Special feature of 1905 film network The broadcast volume is 169 million, and the box office is 41.95 million!
At the time when the May 1 ST file of the cinema was in full swing, thriller and suspense online movies also made great strides online, setting a new record for the first month box office of a single platform and becoming the "first explosion" in the online movie market in 2021.
Coincidentally, another online movie "Bloody Unknown Chuan" in the same period also attracted attention from both inside and outside the industry. This military war film with the background of resisting US aggression and aiding Korea set a new record for many lists in the iQiyi station within 24 hours, and now the box office has exceeded 23.06 million.
At the same time,In the first quarter of 2021, the online movie transcripts were also freshly released, with 15 movies with box office exceeding 10 million, although slightly lower than 20 in 2020, but much higher than 6 in 2019.. With the arrival of the "May 1st File" and the admission of head films such as "The List of Gods: The Final Battle of Wanxian Array", it is expected that millions of box office camps will add new troops.
What are the new trends of online movie market in 2021 in the post-epidemic era? What explosion methodology can be found from the head films such as The Legend of the Hunter in Xing ‘an Mountains and The Unknown River in Blood?
01 The slotting effect is prominent
Looking back on this year’s Spring Festival file, the first "online movie Spring Festival file" has quietly taken shape while the cinema film has won a record of 7.84 billion yuan.
This concept was formally put forward for the first time by the Network Audiovisual Program Management Department of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Network Working Committee of the China Film Association in conjunction with iQiyi, Tencent and Youku, and released 43 film lists including directors, leading actors, self-directed and self-performed, and past cinema works.
In the end, the total box office of the Spring Festival online movies on the three platforms reached 48.736 million, and the effective broadcast volume reached 440 million times, an increase of 33.3% compared with 2020."Let me have fun" and "Fight Back", which ranked the top two in the box office in the first quarter, are also Spring Festival movies. The effect of the first online movie Spring Festival is remarkable.
After the Spring Festival, the "Qingming File" where The Legend of the Hunter in Xing ‘an Mountains and The Bloody Unknown River are located is also eye-catching.The concept of schedule suitable for the distribution of traditional cinema films is constantly infiltrating into the online movie market.
The Rabbit Cave Cultural Team, the main producer of The Legend of Xing ‘an Mountain Hunters, told reporters that this schedule was chosen mainly for the consideration of film tonality, and "thrillers conform to the atmosphere of Qingming archives", which also effectively filled the gap in thrillers of cinema films in this schedule, coupled with the blessing of small holidays, and created a number of box office records.
Zhang Yucheng, co-founder and vice president of content of Yingmei Media, the producer of "Bloody Unknown Chuan", analyzed.Behind the prominent effect of online movie schedule is the overall upgrade of online movie quality and quantity reduction. Only by constantly improving the production level and touching the emotional resonance can the audience’s expectations for the movie schedule be effectively met..
Not only the Spring Festival files and Qingming files, but also the May 1st files, summer files and National Day files of online movies are coming to the fore. On the one hand, it shows the "ambition" that online movies hope to be on an equal footing with cinemas. On the other hand, the platform and head production companies will also produce more high-quality films that meet the schedule attributes, and together they will make the "plate" bigger and fully release the popular schedule bonus.
02 Multiple themes attract incremental users
The diversification of content and theme has always been one of the major trends in the development of online movies, which is also confirmed by the box office transcripts in the first four months of 2021.
Although the films with box office exceeding 10 million still focus on the traditional box-office types such as action, comedy, fantasy and adventure, it is not difficult to find that the types of action and comedy are more and more popular, while the popularity of the "three illusions" that once exploded frequently has declined.
"Northeast Comedy" and "Let me have fun" topped the Q1 box office list.
At present, the Legend of Xing ‘anling Hunter, which is temporarily ranked at the top of the annual box office list, focuses on thriller+suspense. This composite type is not uncommon in online movies, but it has not been seen for a long time after the 2018 "Soul Ferry Yellow".
The Rabbit Cave Cultural Team explained:"The thriller genre has always been a relatively vertical product. Due to the long absence of the cinema, the audience has a strong need for this type."
Taking the benchmark series of domestic cinema thrillers as an example, the two parts attracted 11.62 million and 6.22 million people respectively, but after 2017, there will be no more thriller explosions in the cinema. The appearance of Xing ‘anling meets the long-standing demand of this audience.
After determining the thriller type track to meet the needs of the vertical class, the Rabbit Cave cultural team further chose to take the folk mystery as the starting point. "Legends such as’ Big Horse Monkey’ and’ Old Woman Eating Fingers’ are the childhood shadows of a generation.Compared with the general thriller theme, it has a broader audience base and is easier to attract incremental people to enter the venue.. "
If Xing ‘anling is deeply rooted in the thriller type, then Blood Without a Name can be regarded as a "pioneer" of online movies in the military war type.
The theme of military war is not the dominant theme of online movies for a long time because of its relatively high cost and difficulty in shooting and making, so the overlap between mainstream users of online movies and the audience of this theme is not high.However, the development team of Yingmei Media is interested in this type of differentiation advantage.
The data shows that the average age of the users watching "Blood Without a Name" is 37.7 years old, breaking through the relatively young audience circle of traditional online movies."Through the difference in subject matter and word of mouth, it has attracted an increasing number of people. From the perspective of platform data, it does have a good role in pulling new ideas."Zhang Yucheng said.
In his view, the creation of military war themes is not only a breakthrough in the homogenization of online movie themes, but also in line with the current mood of the times. As one of the main theme themes, it is easy to reach and mobilize a wider audience.
Since 2019, commercial blockbusters with the main theme that have won numerous successes in cinemas have gradually penetrated into the online movie market.Among more than 10 million works this year, there are also many main melody elements such as "Counter-Strike" and "Absolute Loyal National Interests".
After experiencing an explosive leap forward, the growth of online movies has entered a stable period.How to break through the stock crowd and find a broader audience, on the one hand, we should overlap, upgrade and innovate the traditional types, on the other hand, we should obviously mobilize the incremental crowd to enter the market by developing new types.
Last year, the rabbit hole culture produced a super high score of Douban 8.0, which can be regarded as a successful test of children’s education theme. "Young people can try animation and even science fiction."
In the future, Yingmei Media will continue to exert its strength in the diversification of types. If it is expected to be launched in the summer, it will focus on love, fantasy and comedy elements.
"The homogenization of the online movie market is very serious, but this kind of’ involution’ is more reflected in the middle waist content, and it has become a trend for the head content to choose multiple topics.The platform has also seen the dividend of diversified types. When the content and production are of high quality, with accurate marketing strategies, it will have a better chance to impress the vertical audience of this theme type.. "Zhang Yucheng said.
03 "Quality" is on the road
At the first China Online Movie Week in 2019, under the joint initiative of the three platforms, the word "big" was removed from "online movie" and used as the unified title of movies distributed through the Internet, which also marked the fast lane for online movies to enter high-quality products.
In 2020, a sudden epidemic has created unprecedented opportunities for the development of online movies.In 2020, among the online movies in Shanghai, a total of 79 movies earned over 10 million yuan at the box office, an increase of 41 movies over the same period of last year, and the box office scale of 10 million movies was 1.39 billion, an increase of 125% over the same period of last year.With the rapid expansion of the market, high-quality products have become an inevitable trend.
A large number of traditional film and television companies, professional production talents and head actors entered the game, forming a combination pattern of "net students+tradition".
In the first quarter of 2021, the box office runner-up "Counter-Strike" is the director’s debut of famous film and television actors, with remarkable star effect.
At the same time, in 2020, the proportion of films with an investment cost of more than 6 million will reach 34%, and those with an investment cost of less than 3 million will be reduced by 11%. Online movies have bid farewell to the era of "low cost". However, in the interview, several senior producers also said that in the case that the box office has a ceiling as a whole, it is not appropriate to unilaterally pursue high cost and large-scale production, but should pay attention to the return on investment.
Compared with creating visual wonders with high investment and strong special effects, more and more head creators now pay more attention to story polishing and content upgrading.
The producer, literary planner, director, Guo Yong and other creative writers of "Blood Without a Name" have rich experience in military film and television creation. This enables the team to complete a relatively excellent work with controllable cycle and cost.
“We clearly know that we won’t spend too much energy on special effects, because if the story or setting is not good enough, we can’t really impress the audience by relying on the accumulation of special effects.. Especially in the process of short video promotion, big scenes and action scenes are the first things that the audience will see. When they watch the propaganda and then watch the feature film, they expect not only the big scenes of the war, but also the deeper characters, emotions and resonance. "Zhang Yucheng concluded.
The creative team of The Legend of the Hunter in Xing ‘an Mountains also expressed a similar view. On the basis of the gradual maturity of the online movie manufacturing, at this stage, we are striving for the ability of meticulous work and theme upgrading. We should jump out of the traditional thinking of "doing it well for 6 to 10 minutes" and improve the story itself. "Now everyone is competing for the consumption time of users. Only high-quality content can bring greater innovation to the platform, not just relying on 6 minutes and 10 minutes."
Looking back on 2020, although the head films such as daoist magic, Ghost Story: Human Love, Ghost Blowing the Lantern in Longling Cave produced a big explosion with a box office of over 50 million, none of the Douban scores reached the passing line.
On the other hand, this year, the scores of two douban books, Xing ‘anling and Wumingchuan, both exceeded 6, although there is still room for improvement.However, it has gained the attention and recognition of more and more mainstream movie audiences, and is also conducive to constantly breaking through the circle and attracting incremental users..
At the spring festival release conference of online movies at the beginning of the year, it was once again pointed out that the high-quality content of online movies is still lacking."Reducing quantity and improving quality" will be the future development direction..
In the first quarter, Aiteng Yousan Platform launched a total of 160 new films, a decrease of 56 compared with the same period of last year. It is estimated that the number of new films in the whole year will decrease by more than 160 compared with last year. Under the call of "reducing quantity and improving quality", the head effect becomes more and more prominent, and the competition between waist and tail films will become more intense, and the survival of the fittest will become an inevitable trend.
Zhang Yucheng believes that,At this stage, to create online movie explosions, there are four elements: story, visual effects, actors and marketing, which are indispensable.In order to continuously export head works, we should also avoid blindly following the trend, deepen our fields of expertise, and cooperate with the most professional teams and creators of a certain theme type to give play to our core competitiveness.
From the barbaric growth in 2014 to the standardized operation, and then to the unprecedented development opportunities brought by the epidemic, the online movie market will continue to move forward in the direction of quality content, diversification of themes and evolution of business models in the future. The acclaimed and blockbuster explosions such as The Legend of the Hunter in Xing ‘an Mountains and The Bloody River are just the beginning.
