is undoubtedly, now is the era of "a hundred flowers bloom" for new directors.
At present, the venture capital link of domestic film festivals is becoming more and more perfect. At the same time, new director support programs represented by the "Green Onion Project" of the Chinese Directors Association and the "Bad Monkey Project" led by Ning Hao are blooming everywhere. The more newcomers get good opportunities.
As the film scholar Dai Jinhua said, “New directors and new works appear every day, and the scale of the development of Chinese films is an unprecedented miracle.”
throughout November, from "The Beneficiary" to this week "Two Tigers" "Sherlock on the Plain" and other works hit the show, let everyone once again focus on the new director.
At the same time, we can find that among the top ten films in the box office list, 4 films are the director’s debut or second work. These 4 films are the top three on the list.
The former is the second work directed by Li Fei, with super-strong casts like Ge You and Zhao Wei joining. In the past, this lineup would only appear in the works of major directors such as Jiang Wen, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, and Xu Anhua. .
Xu Lei’s debut film "Sherlock on the Plain" cost only a few hundred thousand. All amateur actors starred in the film. On the first day of the show, he scored 7.1% of the film. One day trip". The two films
are like the works of new directors today. One part broke out in the mainstream market, and the other part was recognized at various film festivals as niche literary films. At the same time, they slowly explored a set of unique publicity models. Slowly enter the public view.
In addition to these two works, the same is true of the same file "I will have you in my life 2019" and "Ice Peak Storm". However, market feedback has been mediocre, and word of mouth is even worse.
What kind of works will the new directors shoot to attract public attention? Today we will have a good set.
Basic Disk: Story
For a movie, the core is always the story itself.
So, what kind of story can impress the audience? In the past, people would think that comedy subject matter allowed the audience to actively buy tickets, but from the perspective of the "boom" in recent years, comedy elements are one of the factors that help movies sell, but they will never become a necessary condition.
From "Wolf Warrior 2" to "Operation Red Sea", among the top five films in the mainland film history box office list, only "Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World" contains comedy elements. Many directors also confided in interviews that it is too difficult to create comedies. If the Internet develops too fast and improperly created, many comedy elements will only become particularly low-level and become online jokes in the eyes of the audience.
We found that more and more directors are willing to adapt real events in life, including last year's "I am not a medicine god".
For them, it is easier for them to use real events as the basis of the script. For example, there is an outline in the "Bad Monkey Project" that requires creators to pay attention to reality, locality, and contemporary times.
"Since the explosion of "I'm Not the God of Medicine" last year, we have received a lot of scripts adapted to social themes. Indeed, for directors, this type of story is relatively easy to operate. There is a foundation. As long as the adaptation is reasonable, the story is usually not It will be too bad. The most important thing is that this type of story is relatively low-cost in terms of production." said Miao Miao, a project planning company for a film and television company. Since
has real events as the basis, it is easy for viewers to make comparisons. Everyone has a certain labelled cognition of this kind of movies in their hearts, but if the final film cannot approach this cognition, it is likely to have a contrast. Of course, this comparison will also occur in the case of novels and IP adaptations. This is the case with "Six Desires" directed by
Zu Feng. The story is adapted from real people, but a certain stylized creation is made on the play. The final evaluation is mostly "distortion", which prevents the audience from catching the story. Core. The
script is always just a stepping stone. The good script of
can attract the company to invest in it, and it can also attract first-line actors to join. Li Fei told us that after he sent the "Two Tigers" script to Zhao Wei and Ge You, the former immediately decided to act and took the initiative to take the position of "producer", while the latter was also attracted by the script and was willing to play the role of "Zhang Chenggong".
Everyone’s luxury lineup isThis promotion. After all, Zhao Wei has not participated in any film works since "Three People", and Ge You also has a similar situation.
"A good story is the key to attracting investors, but for our publicity, the actors are actually more critical." Xiaowen, who has been engaged in film publicity for 3 years, told us her views, "I have done one before. The director’s debut work, everyone did not know the director before, and the media attention was very low. However, the actor configuration is not bad, it can be regarded as someone who has a work, so the early publicity has always been the main cast."
In recent years, the works of new directors have found that many works are promoted with actors as important publicity points. "Look carefully at the posters of these directors' works. Sometimes the actor's name is bigger than the director's name." Xiaowen took out the posters of "About Winter" and "Ice Peak Storm" as examples to show us.
Starlight does not work every time. In "Bingfeng Storm" and "Chang'an Road", actors such as Zhang Jingchu, Fan Wei, and Chen Shu also participated, but judging from their national character, it is still difficult to "attract attention" in movies.
"Sherlock on the Plains" without a star appeared in the publicity, which seemed even more "lost". Even so, Rao Xiaozhi, the director of "The Unknowns", participated as the producer of the film, which once became one of the important publicity points of the film. The director
supervises the newcomer's work platform, which is usually one of the ways for everyone to "see". "But if the producer itself is not out of the circle, this kind of publicity is also very weak. You see, "19 Years of Chasing the Murder" The producer of Zhang Meng and the producer of "Sherlock on the Plain" Rao Xiaozhi, you may be familiar with their works, but I don't know enough about them, so there is no special effect in publicity." Participated in the publicity of a new director's work in November Personnel P, expressed her views to us.
"However, Ning Hao is different. The audience knows too much about his "Crazy Series", and the reputation of "I'm Not the God of Medicine" and "Xiuchun Dao 2" is very good, so everyone has gradually recognized Ning Hao Producer's brand. Zhao Wei is in a similar situation. She is a national idol and she has appeared frequently on variety shows recently, and she is still very popular with audiences."
Added value: film festival
"If the work of the new director is not commercial enough, often I will go to the film festival first. From the later stage of publicity considerations, a certain amount of exposure may be increased. At the same time, in the concept of some audiences, the film quality of the film that can go to the festival will not be too bad." Miao Miao told us that before. She participated in a film in charge. One year before it was released, she almost ran various film festivals in order to have enough exposure.
"Sometimes there is a word inside of us, "Film Festival Curse". Any film that goes to the film festival will not be able to go to the box office. It is very happy to be able to pass 50 million."
usually needs this additional film, mostly A literary film in the concept of everyone.
There are always special cases in everything. The movie "The Last Night of the Earth" is the second work of director Bi Gan, which was previously nominated for the "A Concern" section of the Cannes International Film Festival. However, during the film promotion period, the relevant information was weakened, the literary nature of the film was deliberately avoided, and its commercial nature was infinitely enlarged. In the promotion, the main focus was "One Kiss". In the end, the box office of the movie exceeded 280 million, of which 240 million came from the first day of release. How can
properly promote this type of film? For practitioners, now is another kind of reflection. The key value of
: emotion
story, plot, cast lineup, for a movie, it is the basic factor for the audience to recognize it. With these basic disks, whether a movie can get a better box office performance has never been based on the first week of box office, and relying on its own good reputation to achieve long-term sinking and fermentation.
But judging from the new director's work in November, it seems to have become a kind of "paradox."
"Many people think that word-of-mouth is just a simple network rating. In fact, it is more of a kind of'audience'." Xiao P told us, "Have you found any film that has become a hit in recent years? Its comments It's mostly a kind of emotion. "Things Sader Than Sadness", "Predecessor 3" are crying, "Wandering Earth" and "Nezha" are burning." Indeed, this emotion is exactly a kind of empathy between the audience and the film creators. , It is precisely because of this empathy that word-of-mouth can pass through various social platformsTaiwan spread out. Dong Runnian, director of
"People Caught by Light", also told us, "In addition to the movie itself, the reputation of this reputation is also related to the social mentality of the entire era, and even a period of time."
Ning Hao also worked with "Clouds" The director once gave a speech, "Before making a film, you must think clearly about who the work is to talk to."
This is the work we look forward to seeing in the era of endless new directors. This kind of work is in dialogue with the audience, with the society, and digging out more reflections belonging to the background of this era.
Among the new directors of recent years, which movie is your favorite?
