1905 Film Network "I have been too busy with invitations to venture capital at various film festivals. Now venture capital activities are surging, projects are not enough, judges are not enough, and young directors are not enough." On November 11th, the fifth Wang Hongwei, the person in charge and associate professor of the Beijing Film Academy, said at the launching ceremony of the Youth Program.
Just 10 days later, the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival also added a venture capital unit and a new director training camp. In the new director plan that blossomed everywhere, a member of the national team was added.
The 28th China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival "Green Onion Project" Chinese young film director talent discovery and training forum group photo The same project appeared in three or four venture capital activities, the same instructor shared his experience in different training camps, the same A producer flew all over the world to meet young directors and talk to them about their project ideas. With more and more venture capital conferences and training camps today, who can the "New Director Project" help? Who opens the door of
Venture Capital Conference?
"Your last work cost 70,000, this time 25 million, 17.5 million is in place, did you come to the venture capital conference, did the film party divestment?" This is the scene of the Golden Rooster Film Venture Capital Conference and the ultimate road show. In the penultimate project in the morning, a judge's question awakened many people and they straightened up to see what happened on the stage. The producer of
tried to stay calm and smiled and said, "We still have some share we want to share with everyone." When asked whether it was a premium, the producer nodded and admitted. The so-called premium is the act of selling a part of the investment and production cost of the film when the main creators have basically finalized the preparation or have already started. Buyers can put titles such as joint productions, and the price of entering the project will be higher than the original production.
"I don't think premium films can appear on venture capital!" Another judge criticized quite harshly. As soon as the voice fell, hundreds of industry insiders clapped together, making the director and producer on the stage quite embarrassed.
This is not a common situation in venture capital. Venture capital activities are often to build platforms for young people who are new to the film industry and do not have much resources. At the Golden Rooster Venture Capital Conference this year, many students who just graduated even entered projects. For the last project of the
Golden Rooster Ventures Roadshow, the speakers are two young people who have almost no experience in feature film shooting and production. Director Lin Xingchen's previous job was to combat high-tech exam cheating projects. He incorporated what he saw and heard into this film called "Letter Bird". The judges raised a series of questions about the similarity between the film and "Genius Gunner", how to ensure the feasibility of film production and the development of the script. The two young directors and producers seemed at a loss on stage.
"I think this is quite good, I feel that Golden Rooster is for very young people. Our project also invested in another film festival venture capital, which feels very commercial. Many projects don’t need a director at all, just The producer took the stage and said that he felt that the purpose was to raise money." The small multi-professional school who said this has graduated and worked in a screenwriting studio for 4 years. After investing in multiple film festivals for his project, he was finally spotted by Golden Rooster Ventures this year. "We have also been in contact with other new director plans." Xiaoduo told us that the project that was previously selected for a new director plan has been completed, but because of the financial conflict with the planner, the film was withheld. When will it be possible? The release is still unknown.
Another director met with the boss for a whole day in a one-on-one conversation. "We really need funds, we really don't have money." said the producer of this project. The director feels that venture capital is an exercise for the creators themselves. In the process of telling their own stories, they can get inspiration from the feedback of the judges and stimulate thinking. "Projects are also like carrots and vegetables." Xiaoduo said that their venture capital goals do not necessarily have to get bonuses. "After all, it is a platform. If you can see more capital, you have more opportunities."
Can the new director plan help the director?
It may be much harder to get the project to land successfully than to get the favor of investors in venture capital. The person in charge of several venture capital projects revealed that the number of projects received every year is three-digit, and this year even reached four-digit. Many young directors will take the story outline or first draft of the same project and submit them to all domestic support plans. Some people even handed the project case to Busan, Rotterdam and other film festivals. in the endWhich support programs can really help young directors produce their first works? Someone in the survey mentioned Shanghai Film Festival, Wu Tianming Youth Film Special Fund, and the China Film Directors Association’s Green Project. The venture capital training camp of the Shanghai International Film Festival is modeled after other international film festivals, with the purpose of training "Shanghai" directors. Through the three units of venture capital—Asian Newcomer Award—Golden Goblet Award, young directors are trained layer by layer to become a mature director.
Wu Tianming Foundation promotes young producers to the producer workshop in Cannes every year to help the film find more possibilities for international cooperation. At the same time, it is to expose the projects of these young directors as much as possible.
This year's Cannes International Film Festival's closing film "Spring River Plumbing" won the award from the Wu Tianming Youth Film Special Fund in 2017. Then the factory gate film industry entered and helped director Gu Xiaogang complete the filming of the film. This is also one of the best help that venture capital projects can provide young directors: let their projects be seen by more producers and investors. Huang Xufeng, the founder of the factory gate, said that he would judge whether he would participate in a project from the film language and aesthetics. When he saw "Spring River Plumbing", he felt that there are not many stories about common family problems at the moment. This is a rare family movie. And he was moved by the vision of the long scroll of landscape painting that the director wanted to create.
"When we entered this project, the director had already turned on about a third." Huang Xufeng said, "What we did was to give a guarantee from the entire shooting cycle. For two years of shooting, for some rough parts, Invested in re-shooting.” Huang Xufeng and Gu Xiaogang talked for 4 hours at the time of the proposal. The content went from the film festival to the domestic announcement to the director’s personal branding before finally deciding to cooperate.
A good support plan can bring a reliable producer to the director and a smooth road to the film festival. After the Cannes Film Festival, "Spring River Plumbing" was screened at multiple film festivals, and won two nominations for Best Medium and Small Cost Feature Film and Best Music at this year's Golden Rooster Awards. Huang Xufeng told us that director Gu Xiaogang has already started writing the second script of the long-roll film "A Thousand Miles of Jiangdong" to which "Spring River Plumbing" belongs.
is different from the venture capital that builds a platform and promotes projects to get to know more investors. The Green Program of the China Film Directors Association pays more attention to how to make the first film of young directors be made. After 4 sessions of the Green Onion Project, 10 directors have made their first film.
"From my experience, the Green Onion Project should have the highest survival rate in various large and small venture capital activities." The person in charge Wang Hongwei commented. In his opinion. What Sing Cong plans to do is not venture capital, not to select projects, but to let young directors shoot movies.
During this year's Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, Qing Cong Project brought 5 films in full for recommendation on a related forum. Among them, "The Transcript of Wild Dogs" shot by Hao Feihuan invited Zhang Yu, who has been in constant schedule, to be Wang Hongwei's help; Gui Yalei and Yang Guimei in "Sweet Potatoes Pouring Rice" were Li Shaohong's help; Li Yu produced "Rabbit Violence" ", simply helped director Shen Yu set up the entire actor's plate, and the film pickers of the Cannes Film Festival Critics Week were also invited to watch the film.
Li Shaohong, president of the Chinese Film Directors Association, said that the Green Onion Project is to integrate the power of more than 400 directors from the entire association, open up the upstream and downstream, and help young directors to shoot the first work. Wang Hongwei said that the "trilogy" of the Green Onion Project is the first film, the director of the second one can stand, and the third one can achieve profit.
Is there too much new director plan?
Counting down the current venture capital plans, it can be said that a hundred flowers bloom: members of the "national team" now have the Golden Rooster Venture Capital Conference and the Green Onion Plan; for the enterprise level, there are companies such as Wanda, Tencent, Alibaba Pictures, and iQiyi. These companies are now exploring new directors through various venture capital platforms. The third is the various young director programs launched by filmmakers based on their own influence, such as Jia Zhangke, Huang Bo, Andy Lau, Ning Hao and others; The fourth type is the training camps and venture capital conferences set up by various film festivals and film festivals, all of which are cultivating "direct line" directors for their film festivals.
So many venture capital projects, is it necessary to exist?
A producer posted a Moments of Friends Tucao the intensive time of venture capital meetings: a suitcase, two seasons of clothes must be prepared to runVenture capital conferences all over the country. "From a desire point of view, the more venture capital will be, the better. But these venture capital conferences are not for the media and capital to tell stories, not for support as a story." The producer said he I am particularly worried that venture capital will form a closed loop. "I started an event and invited some young directors, and then the closed loop was completed." Wang Hongwei pointed out that the surplus of venture capital may make new directors form a deceptive self. Satisfy. It will be misleading to the wider film market and audience, and the debut of these young directors becomes a small circle game for filmmakers.
"If the support is very active, and the follow-up efforts are not enough, a very sad phenomenon may be formed. We are called venture capital directors. This movie will stay at the stage of various venture capital meetings for a long time. This director may After so many years of polishing, he has not been polished into a film director, but a PPT director who is very good at road shows." Wang Hongwei felt that blind venture capital would hurt the creative enthusiasm of many young directors. Xiaoduo, the screenwriter of
, talked to us about a project. Last year, this project won an award in the venture capital of the Beijing Film Festival, but after a year, the project still did not start. This year, he changed his name and submitted it to the Pingyao International Film Festival. But it was not selected. Huang Xufeng also saw this impetuous mentality. He told us that the idea that young directors themselves are immature is affirmed in venture capital, and this affirmation may give the illusion that the project is not bad. The young director he has signed to go to venture capital, Huang Xufeng will tell them that the start of this project is like learning from the West, just on the road, far away from the ultimate goal. "The honor given by venture capital and the praise given by the environment can easily affect the creative mentality of young directors. Preparing to participate in venture capital will also require time and energy for young directors. This is a test of a young director's mind and spirit. The attitude of young directors towards creation. We are also reflecting on how to make young directors better benefit from it.” Huang Xufeng said.
Why are new projects so slow?
"Sometimes it is too simple to be a venture capital meeting. Even if you make the scale very large, you may only need a few judges to do it, and you don’t even need a lot of money. , But the movement is big enough.” In the opinion of a producer, the solicitation of projects to run venture capital meetings is sometimes just a makeup. He told us that if there is no follow-up by the industry, then venture capital projects can only stay at the road show stage. For those who run venture capital conferences, collecting 1,000 projects is easier than actually shooting a movie. many. Wang Hongwei also has his own reflections on venture capital plans. In his opinion, although venture capital projects have a variety of tricks, they cannot be separated from reality to choose projects to be praised. In his opinion, some projects are easier to win prizes in venture capital, but judging by professional experience, the finished film may not necessarily find a benign exit: "When the award-winning project is delivered to the entrance of the industry, this entrance I feel that this project seems to be difficult to shoot, or the prospect of shooting it is worrying, then this will cause the problem of not being able to make a film. This may be the end at the venture capital meeting, and the end of the venture capital meeting and winning is the end! "
" There are not many projects that can turn scripts into movies every year." In recent years, Huang Xufeng has produced many films such as "Junior", "Chunjiang Plumbing", "A Trophy Floating on the Sea" and "Balloon". However, he feels that among the hundreds of projects he sees every year, there are very few projects that can be prepared. Many of the scripts of his company's projects have been polished for two or three years.
Huang Xufeng judged that a venture capital project could not be implemented because one of the reasons was that the script had problems, and the second reason was that there was no suitable producer: "The new director encountered great resistance in the process of making the script, or it was yours. There is a problem with development ability, or there is a problem with the writing ability of the director, and then the script has been stuck in a state where it cannot be prepared." Looking at it now, the new director plan is still effective in helping to find new people and new projects in this industry. s method. A good venture capital plan can become the standard mechanism of a film festival. From the drama to the production, to the various problems in the project, it can help new directors, so that the venture capital conference and bonuses can truly become the starting point of the work.
