"Paperclip is your contemporary life manual. We study cameras, phantom coins, spam messages and your shit." This is the introduction of the popular science video channel "Paperclip Paperclip" on station B.
On February 2, the popular science video "All About New Coronary Pneumonia" produced by the paperclip team was screened across the Internet. This video covers the occurrence and spread of new coronavirus pneumonia, mortality and transmission speed, and how to reduce the possibility of infection in 10 minutes and 18 seconds. Popular science.
In the days when it was flooded with ambiguous information, this popular science video gave people in panic a placebo with calmness and restraint, detailed visual data and meticulous medical knowledge.
As of press time, the video has been played more than 80 million times on Weibo, the number of reposts exceeded 680,000, and the number of views on the entire network has exceeded 100 million. What
makes this "treasure blogger" in the minds of many people out of the circle is the few words at the end of this video:
We praise courage because we humans always choose to do it when we know the risks. What we should do.
Finally, let's take a look at the protagonist of this pneumonia, this deformed sphere with a diameter of about 0.1 microns. Terrible? ... Actually it's not that scary. If we are scared by this, scared to lock up neighbors from Wuhan, scared to attack unfamiliar helpers, scared to make everyone afraid to speak in the name of rumors, then it is really scary.
The hymn of mankind is the hymn of courage.
Behind the video is the result of the producer Wu Songlei and several members of the team staying up late to rush to the production under the "urging" of fans.
Born in 1994, Wu Songlei, who was rated by netizens as having a "poker face" and a dull male voice in science, leads a team of 20 people in "Paperclip".
graduated from Jiangxi Normal University, majoring in engineering management, Wu Songlei. After graduating from university in 2015, he started to make short videos of serious knowledge. Seeing that the short video channel "One" at that time tasted the sweetness on the outlet, Wu Songlei tried to make a video program called "Wall Facing Laboratory".
Then, Wu Songlei was invited by the Elephant Association and started content there. In 2017, together with Liu Dake, the former curator of the “Museum of Chaos”, he established the “Museum of Chaos”, a video project incubated within the Elephant Association.
Later, at the end of 2017, there was the "PaperClip" born out of the "Museum of Chaos". In March 2018, Wu Songlei officially divided the paper clips and became a new company independently operated, focusing on the production of serious knowledge videos.
On November 30, 2017, Paperclip sent out the first video. In the past two years, they have produced about 125 popular science short videos. From "How to be a sensible street lamp? "How to dispatch trains for 1.3 billion people? ", to "Atomic Bomb Manufacturing Guide" "Why is counterfeiting money so difficult?" "They hope that within a few minutes, they can use hard-core knowledge and rigorous inferences to clearly show the working principle and operating logic of a thing.
How is this company doing? On December 31, Paperclip released the "How much money did paperclip make in 2019?" "Video titled. The video uses the same visual production method to disclose the company's data in detail over the past year: revenue of 5.972 million, expenditure of 4.144 million, and net profit of 1.828 million. It has gained more than 6.8 million followers on the entire network. Although
has attracted more advertisers due to the increasing number of fans this year, as the company is expanding, a new office address that can accommodate 60 workstations will deduct half a year’s rent, a deposit of 617,000 and about 800,000. In the end, they still lost about 100,000 yuan in decoration costs.
Wu Songlei said in the video: I will earn it back.
After "All About New Coronary Pneumonia" hits popularity, will it bring the spring of serious knowledge videos? Wu Songlei is not sure.
revealed in the video that the team now mainly relies on advertising customization, but in order to develop in the future, they will launch a paid interactive video project this spring. "It's still quite experimental. It will use a more complicated and intuitive way to present the logic of a specific problem."
Paying for content, Wu Songlei believes that the current business is relatively good, and it is still similar to the audio courses like "get" or the big online movie "you can buy a movie for 5 yuan". "What we are actually exploring is a more serious payment direction for video content. I am not sure what will happen in the future, and it may fail."
talked with Wu Songlei about the popularity and the future.
Diaojiao Entertainment Investment: Diaozhu
"Paperclip Paperclip" Producer: Wu Songlei
How did this video come out?
Chosen Master: Which members of the team led you to make this video? What knowledge preparations have you made?
Wu: Mainly I was writing the manuscript, and then two colleagues helped me to do some proofreading and data sorting.
I mainly read the websites of medical journals, mainly the Lancet and NEJM, and the most important ones are six or seven articles.
has some other details, such as the size of the droplet nucleus, the complete process of sneezing, and the survival time of the virus outside the body. I have read some information on Zhinet. There are domestic papers, and then I know that there are usually papers cited on the Internet, and some foreign papers will be cited and read.
Choi: When did you decide to make this video?
Wu: I started writing the manuscript on January 27th.
I don't have such a strong motivation, I think this is quite suitable for making a video to explain what is going on. At first, many of our own audiences wrote a lot of comments, and I hope we will make a video.
We wanted to make masks at the beginning. I probably checked some materials and papers about masks, and found that masks are actually not that important. We still have to explain what the complete transmission mechanism is, and then we can explain how to protect them.
started writing on January 27 and released it on February 2. It was done by working overtime. We do it at four or five in the morning every day, and then go to rest, wake up at 12 in the morning and start again. The difficulty level of
is similar to our usual video. We usually take at least 2 weeks for a program, 1-2 weeks for the text, and 1-2 weeks for the text to become a video.
Chop Master: After this video, what kind of deep feedback did you receive?
Wu: It's nothing. The feedback I'm deeply impressed with is of course like Teacher Fang Zhouzi.
Chop Master: To what extent do you think this matter has been studied, I can start making videos, how did you decide on this termination point?
Wu: There will be a question that we probably need to figure out, and then as long as we can answer these questions, we can almost start doing it. For example, a complete infection mechanism and some details of the transmission process. For example, when you sneeze, what is the structure of the droplets produced by your sneeze, how to spread, and what size; for masks, you must understand the power of the mask in the face of droplets of different sizes. The protective effect and the difference.
Regarding questioning: who graduated from engineering management, do you want to do biological science videos?
Chop Master: After the new coronavirus video came out, it caused such a big response, how do you feel?
Wu: I didn't expect it to spread so widely, and I felt a lot of pressure. The pressure is always worrying about what is wrong with the video, or that it is not done well. Because there is such a large amount of broadcast, it is actually a very scary thing.
Chopped Master: But getting a lot of traffic is a good thing after all, right?
Wu: This is where I am more contradictory as a creator in the content industry. Because I personally don't like such a big exposure, but our work needs a good data and a good broadcast volume.
So from a work perspective, of course it is a good thing, but I will receive a lot of news because of this. I am a person who doesn't like to socialize, or I don't want to be an influencer.
Chop Master: Some people on the Internet question your professionalism. For example, Fang Zhouzi made this comment on Twitter:
Wu: Some people say something reasonable, but most of them are unreasonable. In some places, we should explain more clearly and make some supplementary explanations.
Chop Master: For example, he said, "I saw that the coronavirus infects the human body through ACE2 on the oral mucosa."I can't stand it anymore.
Wu: This is where the expression is inaccurate. ACE2 should also be an ACE2 receptor, but it is understandable in the context of the video. Of course, the
new coronavirus will be infected through the oral mucosa. There is no doubt about this. We and Dr. Lilac have also confirmed this aspect. But it may also be inhaled by you into deeper places and cause infection, such as in the bronchi or lungs. This is a place that needs to be supplemented, but the expression in the video is also no problem.
Diaozhu: And the person he forwarded said, you haven't even figured out droplet transmission and air transmission.
Wu: This is because I made a mistake in the recording. You see that the transcript of our video writes droplet transmission, and then I read it as air transmission when recording.
Chop Master: Some people questioned that you graduated with a major in engineering management.
Wu: Hahahahaha... This is pretty fun. I don't really care, it doesn't matter.
chop master: Has anyone questioned your professionalism before?
Wu: No. In fact, what we are talking about are all very basic things. Even I don’t think we have reached university level. Many of them are very basic high school biology courses.
Paperclip What kind of team is Paperclip?
Chop Master: Why is it called a paperclip?
Wu: Just think about it, without any reason, I think the name is okay.
Chop Master: Two changes a week, a program will take 2-4 weeks, what is the methodology of standardized operation?
Wu: We will be divided into many groups, each group may have three or four people for a period.
Chop Master: There are now 20 people in the team and five or six writers. What kind of positions are the rest?
Wu: The rest is our visual designer and motion designer, and then there are three modelers, three colleagues responsible for product development and website development.
Chop Master: What is your previous education and background?
Wu: I have everything, but the background of science and engineering will be a little bit more, and then more technical. There will be more science lovers.
Chosen Master: What kind of process do you usually go through to make a program? How is the topic selection for each issue determined?
Wu: First, organize the data and make a text draft, then divide the shots according to the text draft, then make the visual effects, and finally synthesize the video. The topic of each issue of
is a random idea by everyone. For example, if an author wants to write about knitting sweaters, I will say: OK. Gone.
Chosen Master: How much does it cost to make a program?
Wu: Actually, I haven't calculated it carefully. We made about 80 videos in the past year, and then spent more than 4 million, which is almost the case. (According to the video "How much money did the paperclip make in 2019?" released on December 31st, the paperclip expenditure is 4.144 million, and the average cost of a video is about 51,800.) Compared with other video programs,
Speaking, the cost is still quite high, but if other visual effects teams do it, the cost will definitely be higher. Because we have a relatively standardized production process, the speed is very fast.
Diaozhu: Have you ever encountered a topic that you gave up? It feels too difficult.
Wu: I didn't give up. I just said that there has been no time to write it out and no time to sort out the process. For example, we have a topic about how a barber cuts a hair. I have read several books, but I haven't had time to write the manuscript because it is really complicated. The complexity of
is that the gap between practical operation and theory is very large, and there are no related academic papers, which are basically training materials. How to make the content of a training material logical and professional is difficult.
Chop Master: What are your screening criteria for advertisers? What kind of advertisers are you contacting?
Wu: The standard is that there is really a tangible technology for us to talk about.
is mainly for some technology customers, including mobile phones, digital, home appliances, and some to B customers, such as battery manufacturers and wind generator manufacturers.
Chop Master: You used to say that advertisers don't like serious advertising content. Has their attitude changed?
Wu: Now they are quite acceptable. Our ads are saturated and we can't take it anymore. weNow the cooperation fee for a single advertisement is about 400,000 yuan. Advertisers of
usually don't change our drafts, but I hope we can be more hard-core and make them more professional.
