"Our entertainment industry is an arena highly controlled by capital. Aesthetics and creation are highly subservient to..."
·
"'Aesthetics and creation are highly serving capital?'" Ji Juntao almost laughed in anger as he looked at the handwritten document sent by Shang Yechu. "Yechu, it is rude for a son to scold his father."
Shang Yechu chuckled: "Why don't you keep watching first?"
Ji Juntao shrugged and read aloud, “'It’s outwardly beautiful but inwardly rotten'—isn’t that obvious? 'Traffic is rampant, algorithms are paramount'—that’s obvious too. You woke me up at four in the morning just to show me this?”
Shang Yechu twirled the pen and laughed, "If you don't want to read it, that's fine. But let me tell you, these few scraps of paper are related to the cooperation between Qingping Entertainment and Meta Pictures, you'll have to read them sooner or later."
Ji Juntao rolled his eyes: "I knew you hadn't given up on your troublemaking guild. —'It's rotten.' That's true. 'But we can't just criticize it; we need to know why it's rotten. To bring more good works to the audience, we must know who our friends are and who our enemies are. This is the primary question for distinguishing directions on the literary and artistic front.'"
At this point, Ji Juntao paused: "Ye Chu, are you stupid? What does it have to do with me who you want to bring good works to? My goal is to expand my company and become the big boss. You should hand this over to the people who make movies."
"You're the one who's stupid." Shang Yechu took a sip of water and brainwashed Ji Juntao, "If you want to run a big company and be the big sister, shouldn't you have a few more pillars? Are you really planning to rely on me to fight this battle all by myself?"
Ji Juntao pursed his lips: "Being a pillar of the production team doesn't have much to do with making good works, does it?"
"There are essentially four pillars in an industry: a great screenwriter, a great director, a great actor, and a great singer. An agent barely qualifies; without good talent, they won't rise to prominence. Idols are replaced too quickly; you support someone and they're only popular for two years before a new generation of idols emerges. They're like fast-moving consumer goods. Unless you can cultivate an endless stream of idols—but you can't just cultivate idols, right? If any generation flops, it'll be a huge gap." Shang Yechu observed Ji Juntao's expression. Ji Juntao herself knew these things; she was just being stubborn.
As for top singers, even without Shang Yechu's explanation, Ji Juntao knew the difficulty. If singers were so easy to cultivate, how come the Chinese music scene is still dominated by the same group of people from ten or twenty years ago? In the domestic entertainment industry, the emergence of singers who can truly carry the industry is a matter of chance.
Directors and actors, on the other hand, are relatively trainable. Even if you don't cultivate any exceptional geniuses, you can still train a group of skilled workers of roughly the same level. And that's enough.
Shang Yechu patiently persuaded, "Boss, I know you understand what I'm about to say, you're just waiting for me to convince you and help you make up your mind."
Ji Juntao snorted coldly and remained silent.
Shang Yechu smiled: "You want to defeat the three major players, especially Tianding Entertainment. That's good, that's your ambition, and I love this place about you. But what kind of behemoth are we facing?"
"The influence of Tianding Entertainment, Guanjun Century, and Meta Pictures has long permeated every aspect of the entertainment industry. They invest in movies, produce TV series, web series, and manage boy and girl groups. They've even trained quite a few singers, but unfortunately, none of them have become superstars. They have money, connections, and power. While I was still preparing for the college entrance exam and you were still asking your mom for money, they were already tycoons!"
"What do we have to compete with them? Mobilize the entire company to find a music superstar who's nowhere to be found? Constantly train boy and girl groups for fast-moving consumer goods, with new and old members coming and going, and then fight tooth and nail against their 48-member groups, or even 101-member groups? Even supporting me, the only college student in the whole village, must be a lot of pressure for you!"
Ji Juntao chuckled and cursed, "What a heartless braggart! Fine, it's better if the ancestors of the old merchant family don't bring honor to the family. And what a heartless phoenix girl! You still know how hard your boss works!"
Shang Yechu flicked away a mosquito that had landed on his neck and laughed, "Thank you to the villagers for selling their kidneys to help me." As he spoke, he pretended to wipe away two tears.
“But we also have our strengths,” Shang Yechu said. “We have our own advantages.”
Ji Juntao tapped the table: "What advantages? What strengths?"
Shang Yechu looked at her and smiled, "Our strength is you."
"Stop flattering me," Ji Juntao said, a smile involuntarily creeping onto his face, his eyebrows dancing with excitement. "Let's get serious."
"I'm not flattering you, I'm serious," Shang Yechu said earnestly. "Your mind hasn't hardened, you haven't become arrogant, and you don't treat the audience and consumers like fools. Haven't you noticed? The dramas and movies that the three major production companies have invested in in recent years have been increasingly flops. I wrote about this phenomenon in that report."
The biggest problem with these three driving forces is their short-sightedness. In recent years, they have increasingly neglected creative work and reputation, focusing only on return on investment, recouping costs, exposure, and star-making. We live in the era of fan economy; as long as you create a star, get fans to inflate the data, and secure endorsements and magazine appearances, recouping costs is not difficult.
Ji Juntao glanced at Shang Yechu's report and pursed his lips.
"However, fans are only a minority." Shang Yechu sneered, recalling the future state of the Chinese entertainment industry. "They just made the biggest noise online and fooled the three main actors into thinking they were idiots. They don't represent the vast majority of the audience. The audience will always be more numerous than the fans. If the fan economy really had that much power, the box office wouldn't be carried by those middle-aged and old actors."
"Let the three driving forces dominate the fan economy," Shang Yechu concluded. "We'll capture those viewers who don't want to watch idol-fan dramas, fan-exclusive big stars, or resource-driven celebrities, but only want to watch good dramas and movies. Let Qingping Entertainment become synonymous with high-quality film and television, so that when future viewers see Qingping Entertainment, they think of 'good dramas, good movies, and good works.' Let the silent majority decide who will dominate the future entertainment industry!"
Shang Yechu's demeanor at that moment was dazzling, confident, and even aggressive. For a moment, President Ji was almost bewitched, involuntarily wanting to nod in agreement. But in an instant, she realized what she'd said: "It's not that easy! Look at what you wrote in your report: 'Film industrialization,' 'Long-running drama industrialization,' 'High-quality and popular development in parallel.' What do you think our company is, a money-printing factory?"
Shang Yechu said softly, "I didn't say we could get fat in one bite. Wouldn't it be better if we started with one or two dramas as a pilot project, and then gradually expanded the scale? Ji Juntao, let's build a small paradise first, and then slowly expand it into a utopia..."
Ji Juntao swallowed hard, then suddenly remembered something: "Wait a minute, you just told me that this report was related to the cooperation between Qingping Entertainment and Meta Pictures. Where has this topic gone? What's the connection?"
Shang Yechu coughed lightly and lowered his voice:
"Our company's biggest pain point used to be the broadcasting platform issue. We couldn't get good prices for our dramas, and we had to tie in a bunch of conditions, like having their own 'princelings' and 'princess's' come in. It made us feel restricted in everything we did."
"However, Metafilm is now going to work with us."
"Don't forget, Metafilm also has its own online streaming platform..."
MyTa Films.
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