cultural perspective｜the audience has moved up a level, and the film industry is about to change.
2024-09-02
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the 2024 summer season has come to an end, with crisis and change becoming the keywords at the end of the season.according to the data from lighthouse professional edition, the total box office of the summer season from june to august this year was 11.643 billion yuan, and the total number of moviegoers was 285 million. these two figures are not only far lower than the 20.63 billion yuan and 505 million people in the same period last year, but also lower than that in 2015. in terms of the box office performance of individual films, "catch the doll" was the best in the market during the period, and it was the only film with a box office of over 3 billion yuan. the second place in the summer box office list was "the silence" with 1.348 billion yuan, and "alien: taken" ranked third with just over 500 million yuan.as we bid farewell to summer, mao yu, deputy director of the film bureau of the publicity department of the cpc central committee, who is in charge of daily work, publicly stated: "since the beginning of the summer season, although about a hundred films have entered the market, the market performance has sounded the alarm for us. compared with the same period last year, the number of audiences and box office revenue have both dropped by 22%, highlighting the deep-seated and structural problems of chinese films. it can be said that the crisis has arrived and change is imminent." compared with those days of rapid progress, the 2024 summer season may be just a microcosm of the annual film market. chinese films have reached a time when they must break in order to build.breaking: the "algorithm" fails, and the audience is not staticlooking back at this year's summer season, there is no shortage of supply, with 135 new films released, basically the same as last year. there is no shortage of charismatic star actors, such as zhu yilong, yu shi, zhang ruoyun, and wang junkai, each with their own loyal fans. this summer, there is no shortage of famous directors and producers, with gu changwei, wuershan, xu zheng, and chen sicheng taking turns to bring domestically produced industrialized blockbusters such as "under the alien" and "decryption", but the overall box office performance is lower than expected.star effect, big director brand, industrial blockbuster... the "labels" and "algorithms" that used to make a movie a hit have all failed. where did the audience go? this "heavenly question" has replaced the pure discussion of the content of the movie and has become the most eye-catching topic of the summer season. in the view of yin hong, vice chairman of the china film association, the ultimate question that is more worthy of review and discussion than the box office is the issue of audience demand. "movies are always closely related to the audience." the audience has changed, and the social environment and psychological motivations for watching movies, as well as the chinese film market and the chinese film industry, will undergo new structural changes. before accumulating audience favor and meeting audience needs, chinese filmmakers must recognize both the overall audience and the needs of multiple audiences with differences. more importantly, "what the audience likes today will not be liked tomorrow. many blockbuster works are not calculated according to the original success model and success factors." yin hong said.the most direct reflection is the failure of the marketing routines inferred by the "algorithm". some netizens concluded that the praise group at the premiere, the pre-control of the comments by the self-media big v, and the "audience theater" at the roadshow have long seriously overdrawn the audience's trust in the quality of the film. how can a work find an audience and attract the audience to enter? after going through the so-called stage of winning by sinking marketing, at least today's answer is clear-rebuild the audience's trust. in other words, it is not easy to "control" the audience. chinese films need to keep up with the audience's aesthetic upgrades and demand upgrades and go to a higher level.li: return to the origin, starting with stories and innovationafter experiencing the hot expectations and relatively cold feedback of the summer season, a consensus is being reached: today's film competition is not a competition between film companies, but a competition with a variety of entertainment forms such as short videos, online games, online live broadcasts, vertical screen dramas, and virtual reality cultural tourism experiences. it is about how to make people think about the beauty of movies while enjoying the joy of traveling and having midnight snacks with friends. chinese films need to return to the origin of movies more than ever, starting with stories and innovations, and handing in works that can withstand the scrutiny of thousands of people and respect the voices of the audience.a good story is the origin of a movie. the relevant market insight report released by the lighthouse research institute mentioned that films with "plot" as the main type face new challenges: is the "reality" real enough? is the "tear-jerking" deliberately sensational? in the 2024 spring festival, "hot and sour" led by jia ling stood firm at the box office champion. the real "explosive" life experienced by the actors outside the play must be an important reason for driving people to go to the cinema. in contrast, the "warm realism" storytelling method of this summer season encountered the test of "whether it is deliberately sensational" and "whether the story is down to earth enough" from the audience.creation and innovation are the duty of movies. for more than 100 years, movies have been the product of iterations accompanying technological innovation. rao shuguang, president of the chinese film critics society, pointed out that innovation may have the pain of a transformation period. "but the future of chinese movies will definitely belong to explorers, innovators, and lone brave men. today's lone brave men will definitely have more like-minded people in the future."from this perspective, the success or failure of this summer movie season does not have to be judged solely by box office, because in this summer of movies, new directors create new content, new content brings new perceptions, new perceptions spark new scenes, and new scenes revolutionize new technologies."safe escape from the 21st century" takes the audience on a mind-blowing adventure in time and space; "decryption" creates an immersive historical time and space, allowing people to experience extraordinary audio-visual effects; "falling into the mortal realm" and "white snake: floating life" use new technologies to deeply cultivate the cultural charm of chinese aesthetics; "under the alien" combines live-action animation with artificial intelligence technology for the first time, leading people to step into the world of traditional chinese style aliens in the "second dimension" world...even the genre-defining films "catching dolls" and "the silence" were able to cross the 3 billion yuan and 1 billion yuan box office lines respectively, not just relying on the combination of "shen ma" and the suspenseful reversal. the "truman show" created by "catching dolls" and the bullying and counter-killing reflected in "the silence" are both "spectacles" reflecting real life and making micro-innovations in the genre.fu ruoqing, vice chairman of the china film association, secretary of the party committee and chairman of china film group corporation, said frankly: "the new force that chinese films are looking forward to is not limited by old words and old concepts; it should have the style and character of young people, not for fame and fortune, and without prejudice; it should respect the audience and protect the audience's trust in movies."
author: wang yan
text: wang yan photo: wang jingcheng editor: fan jing responsible editor: xing xiaofang
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