Text | Xia Xiaoyu
Editor | Wu Yanyu
"Online movies are not movies, but videos." This is the message in 2018, under the article of poison eye writing online movies. At that time, "edge ball", "rubbing IP" and "slag special effect" were still prominent labels of online movies.
In the past two years, online movies have been upgraded in terms of production, cost, word of mouth and theme, and the labels and stereotypes of the past are no longer applicable.
In the past 2020, the quality of online movies was improved and decreased, and the box office of more than 10 million yuan was doubled. In the end, 71 online movies earned more than 10 million yuan. At the moment when commercial themes are piling up, it is gratifying that as of press time, the box office of China Flash has exceeded 15 million.Such realistic theme works are also being recognized by the market, and new theme dividends are being opened.
The upgrading of the market continues, and more and more practitioners are beginning to expect works with box office exceeding 100 million. This seems to be close to the next watershed for the industry."One year is fast, and two or three years is slow."At the end of December, Dong Guanjie, the founder CEO of Qishuyou Fish, accepted it.Poisonous eyes (WeChat ID: domoredumou)During the interview, I predicted the timeline of online movies with box office of over 100 million yuan.
Dong Guanjie, founder CEO of Qishuyou Fish
In the past year, Qishuyou produced 30-40 online movies with diverse themes and contents, and the production investment exceeded 10 million, with frequent high-quality works. Among them, "daoist magic" has become the latest box office ceiling of online movies with a score of 56.41 million.
"We want to tell the industry that there are more possibilities for online movies. Daoist magic is the most mainstream theme in this industry, but we have used higher requirements in production, which basically represents the production ceiling in the mainstream theme of online movies since 2020; At the same time, we have a lot of energy on the development of innovative themes, and "China Flash" is one of the new breakthroughs. " Dong Guanjie said.
This is inseparable from the deep cultivation of strange trees and fish in online movies for many years. In 2015, Dong Guanjie started his second venture, locked in the online movie market that had just started at that time, and founded a strange tree with fish. This company with internet product thinking and genes, the initial intention is to produce online content for users. In the past five years, great changes have taken place in the online film industry, and the strange trees have fish to participate, witness and promote all this.
Not only that, its business has also expanded from online movies to sub-account dramas, short videos and other fields.In Dong Guanjie’s office, the calligraphy and painting of "Do not forget your initiative mind" has been hung all the time-a strange tree with fish only makes 2C content.
This persistence has been gradually verified. After more than five years of development, the number of users of online movies has increased, and the industry has become more and more 2C. In the new period of change, users’ aesthetics are improved, and the demand for viewing content is higher, so online movies must be upgraded.
Behind the iteration is the all-round upgrade of the head company from production cost to content, quality and theme, and this comprehensive upgrade will continue in 2021.
Accelerated integration of hospital and network
On December 10th, 2020, the online movie "China Flash" was launched in iQiyi. It is a realistic film directed by the State Administration of Radio and Television and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Radio and Television, which is produced by new media.
The film takes care of the real life of ordinary people, focusing on the group of takeout workers for the first time. The main character, Li Anquan (Xu Juncong), is a little takeaway brother who travels through the streets rain or shine. The film tells the story of tears in laughter between reality and belief during his desperate efforts to raise money for his daughter’s surgery.
Through such a protagonist setting, the creative team tries to reflect the working and living conditions of the whole group of takeaway workers. According to the statistics of Academia Sinica, by the end of 2019, the total number of take-away workers had exceeded 7 million.
In 2020, when the epidemic was shrouded, the distance between the delivery staff and people was narrowed, and the professional life shown in the film also resonated with many people. If the label is changed to "drifting north", the crowd represented by the main character of the film will reach 20 million, which may also be echoed in a wider range.
Stills of Flash in China
On the second day of the film’s launch, the highest popularity in iQiyi was 6,325, and the score steadily increased from 8.1 to 8.9, which was the highest score of all films in the station in 2020, tied with The Eight Hundred, the box office champion of cinema. At present, the film Douban scores 6.2, which is one of the eight online movies with Douban scores over 6 in 2020. In addition, the film topped the Cat’s Eye online movie popularity list TOP1 for six consecutive days, ranked first in the iQiyi movie list and the hot search list of the whole station, and ranked second in the Tik Tok movie list.
According to the statistics of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the box office of China Flash broke through 10 million in the first week of its launch. From the perspective of popularity, word of mouth, box office and other dimensions, there is no online movie with realistic theme, which has reached such a high level in social value and commercial value, and it has also been called by the industry."The first realistic online movie".
Using online movies to record the "little people" in the great era, China Flash has also attracted the attention of the industry and the recognition of the mainstream media. Among them, the commentary of People’s Daily pointed out that "China Flash" has pinned the inner expectation of each of us, that is, singing for every ordinary but great soul, dancing for every event that helps and is brave, and the human heart is the fairest scale between heaven and earth. "
Stills of Flash in China
More importantly, its achievements will promote the discussion of realistic themes in the online film industry, and also let practitioners see the value of theme innovation.
To this end, Dong Guanjie told the poisonous eyes that in 2021, there will be fish in strange trees and will continue to add realistic themes."We hope to let everyone know by doing one thing, or to be bold and innovative. Although it may be risky, if you analyze it carefully, it is actually similar to the risk of making a homogenized movie."
Indeed, it is time for online movies to upgrade their themes and broaden their boundaries.
Since the birth of online movies in 2014, it has been labeled as "shoddy", "scratch the ball" and "low-grade taste" because of its barbaric growth. The label. In 2014, the box office champion of Iqiyi’s "Net University" was Adult Story 2, in 2015, Mountain Gun Entering the City, and in 2016, Mountain Gun Entering the City 2. Their common characteristics are shallow expression and low production cost.
Industries with mud and sand have also attracted regulatory attention. During 2016-2017, thousands of "Internet Big" were removed from the shelves.
In the early years, the focus of industry traffic was on action, fantasy and fantasy types. According to the Research Report on the Development of Online Audiovisual in China in 2018, the total proportion of action, suspense, love and fantasy movies in the foreground of new online movies in 2018 is as high as 77.8%; In that year’s online movie box office list, TOP20 movies basically belonged to action, fantasy and suspense.
TOP10 at the box office of online movies in 2018
By 2019, many industry head companies also realized that the original creative ideas could not fully meet the needs of the current market.
Dong Guanjie once told Poisonous Eyes,Under the new situation, the content strategy of strange trees and fish has been overweight and adjusted from the previous "spectacle imagination" to "inheritance and moving""At the time of its establishment, Qishu had fish as the main theme of’ Spectacular Imagination’. Now, the content is more tonal, and it needs to be guided by values. Some things will not be done. For example, it will not make some negative monster films to emphasize stimulating users. Now it is necessary to shoot positive energy and warm emotions."
In 2019, Qishu Youyu filmed the first poverty alleviation theme online movie "Donkeys on the Tree", which is supported by the Beijing Radio and Television Network Audiovisual Development Fund. Realizing the unity of social and economic benefits, it is called the first main melody online movie by virtue of content innovation and quality improvement.
However,Realistic themes are always lacking in online movies, and there is no advantage in the proportion of box office.
In the first half of 2020, there were as many as 22 fantasy movies in costume, which were still the main box office. Only Happy New Year from Beijing and Crazy Daddy were on the list, with box offices of 11.79 million and 10.35 million respectively.
At present, the supply of realistic themes is insufficient and there are few successful precedents. In a sense, the bold attempt of a strange tree has smashed the ceiling of the industry.
Looking back on 2020, the overall projects of Qishuyou Fish are diverse in types and contents, such as realistic film "The Donkey Up the Tree 2", comedy film "Northeast mr. six", military theme "The Secret Agent’s Wild Flowers", fantasy new martial arts theme "Wu Dong Gan Kun", realistic comedy "Crazy Daddy" and adventure action film "Mu Ye’s mysterious Qinling Dragon Cave". Many films have caused many discussions in the industry.
While broadening the theme, it is the improvement of the overall production level.
In the past two years, strange trees and fish have focused on quality content and reduced output. The annual quota is 30-40, and most of them are self-developed and self-made.In 2020, the cost of a single film will exceed 10 million..
Among them, "China Flash" took ten months to prepare, and was filmed within 16 days due to the epidemic situation.It’s the most difficult film to make since we made online movies for so many years.
Daoist magic invested more than 20 million yuan, which provided a model for the industry in marketing, and at the same time created a dual-platform account-sharing model. At last, with a box office of 56.41 million yuan, it became the highest online movie in history. In the past year, there were 11 films in Kistler Fish, and the box office was over 10 million.
The online movie box office is over 100 million, how far is it?
The upgrading of content theme and production level will make the online movie industry upgrade in 2020. However, this kind of upgrade is not only internal, but also beneficial to the overall environment.
An epidemic has stopped the cinema market. In the 178 days after the cinema closed, online movies took the wind. According to the statistics of Lighthouse Professional Edition, in the first half of 2020, there were 391 online movies, and a total of 38 accounts had a box office of over 10 million, exceeding the whole year of 2019. In 2020, the box office of online movies TOP3 exceeded 40 million.
However, even if there is no epidemic, the problems in the cinema market will be exposed.Before the epidemic, cinema films had encountered bottlenecks, and the growth rate was far less than that of previous years, and some disadvantages had already appeared.Cinema has been growing slowly since 2016. By 2019, the number of people watching movies is still increasing, but the industry knows that the stamina is insufficient. If there is no change, the market seems to have no more room.
In 2019, the total number of people watching movies was 1.727 billion, up less than 1% year-on-year compared with 1.718 billion in 2018; The growth of the number of cinemas and screens is obviously not equal. The growth rate of the former is much higher than that of the latter, which brings about a decrease in the attendance rate of cinemas and a decrease in the box office generated by a single cinema and screen. According to statistics from Yien Film Think Tank, in the first quarter of 2019, the attendance rate was about 12.1%, down 4.7 percentage points year-on-year.
The epidemic in 2020 accelerated the exposure of cinema film problems, and the channels were limited, so new films could not be released. However, the demand for users to watch movies has always existed, which gave online movies opportunities.
Many people used to be users of cinema movies, but now they have moved to the online movie market.
According to CNNIC statistics, in 2020, the number of online audio-visual users exceeded 900 million, and the utilization rate of netizens was 95.8%. From March to June, 2020, the number of users of the integrated video platform reached 724 million; Smart TV users exceeded 200 million.
Dong Guanjie told Poison Eye, "Since the beginning of this year, the user group of the entire online movie has undergone great changes, and the proportion of first-and second-tier cities is rapidly increasing. Now it can basically be understood that it is getting closer and closer to the users of cinema movies, and even the composition is more complicated than cinema movies."
The change of external environment has brought new opportunities for the development of online movies. Of course, the online film industry has also seized this opportunity, and has excellent performance in content quality and box office results.
As of mid-December, in 2020, there were 71 online movies with a box office of over 10 million, double the number in 2019; According to incomplete statistics, there are 8 films with Douban score of 6. "Online movies have produced some good works this year, which is also the result of the joint efforts of the whole industry in recent years. It is also at this point that there will be changes without the epidemic, but everyone may not feel it so obviously. " Dong Guanjie said.
The industry is also actively evolving. In the early days, the cost of making a website was only 100,000-200,000 yuan, but later it was upgraded to 800,000-1 million yuan, and now the production cost of boutique websites has risen to 5-10 million yuan or even higher. In terms of content, there are also works with bright themes such as Flash in China, There is a Good Place in the Tree and Xin Qiji 1162.
The vigorous development of online movies has also stimulated the nerves of traditional film companies. Almost all traditional film companies have entered and started making online movies. At the "Restart 2020 Poisonous Eye Entertainment Conference", Ye Ning, the founder of Qingsong Film, sent a message to 2021, "Everyone will look at online movies with new eyes and will form a new business model."
Poison eye’s previous article on "the relationship between colleges and networks" has pointed out that online is no longer a "supplement" of film income, but an indispensable part of complementary.The simultaneous development of online and online integration is the general trend..
The booming online movies seem to have reached the "eve of the outbreak", but from the box office ceiling, online movies are still not "out of the circle". In 2020, the top box office of online movies will be daoist magic (56.41 million). When will online movies with box office exceeding 100 million appear? Dong Guanjie believes that,"If it is fast, it will appear in 2021.. "
On the way to the "over 100 million box office", the industry is still exploring new business models.
At present, the accounting rules of online movies are mainly defined by platforms such as Aiyouteng. Generally, movies are divided into S-level, A-level, B-level and C-level, and the unit prices corresponding to different ratings are different. Due to the different attributes of users and platforms, each video platform has its own considerations and requirements for the accounting rules of online movies, and the accounting formula is also different.
Dong Guanjie believes that as the industry becomes more and more mature, video platforms will definitely innovate business models. Now platforms have different understandings of online movies and different accounting rules. Perhaps in 2021, the accounting rules will be consistent and transparent, and the box office will be more transparent.
For the imagination of new payment methods, PVOD (Advance Pay-On-Demand), as a common concern of the film and television industry, provides imagination space. At present, most of the films that try this mode in China are literary films or small and medium-sized movies, such as Spring Tide, Spring River Plumbing and so on, while Journey is a rare visual blockbuster.
By the end of the year, online movies also began to try PVOD mode. On December 30th, the sports comedy online movie "Chen Xiang’s Folk Master at 6: 30" was launched. This is the first online movie launched in iQiyi in PVOD mode, and the highest popularity in the history of iQiyi Station is 6060.
Stills of Chen Xiang’s Folk Master at 6: 30
"The PVOD model is the opportunity, that is, the ticket-buying model, and the industry will take a big step forward. Next year, Qishuyou will definitely make online movies with this income model."Dong Guanjie said.
With the exploration of payment methods and the self-upgrading of the industry, online movies with box office exceeding 100 million may be in the near future.
Only do 2C content
Pull the time back to the beginning of the establishment of strange trees and fish. From the beginning, this is a somewhat different company.
Before 2015, Dong Guanjie’s working experience focused on the Internet and social fields. With the advent of the mobile Internet wave, Dong Guanjie sold the company that had been in business for many years and turned to enter the online movie industry.
The transformation is based on Dong Guanjie’s judgment-The Internet industry is moving from the era of traffic to the era of content, and the core of future competition is to rob users of their time.In his view, the core of the PC era is traffic, and companies that can control terminals such as Baidu and 360 have risen rapidly; The core of the mobile Internet has become content. In this era that requires a lot of online content, everyone has a lot of APPlications installed on their mobile phones. It is difficult to have an app that can rule everything, and the traffic will not work.
The essence of content economy is attention economy, and Dong Guanjie is firmly optimistic about the development prospect of 2C content. "The business keywords of Qishuyou are the Internet, client payment and video content. In 2015, only the small industry of online movies meets these keywords, so let’s do this first. "
Therefore, Qishuyou has never been an online movie company, but more like an Internet content company. If there is any content form that conforms to its product logic, they will seize the wind."Maybe we won’t have thinking set, but we may be able to bump out something new."Dong Guanjie said.
After becoming a trinity of production, production and announcement, Qishuyou gradually grasped the trend of the content industry and opened up two new businesses-sub-account drama and music short video MCN, while waiting for the emergence of online movies with box office exceeding 100 million, and achieved gratifying results in new fields.
In April 2018, iQiyi announced that it would upgrade the online drama billing mode, with the billing ratio changed from 5: 5 to 3: 7. It will also set up an online drama channel on the mobile side to add content outlets for partners. But on the whole, there is not much data for reference, and the commercial prospect of the sub-account drama is still unclear.
After thinking about it, Qishuyou decided to test the new content category of "Separate Account Drama". The previous experience of making several high-grossing online movies is of reference significance to the drama business. "The ability accumulated in the past is completely reusable, but it just needs some new ways of thinking." Dong Guanjie said.
Based on the company’s analysis and observation of the user groups of the sub-account drama, Qishu has a sweet fish layout and a suspense track, and has become one of the best.
In 2020, Qishu Youyu produced the first sub-account drama "Murder Scene" with the theme of criminal investigation suspense, and the sub-account box office reached 28 million, ranking first in the box office of iQiyi sub-account short drama in 2020, with a return on investment of over 200%. Dong Guanjie told Poison Eye, "We judged at that time that the subject of criminal investigation is special, which is strong plot, extreme excitement and fast pace, which is especially in line with the needs of users to pay."
In addition to the suspense theme, Qishuyou also produced the costume fantasy sweet pet drama Dear King of Medicine, which is a work planned by iQiyi in Yun Teng, and its sub-account box office has also exceeded 20 million.
Judging from the market situation this year,On the one hand, the theme of the sub-account drama circle is refined, and the short drama series breaks through strongly. According to the report released by iQiyi and Yunhe Data, in 2020, costume suspense and youth family are the two types with the highest effective broadcast volume in the sub-account drama. The number of dramas is basically the same as last year, and the volume below 24 episodes is becoming a new trend.
On the other hand, the drama market is getting 2C.
Pay-as-you-go has become the norm. The Beijing News reported that since The Untamed, a summer drama series in 2019, more than 40 dramas have started the "pay-as-you-go" mode. The report also released the survey results, and 40% users are more willing to pay for high-quality content.
According to the official data released by Aiqiyi, as of the end of Silent Truth, more than 68 million Aiqiyi VIP members have watched the content of Fog Theater, and at the same time, more than 460 hot search topics have been created on domestic social platforms, and the average score of Douban is over 8 points.
The creative trend of these drama markets also confirms that Dong Guanjie’s original judgment is correct. Dong Guanjie also pointed out that "the current sub-account drama market is equivalent to the online movie market in 2018. Everyone has seen some directions, but it has not really formed an effective iterative methodology."
In 2021, their content matrix in the sub-account drama track will continue to upgrade, and suspense and sweet pets are still the key directions of strange trees and fish. For example, "Murder Scene 2" will contain elements of criminal investigation suspense and female crime, and "Little Brother who lives opposite me" is an urban sweet pet style and so on.
The Imagination of Music Short Video
If the business models of sub-account drama and online movies still have something in common, which belongs to common business expansion, then joining MCN and making short music videos is a new business exploration with a large turn.
In 2019, the short video industry was in full swing. According to the Survey Report of China TV Drama (Network Drama) Industry, in 2019, short video users in China used longer than long videos for the first time; According to the report of Zhiyan Consulting, the scale of the short video industry reached 100 billion yuan in 2019, and it is estimated that by 2021, the short video market is expected to reach 200 billion yuan.
In August 2019, considering the necessity of grabbing users’ time, Qishu Youyu began to make a short video MCN "Power Man". Dong Guanjie told Poison Eye, "First, although the short video does not mean that users pay directly to watch it, it has direct or indirect value after users watch it, and it also needs to be laid out; Besides, short videos occupy a lot of users’ time, which is also an industry that we must lay out. "
Strange trees and fish have also experienced a period of rapid trial and error. At first, they followed the experience of the previous MCN industry and signed a large number of talents, involving plots, food and other vertical categories. After two months, there was still no improvement, and they dissolved the signing talents.
Dong Guanjie concluded that signing a contract and making a comprehensive category MCN is purely burning money and has not completed the business closed loop. "The left hand spends money to sign the content, and the right hand tries to realize it through advertising, but these contents are comprehensive, and the liquidity is not the best, because not all categories can be realized, the customers they find can’t match, and the commercialization efficiency is very low. At the same time, the cost is constantly rising, and (income and cost) is slowly upside down. Now MCN is dead for this reason."
They found that there were enough talents in the team who knew music. After in-depth thinking, they decided to continue to deepen their cultivation in this category of music, and they no longer signed up for talent, but only hatched independently.
A story that may not be well known is that as early as the portal era, when Dong Guanjie was the director of UC business department of Sina, he had to select high-quality content from a large number of UGC, so he excavated a number of popular online songs, including Yang Chengang’s "Mice Love Rice".The ability to judge the content is his core ability to go further on multiple tracks.
"Our goal is to form our own closed-loop business through content, so we chose the music category: First, we have our own unique opinions on content, and we can make content at a relatively low cost. With a large number of explosions, the total cost will be reduced; Second, we have a unique business model for iteration, which can form a money-making model. Once the business model forms a positive cycle, it can be expanded. " Dong Guanjie said.
In more than a year, "Powerman" MCN has hatched dozens of head musicians, including Ya Dan Egg, Xia Tian, Lin Yi, Qixi and other celebrities. Today, Powerman has accumulated 150 million fans, 20 billion short videos and 500 million likes in Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker.
Some music works of "Power Man"
Specific to the content, "Fa Li Ren" has produced a number of Tik Tok Divine Comedy. Ya Dan’s egg cover "Born after Daejeon" has become an annual phenomenon-level cover case, ranking first in Netease Cloud Music’s new song list, soaring list and hot song list. In addition, I met him later, Under the Sea, A Flower under the Sea and Cinderella have also become popular songs on music platforms and short videos.
The reason why the explosion frequency is high is that Qishu has reused its ability to perceive user needs and summarize methodology at the content level.
"The methodology is the same, that is, to capture the needs of users and split the methodology of specialization. Born after Daejeon was originally an old song, but it was not popular. After we adapted it, it became popular. It is very important to get the preferences of users, which is also a common feature of our three teams. " Dong Guanjie revealed that at present, 60% of the company’s revenue comes from online movies, and the sub-account drama and short video sectors each contribute 20% of the revenue, and the proportion of short video contributions will increase next year.
In the framework of strange trees and fish, short video, online movies and sub-account drama all develop independently. However, short videos provide marketing and publicity assistance for online movies. For example, the theme song of the same name "China Flash" and the theme song "Who’s the Boss" of "daoist magic" were all created by their musicians, and achieved good communication effect on the short video platform.
"(Original music) has brought some users who like this song to the movie. At the same time, when they hear this song in the movie, they will ask if it sounds good, and they will see the answer on the barrage. (Users) will search and become fans of our music." Dong Guanjie said.
As its business spread to various texts and showed its style in different channels, Qishu Youyu Company gradually proved their initial judgment. As early as 2016, Dong Guanjie proposed in his public speech that,Network and cinema are just channels, and both will become mainstream markets.Today, this judgment is becoming a reality.
The idea of "being a 2C Internet content company" may encounter resistance and doubts at first, but with the improvement of the team’s content ability, in-depth understanding of the industry, and the gradual upgrading of the industry as a whole, 2C thinking will be verified by more practitioners, and may also become the mainstream of the online content industry.
Dong Guanjie said, "Many people in this industry may think that online movies are contemptuous of the bottom of the chain. I don’t think that everyone’s views will necessarily represent the future now. Many things are done slowly. You can’t just look at the results, but also look at the process. It is a very important process to blame and upgrade bit by bit."
