Zhang Ran's eyes swept around the classroom, and when he saw a girl raising her hand high and shaking it, he pointed at her: "Come, this classmate, introduce yourself, and then tell everyone the answer!"

The girl stood up, with a flush of excitement on her face, and said excitedly: "Hello Mr. Zhang! My name is Bao Whale, and I am a student of Nortel's Department of Literature! Midas is the king of Phrygia in Greek mythology, greedy for wealth, and asked God to give him the spell to turn things into gold, and God fulfilled his wish, and finally even his beloved daughter and food were turned into gold because of his fingers. He couldn't live, so he had to pray to God again and everything was back to the way it was. ”

Hearing the name Bao Whale, Zhang Ran felt familiar, thought about it for a while, and suddenly remembered who she was, the screenwriter of "Thirty-three Days of Broken Love". In the last life, after the film was released on Singles' Day in 2011, it caused a sensation and achieved a box office of nearly 200 million, becoming a masterpiece of Chinese chick movies.

Zhang Ran nodded at Bao Whale and said approvingly: "That's right, Midas represents turning stones into gold, and the Midas formula is Hollywood's formula for turning stones into gold." Now I'm going to talk about this formula, in recent years, there have been more and more Hollywood blockbusters, the global box office has been getting higher and higher, and there are more and more movies that exceed a billion dollars. Hollywood has come up with a formula for these billion-dollar films, and this formula is known as the Midas formula, which consists of nine elements. First, the film should be based on a fairy tale, comic, anime, best-seller, or an amusement park theme like Pirates of the Caribbean. ”

Speaking of this, Zhang Ran paused, looked at the students in the audience and asked, "Now I want to ask everyone, why is this so important? In addition, let's talk about whether there is such a comic suitable for making a blockbuster in our country, or is it? Who will tell me?"

The students in the audience raised their hands in an uproar, and the whole classroom seemed to grow a forest of arms.

A boy stood up after being hit by Zhang Ran: "Hello Mr. Zhang! I'm Cao Rui, a major in Asian film production, I think so, comics and best-selling works themselves have a huge fan base, such as "Harry Potter" has thousands of fanatical fans, and these fans have spending power that cannot be underestimated. Fans who put these works on the big screen will definitely come into the cinema to support, but the quality of the movie is not too bad, and the box office will definitely be a hit. Our domestic works are suitable for adaptation into blockbusters, and I think it is quite appropriate to have "Zhu Xian" and "Ghost Blowing the Lamp". ”

Zhang Ran felt that this student had a good vision, and nodded with a smile: "Very well, commercial blockbusters are very expensive and risky, and if a blockbuster fails, then the company may go bankrupt, and there are many examples of this kind in Hollywood; The copyrights of "Zhu Xian" and "Ghost Blowing the Lantern" mentioned by Cao Rui just now are in the hands of the peak of the century, and in the next four or five years, the two will definitely be put on the big screen, and everyone here may be able to participate in it at that time. ”

Many of the students present liked "Zhu Xian" and "Ghost Blowing the Lamp", and when they heard this, they immediately became excited. If these two films are handed over to other companies, there is a great possibility that they will be filmed, but it will definitely be no problem to let the peak of the century shoot them.

Zhang Ran continued: "Let's go back to the Midas formula, the second of the formula is that the movie has children or teenagers as the protagonists. Third, the movie should have a fairytale-like story framework, in which the protagonist was originally a weak young man who went through hardships and changes, and finally found the direction of life and became a powerful hero. Then my question arises again, why is the protagonist a child or a teenager, why should there be a fairy-tale story structure?"

A student stood up and replied: "Teenagers in the United States are the main movie-watching group and the main force of the box office, and the most important schedule of the year is the summer vacation, because students have a lot of time to watch movies." ”

Zhang Ran was very satisfied with this answer: "I'll give you a statistic from last year, North America, audiences under the age of 18 accounted for 24% of the total number of moviegoers, and young people aged 18-24 accounted for 22%, and the two combined, the number of moviegoers reached 46%, and if you catch these two groups, you will catch nearly half of the audience." Now my question comes again, what age group is the main movie-watching audience in China, and is there any difference between it and the United States?"

There were silences, some pondering, some whispering, but no one raised their hands, they never considered the question, and they didn't know what the answer was.

This result was expected by Zhang Ran, so he said: "Some of you here are studying directing, filmmaking, and screenwriting, and you definitely want to make movies in the future, but if you don't even know the most basic questions about who the audience is, where they are, how many people they have, and what they like, then how can you make commercial films that are popular with the audience? The reason why Chinese commercial films can't get up together is that our directors have never really considered the audience and don't know what the audience wants to see." Let me tell you the answer, according to the survey results of Century Peak, Chinese audiences aged 18-25 account for 36% of the total moviegoers, audiences aged 18 to 30 account for 53%, and audiences aged 18 to 40 account for 87%. ”

Zhang Ran's words were a bit deafening, not only the students, but even the teachers in the front row, Zheng Dongtian, and the others fell into deep thought.

Zhang Ran continued: "Continuing with the Midas formula, the fourth point is that the relationship between the sexes is relatively chaste, there are no excessive nudity, hints of playfulness, no provocative language, and no intimate scenes with sexual innuendo. Everyone knows that this is for classification at a glance, and there is no way to get PG or PG-13 ratings if there is nudity or pornography, so that child audiences can not see the movie, and the movie-watching crowd is one less piece, and now PG and PG-13 films in the North American market have become the mainstream ...... of commercial films"

At this moment, Zhang Ran saw a boy in the third row raise his hand high, as if there was something wrong, so he stopped and asked, "This classmate, do you have any questions?"

After the boy stood up, he looked at Zhang Ran and asked: "Teacher Zhang, you just talked about grading, I especially want to ask you, we have been talking about the grading problem in our country for many years, but it has not been realized, when do you think we will be able to achieve grading?"

Hearing this, everyone at the scene, whether it was a student or a teacher, stared at Zhang Ran, the topic of establishing a film classification system has been talked about for almost 20 years, although there have been a lot of rumors, but in the end it was still difficult to give birth, so everyone wants to hear Zhang Ran's opinion.

After all, Zhang Ran is now the standard-bearer of Chinese films, and he must have a deeper understanding of this matter!

Zhang Ran looked at everyone's expectant eyes and said slowly: "I think the grading will definitely be realized, and at the same time, I think it will be impossible to achieve it in the short term." Why is it so difficult to classify? This involves a concept, that is, the question of what exactly a movie is, whether it is an ideological tool or an entertainment commodity? For many years, China has been calling for the abolition of censorship and the implementation of classification, but it has never been realized, because the government departments do not regard movies as commodities but as ideological tools and propaganda tools, and since they are ideological tools, they must be firmly in their own hands. Until this mindset changes, censorship will not disappear and grading will not be possible. When will this concept be reversed? Only when China's film market is fully marketized and industrialized! We know that censorship will inevitably suppress film creation, and because of the restrictions imposed by censorship, it will inevitably lead to an excessively narrow film genre, and the larger the scale of the film industry, the greater the hindrance effect of censorship, and at this time, the industry will force censorship to carry out reforms. Chinese films have carried out two major reforms so far, the cancellation of unified purchase and sales in 93 and the reform of cinemas in 02, both of which are the result of the industry's reversal. Censorship, like grading, can only be promoted through industry! If anyone thinks that shouting slogans will mean that the government will abolish censorship and implement grading, that can only be said to be too naïve!"

The teachers and students present all had a sense of sudden realization, and they admired Zhang Ran's gaze even more, worthy of Teacher Zhang, who saw this problem very thoroughly!

The issue of classification is too complicated, Zhang Ran didn't want to talk about it, so he returned to the topic: "The fifth point of Midas's formula is that the conflict scenes depicted in the movie, where the scenes are big, and the special effects are dazzling, but they must not be particularly realistic and bloody." This is also for grading, so I won't say much. Sixth, there must be a character that is suitable for toys and licenses, and this is for the development of derivative products such as clothing, toys, and games, and there is nothing to say. The seventh point, which I think is particularly important, is to elaborate on it, and the seventh point is that the movie has a happy ending, and in the end the hero always has to defeat the villain or the supernatural forces.

We know that the most essential power of movies is to create dreams, and for the audience, watching movies is to fulfill his dreams that he can't realize in real life, we just said that the protagonist of the movie is a child or teenager, and this is done to meet the sense of substitution of young audiences. When the audience's dream comes true in the movie, they will feel happy and happy, so a happy ending must be arranged in the end. When we watch Hollywood blockbusters, the heroes often end very well, and there is often a scene at the end where the wife and children are waiting for the protagonist, hugging and kissing. But due to the long-term influence of art film thinking by our domestic directors, many of the protagonists of the movie are particularly distorted characters, and the ending is often tragic, such as the commercial film directed by Zhang Yimou, the ending of "Hero" The male protagonist died namelessly, and the remnant sword Feixue also died; the heroine of "Ambush on All Sides" died, not to mention "Golden Armor", people died almost; For ordinary audiences, my life is very tired and hard, and watching movies is for entertainment and relaxation, but you make me so gloomy and dark, I am looking for abuse?

A film like "Golden Armor" is too distorted and depressing, and no big company in Hollywood will invest in it. I'll tell you a real thing, last year I invested in a movie called "Black Swan", which was just finished recently. The director is Darren Aronofsky, who won the Golden Lion in Venice last year, and the heroine is Natalie Portman. Darren originally handed over the shooting plan to Universal Pictures, hoping that they would invest, but he never passed Universal's green light system. I met Darren last year, and after reading the script, I invested. Not long ago, I chatted with the manager of Universal Pictures, and when I talked about this movie, they told me that the story is indeed a good story, very exciting, and has connotation, but it is too depressing, and it is very uncomfortable after watching it, and such a movie will not be very good at the box office. Therefore, you must remember that you can't be too depressed when making commercial films, and try to arrange a happy ending, even if the ending is a tragedy, you must give people hope!"

The classroom was silent, only Zhang Ran's voice echoed. Whether it was a student from Nortel, a student from Yaying, a student from the directing department, or a literature student from the literature department, they all listened quietly, and they were deeply attracted by Zhang Ran's explanation.