The entertainment industry shouldn't be like this

Chapter 176 A New Era of Animated Movies
This is the second time for Lin Yongqiang to participate in the Dunhuang screening, but his identity is quite different from the first time.

He has been promoted from a senior film reviewer at Sky Cinemas, the second largest theater chain in China, to the director of the film review department, and he is quite proud of his career.

And this is largely due to the blessing of Dunhuang.

Under his strong recommendation, Sky Cinemas has insisted on giving Dunhuang films a high ranking over the years, so it has gained a considerable share of the cake, and its market share has quickly approached the largest cinema in China.

Right now, Sky Cinemas and Dunhuang can be regarded as an open "honeymoon period".

However, this is not the main reason why he came to Dunhuang to participate in the screening of "Toy Story".

As a matter of fact, the industry can’t say that the animation film of Dunhuang is overwhelmingly unfavorable, but it is absolutely nonsense to say how many people believe that it can be as popular as Dunhuang’s live-action film.

Animated movies are different from live-action movies after all.

Although Dunhuang announced that it will present the audience with "the first 3D animation film in history", this title does not bring much attention to it.

After all, although [-]D animation has been used in special effects production, hand-painted [-]D animation still dominates the animation film market. Animators don’t even accept computer animation, and sometimes they even oppose the use of computer graphics and editing.

Nobody thought there would be a market for computer-generated animation.

Not to mention, the production cost announced by Dunhuang is as high as 8000 million yuan!
What is the concept of 8000 million for animated movies?
Let's put it this way, the animation film with the largest investment in Lianya Entertainment's history, if only the production is counted, it can't spend so much money.

How much box office does Dunhuang have to sell in order to recover the cost?
——This is the real reason why everyone sees this movie badly.

Because a cruel fact is that in the past five years, excluding the several blockbuster cartoons produced by Lianya Entertainment, the average domestic box office revenue of nearly 5000 cartoons released by mainstream film companies or famous independent directors is less than [-]. million yuan.

Therefore, in the animation industry, Lianya Entertainment is in China Entertainment, and Disney is in Hollywood. They are both dominant, and they all focus on mainstream [-]D ​​animation.

Lin Yongqiang knows what everyone thinks about Dunhuang's attempt this time - this movie is a failure, but it will not hurt Dunhuang, but it is just another proof of Lianya Entertainment's unshakable position in the animation industry .

The theater side is the most realistic. They will not waste resources on a movie that is destined to have no future just because the two parties are in the "honeymoon period".

However, Dunhuang wants to carry out in-depth joint marketing with Sky Cinemas on this movie, such as covering the film's surroundings with Sky Cinemas' sales department.

Therefore, Lin Yongqiang came to watch the film meeting in person.

After arriving, I found out that Dunhuang had not only invited moviegoers from theaters, but also representatives from chain restaurants, chain shopping malls, and many other businesses.

Lin Yongqiang couldn't help but narrowed his eyes.

This is interesting!

Dunhuang’s planned marketing and publicity activities for this animation film are quite extensive. From the invited merchants, it can be seen that it is not only aimed at families with children.

Of course, families with children must be put first. You can tell from the name that this is a cartoon suitable for children to watch.

The question is, does it really hold the interest of teens or adults?

Dunhuang obviously has this confidence, and the source of confidence can only be in the film.

With curiosity and anticipation, Lin Yongqiang soon ushered in the movie screening.

Then, he felt the magic of 3D animation on the big screen for the first time!
A group of cold toys in daily life suddenly "become smart", but they seem so real——

The delicate expressions of the characters created by the computer are difficult to achieve by hand.When they open their mouths, the mouth shape changes just like a real person, which can drive facial muscles to move, and then express complex and expressive expressions.

When watching the movie, the audience may not notice the large number of technical elements in it, and only feel that they are integrated with the movie.

Lin Yongqiang was shocked - it really pushed the animated film into a new era!

He doesn't think it's just because of technology—the fresh visual impact brought by technology generally only attracts the audience for 10 minutes, and then it depends on the wonderful plot to grab the audience.

At first glance, "Toy Story" is a very simple cartoon, but its storyline is not a simple binary opposition, the two protagonists are not perfect, there is no single truth in the story - growth, friendship, family It is the theme it wants to explore, which is particularly engaging.

"It's really surprising——Dunhuang's first family carnival animation film has done a great job of rendering a toy world full of joy and metaphors for the real society, all of which are within the size of a carnival story...Children , teens, and adults alike will appreciate the wit.”

"The real challenger of Lianya Entertainment has appeared!"

Lin Yongqiang silently commented in his heart.

The reactions of other audience members in the theater proved his point—no matter when Lin Yongqiang glanced over, no one was impatient or even dozed off.

After the screening, there was thunderous applause.

"This is simply amazing!"

Relying on his friendship and status, Lin Yongqiang immediately came to director Gu Xiji and producer Wang Wei to express his congratulations, "You have brought an epoch-making animation film, how did you do it?"

Wang Wei made a "please" gesture and gave up the stage to Gu Xiji.

The latter is also not humble: "In fact, the production process of "Toy Story" is far more complicated than imagined..."

——It also burns more money!

Wang Wei answered silently in his heart.

If counting from the initial birth of the production idea, it took more than three years before "Toy Story" was fully produced.

Although the production cost of publicity was 8000 million, the real cost was in the early 7000 million. Well, this was more than 1000 million more than the initial budget.

This is on the premise that he has reduced a lot of preliminary work.

In fact, the animation production processes in China and abroad are similar, and they are divided into pre, middle and post.

The early stage is story creation, character, scene and prop design, storyboard setting, etc. Generally speaking, the early stage often accounts for more than 40% of the budget of a mature animated feature film.

And because of a certain hook, the creative team of "Toy Story" took a lot of detours in the early stage from scratch, but in the end it still exceeded the budget a lot. There are many reasons.

One is that after Gu Xiji joined the team as a leader, he greatly expanded the team and accelerated the pace of advancement from the mid-term.

This is why Wang Wei specifically asked Gu Xiji to be the director——

The animation technicians originally recruited are very good at using computers to create [-]D models for characters, scenes, and props, but it is difficult for them to carry out mature movie lens design.

Wang Wei didn't have a hand to guide - even if he was free, his experience in animation production would not be considered rich; at this time, Gu Xiji's leadership role was reflected.

At the stage of arranging the characters and props into the scene, using the virtual camera to shoot different shots, and capturing the emotional atmosphere and the key points of the story, he can think of the frame of the shot, stipulate the position of the camera, and arrange each camera position;
In order to achieve the realistic effect of live-action movies, he even imitated the unique lenses of live-action movies, such as the circular lens, which is used to shoot the scene where the protagonist is surrounded by toys and blames.

After the first and mid-terms are completed, it’s time for post-rendering (finally expressing light effects and materials), that is, the stage of “expenses are burning every second”——

剧组需要用200多台电脑24小时不间断工作，完成一个画面的渲染需要45分钟到20小时不等；每周，剧组只能以完成四5分钟片段制作的速度在推进。

And this is relatively fast in the industry, because the crew is willing to spend money on equipment and technology.

——Technological progress, this is what makes Wang Wei most happy.

Needless to say, the core rendering technology, the rendering tool developed for this film, in the words of Jiang Lei, a Weibo technology leader, said: "Even if we include our counterparts on the other side of the Pacific, our technology is also the most advanced. !"

In addition, the new modeling technology and mesh subdivision technology also gave Wang Wei a lot of surprises.

- Previous CG special effects and 3D models in video games were drawn with polygons, which made the surfaces of some characters look rough.

But if you look at the characters in "Toy Story" in Dunhuang, you will find that the hands of the characters are as smooth as human hands - in Wang Wei's impression, this is the improvement of Pixar in the other world, probably only in "Toy Story 2" .

These large and small animation technologies can be applied to the production of CG special effects in live-action movies without hindrance. In a sense, this is the greatest value of developing this "Toy Story".

This is why Comrade Wang, who has always hated overspending, didn't make too much noise when making additional investments—this is technical infrastructure, and it's not that it can't be reused.

At this time, Gu Xiji's brief introduction came to an end, and this fellow was not shy about boasting: "... We all say that the more you know about its production process, the more you admire it."

"I'm speechless." Lin Yongqiang said, "It's really amazing. Only after seeing all this can you understand what it means."

——In fact, Wang Wei suspects that he doesn't understand technology at all.

However, this does not affect his realization that he is not only watching an animated film, but also participating in the history of creating animated films.

"We want to make sure that more people see all of this. Sky Cinemas will make this movie one of the main movies in the summer, and there is no problem for its peripheral products to be stationed in our sales department counters." Lin Yongqiang made a decisive decision and gave best promise.

Because he noticed that other film viewing representatives, including business representatives, also sensed business opportunities and discussed cooperation with people in Dunhuang.

"By the way, you'd better prepare more goods, otherwise I'm afraid that the peripherals of this movie will be sold out." Lin Yongqiang did not forget to remind.

This is enough to show that he has a strong prediction of the movie's popularity.

Wang Wei and Gu Xiji looked at each other and smiled: "You can rest assured on this point, the supply of peripheral products is as much as you want."

Lin Yongqiang couldn't help but look sideways.

They dare to say this, "as much as you want", which shows that they have already included the surrounding production into the overall plan.

——Otherwise, drawing, design, sample making, finished product, launch... For a new toy, it will take at least a few months to go through this set of processes.

And even though he has already seen the movie, Lin Yongqiang couldn't help but want to complain——

"How much confidence do you have in this movie of yours!"

……

　There is another update today, before [-] pm~~~
　　
　
(End of this chapter)