Chapter 214 213. It's time to set an example for you
Strictly speaking, the story of Saw 2 is not very related to the first one, at least in terms of the plot, it is relatively independent.
The only connection is that the big boss behind the scenes is still Jigsaw. After all, without him, the audience would be half as many.
Another connection point is Amanda, the survivor of the first film. In this film, she has converted to Jigsaw's sect, and her mental state is somewhat similar to Stockholm syndrome, but not entirely.
Eric did not participate in the writing of the second part of the script. He only proposed the story outline and development direction. The rest was completed independently by Ray Whannell.
His screenwriting skills are far better than his immature directing skills, and the plot is still excellent. The third film is still produced by James Wan. If this old partner cooperates on one more film, James Wan's directing ability will be almost mature and he can direct independently by then.
With the huge failure of "Dead Silence", the market's attention was all on "Saw 2".
Lionsgate certainly hopes that Saw 2 will fail. People who are jealous of MGM and hate Chinese people also hope that it will fail, so that it will be easier for them to mock James Wan.
However, as the feedback from the first batch of viewers came out, reality slapped these people in the face.
Fox News: "Saw 2 continues the thrilling and human nature exploration of the first film. Compared with the first film, the second film has innovations and progress in both technology and plot."
“But it still retains the core elements of the series, including high-IQ killing machines, complex interpersonal relationships and profound thematic discussions. It is a masterpiece worth watching.”
Los Angeles Times: "Saw 2 is still a very cleverly conceived film, continuing the routine of foreshadowing, which is unexpected but reasonable."
"After watching this movie, you can solve a mystery from the first movie, which is why Jigsaw left behind some survivors. It is a must-see for movie fans."
Salt Lake City Entertainment News: "You all know that I like to recommend good movies to movie fans, but I rarely recommend sequels because no more than 10% of movies can be made into good sequels."
"But there is no doubt that Saw 2 belongs to that 10%. It is still a sophisticated killing game, with terrible traps and cruel plots that make people's adrenaline surge. Horror movie fans will find everything you want here."
Like most of the positive reviews from film review media, most of the reviews from movie fans online are also positive.
The praise from die-hard fans is even more disgusting, with words like highest praise, highest honor, and best of the year coming out.
The freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes reached 91%, and the opening score on IMDb was 7.2. It will definitely drop in the future, but it is already high enough for a horror film and is considered a masterpiece.
The most direct reflection of the positive reviews was the box office. The film was released on Friday and earned $37 million in its first three days over the weekend, $4 million more than the first film.
The cost is the same as the first film, which is still $5 million in production and $10 million in publicity and promotion costs.
"Dead Silence" has been released for 6 days so far, but has only earned more than 7 million US dollars at the box office.
Admittedly, one of the reasons was that Lionsgate's operational capabilities were not as good as MGM's and the film was only released in a thousand theaters, but the collapse of the film's quality and reputation was the root cause.
There was no meeting of worthy opponents or talented generals as imagined, nor was there any tug-of-war. The competition between the two films has ended, and "Dead Silence" was completely defeated.
Apart from Lionsgate, the person who is feeling the most uncomfortable right now is James Wan. The outside world is scolding him and praising him at the same time, and he is almost having a split personality.
Eric and Ray Whannell naturally stood up to speak for him.
Eric: "Every director has failed works. This is not uncommon. Even Hitchcock and Kurosawa Akira could not guarantee that every one of their films would be successful."
"The success of a film is the result of many factors, such as creativity, market environment, behind-the-scenes team, actor performances, etc."
"When a movie is successful, we don't just praise the director. Just like the Oscar for Best Picture, the entire crew goes on stage to receive the award together."
"Similarly, when a movie fails, we can't put all the blame on the director. I have always believed that James Wan is a good director and will definitely become a successful director in the future."
James Wan: "Saw 2 was completed by James and I together. Although I was credited as the director, he helped me a lot. In fact, this is a work of both of us."
"I have known him for many years and I never believe that one failure can knock him down. I believe he will stand up soon and bring us better works."
"In fact, I heard that MGM has been in contact with James about a new project. Wen is a person who can't sit still. He will prove himself again."
James Wan was deeply moved by the two's firm support. Anyway, "Dead Silence" had become such a mess that Lionsgate was embarrassed to promote it anymore, so James Wan simply devoted himself to the promotion of "Saw 2".
On February 10, "Saw 2" was released in more than 2,700 theaters for 10 days and has grossed nearly 60 million US dollars. It will be no problem for it to break 100 million in North America.
Overseas, the film was only released simultaneously in some European countries. After a large-scale release in a few days, it should have no problem breaking $200 million worldwide.
As for Lionsgate's "Dead Silence", no one cares about it and it has been swept into the trash.
But right now Eric’s focus is not on the movie, because today is the day the YouTube video goes online.
Silicon Valley, he hasn't been to the company for a month. As a decision maker, he only needs to get the general direction right and focus on people and money.
Facebook is growing rapidly, especially last month when it saw a small spike in new customers, most of whom are adults.
The number of registered users has reached 50 million, accounting for nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.
There are more than 42 million active users, which is a terrifying number.
This is still the actual data. The data released to the public is even more exaggerated, which has caused the competitor Myspace to catch up nervously and get closer and closer.
And probably due to pressure from within Fox, Myspace recently started running advertisements.
Advertisements have a huge impact on user experience. The most obvious impact is that it takes longer to scroll through the homepage, which has been complained by many users.
Last month, Facebook also updated a new feature, which is the drift bottle.
As for the message in a bottle, I'm sure all Chinese people know what it is used for. It can hold text, voice, and pictures.
As for whether the pictures and voice messages sent by users violate regulations, it is difficult to control for the time being.
Moreover, Facebook is not as stingy as WeChat. There are restrictions on throwing and fishing bottles every day.
We have specially equipped such an awesome server, so why not leave it idle? No limit, no limit at all, just send as much as you want, so within a few days of the function being launched, all kinds of crooked ways were developed.
Some old perverts who couldn't stand the lag of Mysapce and left naturally switched to Facebook.
Fitz was a little worried that this feature would affect Facebook's reputation, but Eric knew it.
The function of the message in a bottle is like a chamber pot. It should be used when necessary. When Myspace is defeated and Facebook becomes the only dominant player, just kick it under the bed.
Moreover, unlike Myspace, which used pornography as its selling point when it was launched, Facebook is still a normal social platform as a whole, with the message in a bottle being just an embellishment.
Those old perverts who were attracted by the Drift Bottle feature will not leave just because this feature is gone, because Facebook still has other attractions to keep people there.
With Facebook as a pioneer, YouTube promotion has become much easier.
Major television stations, portal websites, forums, and chat rooms carried out carpet bombing propaganda.
All Facebook users have received an open letter and can log in to YouTube directly with their Facebook account without having to re-register. It is quick and convenient.
Hundreds of celebrities, big and small, also helped promote the event on their social media accounts, and then opened YouTube accounts and uploaded a few short videos they had shot to attract fans.
Eric took a look and saw that no one had much experience and it was their first time doing this, so the content of the video was very simple.
Just point the camera, introduce yourself, welcome everyone to open an account on YouTube, and hope to become friends with everyone.
Eric shook his head. After experiencing the bombardment of long and short videos in later generations and seeing how reserved everyone is now, he felt like he had returned to the Stone Age.
In addition to these conventional promotional methods, Eric also prepared a killer weapon, which is to spend a lot of money.
Unlike posting pictures and editing text on Facebook, making videos on YouTube is much more difficult.
At least you need a DV camera, otherwise you won’t be able to shoot videos. If you want to make high-quality videos, you also need editing and other techniques. The cost has already limited many people.
Even though YouTube has built-in various editing plug-ins, the learning cost will still keep a large number of people away.
Therefore, if you want to quickly gather creators, the most direct way is to give them money.
As long as creators can make money through videos, people will naturally join in.
But when the website was first established, it was definitely not allowed to run advertisements. Without advertising revenue, Eric would have to pay for it.
Fortunately, he is not short of money now. Even though his shares in MGM cannot be moved for the time being, he still has a lot of liquid funds in his hands.
First take out $300 million as incentive money, and then add more if it is not enough. If personal liquidity is still not enough, then borrow money from MGM, transferring money from one hand to the other.
The revenue is mainly calculated based on the completion rate of the video, and a portion is also provided by likes and shares. The price is then set in stages based on the length of the creator's video, similar to the pricing of short, medium and long videos.
There is only one standard: the more you work, the more you earn. The more exciting the video, the higher the income.
If you open YouTube now, you can find that the entire website is divided into only the general area and the music area.
The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!
The music area mainly contains songs and MVs of all singers affiliated with Sony Music, which are directly licensed to YouTube by Maxco at a lower price.
Others include parts of other companies that Max helped negotiate with.
"Boss, got it! Got it!"
"What?"
"The first video, the first video uploaded by a user, was not of those stars," Howard Hughes shouted excitedly.
Eric walked over and saw a user named Diablo on the computer screen. He uploaded a video of himself playing games.
The video is not long, only a few dozen seconds.
Under the camera, the young man pointed at his game interface with a dazed look on his face: "Immortal King, I finally collected the Immortal King suit!"
The guy jumped up and hugged the person filming, and the video ended there.
Eric nodded after reading it. Although it didn't have much to watch and was more like a short video in later generations, he had already earned the title of the first person to upload an out-of-print video.
"It's not bad. At least his exaggerated expressions will attract some users to click in and watch. It's a good start."
After a while, another reviewer shouted: "Boss, the second user video has appeared."
Eric clicked on it to watch. This time it was a female user, who was filming her own cat exercising.
"Hahahaha. I've been looking for this guy for a long time. It turns out that he went to the neighbor's house and had sex with the female cat."
"I heard that female cat meowing last night, you bad thing!"
Then came the third, fourth, and fifth. By 3 p.m., the number of views by YouTube users had exceeded 100 million.
The number of registered users easily exceeded one million, after all, Facebook’s user base is there.
However, the vast majority of views in the comprehensive area are contributed to the videos of major celebrities, with fewer views distributed to general users.
Overall, the music section accounts for more than half of the views, and the vast majority of users go there to listen to songs and watch MVs.
The MV of Michael Koo's "Rolling in the Deep" was viewed 730,000 times in one day, and received over 50,000 likes.
This result is expected. The number of videos in the comprehensive area is currently relatively small, with only more than 400 uploaded per day.
They are all short videos and the quality is not high.
Users quickly browse through the content they are interested in, and then naturally switch to the music area or exit YouTube.
This situation lasted for a week, but there was still no significant improvement, which was somewhat different from what Eric had expected.
"Howard, what's going on?"
Howard Hughes shook his head and nodded: "Boss, judging from the data alone, as a new website, YouTube can be said to be developing rapidly."
"But the traffic all comes from the music area, which accounts for the majority, while the personal videos of users that we promote are pushed to the corner."
"If this trend continues, YouTube will change from a video site to a music site, which goes against our original intention."
Eric hummed, "What do you think the problem is?"
"Obviously, the video quality is not high enough to attract people."
"Boss, YouTube is a very novel mode of operation that allows ordinary people to shoot their own videos, but ordinary people have no experience in this area at all."
"Even the family comedy videos that were popular in the last century were selected from all over the country and then carefully edited and broadcast by TV stations."
"We can't expect users to learn how to make it quickly. Maybe we should give them some time. After two or three months, the situation will get better."
FitzHeisenberg shook his head: "I don't think this is a good idea, because people have personalities, and websites also have their own labels."
"When a site is labeled as something that belongs to it, users who are not interested in that label will ignore it."
"Boss, you're in the film business. Audiences who like horror movies won't watch comedies, right?"
"Go on." Eric nodded.
"If the music section is really allowed to suppress the general section for a long time, YouTube will be labeled as a music website."
"The vast majority of users that can be attracted are music enthusiasts, and its video attributes will be greatly weakened."
"If a competitor suddenly emerges, like Myspace, and the other party only displays video attributes, it will be a huge challenge."
"So my suggestion is not to give up two or three months, but to take all measures as soon as possible to stimulate the creativity and autonomy of users."
"But the general public are not professionals. They cannot make a great video in a short period of time, or they simply don't know how to do it!" Howard said in frustration, slapping the table.
"Then teach them what to do!"
"What?"
"What they lack is teachers. As long as there are good teachers to set an example, the process can be greatly accelerated."
Fitz looked at Eric and said, "We already have a ready-made teacher, Boss. You were the one who came up with the idea of YouTube. I think no one in the world knows how to do it better than you."
"Besides, MGM has so many professionals, why not lead them to do it together? First, make a batch of high-quality videos. Once they are widely disseminated, the comprehensive area will be well known in an instant."
Eric nodded slowly: "It seems that it is time to set an example for you!"
(End of this chapter)