Chapter 150: Conflict of Ideas

The use of animation works to market products has been regarded as a regular promotional method in the industry in later generations. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

For example, in the 21st century, Japan's animation industry is difficult to make profits, but the production committees of major animation works are still springing up, and the main factor is that the investors of major animations have no illusion of making money by relying on animation copyrights themselves, but are counting on animation to drive peripheral sales. In particular, the sales of the original works of anime are the biggest beneficiaries of anime broadcasting.

After the animation broadcast has driven the popularity of the original work, it has often promoted the explosive growth of the efficiency of some original works, and the sales of tens of thousands of single episodes of a single book have skyrocketed to 100,000 or even hundreds of thousands, and the popularity of some animations can even push the sales of the original work to a height of hundreds of thousands or even more than one million copies per volume. Therefore, the animation industry in Japan generally adopts a production committee system, that is, first find investors to raise funds and set up a production committee, and then the production committee finds a professional animation production company, or temporarily sets up a team dedicated to anime.

For example, some production committees were set up by companies that held the rights to manga and novels, and in order to expand their profits, they began to invest in animation again.

Even popular manga like "Dragon Ball", "Saint Seiya", "Naruto", and "One Piece", although they were already very popular works before the anime adaptation, still need to rely on anime to maintain their popularity and stimulate the sales of single books to record highs.

Most of the popular works in light novels, such as "Haruhi Suzumiya" and "Catalogue of Forbidden Books of Magic", were created after anime adaptations.

These use of animation to stimulate the sales of the original work are only relatively easy to achieve, and the effect can be seen immediately, and the investment risk is now controllable.

As for using animation to stimulate the sales of figures, toys and the like, this risk and opportunity coexist, and it is easy to cause double losses in animation and peripherals.

But...... The reason why the industry has been trying to develop anime peripheral figures, toys, clothing and various products has been made later. Or is it because there have been a bunch of successful cases.

For example, the success story of Transformers and mini 4WDs in the 80s inspired waves of investors to replicate the miracle!

……

Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio.

After receiving the intention of cooperation, we quickly invited the backbone creative personnel in the factory to the conference room according to the requirements of Xindian Toy Company.

"Guys, I'm an amateur when it comes to animating. Liang Fei said in Mandarin with a Cantonese accent, "But, as a viewer, I think I should have my own voice." Our company, as the vulgar one puts it, is a company that is purely oriented towards commercial interests and market profits. The purpose of any investment is to make a profit. Your artistic level at Shangmei Film is very high, and you are the first in the world in ink animation, and you can get international acclaim. But...... We're not asking for artistic acclaim, and we're not uncommon for us to win awards. Any international award is meaningless if it does not bring us profit. How to balance art and business, our view is that it is more focused on business. And if you continue to create animations for the sake of art and education, then we don't think there's any need for collaboration. To use an inappropriate analogy, why did the BBC terminate the investment in "Book from Heaven"? Although I don't know the inside story, I feel that you have won artistically, but you have not been recognized commercially, so you have lost your investment!"

"Mr. Liang, our "Strange Tales from the Sky" is similar to the script provided by the BBC, except that we can find similar stories directly in the classical Chinese classics, without using their rigid plot ......" Wang Shuchen, one of the directors of "Strange Tales from the Heavens", strongly expressed his opinion.

"Do you think your adaptation is better? Wrong! "Book from Heaven" is adapted from "The Legend of the Ping Demon", according to international copyright conventions, the copyright will not be protected for 50 years after the author's death. Luo Guanzhong's Ming Dynasty people have been dead for hundreds of years. You don't have to pay royalties for adapting his copyright, but people all over the world can use these classical masterpieces to adapt their works for free. The value of this kind of non-exclusive copyright work is greatly reduced in capitalist countries!" Liang Fei said, "Even if their scripts are even worse, the copyright of the plot and character settings is theirs! Exclusive copyright can form a monopoly business, and the benefits are definitely higher than that of adapting from ancient masterpieces!"

Some of the artists present frowned a little, but they did not walk away.

In the early days of reform and opening up, China's first exchanges and cooperation with the rest of the world was culture and sports. Films, animations and other arts continue to be exhibited, as well as sports events continue to win gold medals. In essence, it is just to show its face and make China have a presence in the international community.

Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, since its establishment, has won countless awards. But in the early 80s, Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio also deeply felt the feeling of being really hard to have no money. It is precisely for this reason that Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio is one of the first to try to use its own resources to attract overseas capital investment, so as to revitalize its resources. Whether or not to make money is secondary, the key is the investment of foreign capital, at least so that most of the idle labor force of the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio can have something to do.

For example, "Strange Tales from the Sky" was originally approached by the British BBC company to come up with a script and asked Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio to do it. But Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio found that this plot was similar to a certain plot in the ancient Chinese novel "The Legend of the Ping Demon", so it adapted the script according to the plot in the better plot of "The Legend of the Ping Demon", and slapped the BBC in the face with the new script.

The BBC representative gave a thumbs up and said you're great, but the script was submitted to the BBC parent company and never followed. Later, the BBC's funds never arrived, but the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio advanced funds to make some preliminary preparations, so the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio was forced to invest in "Strange Tales from the Sky" on its own.

Although the adaptation of "Strange Tales from the Book of Heaven" is quite successful, it is mainly popular in China, and internationally, there is no market for Chinese ink animation in this era.

Even in the 80s, when the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio was prolific, its creative concept was still detached from the educational significance.

The reason why this is so is because the environment in which Chinese animation was born is that the country is backward and beaten, and it is turbulent, so the huge crisis and anxiety make the predecessors of the Chinese animation industry try to educate and enlighten the people through animation. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it strengthened the fact that cartoons became the vassals of educational films, educating young children, rather than satisfying the entertainment needs of the public.

This emphasis on "edutainment" was correct in the past, but as the country gradually stabilized, the people's demand was more for entertainment and relaxation.

Domestic animation is not entertaining enough, so after the country opened, the market was quickly occupied by overseas animation. The occupation of the animation market also means that a large number of overseas peripheral goods are pouring into China.

It wasn't until the end of the 90s that some Chinese companies realized the significance of animation for the promotion of merchandise. Haier even invested in a "Haier Brothers" animation, and Aofei began to try to imitate the route of the Tiangong model.

However, the animation of "Haier Brothers" was successful, after promoting the Haier brand. Haier even replaced the company's brand logo with the character image in the animation. However, this investment only required one time, so Haier never invested in brand animation again.

Ao Fei is a bit of a pity, because the road ahead has been preempted by the Tiangong model. The profits of the mini four-wheel drive market during the hottest period have been earned by the Tiangong model. By the time Alpha began to decide to make mini four-wheel drives, the market had passed its peak and gradually began to decline.

"General Manager Liang is right!" a leader of Shanghai Film stood up and said, "This is very much in line with the spirit of reform and opening up of the central government." Our Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio was established almost in the same era as Disney, and the original level was half a catty and half a tael, they have Western animation, and we have the world's unparalleled ink animation. But why is it that by now, they are international giants with a scale of 10 billion dollars, not to mention not even one percent of Disney's, no, one thousandth! Even if we take into account the economic gap between China and the United States, it is not so far as to be so disparity? So...... There must have been problems with the business ideas and creative concepts of our Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio in the past, and how long has it been since Hong Kong's new start-up company was established? It has only been three years! However, the speed of their development is rare in the world, and there are many economists who believe that the scale of entrepreneurial electronics in the future will surpass that of Disney, and it will not even be too long! Comrades, now that Mr. Liang has given us insufficient guidance, we should be humbly taught, instead of being angry and ruined when we are pointed out that we are deficient, and we have an expression of being an expert, you know what a fart!

The audience suddenly burst into a cheerful smile.

After the tension is gone.

Liang Fei and others also breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Okay, let's get down to business, the animation we are going to do now needs to be adapted according to the comic "Four-wheel Drive Heroes". There are some passionate and inspirational pictures and lines in the comics, which are very original...... Since there is not much to refer to in Hong Kong's animation industry, it is recommended to refer to some of Japan's most popular sports comics and animation creations in recent years...... Our boss, Mr. Lin Qi, joked that in addition to the professionalism of Japanese sports manga and animation, the exaggerated hysterical and completely irrational commentary of the onlookers commentators, as well as the shock of the audience, yes, shocked, shocked, continue to shock, the audience was shocked, the peripheral audience watching TV was shocked, and the industry experts were shocked, however, different people's characters issued a series of hysterical commentary comments, this kind of fans who seem to be brain-dead, how crazy in reality, will not be crazy to such a point. Even if there are brain-dead fans who are so crazy, it is impossible for the whole world to be so shocked, but ...... Our boss Lin Qi commented that anime with the theme of Japanese sports competition, as long as you learn to be shocked by bystanders, you are already getting started. If you add some inspirational literary drama to set off, then it will be even better...... Here, the original work we provide may be insufficient, so it is recommended to take out the Japanese manga "Soccer Player" to learn the use of some scenes to set off the atmosphere. That's right...... We can also collect some of the live sports programs on Japanese TV, and it will be very meaningful to take the ones that have no reference meaning, and select some of the commentators' nonsense and crazy hysterical commentary as a reference. ”

Astound!

This trick is not only a common trick in Japanese sports-themed anime, in fact, those comics in Japan have affected their sports commentary, so that some sports commentaries in reality are also full of commentators, and their tone is exaggerated like those fools in the anime watching, so that the more entertaining commentary is easier to gain popularity.

In contrast, the commentary of sports events in China is as serious as the news, and although it is very professional, it makes people feel dry. In the later age of the Internet, people are even more willing to watch unofficial commentary.

Regarding, Japanese manga and some sports program videos, Shinden Toys Company has also prepared. The techniques in the comics, such as the anime adapted from "Soccer Player", have not yet been released, but the comics alone are enough for people to learn a lot of skills to set off the atmosphere. Of course, this is a reference, so that the creative staff of Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio can open their eyes, rather than directly plagiarize.

As for the comic "Four-wheel Drive Heroes", although there are also many successful commercial elements, there are still many shortcomings. It is precisely because of its imperfection that it is necessary to collect some Japanese anime and sports commentary videos from Japan as material to borrow some entertainment.

Since Xindian Toy Company is a rich man, the creative staff of Shangmei Film naturally have to listen to the instructions of the rich man and continue to make up classes.

Seeing these materials for the first time, many creators can't help but feel "live for a long time", especially in live sports events, so full of nonsense, don't you feel ashamed? But I have to admit that its effect on the atmosphere is indeed unique. In terms of entertainment, Japanese sports commentary does have merit to be evaluated.

The Japanese commentaries and anime are very entertaining, and there is no emphasis on any educational significance. However, after ...... "Football Player", the wind of football blew in Japan, and a large number of teenagers devoted themselves to football, which greatly improved the level of football in Japan later.

Like "Slam Dunk", an entertainment work was a big hit and inspired the basketball craze in Japan. "Chess Soul" is an unpopular game of Go, which has attracted a large number of fans......

It is precisely for this reason that it is first based on the meaning of entertainment, and does not preach at all. As long as the work of a certain theme is popular, it will inevitably form a kind of orientation. deliberately wanting to "educate and entertain" makes the work not popular, and few audiences are willing to watch it, so who is it to educate?

"For animation, let's try to do 3 episodes first. Liang Fei said, "The level of 3 episodes lays the foundation for the overall situation, and you can't be sloppy." After that, it's broadcast on TV, and the ...... is changed while the broadcast"

"This ......," said an animator "Mr. Liang may not understand the animation production process, a one-second animation, if it is a movie animation, has to do 24 frames, and the middle of each frame is very laborious." TV animation was simplified to 12 frames, which reduced the cost and production cycle, but it still couldn't be made so quickly. An episode is more than 20 minutes, which means more than 10,000 original animation manuscripts. And that's not counting the scrapped drafts......"

Liang Fei said in his heart, no wonder you can't find Japanese people to do animation. 10,000 copies per episode, even if it is $10 per picture, it means that an episode of animation is more than $100,000. Chinese animators, 1 painting does not even need 1 dollar, about a few dozen yuan to more than 100 yuan per month, at most the benefits are good, the unit can pay a little subsidy to employees.

The budget was $1 million, and even if post-production was included, the 48-episode animation industry wouldn't be able to use that much budget. The extra is naturally the profit of Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio. It can be said that this list alone is enough to feed thousands of employees and retired workers of the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio for one year.

But the problem is a matter of speed......

"Even at the rate of one episode a day, we mobilized the whole factory, and we couldn't meet the demand for broadcasting...... "The animator gushes......

"Wait...... What is one episode a day?" Liang Fei said, "It's one episode a week! One episode a day, let you finish watching it in one go, throw it away after watching it, and find a new animation to watch? That would be a great loss of commercial interests! One episode a week, 48 episodes can be released for a year! The time is long enough to maintain the popularity, so as to more effectively promote peripheral goods! Who told you that you must show one episode a day, it is because you don't understand the market!"