Chapter 691

"It's not that negative reviews of the movie don't hurt the movie much, but for the movie 'Phone,' if you want to control the reviews and suppress some negative reviews, the effect will be counterproductive, because it didn't take the route of no bad reviews."

In Lin Yu's TV column program, she also analyzed this matter incisively.

"For the film industry, because of the high risk of movies, and because the first-day box office or the first-weekend box office has a decisive effect on the life and death of the entire movie, everyone has been afraid of bad reviews for a long time. Even if we all say that bad is bad, and bad means you have to stand still and take a beating, but standing from the perspective of the production side, it is definitely not the case. In fact, I think 'Phone' blew a new trend for the entire film industry, which is that the audience doesn't necessarily have to have a perfect movie to be willing to walk into the movie theater to watch it."

"I chatted with many friends about where the advantages of the movie 'Phone' lie and what exactly they did right, and summarized a few points to share with everyone. If I say it wrong, just treat it as me saying it wrong."

Lin Yu paused with a smile before continuing.

"First, the core selling point has been very clear since this movie entered the audience's field of vision, and it doesn't try to rub against any hot spots. For example, the two female leads are easily associated with one of the women."

"Second, under the configuration of Lu Yan He as screenwriter and Jiang Yuqian as the lead actress, the movie had a clear box office goal from the beginning, and it was very practical, 100 to 300 million. This is the goal estimated by the production side according to this subject matter and market situation. They control the cost budget around this goal, not blindly arrogant, unlike various movies that open their mouths and want to impact 1 billion or 2 billion in box office. They don't render how big their production cost, difficulty, and investment are. Instead, while attracting more audiences to enter the movie theater, they don't let them maintain high expectations. This point is too rare. Now basically the promotion rule of all movies is that the movie is explosive, and if you don't watch it, you lose. On the one hand, it raises the audience's expectations, and on the other hand, it is often not what it claims to be."

"Third, 'Phone' is willing to do promotion and marketing, and uses stars on the cutting edge. One selling point of 'Phone' is the subject matter, and the other is Jiang Yuqian and Lu Yan He. Compared with many movies, the star power of the actors in 'Phone' is actually insufficient. It can be said that this is basically Jiang Yuqian acting alone in this movie—if you don't count Lu Yan He's blessing—but he is the screenwriter, not the actor. In this case, they didn't ignore the other actress, Wang Jing, at all. They used Jiang Yuqian and Lu Yan He to hit the promotion range and popularity, and used Wang Jing to hit the audience's freshness. As far as I know, the promotion and marketing expenses invested by the production side in the actor and role of Wang Jing are almost on par with Jiang Yuqian."

"Jiang Yuqian is also living more and more backward," Zhang Lan sneered. "She actually let a newcomer dare to compete with her."

Shi Zhou heard this, smiled, and said: "I told you long ago that she is becoming more and more humble in front of Lu Yan He. Her so-called momentum and popularity now are all because of Lu Yan He's plays. So you see how she licks Lu Yan He. When Lu Yan He doesn't support her in the future, she will be out of fashion immediately."

Zhang Lan: "Have you watched 'Phone'?"

"Not yet," Shi Zhou shook his head. "Too lazy to watch. They have clearly stated that it is not a good movie, just here to make quick money. I didn't expect that even this could accidentally make the audience feel that they are very sincere, and instead be willing to watch this movie."

Zhang Lan said: "'Fake Death Won't Work' was very popular before, and there are several such romantic comedy scripts sent over. Do you think I should take one?"

"Those scripts are all very average. Do you want to take them?" Shi Zhou asked with a frown.

"Mainly because there are no other scripts now," Zhang Lan said. "I haven't joined a crew to film for a long time. Now I don't have a single drama on hand to be broadcast. If I don't take a play, what will I do later?"

"I feel that we should rather be short than excessive," Shi Zhou said. "Look at the two plays you took by lowering the standards before, the final results were not very good, and instead dragged you down. With your status, fame, and popularity, even if you don't film for two years, it is enough to maintain the current situation. Every time your career suffers a major setback, it is after you start filming."

Zhang Lan: "..."

Shi Zhou said again: "Unless we are very sure that this play can explode."

"How can this be certain? If we could all be sure that a play could explode, there wouldn't be so many plays with poor results in a row before," Zhang Lan sighed. "Do you think I've had bad luck these two years? Why don't I go to the temple and find a Bodhisattva to worship?"

Shi Zhou: "That's fine, get rid of the bad luck."

On weekdays, the decline of "Phone" was a bit large, exceeding everyone's expectations.

People in the box office analysis and audience tracking department said that the audience range of this movie is very small, and the audience over 35 years old only accounts for 17%, which is very small. Therefore, after the weekend, the decline was very serious.

"However, the total box office of 'Phone' still has hope of breaking 400 million. Throughout January, the market is relatively cold, and there are no competitive films, which will not erode the screening space of 'Phone.' This slot is very friendly to small and medium-sized box office films like 'Phone'."

At that time, the people in the promotion and distribution department chose this slot, which was actually specifically studied.

Jiang Yuqian had no way to continue running promotions with the crew later, and she herself had a lot of work.

Therefore, the roadshow after the release was basically run by Wang Jing alone.

Wang Jing ran very attentively.

This movie brought a lot of attention to her.

Whether it was "Late Spring" before or "Squid Game," she was actually not the lead actor. Although the play was popular and brought her a lot of attention, it didn't really form a large-scale fan effect, so it didn't make her truly "popular overnight."

This time, the constantly reversing villain she played in "Phone" allowed her to show her acting skills in her comfort zone, firmly grabbing the audience's attraction, and also making her truly popular.

This can be seen from the fact that Wang Jing suddenly received four scripts within a week—all of which were leads.

In addition to the roadshow, Wang Jing also specifically took a day to complete the cameo scenes of "Home Alone."

This matter was specifically marketed by Linghe.

After all, it can promote "Phone," maintain the popularity of the movie, and warm up for "Home Alone."

"Home Alone" is a movie that needs to constantly attract attention—its star power is even less than "Phone."

Just at this time, the Xitu'er Film Festival suddenly announced the jury list for this year.

Liu Bige was among them, which sparked some attention.

After Lu Yan He, Li Zhibai, and Yan Liang completed a Spring Festival Gala rehearsal, the Xitu'er Film Festival announced another batch of films entering the main competition unit.

"Tropical Rainy Season," in which Lu Yan He participated, and "Raise the Red Lantern," which he wrote, were among them.

With Lu Yan He's works winning awards on the international stage over the past two years, this time after these two films were shortlisted for top international film festivals again, everyone was not discussing whether they could win awards, but what awards they could win.

The media world wants to know:

1. Can Lu Yan He win another Best Screenplay Award with "Raise the Red Lantern"? 2. Can Chen Bige win her third international film festival best actress trophy with this movie?

3. Can a Malaysian art film like "Tropical Rainy Season," with a newcomer director and no big production company behind it, actually be nursed into the main competition unit by Lu Yan He? When did the main competition unit become so easy to enter? Didn't it say earlier that this movie could only enter a secondary unit?

4. Can Chinese films win a top award this time?

After all, there is Liu Bige in the jury lineup of the main competition unit of the Xitu'er Film Festival this time.

It's not that he, as a judge, can make the final decision. He is not the jury president, it's not like that.

However, if there is a judge present, he can introduce the cultural background and interpretation of this movie in detail to other judges. Movies are cultural products after all. If you can understand the cultural background, you can know the things inside more deeply.

Lu Yan He thought to himself, "Raise the Red Lantern" is a standard award-winning film.

With the configuration of Director Wang Zhong plus Chen Bige starring, plus the performance techniques and themes of this movie, it's hard for it not to win an award.

In fact, for foreigners, there is not much that is difficult to understand in this movie. Because the theme of this film is very clear, there is nothing hidden. Anyone who watches this movie actually understands that this movie is about "human alienation."

As for the oppression of feudal ethics—

This kind of thing is like this for Chinese people. For foreigners, even if they don't understand what the oppression of feudal ethics is, they can still appreciate this movie.

They don't understand feudal ethics, but they must understand power structures, especially the power structure between men and women. Such story themes are also common in foreign movies.

And "Raise the Red Lantern," Lu Yan He has always felt that compared with other movies, the most outstanding part of this movie is that its structure is extremely rigorous, even to the point where one can feel the beauty of the structure.

!

Whether it's the frequently appearing central axis symmetrical pictures, or those sounds of hammering feet with a certain rhythm, or the lighting of lanterns time and time again, it forms a kind of ritual with ancient colors...

It can be said that in this movie, it seems that there are metaphors and allusions everywhere. The whole world has become a system itself.

The original work won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Domestically, Gong Li and He Saifei also won the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards at the Hundred Flowers Awards respectively, with remarkable achievements.

Lu Yan He will always remember the shock he felt when he first watched this movie.

At that time, he thought this kind of movie was the kind of critical, serious, actually not very good-looking, but just so-called high artistic value work.

But one afternoon, he saw this movie playing on TV, so he pulled the curtains and watched it alone for a while. As a result, he got into it.

This movie itself is a good story. All the criticality, seriousness, and the value and meaning given to it by the critical circle are added later. From the story itself, this is a story that develops in twists and turns, and you don't know what will happen next.

Especially Songlian's change in attitude towards hammering feet, and before getting married and after falling, in order to compete for favor, she slowly twisted and became the kind of person she hated most before.

At that moment, Lu Yan He really felt that Old Mouzi could make such a big name for himself, and it really relied on hard skills.

Some directors eat the food of the critical circle, some directors eat the food of audience word-of-mouth, and some directors eat the food of the market's money bag, but he eats it all.

Lu Yan He still hasn't watched the "Raise the Red Lantern" filmed by Wang Zhong, but based on his understanding of Wang Zhong, he knows very well that this movie will only be filmed more "eerie" than the original.

He is also looking forward to the performance of this movie at the Xitu'er Film Festival.

So many times, this is the first time he has truly brought out an award-winning film to compete for an award.

Whether it was "Rouge" or "Love Letter" before, they were actually more of movies recognized by the audience. In terms of artistic value for mainstream awards, they were not that prominent.

But in this world, they also achieved some achievements.

It's just that I don't know what will happen to "Raise the Red Lantern."

Lu Yan He sincerely hopes that this movie can win a very weighty trophy.

Don't let it be smashed in your own hands.

Lu Yan He can't stand this point.

Spring Festival Gala, after the three of them participated in a round of rehearsals, because Lu Yan He's time was really very tight, the director group finally gave him a holiday, allowing him to be absent from the two rehearsals in the middle, as long as he could catch up with the last round.

This is also really the "preferential treatment" of the Spring Festival Gala director group for Lu Yan He. Basically, the Spring Festival Gala director group will not give such preferential treatment to celebrity artists.

Of course, this is also because, when it comes to Lu Yan He's level, the director group still hopes to let Lu Yan He stand on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala.

The Spring Festival Gala now wants to let the most popular, most representative, and most notable achievements of the year, especially the celebrity artists who have achieved notable achievements on the international stage representing China, step onto the stage, like a performance.

If Lu Yan He doesn't show up, it would be a bit unjustifiable.

Not to mention, this program is a chorus stage for three people.

If Lu Yan He doesn't go, Li Zhibai and Yan Liang can't go either.

If they two were paired with someone else, they would definitely be sprayed to death.

God knows how many fans are waiting for their annual joint stage.

As the three of them go further and further on the road of actors, their stage as idols is really getting less and less, not to mention the joint stage.

After the road photos of their last Spring Festival Gala rehearsal were released, it has now attracted huge attention and expectations.

Unless there is really some force majeure factor, otherwise, it is impossible to take their program down now. (End of chapter)