and the box office champion of Singaporean Chinese New Year films. This gratifying scene has effectively boosted the morale of the industry and the confidence of practitioners, and stimulated people’s thinking about future development.
Creating Film Works Based on Internet Distribution and Communication
In 2014, the industry defined online movies: movies with a duration of more than 60 minutes, a complete movie structure and the Internet as the main distribution platform. At that time, with the deepening of industrialization reform, the film market in China showed a high growth momentum, attracting capital and talents. However, for a long time, the channel of film communication has been mainly concentrated in the cinema. Although the number of domestic cinema screens has increased steadily, there are still some films that cannot be released every year due to limited capacity. At this time, video websites rose rapidly, and the massive capacity and convenient viewing mode provided market space for movies. As a result, movies based on Internet distribution and communication appeared, and gradually formed an art category that was different from cinema movies in content and audience.
Due to the relatively low online cost of video websites, online movies attract a large number of small teams and new companies that pursue low investment and short cycle to seize the market. In order to form differentiated competition with cinema films, some producers regard the topics rarely involved in mainstream cinema films as competitiveness, and take the slant of the sword and attracting attention as the main topic selection direction. Creation mainly focuses on thriller, exotic animals, fantasy and other theme types, and repeatedly remake and interpret classic works or big IP. Some themes crash and the content is the same; Some works apply the titles and even themes of popular cinema films in the same period; Other works have sensational titles, exaggerated and explicit contents and unclear narrative logic. For a time, "low style", "shoddy", "love to rub hot spots" and "imitation and follow the trend" became the key words of online movies, which caused the audience to criticize. In response to this phenomenon, the relevant departments set about governance. On the one hand, scientific planning of topics, regulation of fantasy, animals and other overcapacity theme creation; On the one hand, it provides support for the main melody works that reflect real life and praise the great era in the aspects of auditing and project establishment, broadcasting and propaganda. In 2022, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued an administrative license for online dramas, and online movies were certified to "take up their posts", leading the industry to advance to quality.
Explore the scientific accounting mode to make high-quality works get higher box office.
The direction of high-quality products is not only reflected in the continuous updating of creative ideas, but also in the improvement of industry rules. For a period of time, there is a saying in the industry that it takes three elements to make an explosion, namely the title, poster and 6 minutes. "6 minutes" is the time limit for free trial viewing. Once it exceeds 6 minutes, the system will prompt the audience to buy membership or pay for viewing, and the video platform will divide the account with the film according to this effective viewing quantity. This rule makes online movies fall into a "6-minute" cycle. In order to get more points, some works put most of their production funds and creative energy into the first six minutes of creation, so that wonderful content, hot scenes and dazzling special effects can erupt in a concentrated way. The creation beyond 6 minutes is fooled, either "water injection" or "unfinished", and the quality declines in a cliff-like manner, which makes the audience feel cheated.
In order to solve this problem, the industry is constantly trying to explore a new accounting mode, and adjusting "effectively watching the accounting according to the first six minutes" to "long accounting on time" and "long accounting on time". Take the new regulations issued by iQiyi in 2024 as an example. Members watch for more than 10 million hours, more than 6 million hours and less than 6 million hours, and the corresponding 10,000-hour ladder bill prices are 3 yuan, 2 yuan and 1 yuan respectively, and the final total box office is the sum of the income of each ladder. In order to avoid intentionally filling the film with water, some video platforms refine the calculation method of effective duration. For example, the audience watches a 60-minute movie at twice the speed, and the final effective duration counted by the platform is 30 minutes. This means that the "key time" to attract users to watch is no longer the first 6 minutes. The longer users watch, the higher the income of film producers. In order to incite a higher box office, the film must produce high-quality content that can stand the test of the audience.
Actively respond to the changing market environment and establish new differentiated advantages.
In the past two years, online movies have encountered new challenges. On the one hand, the window period of cinema movies is shortened, which brings competitive pressure to online movies. Window period refers to the time interval required for a movie to play content in different media. Earlier, after the film was shown in the cinema, it was not broadcast on the streaming media platform until at least one month later. However, in recent years, the online speed of cinema movies has become faster and faster, which has broken this convention. Many users who watch movies on the Internet prefer to choose cinema movies that have passed the market test and accumulated a certain reputation and popularity. This has squeezed the market space of online movies to a certain extent.
On the other hand, the appearance of miniseries has a certain impact on the online movie market. Both of them are new film and television categories that have developed rapidly in the process of the rise of the Internet. They all make full use of the convenience and interactivity of online media, allowing viewers to watch online platforms anytime and anywhere, and they are good at attracting users by means of intensive burying and frequent inversion. However, the difference is that the mini-short drama can be displayed horizontally and vertically, and the length of a single episode is short, and the number of episodes can be more or less, which is easier to meet the entertainment needs of people watching in fragmented time by mobile phones. The online movie is mainly in horizontal screen mode, which is more suitable for the traditional deep viewing experience. If we follow the logic of realizing money completely, the miniseries whose current flow pool is larger than the online movie track are more attractive to the creators. In the past two years, the scale of online movie industry has declined. According to incomplete statistics, there were 245 online movies in 2023, a decrease compared with 2022, which should be related to the limited market space and the loss of talents to miniseries. Facing the changeable market environment, in order to achieve sustainable development, online movies should not only adhere to the quality of movies, but also tap the advantages of the network, so as to achieve new differentiated competition in the attack of miniseries and cinema films.
High-quality works intensively cultivated by professionals are constantly emerging.
Blowing out the wild sand begins with gold. Continuous policy guidance, resource pooling and concept updating have squeezed the market bubble of online movies, and pushed the industry onto a benign track of setting up professional creative teams, adopting scientific and standardized production processes and creating quality content products. In the spring of 2024, the online movie market achieved a bumper harvest at the box office, marking that online movies have entered a new stage of "improving quality and reducing quantity".
The market competition of online movies has changed from "invitational tournament" to "elimination tournament". Before that, speculators who regarded this track as a quick way to make money were gradually eliminated. Practitioners who adhered to the wrong ideas of attracting audiences and obtaining economic benefits by creating a sense of coolness and gimmicks also changed their thinking, and high-quality films were constantly emerging. Many creations have jumped out of the past, and turned to the themes of the times, such as poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, to show real life, historical events and cultural classics from a youthful and typed perspective, opening up more artistic space for mainstream value dissemination. For example, China Flash, Hidden Grass is Green, Black Hawk Boy and Huang Jiguang, a Superhero, etc., some of them have been listed in the prime file of TV, some have been selected as excellent network audio-visual works by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and some have been highly rated on the rating website, which has been recognized by the mainstream media and praised by the audience. People are pleasantly surprised to find that in addition to "cool feeling" and "excitement", online movies can also see so many lovely and respectable characters, diverse and flexible artistic presentations and silent value expressions, which have a positive and far-reaching impact on the diversification of main theme film and television expressions from the aspects of theme content, style and communication channels.
In addition to deepening the theme creation, online movies also deepen the existing advantages. Unlike cinema movies, which have large screen capacity, richer picture expression and scene scheduling power, online movies are limited by screens of computers, mobile phones and other viewing terminals, and pay more attention to the detailed presentation of pictures and the drama of stories. Action movies have become a type suitable for this media and can create unique audio-visual effects on small screens. Many practitioners are deeply involved in this field. For example, in creation, works such as Warrior Company and Sniper Hero focus on the characters’ state of calmly fighting and confronting the enemy with neat and coherent movements at critical moments, so that the audience can truly feel the tense and exciting atmosphere of the battlefield and deeply understand the hero’s spirit of not being afraid of sacrifice. In planning, iQiyi launched the "Action Master Season", focusing on launching a number of action movies to create a publicity matrix.
In short, online movies have a "network sense" different from cinema movies and a "movie sense" different from mini-dramas. Therefore, we should meet the needs of network carriers in form and stick to the artistic quality of movies in content. With the establishment of a sound market mechanism, the improvement of comprehensive evaluation indicators and the improvement of the audience’s aesthetic needs, online movies will continue to play the role of theme test fields, talent Petri dishes and IP incubators for film and television production, and achieve quality and standardized development. (Author: Zheng Xiaoyi, Li Lei, lecturers of Art and Design College of City College of Xi ‘an Jiaotong University, our reporter)
Guangming Daily (15th edition, April 17th, 2024)