On January 31, the pre-sale of new films for the 2024 Spring Festival officially opened. According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, in just 4 days, the total box office (including screenings and pre-sales) of 8 new films has exceeded 200 million. However, when it comes to content supply, this year's situation is significantly different from last year's.
Source: Lighthouse Pro.
The 7 new films in the 2023 Spring Festival file cover science fiction, suspense, comedy, animation, sports and other categories, and this year's 8 new films have 3 animations, 4 comedies, and 1 realistic romance film.
2024 Spring Festival file list (source: Douban).
There is irrationality in such a distribution, the Spring Festival file is essentially the schedule with the largest number of appearances in the whole year except for the summer file, and it has a natural audience base advantage, and movies that can poke the public's mood have a chance in the Spring Festival file. The large number of audiences also means that it is difficult to reconcile, and the supply of multiple types of films is the only solution to meet the diverse viewing needs of audiences. At this point, there is a lack of diversity in the supply of types for this year's Spring Festival.
It is precisely because of this that the suspense of the dark horse has become bigger. As the only romance film in the schedule, "Let's Shake the Sun Together" (hereinafter referred to as "Shake the Sun") has recently been screened in 64 cities across the country with a large-scale industry screening of nearly 7,000 viewers. In the default logic of the industry, large-scale viewing represents a kind of confidence, showing the film's confidence in the quality of its own content. In the word-of-mouth after the screening, "tears in laughter" and "* series" are also in line with the public mood, giving it a dark horse appearance, and the final box office performance of the film has also become an industrial sample with analytical value.
Judging from the current pre-sales, "Flying Life 2", "Hot and Hot" and "Article 20" are evenly matched, and "Bear Infested" has become their dividing line with "Mr. Red Carpet" and "Let's Shake the Sun Together". But is the market landscape fixed? In fact, it is far from the time to decide the winner and loser.
"** Department".
"Shaking the Sun" tells the story of "brainless" Lu Tu (played by Peng Yuchang) and "unhappy" Ling Min (played by Li Gengxi), two seriously ill patients, who fall in love with each other by mistake because of the agreement of "relay of life", and face each other bravely and bravely.
In the first half of the movie, the witty and humorous style weakens the power of suffering, and serious illness occurs in ordinary people, and it is not only crying and grabbing the ground; In the second half of the interweaving of family affection and love, the emotions of the story become full and full, and the crying point comes naturally through non-sensational means. And the love of mutual redemption is one of the most powerful existences.
Lu Tu and Ling Min were just patients at first, and they lived together due to an accident, and Lu Tu, who seemed to be simple-minded but was actually careful, and Ling Min, who had a knife mouth and a tofu heart, rubbed and quarreled constantly in the early stage, making noise in the days when chickens and dogs were jumping, and they had feelings. And the sympathy of the same seriously ill patients made the two of them find warmth and strength in love, and accompany each other through the darkest moments in their lives.
Behind the love line is an expression of vitality - the effort that a seriously ill patient has to put in to live is more than death, and only a strong person can do it.
This is also the spiritual core of "Shaking the Sun": wrapping heaviness and pain through warmth and love, facing the suffering of life with a positive and courageous attitude, and bringing positive energy and warm emotional comfort to people with love and cherishment.
The film also dissipates the pain of the audience when watching the movie in a light way, and the smiles and tenacity of the people in the story also give the audience outside the story the courage to sweep away the haze and regroup to face life.
Achieving this requires working on the details. The method behind "Shaking the Sun" is to first pursue the true expression of the performance. "Don't act, just feel what you really feel, show what you experience, don't act out that fake, imaginary emotion in your head, that you don't feel. Director Han Yan asked the two leading actors to make the performance more rustic and more realistic in reality, and at the same time, the actors went to Changsha, the filming location, in advance to experience the local life and try to get as close to the life reality of the characters as possible.
Of course, the restoration of the patient's state also requires the actor to subvert the previous screen image. In "Shaking the Sun", Peng Yuchang's image is sloppy, tanned, and rustic; Lee Geng-hee plays a uremia patient whose lips are chapped for a long time because he can't drink water casually - during the filming stage, the onlookers couldn't even recognize the actor himself.
Peng Yuchang and Li Gengxi's images in the play (source: Weibo).
More importantly, for a realistic film to feel real, the foundation of the story must be strong enough. For a film like "Shaking the Sun", which focuses on critically ill patients, it is essential to understand and care about patients. To this end, after a year-long precipitation and preparation before filming, the creators went to the hospital to understand patients, visited expert doctors, had in-depth exchanges with patients and their families, and collected a large amount of relevant information on the Internet, so as to present the daily life and survival situation of seriously ill patients as restrained and delicate as possible.
At the same time, the details of the props in each scene in the movie also need to be polished to have the texture of real life. In the rental house where Ling Min lives in "Shaking the Sun", the placement of sofas, mirrors and other items, and even the garbage are designed; The walls of her original home were plastered with different vegetables on what they meant for uremia patients. Relying on details such as this, we try to give the audience a sense of realism in life.
With these premise foundations are not enough, empathy and resonance at the emotional level is the only bargaining chip to impress the audience.
In "Shaking the Sun", Lu Tu and Ling Min's optimism and bravery in the face of the suffering caused by illness will form a natural contagion, giving courage and strength to people in adversity; The love and family affection in the film can easily remind the audience of the people who accompany them in the storm of life - this is also the most important core of the film, giving the audience the energy of love and life.
Perhaps in the fierce competition of the Spring Festival, the relationship between the story told by the movie and the audience is particularly important. After all, a story related to you and me, a warm and emotional experience of life, has always been the reason for the audience to enter the cinema.
The possibility of "Shaking the Sun" in the Spring Festival
Although the "fight" of the Spring Festival stalls has always been fierce, there is always no shortage of "miracles", and the dark horses that counterattack have also become frequent visitors to the Spring Festival stalls.
Analyzing the party behind the so-called dark horse, in addition to the premise of excellent quality of film content, it is necessary to clarify the question of "what kind of movie can be accommodated during the Spring Festival", and the answer may be found from past cases.
In 2019, "The Wandering Earth" became the first sci-fi film to appear on the stage of the Spring Festival, at that time, domestic sci-fi did not have a high degree of recognition and favorability in the hearts of domestic audiences, compared with "Crazy Alien" and "Flying Life" in the same schedule, the audience base was weak, but with its excellent audio-visual and emotional power, it became the schedule champion with a box office score of more than 500 million beyond the second place; In 2022, "Shuimen Bridge of Changjin Lake" also won the first place in the schedule with an absolute advantage, proving that historical and war films can also be favored by the audience in a festival that is considered "joyful".
The Wandering Earth" and "Shuimen Bridge of Changjin Lake" (source: Douban).
It can be seen that the Spring Festival file is not based on the type of "hero", no genre is the trump card of absolute insurance, and the only factor that can determine the fate of the film is the content of the film itself. Based on this consideration, the choice of "Shaking the Sun" to be set for the Spring Festival is not inconsistent, after all, no one stipulates that the audience can only have one comedy on the festival when the family is happy.
In the extension view, the reason why different types have opportunities is because the Spring Festival stalls are too "inclusive". A simple example, the total number of moviegoers during the Spring Festival last year was 12.9 billion, although it is not comparable to the three-month summer file, but compared with the 65.14 million moviegoers of the National Day file of the same duration, it has an absolute advantage to suppress. Not only in 2023, but almost every year, the Spring Festival stalls will firmly occupy the second place in the annual box office contribution with its huge audience base.
The large number of moviegoers means that the audience's tastes and preferences are "varied" in this schedule, and the supply of a single type of film alone is completely unable to meet the audience's viewing needs, which is why there are basically more than four types of Spring Festival stalls in the past; At the same time, although the annual Spring Festival schedule report will mention that the proportion of viewers who "only watch one film" is sometimes as high as 80%, even so, more than 20 million viewers will still choose multiple movies out of more than 100 million moviegoers**.
Moreover, it is not entirely reasonable to only pay attention to the number of moviegoers within seven or eight days of the schedule, and the long-tail effect outside the schedule is equally fascinating. For example, last year's "No Name" and "Deep Sea", although the early film schedule and box office did not have an advantage, after the Spring Festival, it still provided the audience with a continuous motivation to watch the movie. In the past big schedules, high-quality content squeezed by top films also had the opportunity to be screened for a long time and find their own audience.
Nameless" and "Deep Sea" (source: Douban).
On the whole, the inclusiveness of the Spring Festival file determines the unlimited opportunities for different films, and in the past, because of the large number of films of different types, the probability of "dark horse" was evenly distributed, but this year's Spring Festival file is a special existence - 4 comedies "hit the genre", which tests the audience's choice and judgment in the same genre, and 3 animated films have their own audiences, leaving only 1 realistic love movie "Shaking the Sun" is a seemingly "alternative" existence.
But it also means the possibilities and imagination of "Shake the Sun".
First of all, the film makes up for the lack of schedule type. Comedy and animated films are piled up, and "fresh taste" not only provides the only choice for audiences who have a demand for romance films, but also has the potential to "adjust their tastes" for comedy movie audiences. And once the audience pays for the love movie, it will bring about an increase in the frequency of watching the entire movie, and the overall box office of the schedule will also have the opportunity to rise, which is a good thing for the market.
Secondly, this year's Spring Festival schedule includes the Valentine's Day schedule, and the romance film is the most suitable for the holiday atmosphere, at this point, the gentle and delicate love story of "Shaking the Sun" has its stable audience group, combined with the courage brought by mutual redemption and love between the protagonists in the story, and the Valentine's Day schedule is naturally adaptable, it is conceivable that the single-day box office of the film on Valentine's Day may show a dark horse state.
The most important thing is that back to the film itself, the story of two people who support each other in adversity to survive tenaciously is a universal emotion in the film, universality means that the film is very close to the audience, and empathy is an important reason why the audience chooses a film. At this point, "Shaking the Sun" also has its own advantages - every ordinary person's life will have big and small setbacks, hold the hand of the lover and go down bravely, the emotions conveyed in these movies have a good chance to poke the public mood, thus bringing a lot of imagination to the box office of the film.
On the whole, in the Spring Festival file where there is no universal formula, as long as the content quality of a film is passable and can touch the emotions of the audience, regardless of the type, there is a chance to be paid by the audience, and the "alternative" existence of "Shaking the Sun" is a sample to discuss the potential of the schedule and the audience's viewing needs.
Back to the movie itself, perhaps a film that focuses on people's situation and spiritual strength, and is related to you and me, can just use its warmth and ** to take the audience to bid farewell to the haze of the old year, welcome the love and sunshine of the new year, and start again happily and bravely. From the perspective of the industry, in the film market at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the comedy genre certainly has its fixed audience, but if a realistic romance movie also finds its place, the health and diversity of the market will have a chance to be further realized.