According to Lily, Helena is a very good applied mathematician, having done market research and analysis for large companies such as General Electric and IBm.

It's just that she is a bit withdrawn, unsociable, and likes to work alone, so after receiving her PhD from ucLa in June, she has not been able to find a suitable job.

So Shen Chong gave her a house, a high salary, and the right to work freely, recruited her to Hong Kong, and asked her to cooperate with Fei Xiaodie to start a market research company similar to nRg.

nRg is a private market research company that was not known to the public until the ubiquitous Internet of information arrived.

nRg has exclusive service contracts with all six major Hollywood film companies, and its telephone survey is the standard reference for major companies to arrange movie schedules.

When a film's schedule conflicts with a competitor that attracts the same audience, the relevant studios can see the early warning information provided by nRg, compare the film's appeal among the core audience, predict in advance which film will lose the competition, and the losing film will be rescheduled—even if the new schedule is not ideal, but it is better than losing both.

It was because of a few turmoil that Shen Chong knew about the existence of nRg.

In 2oo2, Miramax is preparing to perform "Gangs of New York" and DreamWorks is preparing to perform "Impunity", both of which are starring Leonardo DiCaprio, both of which are ready to be released on Christmas Day on December 25.

Then nRg came out with a warning that the main audience for the two films was male viewers over the age of 25, and in this group, the competitiveness of the two films was almost the same.

So DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg flew to New York to have breakfast with Miramax's owner, Harvey Weinstein, and after several heated arguments, Miramax compromised and moved the screening forward by 5 days, on December 2o.

Afterwards, in an interview with the New York Times, Katzenberg said, "It's not good for us to show it on the same day...... Because both companies have invested a lot of money in Leonardo DiCaprio. ”

July 4, 2oo5, Independence Day, is the prime time in the summer season, on this day, Paramount wants to release "War of the Worlds", Warner Bros. wants to release "Batman Prequel", and Twentieth Century Fox wants to release "Fantastic Four".

However, according to nRg's warning, the main audience for the three films is teenagers under the age of 25, and in this group, they are about the same, but because of Tom Cruise's superstar aura, "War of the Worlds" will also attract a large number of female audiences.

So according to the competitive rankings, "War of the Worlds" got the right to release on July 4, "Batman Prequel" was moved to June 15, and "Fantastic Four" was moved to July 8, avoiding fierce competition, and the box office success of all three films was huge.

Therefore, since the establishment of nRg in 1978, Hollywood has basically not had a scene of blockbuster confrontation with similar positioning and similar themes.

The plot of heaven and thunder against earth and fire, and ace against ace is only suitable for novels, not for businessmen.

In addition to providing "Competitive Positioning" reports to help film companies avoid unnecessary conflicts, nRg also provides data analysis such as film and music, film and television, film and videotape, film and streaming, etc., which can help Hollywood studios revise industry rules and better adapt to the changing times.

In Hong Kong, there is a blank area of research......

You know, whether the content is valuable or not depends entirely on what kind of users it is aimed at, a kung fu movie is a gluttonous meal for men in their twenties, and an annoying noise for women in their fifties and sixties.

In Hollywood, film companies do things that are very targeted, and do everything possible to drive the main target audience to the cinema, but in Hong Kong, film companies do business, which is to advertise it widely, without any purpose, just put up posters and yell in the crowd - my movie is released, come and see!

Hollywood seems to be meticulous farming, where to plant potatoes, where to plant wheat, clearly, and then according to different seeds, apply different fertilizers, maximize the harvest of fruits.

Hong Kong is like a lazy man farming, scattering a handful of seeds and pouring a bunch of fertilizer, as for what grows, whether it grows well or not, it depends on whether God appreciates his face or not......

Of course, this is related to the narrow and lack of competitiveness of the Hong Kong film market, and the film companies lie in the dream of a seller's market, fantasizing that as long as they are screened, there will always be income, and they will not bother to do audience positioning analysis.

At the same time, Hong Kong does not have the same film peripheral industry chain as the United States, and even if there is audience positioning analysis, it is impossible to find advertising media for this group.

For example, "Chasing Girls", the positioning is very clear, it is a group of young couples, but in Hong Kong, there are no newspapers and magazines for this group, and if you want to advertise, you have to spend a lot of money and publish newspapers and magazines with large sales, which is inefficient and wasteful.

However, it is not very useful now, it does not mean that it will not be useful in the future, Shaw Brothers Jiahe can lie down and dream, Shen Chong can't, with the development of his plan, in the future, in the land of Hong Kong, there will definitely be a lot of film companies, do not arrange in advance, get a market research company like nRg to do schedule coordination, and then the internal friction will be very strict.

The Hong Kong Cinema Chamber of Commerce is extremely weak, except for box office statistics, there is nothing else to do, Shen Chong is very dissatisfied with this, this market research company, if it becomes bigger and stronger, can form an invisible alliance to replace the cinema chamber of commerce, so that he can eliminate those garbage film companies.

However, market research companies are not so easy to do well, and they also need to cooperate with sociologists and psychologists, and in this regard, Shen Chong asked Fei Xiaodie to cooperate with several universities in Hong Kong.

Fei Xiaodie was originally the accountant of the magazine, and when "Film Times" cooperated with the Hong Kong Cinema Association to count and sort out the box office numbers of Hong Kong movies over the years, the editors were reluctant to do this work, so she recommended herself to do this, which attracted Shen Chong's attention.

After a trip to Guangzhou and a trip to Taipei, Shen Chong came to two experiences.

First: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, under its own, has a lot of talents.

Second: Even the famous and successful people in the previous life may not be reliable.

So when the investigation company was established, Shen Chong didn't bother to find the celebrities in his memory, but simply promoted Fei Xiaodie, and then recruited Helena from the United States.

Market research companies will play a huge role in the future long after, and Shen Chong's main energy at present is how to shoot his film debut.

Li Ka-shing is about to swallow Hutchison Whampoa, so he put almost all the funds in his hands into the stock market, and frantically acquired Hutchison Whampoa stocks, so throughout September, Shen Chong had no money, no money, he couldn't toss other things, and he just used this gap to concentrate on filming "Buried Alive".

In order to get in touch with as many aspects of the film as possible, Shen Chong decided to do everything from shooting equipment rental, to crew member recruitment, to post-editing production.

In the script of "Buried Alive", Shen Chong wrote a general skeleton, Chen Yunwen added a lot of emotional scenes, Qiu Gangjian added a lot of connotations, and Jin Shijie, who came to Hong Kong with him, is now nesting in the hotel, thinking of adding a humorous skin to these contents.

Shen Chong admits that he has no sense of humor and no ability to participate in the script, so he goes to prepare other aspects of the movie.

The filming location is very easy to solve, Shen Chong directly found the Great Wall Film Studio, and after the cooperation of "The Legend of the White Witch" and the sharing of weal and woe in the mainland, borrowing a studio is completely a piece of cake.

The props of "Buried Alive" are also very simple, a coffin, a knife, a lighter, a telephone, these things, with Li Tang here, they can be done in two or three days.

A little bit of trouble is the telephone.

It's not difficult to make a telephone that can light in the dark, but the question is, will it be easy to track down when you make a call from a landline? If everyone can track it, then the movie loses its suspense.

For this reason, after Shen Chong returned from the mainland, he went to the Dadong Telegraph Office in Hong Kong and consulted with several telecommunications engineers.

Founded in 186o, Tung Telegraph is one of the major telephone service providers in Hong Kong.

According to the consultation, most of the telephone lines in Hong Kong are buried deep underground, and if you want to track them, you can only enter the company's computer room and check the records in the program-controlled digital switchboard, which is not difficult for professionals, but it is difficult for ordinary people to do, and even if you want to track it, you need the authorization of the judge first.

Such an answer made Shen Chong feel at ease, since ordinary people can't do it, things are easy to do, just make up a high-tech illusory thing such as a signal jammer, and set the landline phone in "Buried Alive" to be untraceable, anyway, the audience has always had a high tolerance for all kinds of high-tech gadgets.

Then he also got the unexpected news that the Dadong Telegraph Office had eliminated a batch of old-fashioned door-to-air program-controlled telephone exchanges last year and dumped them in warehouses to be sold as scrap.

That's a great business opportunity!

Shen Chong was in the mainland, suffering from long-distance telephone communication, and he made a phone call in Huangshan to Shenzhen, which took three days.

The mainland still uses the old manual wiring method, and making long-distance phone calls is a laborious and time-consuming physical work.

Call the long distance first, you have to register first, tell the operator, want to call which city which unit, the operator in accordance with the order of registration one by one manual pick-up, if there are many people, have to wait for several hours, wait for it, but also to see if the line is busy, if busy, can not connect, wait again......

Shen Chong was in Tunxi County, and he waited for three days, which was not as fast as the telegram.

Although the door-to-air program-controlled telephone exchange has long been outdated, it is still a good thing for the mainland and can be used.

The profits of the telecommunications business are so huge that even a party like Shen Chong can't help but be moved......

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