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

Chapter 419 "I'll go out and sell myself to support you!"

The initial budget for the project "The Wandering Earth" was 3.5 million yuan. In the later stages, the budget increased with the actual preparation and shooting needs. In the end, the total cost including the publicity and promotion expenses exceeded 5.5 million yuan.

Arclight's initial investment was only over 50 million, but it kept adding to the investment. In the end, it accounted for nearly 40% of the total, second only to China Film.

"Arc Light follows the investment and becomes the main force", this joke has been talked about by movie fans ever since "The Wandering Earth" became popular.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

The total box office of the movie is 5 billion, and the shareable box office is nearly 2 billion. After deducting the share of the distributor, Arclight, together with its shareholders Ruyi Pictures and Guo Fan Studio, has a total profit of nearly 800 million.

The cost was 300 million, the profit was million, and the return rate was %, which seemed to be quite good. But if we add the five years from preparation to release, and the high risk of the film industry itself...

"Boss, from a cost-effectiveness perspective, it's better to make a few more medium-budget comedies than to make this kind of big production. The funds can be turned over quickly and the risk is relatively low. If we make one a year, the profit in five years should be higher."

In the office, Gu Fei looked at the revenue data of "The Wandering Earth" and put forward his own suggestions from the perspective of an investor.

Meng Bai smiled when he heard this. Indeed, if we look at it from the perspective of risk-return ratio alone, small and medium-cost comedy films are the most suitable projects for investment in the film and television industry.

Find a few comedians who are familiar to the audience, copy a few jokes from the Internet, add a few homophonic puns, and a standard domestic comedy with a score of 4 to 6 will be produced. After it is shown in theaters, it will be sold to video websites after it is taken off the screen. It is basically a sure profit.

but……

"It might be profitable to shoot like this, but at most it will only become an excellent but ordinary film and television company." Meng Bai smiled and said, "If Arclight only wanted to make money, it should still be shooting small and medium-cost web dramas now, and there would be no current scale."

Gu Fei was stunned for a moment, but then she reacted. The boss was right. Small companies didn't need to do big projects, but if they wanted to become big companies, they definitely couldn't do without big projects.

Although Arclight Pictures has had successful projects such as "Detective Chinatown" and "City of Lights", most people are still accustomed to thinking of them as a web drama company.

However, as "The Wandering Earth" suddenly became the second place in the domestic film box office history, ArcLight, as the main producer, also became a new force in the film industry.

In addition, it recently joined forces with Ruyi Pictures, which also frequently produces blockbuster movies. Perhaps it won’t be long before this company, which occupies a dominant position in the field of online dramas, will also dominate the field of movies with the same attitude.

"Okay, let's not talk about the film's revenue for now." Meng Bai said, "I asked you to collect information about domestic film and television special effects teams before. How are your preparations going?"

"During this period, we have visited all medium-sized and larger teams and companies in China, and the information is all here."

As he spoke, Gu Fei handed over a pad, which displayed the organized research results.

Compared with Hollywood, which has mature technology, the domestic visual effects industry started late, but it is progressing rapidly. Especially with the rise of the domestic film market, the increasing demand for film and television special effects has spawned a large number of domestic special effects teams.

It’s just that there are many of these teams, but only a few of them have developed well. The vast majority of special effects companies are barely surviving. In addition, many viewers have complaints about the quality of domestic special effects, and “50-cent special effects” has almost become a synonym for domestic special effects.

After all, the reason for this is very simple, that is, the film and television crews often require special effects companies to have "tight time, heavy tasks; little funding, poor aesthetics."

If we talk about the most "grassroots" teams in all industries in China, then the film and television crews are definitely among the top. It is 2019, and the only way for most crews, regardless of the size of the project, to shorten the production cycle is still "working overtime" and "strength in numbers".

Under such circumstances, the crew had a tight schedule for filming and a limited time for post-production. However, the upper limit of the computer's rendering speed was there, and the speed was basically constant.

The machine won’t tell you this or that. If you push me, I will do it normally. If you push me hard, I will burn it for you to see.

In addition, with the booming traffic economy in recent years, most of the funds of the crew are invested in the leading actors and IP, leaving a limited budget for post-production. The money to find a team is limited, let alone find several teams to share the task.

In order to ensure on-time delivery, the special effects team can only save labor and materials on various unimportant details, and the resulting visual effects will appear very fragmented.

In addition, many film crews are financed by a group of middle-aged people in their forties and fifties. Their aesthetic style can be seen from the "Bling Bling Golden Wings Web Game" that is the favorite of the rich.

It’s pretty good if these bunch of “debuffs” are combined together to have a “5-cent special effect”.

But in fact, the actual level of domestic special effects in recent years has improved much faster than most audiences imagine. Even in some individual areas, such as fireworks explosions and material rendering, they are not inferior to Hollywood standards at all.

The only big gap is in areas like character skin and animal hair, which require a lot of empirical data.

For example, in The Wandering Earth, there were four main special effects teams, two of which were domestic, one was a Sino-German collaboration, and one was a Sino-Korean collaboration, so the domestic production rate was quite high.

Judging from the final film, the effect is excellent.

However, despite the movie being a huge box office success, several special effects companies did not make much money.

Ding Yanlai, the visual effects director of The Wandering Earth, is also the founder of Orange Vision, one of the four companies. When the film was short of funds in the later stages, he even went out to take other jobs to earn money to invest in The Wandering Earth.

This kind of spirit of "I will support you even if I have to sell myself" can be regarded as a "pure love masterpiece" in the world of Minotaur.

After the release of "The Wandering Earth", Meng Bai has been considering whether to invest in a visual effects team. This industry is a bit like the map business in the Internet industry. Everyone needs it and it belongs to infrastructure projects.

Moreover, visual effects are not only in demand in the film and television industry, but also in the animation, game and other industries. If it can really develop, even if the business itself is not profitable, it will be enough to attract more cooperation projects and industrial chains.

Meng Bai slid the pad in his hand, which recorded many special effects teams in the country.

For example, Orange Vision and Mojing Tianhe, which cooperated with "The Wandering Earth", Base FX, which cooperated with Hollywood, Tiangong Yicai, which is particularly outstanding in the field of animation, Hualong, which has the strong support of China Film, and Po Chaoting, which Nicholas Tse started to get involved in many years ago.

In addition, there are AI vision projects in several university laboratories including Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Xi'an Jiaotong University.

Different from projects in other fields, this type of project team also adheres to the nature of the industry and the funding is generally not high.

It just so happened that ArcLight had made hundreds of millions of yuan from The Wandering Earth, and less than half of the profits were enough for investment. In the next few days, Meng Bai called on directors Guo Fan, Lu Yang, and Qiming Venture Partners to study which teams were suitable for investment, which was also a preparation for The Wandering Earth 2 in advance.

By the way, he also set up a new company called "Galaxy Fantasy", which is responsible for investing and integrating the relevant teams and experimental projects involved.

Anyway, Arc Light is now on the right track and doesn't really need a boss like him, so Meng Bai has been keeping an eye on this "new toy" for more than a week.

It wasn't until Ke Liming called him and said that Evergrande contacted Ruyi to discuss restarting the acquisition.
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"I thought it would take some time, but I didn't expect Evergrande to get impatient so soon."

"Haha, it's mainly thanks to you."

Ke Liming smiled and said, "Evergrande has always wanted to learn from Wanda and expand into the film and television market to develop new businesses. They were previously scared off by the film and television winter, but then The Wandering Earth became a huge success, and Ruyi also made a fortune from the investment, so Evergrande hurriedly contacted us."

Meng Bai smiled. This was why he told Gu Fei that if they wanted to develop, they had to do big projects. Just making a little bit of money, even if the actual profit was not small, would not be as eye-catching as a hit product.

Especially for listed companies like Evergrande, if they want to boost their stock prices, sometimes market imagination is much more useful than actual performance.

"What is the price Evergrande offered?"

"We have just started to make contact, where is the offer from?" Chen Zhixi said, "Besides, the other party wants to acquire the company in full and retain the existing structure, which involves the issue of shares after the acquisition. We must talk slowly."

After that, she said with a smile on her face: "But judging from the other party's attitude, the price will definitely not be low."

"We can also offer a higher price." Meng Bai also smiled and said, "Hengten Network, which initiated the acquisition, has Evergrande and Tencent behind it, both of which are wealthy."

"Not necessarily. We didn't lack money before, but it's hard to say now."

Ke Liming stopped the two of them and said, "Forget it, let's not speculate here. We will know whether the situation is good or bad after we actually start talking."

The person negotiating with Ruyi Films was Zhou Cheng, the director and CEO of Hengten Network. He was previously from Evergrande and was transferred here two years ago to take charge of the new Hengten Network.

As soon as they met, he came over enthusiastically and extended his hand to Meng Bai: "Mr. Meng, I have heard of your great name for a long time. Today I finally have the opportunity to meet you."

"Mr. Zhou, you are too polite. Our Arc Light is just a small film and television company." Meng Bai said politely.

"Haha, Mr. Meng is too modest. Since Evergrande wants to expand into the film and television field, we naturally understand the industry situation. In today's film and television circles, who doesn't know the name of Arc Light Film and Television?" Zhou Cheng said with a smile.

It was the first time the two parties met, and after they sat down and chatted for a while, they finally got to the point.

Regarding the needs of Hengten Network, Ruyi Pictures has two biggest highlights - one is the production and investment of film projects, and the other is the streaming platform Pumpkin Movie.

"For the film project, we trust both Mr. Chen's vision and Mr. Meng's content support." Zhou Cheng frowned and said, "But for Pumpkin Movie, judging from the current number of users, market share, and growth rate, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly outstanding."

On the Ruyi side, the person in charge of the negotiations was Ke Liming. Hearing Zhou Cheng's question, he nodded generously and admitted: "Indeed, in the field of streaming media, the three companies of Qiyouten basically occupy the vast majority of the market. Pumpkin Film started late and has always lacked capital support, so it has not been able to seize the development trend."

"However, I don't think the streaming media market has been fully finalized. On the contrary, as many overseas entertainment giants have begun to make plans this year, we can see that the streaming media field still has sufficient development potential."

"As video websites have developed over the years, the top platforms have actually been changing. From the earliest Youku, to the later Leshi.com, and now to the three-point market, the market share of major websites has actually been changing."

"The foundation of video websites lies in their users, but users are not 'loyal' to websites. They only follow the content. So in the end, whichever company has better content will have greater competitiveness."

Zhou Cheng caught the topic: "Then I wonder where Pumpkin Movie's content development is headed? Mr. Ke, don't tell me that it's relying on those overseas dramas that skirt the copyright."

Ke Liming shook his head: "Of course not. The current situation is just a means for Pumpkin Movies. If they really want to develop formally in the future, those works without copyright will definitely be removed from the shelves."

"Yes." Zhou Cheng said: "So, after those works are removed from the shelves, where will the high-quality content of Pumpkin Movies come from?"

"It would have been difficult to do last year, but it's different now."

At this point, Ke Liming smiled and gestured to Meng Bai beside him: "We now have the support of Arclight Films."

Meng Bai, who was mentioned, nodded and smiled. The most important role he played today was to keep the situation under control.

As it turns out, the effect is still very significant. Just as Zhou Chenggang said when they met, they do know a lot about the film and television market, so they also understand the value of Arclight.

So when Colin Ming mentioned the blessing of arc light, he did not sneer at it, but instead thought about it seriously.

"It would be great if we could have Mr. Meng's help." Zhou Cheng frowned and said, "But to support an entire website, the output of just one company might be a little weak."

"Of course, Arclight Pictures alone is definitely not enough." Ke Liming was prepared for this question. "The content of video platforms can be divided into two parts. One part is the top high-quality blockbuster works, which are mainly used to attract new users; the other part is a large number of ordinary works, which are used to grab market share."

"To be honest, there is no shortage of such ordinary works. The film and television industry is in a downturn now, and major platforms are tightening their budgets for film purchases, so many projects can only be stored in inventory. For film and television companies, it doesn't matter who they sell to. As long as we have the funds to buy them, there will be no shortage of these works."

"But these ordinary works alone cannot attract users. In order to make the audience follow us actively, we need high-quality works. And this is the most important value of Arclight Films." said Coley.

Zhou Cheng pondered for a while after hearing this, and then looked at Meng Bai who was standing beside him: "I wonder what Mr. Meng is planning?"

Meng Bai smiled and stopped pretending to be deep: "We are a film and television production company. As long as the price is right, we don't care which platform we sell to. If Hengten Network is interested in developing streaming media, then Huguang already has a new series of works and can start the project. At the same time, we can also provide Ruyi with new projects for exclusive broadcast every year."

ArcLight is not fighting alone now. In addition to its own production capabilities, it also has many different teams such as the studio that cooperates with Huace, Xiaotangren Culture, Apocalypse Entertainment, etc., so there is no need to worry about output.

(End of this chapter)