Latest update December 15th, 2015 10:12 PM
Veteran Producer Du Yang Talks about Vision and Talents
Du Yang, General Manager of Beijing Skywheel Entertainment Co., Vice President of Beijing Culture Group. Producer of MY OLD CLASSMATE, POLICE STORY 2013, SOPHIE’S REVENGE and THE MISSING GUN, Du Yang has worked in films grossing over 2billion RMB. Du used to work for Huayi Brothers and Wanda Media for a few years.
On the market: I think the China film market began to take shape in 2007 or 2008. 2014 has witnessed quite a diversified line-up of films distributed in China.
On production: MY OLD CLASSMATE is a commercial film that is adapted from a pop song. It is song written by Gao Xiaosong. We both were born in the 1960s and have deep attachment to this song. That year, I happened to watch a quite music-based Chinese film called FOREVER YOUNG. It is a film targeting the post-1970s, but it does not tell the universal experience of those born in that age.
We did a lot of market research and location scout on the campus – whether this song is still popular after almost 2 decades. To our surprise, people are still singing this song, even those born in the 1990s, so naturally, we made a decision to develop this film.
I have always believed marketing is as important as production. So since day 1 of shooting, we made moves on promoting the film – we released the first poster of MY OLD CLASSMATE. On the final day, we did a flash mob on Times Square in New York with 300 Chinese students – that video got 300,000 clicks overnight. The message of this film then spread like wildfire.
On project development: The essential issue in the China film market is script development – quite likely a universal problem. The prevalence of all these remakes and sequels is because original ideas are a rarity. Beijing Skywheel’s priority is to make films that the market wants to see. Also, we won’t just follow the craze, and we will make quality films. We search for ideas in classic Chinese literature – understandably, it takes time. We also buy adaptation rights from authors. For example, we have purchased Liu Cixin’s BALL LIGHTNING. Last but not least, we look at the freshest pieces that published online, those most grounded stories.
On distribution: It is all very exciting that Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – BAT – want to have some market share in the film industry, but content is still key. What BAT brings in are more grounded marketing devices and approaches, for example, the film BREAKUP BUDDIES chose to cooperate with maoyan.com and this is quite an innovation. Maoyan is a part of China’s largest group purchase website Meituan and this film has presold 100 million RMB film tickets before its screening. It can bring new perspectives and ways into the industry if film professionals can look beyond what they are doing every day. But of course, such an impressive sales is based the quality of the film.
Why Wang Yibing, producer of BREAKUP BUDDIES, chose a new company like Beijing Skywheel to distribute this film? We have only established the company in 2013, but we have already had a team of 170 to secure distribution. We divide the whole country into 13 large areas, do grid search about local people’ preferences – use their own dialects and tastes to design slogans and other materials. What is more, we were audacious enough to sign a minimal guarantee of 500 million RMB for the box office. We had confidence in the film and in our distribution team.
On building a team: Above all, it is vital to build up a good team. Most of my team members are young people. For the young, proficiency is important, but vision is even more important. No matter you are a director or a producer, you need to look into different fields and think out of the box. Lots of inspirations come from life itself – if you don’t have a general idea about what life is, how could you make a good film? So my advice is do not stay in your own cocoon – go out and see things, experience things, in order to make different films.
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