Mysterious viewing？ Frant Gwo actually made up The Wandering Earth because of them.

Special feature of 1905 film network Would you be interested if you were invited to see a movie that has not yet been released for free? If you add a premise, you won’t know any information before the movie starts, and even this work may still be an unfinished version with special effects. Will you still be interested? If I tell you again, your post-screening feedback will even affect the content adjustment of the film creator in the later period. Can it greatly satisfy your curiosity?

All these unknown possibilities make this viewing experience like a blind box, full of surprises. After making these "whether" choices, will you ask, where do you get this opportunity? Perhaps the following content will help you understand the story behind this special movie-watching, and give you the opportunity to participate in the "creative work" of the film and "find fault" for the directors.　

Be selected as a "ticket"

Compared with the viewing group on the eve of the release, this kind of "viewing group" is more mysterious. The simplest explanation is "pre-screening test film research". Usually, there will be a professional market research team to recruit audiences for a film that is still in production, and will not disclose any film information to the audience in advance. Relatively speaking, for the audience who participated in this activity, it is even more impossible to disclose this viewing experience on any platform.　

The audience seems to fall into "parallel time and space" and enjoy the rough cut of a brand-new movie. So, how can we get tickets to enter this "time and space"? We know that there are two ways. One is that Cat’s Eye or Taobao Film pushes short messages to some users from time to time according to their past ticket purchasing experience. Through the questionnaire link in the short message, the audience has the opportunity to be invited to participate in a mysterious movie-watching activity.　

The other is a more professional film market research team, through more levels of screening, to find the right audience and participate in the pilot film research. Fan Ying is one of the professional and experienced research teams in the current market. If the audience buys tickets on weekdays, they can get the invitation to watch the movie on the ticketing platform, then how can everyone be selected by this kind of research team?

First of all, for the research team, they are eager for an audience with strong desire to express themselves. The survey questionnaires of various formal platforms on the market have the opportunity to let the audience get the first ticket for admission.

Of course, it is not the people who fill in the survey questionnaire at random who will have the opportunity. Only in this kind of survey process, those who choose "who are willing to be contacted by similar surveys in the future" will really have the opportunity to be selected by the research team.

Even if the public receives the relevant research call, it doesn’t mean that he really got the movie tickets. The researchers will ask them more in-depth content to prevent them from meeting relevant practitioners or actors and fans in the investigation. Fan Ying’s research team told us that in this inquiry process, they no longer simply used "whether" questions, but adopted a broader form to distinguish the relevant personnel.

Take movies like "The Best of Us" as an example. In reality, many actors and fans are eager to be the first to see such movies. In order to obtain more objective research data, this group is naturally out of the scope of research. Therefore, in the whole selection process, the research team will ask the actors of the same type and nature as him, and make corresponding judgments through the reaction and reply tone of the other party in the face of different actors.

However, for various reasons, Fan Ying’s current screening pass rate is only about 7%. "About every 100 people invited, only 7-8 people are willing to go." In addition to various objective factors, the research team is often questioned as a "liar".　

Screening of audience

So what is the audience composition of this movie theater in the end? "Simulate according to the real audience composition of the market." The research team will invite according to the proportion of different age groups in the market in the previous year, as well as gender. Although people will think that the film market is closer to the female market in concept, it is possible to achieve film achievements by pleasing female audiences. But in fact, according to Fan Ying’s sampling survey from 2016 to 2019, the overall gender ratio of cinema audiences in China is close to 1:1. Pre-screening research simulates the whole film market, so the whole film market is also reduced in the same proportion.　

However, we often come across many films that flaunt themselves as a certain audience-oriented film in the process of publicity, and even emphasize the forms of "female special" and "parent-child special" when organizing a viewing group at the premiere. This mode is just the biggest difference between ordinary viewing groups and pre-screening research viewing. The former is to meet the needs of word-of-mouth management and publicity after the release, but the latter is more for the production of film content, which allows the audience to judge the film as objectively as possible. It is even possible that the so-called audience groups are data reports from the pre-screening research team.　

Of course, works with themes such as women’s films and children’s films will have extremely clear audience goals in the early stage of preparation. The producers of such films also hope that the research team will conduct special tests, but the research team will usually try to convince the producers to organize according to the consumer attributes of the market as a whole for the objectivity of the data.

Zheng Yaqi, the film producer, once talked about in our interview that the film "Canned Little People of Pipiru and Luluxi" did make two waves of audiences in the early stage of filming, one was for parents to take care of their children, and the other was for no children. The final result of the test does prove that parents’ perception will be higher than that of viewers aged 20-30 who have no children.

Possibility of test piece

If the audience has the mentality of seeing the main creation, then we have to tell you in advance that it is impossible. Judging from the psychology of watching movies, even the practitioners in the film and television industry will encounter the main creation in the process of watching movies, and the objectivity of their post-screening feedback will be greatly affected. Therefore, the research team usually explains clearly to the director team, hoping that he will not appear in the movie theater. The evaluation given by the audience can reflect the quality of the film itself to some extent.　

Of course, there are often directors who insist on it, hoping to be in the audience and feel the most authentic feedback from the audience. "We will let the audience enter, and then go in through the side door after the lights are dark. When the film begins to roll subtitles, the director must leave quietly.

At the time of the screening, the director tried to get close to the audience. After all, director Frant Gwo didn’t have much exposure in front of the stage at that time, and many ordinary audiences didn’t know him. Now, with the film’s popularity, Frant Gwo is well known to the public. Maybe when there is similar cooperation in Wandering Earth 2, he will be "expelled" by the research team.　

The Wandering Earth can finally achieve the box office miracle, and the pre-screening research is absolutely indispensable. When The Wandering Earth conducted the screening research for the first time, the overall special effects were about 60% completed, and there were still many green screen pictures unfinished, but it did not affect the audience’s understanding of the story. Before and after the final film, three large-scale pilot film surveys were conducted, and Frant Gwo made appropriate adjustments according to the results of each survey. In particular, two important scenes were made: one was the scene of holding his son on the beach, and the other was the scene of Jason Wu seeing his wife off. With the support of these two scenes, the contradiction between father and son in the film is more convincing.　

In addition to the make-up adjustment of these important bridges, Frant Gwo finally made simple cuts and adjustments to various characters according to the results of the investigation report, which made the conflict of each character in the whole incident more clear.　

An episode of the test film

For this kind of film research, not all rough cuts can be accepted by the audience. "There was a movie that wanted to do research, but at that time there was an important special effect in the movie that was not completed. Our internal evaluation will directly affect the audience’s perception and understanding of the story. Therefore, I advised the director to wait for the general special effects to be completed before conducting the test film. " In fact, most viewers may not have intuitive feedback on the editing and soundtrack of the film, but they will have a very direct sensitivity to the problems of the story itself.　

The above is just a simple and abstract description. Specific to the actual operation, the research team usually divides the whole project into 10 to 20 elements and turns it into a simple questionnaire for the audience to fill in. Do you think this is over? And this is far from over. According to the feedback of the electronic questionnaire, the research team can grasp the filling situation of the audience at the first time, and invite the key audience to stay for further communication and conversation, so that the research team has the opportunity to collect more emotional and in-depth feedback.　

In the process of investigation, many films often face the choice of multiple ending versions. So will the audience have a chance to see the two editions of the content? Actually, it’s not. The research team will organize two different audiences to evaluate the corresponding version. "We will think that the audience is polluted, and the second version is easily influenced by the preconceived feelings of the audience in the first version."　

Before the screening, the audience saw the films that had not been released, and they were curious and fresh, and this kind of emotion happened to be the objectivity pursued by the research team. As for whether the filmmakers will make adjustments according to the research report, this is what the creative team considers itself. For the research team, their task has been completed when submitting the research report. If it is material or rough cut samples, the film can have more reference dimensions before the final cut. Omnipotent editing or make-up can repair plot loopholes, adjust the rhythm of the film and optimize the scene presentation to a certain extent … …　

More than just testing movies

Some films may encounter the schedule of actors or other reasons after the trial screening, which can’t lead to the final revision. But in fact, many savvy filmmakers have started testing since the script period. In our interview, the screenwriter admitted frankly that when creating the live-action version of The Hulu Brothers, the producer took out a thick research report in order to convince her of the feasibility of making some adaptation. "This is the thickest research report I have ever seen. He asked several people to write the outlines of different versions of The Hulu Brothers, including comedy version, blackened version and normal version … …”

It is through the research team that each version is deeply analyzed, and a relatively high market recognition setting is obtained.　

In addition, the film "The Best of Us" is also in-depth cooperation with the research team from the script stage, and constantly recruits audiences to investigate the script and samples. In the end, after repeated revisions, the audience of "The Best of Us" far exceeded the market average, which also broke the ceiling of the box office of youth films at that time.　

In fact, this model is not uncommon in Hollywood, and it is even an important part of the whole film industrialization. Nowadays, more and more films in China are willing to conduct pre-screening research to truly realize the marketability of commercial films and form a stable triangle of "film-audience-market" in this way. What’s more, opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared, and the market is also reserved for films that are prepared. So, are the audience ready for the invitation call?