Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 197 Preparations before the War

Qiyi TV, Copyright Operation Center Conference Room.

The large conference table was now full of people. Sitting at the head was a middle-aged woman with short, neat hair, who looked like a strong woman.

This woman's name is Zhang Yuxin. She is the head of the copyright operation center of Qiyi TV and the daughter of the famous director Zhang Jizhong.

Just like Leshi.com set up a "Copyright Center" to prevent Liu Jun from dominating the market, Zhang Yuxin and Dai Ying are also jointly responsible for the self-made web dramas on Qiyi TV.

However, the two women act independently and do not interfere with each other.

For example, Dai Ying and Meng Bai collaborated to develop "The Best of Us".

Zhang Yuxin served as the co-producer of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" and is in competition with Arclight Pictures.

The purpose of today's meeting is the same, which is to discuss the situation on the opponent's side before the broadcast of their own drama.

In addition to her, there were staff from Qiyi TV, people from the producer Huanrui Century, the main creative team of the crew, and others in the room.

Naturally, this also includes Bai Yicong, the planning and screenwriter.

"How is the early promotion of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" going?" Zhang Yuxin asked.

"It is being carried out according to the previous publicity and promotion plan." The staff member replied.

"Is there any problem with the lead actor cooperating with the publicity?"

"No problem. We have already communicated with their team in advance about the materials and processes they need to release to the public, and the promotional programs on several satellite TV stations have also been confirmed."

Zhang Yuxin nodded, and the Huanrui staff beside him smiled and said, "Mr. Zhang, there's no need to be so nervous. Not to mention the fans of the IP of our project itself, the popularity of the leading actors alone is enough to support the results."

"Yes, Mr. Zhang, Li Feng, Yang Yang, and Tang Yan, if we only look at the actor traffic, they basically crush the other party."

Others nearby also echoed.

Unlike the "main cast trio" of "Forensic Qin Ming" which were almost all new actors, "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" only uses the artists with the highest traffic in the past two years.

The "double male lead" Li Feng and Yang Yang are both top stars at the moment. Together with Lu Han, Wu Fan, and TF who returned to China before, they are collectively known as the "four big and three small" in the domestic entertainment industry.

Although the female lead Tang Yan has been criticized since "Chinese Paladin 3", her fan base and popularity have always been among the top.

With such a starring combination, it can be said that a drama can be supported by fans alone.

What's more, "The Lost Tomb" itself is a big IP, and the surge in visitor flow in Changbai Mountain every August has almost become a regular feature.

With these two sets of trump cards put together, neither the main creators of the crew nor the production company felt that there was anything to pay special attention to.

However, not everyone thinks this way.

"Everyone, I think we should not be too careless. I recently looked at the data of the new show "Forensic Qin Ming" on Leshi.com, and the results are still quite outstanding."

Bai Yicong, who was sitting in the middle, spoke to everyone.

If there is anyone among those present who is most wary of "Forensic Qin Ming", it must be him.

Ever since the show started airing, he has been keeping an eye on its viewing statistics and online popularity.

The result was much "worse" than he expected. Whether it was the number of views, the amount of discussion, or the popularity of the topic online, it was far beyond their previous estimates.

What worries him even more is that Arclight Films has maintained its high standards as always. Whether it is the quality of the shots or the rhythm of the plot, it is really on par with the standards of "American TV series".

People know their own business. He has already seen the finished film of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles". Even if he watches it with the "creative filter", he has to admit that the production quality is far behind others.

So when he saw that other people at the scene still maintained a "blindly confident" attitude, he couldn't help but speak out a reminder.

Fortunately, not everyone is so optimistic. Zhang Yuxin has the same idea as Bai Yicong.

"Xiao Liu." She called out to one of her staff members, "Put up the data you collected."

"Okay, Mr. Zhang."

The screen in front of the conference room lit up, and then a bar chart with various data and annotations appeared on it.

"Everyone, this is the playback data we collected about the new drama "Forensic Qin Ming" on Leshi.com. The first three episodes were aired, and members got to watch two episodes first, so there are a total of five episodes on the first day."

"Here are the playback data at various time points. The 24-hour playback volume exceeded 7000 million, and the total playback volume in 32 hours successfully exceeded million, breaking the record of 'over million' playback volume of self-made web dramas."

Hearing this, Zhang Yuxin added: "Let me remind you that the previous record of 'breaking 2 million' was set by Soul Ferry in four days at the beginning of the year. This drama was also a collaboration between Leshi.com and Arclight Films."

When everyone heard this, they were all shocked.

He refreshed his own data and shortened it by more than half, which shows that the other party has a sufficient audience base.

If you think about it carefully, although the IP of "Forensic Qin Ming" is not as big as "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", the original work has accumulated millions of sales in the past year.

Although the new leading actor has low traffic and few fans, Arc Light Film and Television Company has many audiences and fans.

Thinking about it this way, it seems that the advantage on my side is not as great as I imagined.

Seeing that everyone looked thoughtful, Zhang Yuxin waved his hand and asked his men to continue.

"As of now, Forensic Qin Ming has been online for a week and has accumulated a total of 4.2 million views. The topic has 700 million discussions on Weibo and has been searched 12 times. The average number of views per episode of Yunhe V7 is 920 million, and the influence of Guduo online drama is 8600, ranking first in the entire network in real time..."

"Um, sorry." Director Luo Yongchang, who was sitting next to him, raised his hand and asked in a Cantonese accent, "What do you mean by Yunhe and Guduo web drama?"

"Xiao Liu" glanced at Zhang Yuxin, and when she gestured, he explained, "Director Luo, these two are currently commonly used data to evaluate the actual performance of online dramas."

"Yunhe V7" refers to the average sum of the playback data of each episode of a drama within 7 days of its release. The higher the data, the more popular the drama will be in the short term.

Similar to it is "Yunhe V30", which, as the name suggests, is the average episode playback volume within 30 days, which is relatively more representative of the long-term trend of a drama.

As for the source of this playback data, it is mainly from an entertainment service platform called "Yunhe Data".

The company started analyzing and sorting online data in 09, but previously it was mainly focused on online broadcasts of TV series. This year, they separated out the self-made online drama sections of various video platforms and began to analyze the data of online dramas.

The "Guduo Online Drama Influence Rating" comes from an online film and television data company called "Guduo Media".

They will give each online drama a comprehensive score out of 10,000 and rank them based on the drama's playback volume, network discussion volume, related search volume, network popularity value, series ratings, etc.

"Wow, it's quite troublesome for online dramas." Luo Yongchang smiled, "I thought it was just like our movie box office, we can just look at the total number of views."

He is a director of Milkyway Image and has been working on movies before. This time, Huanrui asked him to work with director Zheng Baorui to shoot "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", which is also his first time to shoot a web drama.

"Uh..." All the people related to the online drama present were embarrassed when they heard this.

As insiders, they naturally know why the performance data of an online drama has to be so complicated, and it is because the number of views is inflated too much.

For movies, you can look at the box office, and for TV series, you can look at the ratings. Both are counted by specialized cinema chains and satellite TV companies. Although there is some falsification, it is always within a certain limit.

However, as online dramas are an emerging market, there are currently no widely accepted data statistics standards, and basically the rules of each platform are different.

Some count based on clicks, while others count based on effective viewing time. There is no uniform standard for viewing time, with some measuring 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and even two minutes.

The calculation methods are also different. Some count a refresh after a pause as a new playback, while others count all episodes every time they log in and click.

In addition, in addition to the main film, trailers, OP/ED single videos, next episode previews, behind-the-scenes interviews, etc. can all be counted towards the total number of views.

In this way, for a 20-episode web drama, one viewer can contribute almost 50 to 80 percent of the viewing data.

The video platform also said: "We are not faking it, it's just a problem with the statistical method."

If one company does this, the others will have to follow suit, or just sit and wait for the advertising sponsors to leave.

This is why the number of views of any online drama can easily reach hundreds of millions.

It is precisely because of these reasons that many viewers will choose some third-party statistical platforms in order to know the actual broadcast performance of each drama.

These platforms started out as network data platforms and have a set of special “dehydration algorithms”.

Although it is still a bit inflated, it is much more accurate than the data released by the video platforms themselves, so many people now tend to believe the rankings of these platforms.

Among a large number of similar platforms, the two with the largest number of users and influence are Yunhe Data and Guduo Media.

Even now, many internal staff of video websites are looking at the data from these third-party platforms to judge the success or failure of a project.

The data on Leshi.com is naturally inflated, otherwise how could "Forensic Qin Ming" have more than 400 million views when it has only been updated to the eighth episode.

However, no matter how much water is injected, the popularity and discussion volume cannot deceive people.

After the "dehydrated data" of the third-party platform, "Forensic Qin Ming" still holds the first place among the online dramas of the same period, surpassing Youku's "The Legend of Sword and Fairy Inn", Wanhe Tianyi's new series "The Senior Sister Knows", Sohu's "Diaosi Man 4" and Qiyi TV's "School Beauty's Personal Bodyguard".

And judging from the data, it was a "fault-level" crushing victory.

Now, the only rival that may affect it is "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", which is about to be launched.

That's why Zhang Yuxin called everyone over to discuss whether there are any new promotional plans, or whether some optimizations can be made to the series itself.

After all, the success of a drama ultimately depends on whether it is good or not.

While Qiyi TV was preparing, Arclight Films also did not let down its guard.

"Come on, let's applaud our Director Wang Wei first!"

In the conference room, Meng Bai, Liu Zhi and others clapped their hands together.

Wang Wei, who was sitting next to him, waved his hands around with a little embarrassment, indicating that it was unnecessary, but the smile on his face revealed that he was feeling very good.

Although the previous "Soul Ferry 2" achieved very good results, it was a sequel to a series after all, and secondly, because the plot was suddenly adjusted at that time, it was finally completed in collaboration with Wu Bai.

Although his name was written as the main director when it was finally broadcast, he still felt a little awkward.

But this time it’s different. He directed "Forensic Qin Ming" independently and it was also a new project, so this result is very convincing.

Although it has not yet been finally aired, judging from the current trend, as long as there are no major problems later, it will definitely break the record.

"Okay, everyone knows about the performance data, so I won't say more." Meng Bai said: "Today I called you all here mainly to talk about the issues that have received a lot of attention from the audience recently. After all, everyone knows that "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" is about to be launched. Although it is a big IP with high traffic, we still hope to compete with it."

When it comes to ratings, Wang Wei and others calm down.

Compared to the impressive viewing data, the reviews of "Forensic Qin Ming" seem to be quite average. Douban's score was 7.4 at the beginning, and after a week, it rose to 7.6.

As a suspenseful criminal investigation drama, and a domestic web drama at that, this rating is actually very high.

But looking at the previous dramas of ArcLight Pictures, "Soul Ferry 1" scored 8.6, "Criminal Mind" scored 8.0, and "Soul Ferry 2" scored 8.9, all of which were above eight points.

"Forensic Qin Ming" is also the first drama with a score below eight.

The key point is that the original novel has a rating of 7.8.

If this happens, there must be something wrong. If they were the only one in the business, it wouldn't be a big deal. But now that "strong enemies are waiting", Meng Bai hopes to find everyone to discuss and see if there are any areas that can be optimized in the subsequent episodes.

Anyway, online dramas are still being reviewed and approved after being filed, so they can be adjusted at any time as long as they are not broadcast.

Hua Yan, who was sitting next to Meng Bai, stood up and looked at the data in her hand and said, "The real negative reviews we have collected so far mainly come from three aspects."

"The first is the character of the male lead. Many viewers said that he was a bit too 'domineering' and different from the image of a forensic doctor as imagined."

In the first episode of "Forensic Qin Ming", apart from the comments about the "heavy taste" of the crew's props, 80% of the rest of the comments and barrage were about the character design of the protagonist.

In fact, Meng Bai and others mentioned this point when they first started adapting the script. After all, it is quite different from the original work.

However, considering the plot requirements brought about by the film and television adaptation, this plan was finally decided.

And the hero is not completely aloof. Strictly speaking, he is more like someone between tsundere and "dry humor".

As the plot unfolds, the viewing experience will get much better.

The result was indeed so. With the successive updates of the following episodes, the controversy surrounding the male protagonist's character gradually decreased, which is also the reason why the ratings rose after a week.

"The second most popular reaction was that there were too many heavy-handed bloody scenes. But it wasn't all negative reviews. Many viewers also left comments expressing their approval of the realistic scenes." Hua Yan said, "The third was that some viewers said the camera was too shaky and it made them dizzy."

After the assistant finished speaking, Meng Bai said, "The second question is about the difference in style. Highly realistic scene props are one of the characteristics of this drama, so there is no need to make major changes. The most we can do is to study whether we can add a reminder shot before the 'face-snap' shot to draw the audience's attention."

Wang Wei nodded: "Okay, I'll discuss it with the editor when I get back and see if it can be smoother."

"Okay, you guys study it. As for the third one, I actually have the same feeling. Lao Wang, I know you want to imitate the documentary style of the lens, but it is indeed a bit too much. You guys should discuss it and see if it can be optimized."

"it is good."

After speaking a few more words to everyone, Meng Bai looked at the data on the computer and sighed.

All possible preparations have been made, and what remains now is the actual head-on confrontation.

(End of this chapter)