In the remaining days, the filming went smoothly. Cheng Long invited Xiao Ran to the premiere of "Dragon Brothers and Tiger Brothers", and at the same time, "Eight Star Announcement" passed the midnight test screening and officially premiered.
These two powerful New Year films will become popular in the prime time slot...
On the opening day, "Brothers of the Dragon" beat "The Good News" by a long way, but in the second week, "The Good News" immediately caught up. The former's final box office was 35 million, while
"Eight Stars Announcement" relied on its strong staying power to knock out Cheng Long's film, earning about one million more, breaking Hong Kong's historical box office record.
"Eight Stars Announcement", which Xiao Ran personally wrote the script and directed, became an instant hit. Even Ming Pao Weekly sent Liang Jiabao for another detailed interview. It was this film that made Xiao Ran a blockbuster, and Huang Baiming regretted it to his guts.
He was already green, and now he wished he could catch Xiao Ran immediately and take him back to Xinyi City.
In an interview with Ming Pao Weekly, Xiao Ran fully exaggerated the importance of the script in a very high-profile tone, claiming that it is precisely because of the good script that he can make a film that the audience likes. Suddenly, good screenwriters suddenly became a hot commodity
, as long as they are famous, their net worth has increased significantly. The screenwriters in the circle are grateful to Xiao Ran. It goes without saying.
This success not only established Xiao Ran as the number one screenwriter in Hong Kong. The reason why I say it was only established because this number one screenwriter has not yet been recognized by the industry. He was also vaguely listed among the first-class directors. Regarding this,
Everyone agrees very much. However, the success of one film can be a matter of luck, but if it is two or three films, it will naturally be different.
After the New Year, when work starts again, Xiao Ran has already begun to prepare for his achievements. However, before that, he needs to plan for this year.
In 1987, Hong Kong movies officially entered an era of abnormality, which was also its peak era. Starting from this year, the huge box office figures that were repeatedly broken made everyone red-eyed. As long as an individual had two dollars, they were all trying to save money.
Movie idea.
So many things have happened this year that Xiao Ran doesn't even bother to think about it. He is not a person who pays much attention to planning. He will never sit down if he can lie down. Therefore, he will never do something that may not happen in history.
and make any unrealistic plans.
March in Hong Kong is still a pretty good month, at least the weather is not very hot. Xiao Ran and Wei Dongling are somewhat hot. "God of Gamblers" will soon complete the actual shooting, and currently "Prison" and "Autumn Fairy Tale"
》Under preparation.
What makes Xiao Ran angry is not this, but money. Of course it is not because of lack of funds. Although the company currently in the development stage does need money more than anyone else, it is not this that is troubling Xiao Ran at the moment.
He was angry about the film's budget. When Yu Jiayu took out the budget report for "God of Gamblers", he ignored an extremely important expenditure item. In fact, it cannot be said to be ignored, it can only be said to be taken lightly.
And Xiao Ran actually missed this very crucial thing in the calculation at the beginning - the publicity fee!
In the 21st century, publicity has been regarded as a major event that can be equal to production, but this era has not yet happened. At least Hong Kong films have not yet had the habit of investing large amounts of funds in publicity. According to the film critic Zhou Liming's "Hollywood Inspiration" in a dream
In the published book "The Anatomy of Hollywood", Xiao Ran clearly remembered that the promotional funds and production funds of Hollywood in the 21st century were split in half.
This means that the total investment for a Hollywood film is 100 million US dollars, and 50 million of it is spent on publicity. This shows the importance of publicity. Unfortunately, no matter how much budget Yu Jiayu spent,
, or the budget provided by Chen Kexin or Mo Tianxin, the publicity fee is so meager that anyone can forget this figure.
If the book was said to be sensationalizing, it would not be credible. But Xiao Ran knew very well that with Zhou Liming's understanding of Hollywood, these information were definitely not bragging. Therefore, he could not ignore the publicity fee even if he wanted to.
Moreover, Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers" did a good job in promoting this, leading to a huge box office receipt. This is a successful marketing material. Of course, Xiao Ran has not considered that the radiation area of Hollywood is global.
, and the current Hong Kong films are only limited to Southeast Asia, so the proportion of investment in promotional expenses will naturally not be too large.
The publicity expenses in other places are not the responsibility of Phantom, but the responsibility of the film producers, which Xiao Ran is not worried about. Another reason for his irritation is that he asked the distribution department to make a market report on the publicity, at least to come up with a complete
Budget and planning.
However, the report submitted by the head of the distribution department really made Xiao Ran extremely angry. As for the report submitted by another group of people arranged by Wei Dongling, it was somewhat insightful. The previous report believed that there was no need to invest a lot of money in publicity, and even believed that publicity did not exist at all.
It is not the responsibility of the company, but the scope of responsibility of the movie theater chain.
The latter report was the one that Xiao Ran appreciated more. This group of people conducted a small-scale investigation. After synthesizing the investigation results, they believed that publicity methods were necessary. However, from the current point of view, it is not wise to invest a lot of money in publicity.
decision.
The reason why Xiao Ran appreciates this report is because of one of the reasons. The investigation team believes that according to the current entertainment rules of people, movies are a necessary form of entertainment. People are always used to going to movie theaters for entertainment, so they only need to conduct small-scale entertainment
Publicity is enough to achieve the effect. Otherwise, even if a large amount of money is invested in publicity, it will not be able to increase the number of potential viewers for the film.
Xiao Ran agrees with this point. In this era, the means of entertainment are very monotonous, not as good as the Internet in the 21st century. In the information age of the 21st century, it was indeed an era of developed and smooth information, but it is precisely because of information
There is too much information, so it is difficult for people to make the right choice among a variety of information. Therefore, huge publicity has become a necessary means to attract audiences.
At least Xiao Ran knew that when he was a child, apart from watching TV, he only played in the mud with his friends, and Hong Kong was obviously no exception. Glancing at Wei Dongling, who was processing documents, he cleared his throat and shook the report: "A Dong, put it here
The director of the distribution department has been removed and let this person do it!"
Wei Dongling raised his head very unhappily, stared at Xiao Ran for a long time before saying depressedly: "Next time when I am working, can you not interrupt my train of thought? It's not good for you to do this. The director of the distribution department is very
An experienced insider, if you replace that young man like this, I'm afraid the distribution department will be in chaos!"
"It doesn't matter!" Xiao Ran rubbed his nose and smiled strangely: "It doesn't matter whether you are inside or outside the circle. The most important thing for the distribution department is to have marketing methods. He doesn't need to know much about movies, and..."
And it is better to be younger and to accept future changes more easily! Xiao Ran added this sentence in his mind. After thinking about it, when Wei Dongling nodded and agreed to immerse himself in work, he was shocked again: "One more thing, find someone with organizational skills.
People should follow the example of New Art City and create a Phantom Friends. As for the levels they are faced with, they should mainly focus on lower-level targets, and they can play a great publicity role!"
"Also, let the newly appointed director of the distribution department calculate the proportion of publicity fees as soon as possible!" After thinking about it, Xiao Ran's mind quickly thought of another thing, which completely made Wei Dongling's highly logical mind unable to keep up with this.
Normal speed: "I think I have to go talk to the person in charge of Golden Princess Cinema about this!"
Xiao Ran is not sure whether Princess Jin can be persuaded to share the money! However, he believes that since the theater chain can share the money with the production company, it is absolutely obliged to bear a certain amount of publicity expenses. However, how much this must be is not certain.
Easy to calculate!
The person in charge of the Golden Princess Cinema is Liao Jingping. Xiao Ran has never met this person, but he admires his management skills. Among the five major cinema chains in Hong Kong, Debao is rented from Shaw Brothers, so let’s not mention it.
However, even the other three major theater chains have been defeated by Golden Princess in a row. In addition to the continuous high-quality films from New Art City and the film studio, this is due to operational factors that cannot be underestimated.
Liao Jingping's control of the Golden Princess Cinema Line started when Lei Kaitai invested in movies. In just a few years, he quickly acquired many cinemas. Not only did he surpass Jiahe in the number of cinemas, but he also managed it well and always managed to win 100,000 cinemas every year.
Earn a lot of money for Lei Kaitai. And these cinemas have the potential to become commercial cinemas in terms of location and other aspects. This makes people admire Liao Jingping.
Liao Jingping was a middle-aged man, and he entertained Xiao Ran warmly. Xiao Ran took a sip of water, then leaned comfortably on the chair and made his intention clear. Liao Jingping frowned and even expressed his objection: "Boss Xiao, I
We don’t think it’s necessary to increase publicity expenses, because the current ones are enough! Besides, an increase in publicity expenses means an increase in costs! But we can’t be sure how many potential viewers we can increase, so this is not a cost-effective deal!”
Sure enough, he had a plan and quickly grasped the cost issue! Xiao Ran smiled slightly. He had no intention of attracting many potential viewers by increasing publicity fees. After all, the times are progressing and people have more choices, so there will naturally be a certain amount of audience.
Loss.
But when this kind of loss reaches a certain level, it will inevitably evolve into another form of audience. For example, if "Jurassic Park" is sold to a TV station, the price of each broadcast on TV is as high as more than 10 million US dollars.
And this is precisely because the theater audience has been lost to the television, resulting in another indirect audience for the movie.
He just wants to take the opportunity to build an efficient and accurate publicity team so that everything can grow in the future. When one day comes, he can rely on this experienced team to become his capital to lead the Hong Kong film industry.
However, Xiao Ran did not point out this, nor did he point out that they were also posters, but some posters could attract the audience to a greater extent. He just tapped the table gently. This action, combined with his young face, actually
It can bring out a kind of power: "There is no such thing as a bad deal. If two movies of the same level are released at the same time, one side will be promoted but the other side will not. I think the result can be predicted!"
Liao Jingping thought for a while and agreed with Xiao Ran's words, but he still had great doubts about increasing publicity expenses: "In this way, wouldn't it be poaching the audience of another film? I don't think this will do any good, Boss Xiao
, I would like to advise you not to do this. Otherwise, you may become enemies with other companies!"
"People's entertainment methods are very monotonous!" Xiao Ran rubbed his nose and tried to make his words more convincing: "Under such publicity methods, they will more often choose to watch two movies together instead of just
Watch one!”
"Besides, a family comedy and a gangster movie target different levels! Why can't we attract audiences who don't originally belong to this level?" Xiao Ran asked. The high level of publicity is to make people who would not buy a certain item originally.
People who want something buy it, not to compete for other companies' market share.
"This..." Liao Jingping hesitated for a moment and had to admit that Xiao Ran's words made sense. He was almost convinced. But he still hesitated and finally answered Xiao Ran: "Boss Xiao, I hope you will give me some advice."
I'll give it a few days to think about it, you know this is no small matter!"
Of course it is not a trivial matter. If Phantom increases its promotional expenses, sooner or later other film companies will surely discover the benefits and follow suit. This is what Xiao Ran wants. Whether it is indirect or direct, it will have a subtle impact on the Hong Kong film industry.
Change.
Within a few days, Liao Jingping agreed to the plan and agreed with Phantom on the proportion of their respective publicity expenses. Of course, for now, the publicity expenses are still very meager, but it is already an improvement.
Chen Kexin and Mok Tianxin came up with new budgets, and Xiao Ran personally served as the producer of the two films. As the art director, he successively met with Lin Lingdong and Zhang Yuanting to discuss the style of the film. He did not intend to intervene in the specific director affairs. After all,
These two are both famous directors with ideas, so it is easy to interfere with their thinking.