Chapter 218 213 It’s Time to Set an Example for You

Chapter 214 It's time to set an example for you

Strictly speaking, the story of "Saw 2" is not closely related to the first one, at least in terms of the plot.

The only connection is that the big boss behind the scenes is still old Jigsaw. After all, without him, the audience will be reduced by half.

Another connection point is Amanda, the survivor of the first film. In this film, she has converted to Jigsaw's school. Her mental state is a bit similar to Stockholm syndrome, but not completely.

Eric did not participate in the creation of the script of the second film. He only proposed the outline of the story and the direction of development. The rest was completed independently by Ray Whannell.

His screenwriting skills are far stronger than his immature director skills. The plot is still well written. James Wan is still the producer of the third film. If this old partner cooperates with another film, James Wan's directing ability will be almost mature, and he can direct independently by then.

With the great failure of "Dead Silence", the market's attention has all come to "Saw 2".

Lionsgate certainly hopes that Saw 2 will also fail, and those who are jealous of MGM and hate Chinese Americans also hope that it will fail, so that they can mock James Wan more conveniently.

However, as the feedback from the first batch of audiences came out, reality slapped these people in the face.

Fox News: "Saw 2 continues the excitement and exploration of human nature of the first film. Compared with the first film, the second film has innovations and progress in technology and plot."

"But it still retains the core elements of the series, including high-IQ killing mechanisms, complex interpersonal relationships and profound thematic explorations. It is a masterpiece worth watching."

Los Angeles Times: "Saw 2 is still a very cleverly conceived film, continuing the routine of foreshadowing, which is unexpected but reasonable."

"After watching this film, you can solve a mystery of the first film, why Jigsaw left survivors. It is recommended for fans to watch."

Salt Lake City Entertainment News: "You all know that I like to recommend good movies to fans, but rarely recommend sequels, because no more than 10% of movies can be made into good sequels."

"But there is no doubt that Saw 2 belongs to that 10%. It is still a sophisticated killing game, terrible traps, and a cruel plot that makes people's adrenaline surge. Horror movie fans will find everything you want here."

Like most of the positive reviews from film review media, the online fan reviews are also mostly positive.

The praises from die-hard fans are even more disgusting, with words like the highest praise, the highest honor, and the best of the year.

The freshness of Rotten Tomatoes reached the opening score of db and scored 2 points. It will definitely decrease in the future, but it is high enough for a horror movie and belongs to the category of excellent works.

The most direct manifestation of the good reviews is the box office. It was released on Friday and earned 37 million US dollars in the first three days of the weekend, which is 4 million US dollars more than the first one.

The cost is the same as the first one, which is still 5 million US dollars in production and 10 million US dollars in publicity and distribution costs.

"Dead Silence" has been released for 6 days so far, but it has only earned more than 7 million US dollars at the box office.

It is true that Lionsgate's operating ability is not as good as MGM, and it has only been released in thousands of cinemas, but the quality and reputation of the film are the root cause.

There is no imagined match, no good talent, and no tug-of-war. The competition between the two movies has ended, and "Dead Silence" has been defeated.

Besides Lionsgate, the most uncomfortable person right now is James Wan. The outside world is criticizing him and praising him at the same time, and he is almost suffering from a split personality.

Eric and Ray Whannell naturally stood up to speak for him.

Eric: "Every director will have failed works, which is not uncommon. Even Hitchcock and Kurosawa Akira dare not guarantee that every movie they make is successful."

"The success of a movie is the result of many factors, such as creativity, market environment, behind-the-scenes team, actor performance, etc."

"When a movie is successful, we will not only praise the director, just like the Oscar for Best Picture when all the crew members go on stage to receive the award."

"Similarly, when a movie fails, you can't blame all the mistakes on the director. I have always believed that James Wan is a good director, and he will definitely become a successful director in the future."

James Wan: "The Movie Saw 2 was completed by James and I. Although I was the director, he helped me a lot. In fact, this is the work of both of us. "

"I have known him for many years. I never believe that a failure can knock him down. I believe he will stand up soon and bring you better works."

"In fact, I heard that MGM has been in contact with James for a new project. Wan is a person who can't sit still. He will prove himself again."

The two's firm support deeply touched James Wan. Anyway, "Dead Silence" has become that ugly, and Lionsgate is embarrassed to promote it. James Wan simply devoted himself to the promotion of "Saw 2".

On February 10, "Saw 2" was released in more than 2,700 theaters for 10 days, and has already earned nearly 60 million US dollars at the box office. It is not a problem to break 100 million in North America.

Overseas, it was only released simultaneously in some countries in Europe. After a large-scale release in a few days, it should be easy to break 200 million US dollars worldwide.

As for Lionsgate's "Dead Silence", no one cares about it. It has been swept into the garbage dump.

But right now Eric’s focus is not on the movie, because today is the day the YouTube video goes online.

Silicon Valley, he hasn't been to the company for a month. As a decision maker, he only needs to get the general direction right and focus on people and money.

Facebook is developing rapidly, especially last month when the number of new customers reached a small peak, and most of the new customers are adults.

The number of registered users has reached 50 million, accounting for nearly a quarter of the U.S. population.

There are more than 42 million active users, which is a terrifying figure.

This is the actual data, and the data released to the public is even more exaggerated, which makes the competitor Myspace nervously catch up, and the edge is getting stronger and stronger.

And it should be due to the pressure from Fox, Myspace has recently started to run advertisements.

Advertisements have a great impact on user experience. The most obvious thing is that it takes longer to open the homepage, which has been complained by many users.

Last month, Facebook also updated a new feature, which is the drift bottle.

As for the drift bottle, I'm afraid all Chinese people know what it does. It can hold text, voice, and pictures.

As for whether the pictures and voices sent by users are against the rules, it is difficult to control for the time being.

Moreover, Facebook is not as stingy as WeChat. There are limits on throwing and picking up bottles every day.

We have specially equipped such a powerful server, so shouldn't we leave it idle?

No limits, no limits at all, you can send as many as you want, so a few days after the function was launched, all kinds of crooked ways were developed.

Some old perverts who couldn't stand the lag of MySpace left and naturally switched to Facebook.

Fitz was a little worried that this function would affect Facebook's reputation, but Eric knew it.

The drift bottle function is a chamber pot, and it should be used when it is needed. When MySpace is defeated and Facebook is the only one, just kick it under the bed.

And unlike MySpace, which was launched with pornography as its selling point, Facebook is still a normal social interaction as a whole, and the drift bottle is an embellishment.

Those old perverts attracted by the drift bottle function will not leave because of the loss of this function, because Facebook has other attractions to keep people.

With Facebook as a pioneer, YouTube's promotion is much simpler.

Major TV stations, portals, forums, and chat rooms carried out carpet bombing propaganda.

All Facebook users received an open letter, and they could log in to YouTube directly with their Facebook accounts without having to re-register, which was quick and convenient.

Hundreds of celebrities, big and small, also helped promote on their social accounts, and then opened YouTube accounts and uploaded a few short videos to attract fans.

Eric looked at it and found that everyone had little experience. It was the first time they did this, so the content of the video was very simple.

Just point the camera, introduce yourself, welcome everyone to open an account on YouTube, and hope to become friends with everyone.

Eric shook his head. After experiencing the bombardment of long and short videos in the future, looking at everyone's restraint now, he felt like he was back in the Stone Age.

In addition to these conventional propaganda methods, Eric also prepared a killer weapon, which was to spend a lot of money.

Unlike Facebook's dynamic posting of pictures and editing a paragraph of text, YouTube's video production is relatively much more difficult.

At least you also need a DV camera, otherwise the video cannot be shot. If you want to make a high-quality video, you need editing and other technologies. The cost has already restricted many people.

Even though YouTube has built-in various editing plug-ins, the learning cost will still keep a large number of people out.

So if you want to quickly accumulate creators, the most direct way is to give them money.

As long as creators can earn income through videos, people will naturally join in.

But at the beginning of the website, it must not be able to place advertisements. Without advertising income, Eric will have to pay for this money.

Fortunately, he is not short of money now. Even if MGM's shares cannot be moved for the time being, he has a lot of personal liquidity.

First, take out 300 million US dollars as an incentive, and then add more if it is not enough. If personal liquidity is still not enough, then borrow money from MGM and transfer it from left hand to right hand.

The income is mainly calculated according to the completion rate of the video, and likes and sharing will also provide a part. Then, according to the length of the creator's video, the price is set in stages, similar to the pricing of short videos, medium videos, and long videos.

There is only one standard, the more you work, the more you get. The more exciting the video, the higher the income.

Currently, when you open YouTube, you can find that the entire website is divided into only comprehensive areas and music areas.

The music area mainly contains songs and MVs of all singers affiliated with Sony Music, which are directly authorized to YouTube by Michael at a lower price.

Others include parts of other companies that Michael helped negotiate.

"Boss, I got it! I got it!"

"What?"

"The first video, the first video uploaded by a user, is not those stars." Howard Hughes shouted excitedly.

Eric walked over and saw a user named Diablo on the computer screen. He uploaded a video of himself playing games.

The video was not long, only a few dozen seconds.

Under the camera, the guy pointed at his game interface with his facial features flying: "Immortal King, I finally collected the Immortal King suit!"

The guy jumped up and hugged the person who filmed it, and the video ended here.

Eric nodded after watching it. Although there was not much to watch, it was more like a short video in later generations, but he had won the title of the first out-of-print uploaded video.

"It's not bad. At least his exaggerated expressions will attract some users to click in and watch. It's a good start."

After a while, another reviewer shouted: "Boss, the second user video has appeared."

Eric clicked to watch. This time it was a girl user, taking pictures of his own cat in motion.

"Hahahaha I've been looking for this guy for a long time, and it turns out he went to the neighbor's house and had sex with the female cat."

"I heard that female cat meowing all the time last night, you bad thing!"

Next is the third, fourth, fifth

By 3 p.m., the number of views from YouTube users had exceeded 100 million.

The number of registered users has easily exceeded one million. After all, there is a Facebook user base there.

However, most of the views in the comprehensive area are contributed to the videos of major celebrities, and less are allocated to ordinary users.

Overall, the music section accounted for more than half of the views, and the vast majority of users went to listen to songs and watch MVs.

The MV for "Rolling in the Deep" by Mykop received 730,000 views in one day and exceeded 50,000 likes.

This result is also expected. The number of videos in the comprehensive area is currently relatively small, with only more than 400 uploaded in one day.

They are all short videos and the quality is not high.

Users quickly finish browsing what they are interested in, and after finishing browsing, they will naturally go to the music area or exit YouTube.

This situation lasted for a week, but there was still not much improvement, which was somewhat different from what Eric expected.

"Howard, how's it going?"

Howard Hughes shook his head and nodded: "Boss, judging from the data alone, as a new website, YouTube can be said to be developing rapidly."

"But the traffic comes from the music area, which accounts for the majority. On the contrary, the personal videos of the users we mainly promote are squeezed into the corner."

"If this trend continues, YouTube will transform from a video website into a music website, which goes against our original intention."

Eric hummed: "What do you think the problem is?"

"Obviously, because the quality of the video is not high enough, it is not attractive enough."

"Boss, YouTube is a very novel operating mode that allows ordinary people to shoot their own videos, but most people have no experience in this area at all."

"Even the home comedy videos that were popular in the last century were screened from all over the country and then edited and broadcast by television stations."

"We can't expect users to get started and learn how to make it quickly. Maybe we will give everyone some time. After two or three months, the situation will improve."

Fitzheisenberg shook his head: "I don't think this is a good idea, because people have personalities, and websites also have their own labels."

"When a website is labeled with its own label, users who are not interested in the label will ignore it."

"Boss, you're a movie maker. Audiences who like horror movies won't watch comedies, right?"

"Go on." Eric nodded.

"If the music section is really allowed to suppress the comprehensive section for a long time, YouTube will be labeled as a music website."

"Most of the users it can attract are music enthusiasts, and its video attributes will be greatly weakened."

"If another opponent suddenly appears, just like myspace, and the opponent only plays video attributes, it will be a huge challenge."

"So my suggestion is not to give up two or three months, but to take all measures as soon as possible to stimulate users' creativity and autonomy."

"But the public are not professionals. They can't make wonderful videos in a short time, or they don't know how to do it at all!" Howard said in frustration, slapping the table.

"Then teach them what to do!"

"What?"

"What they lack is teachers. As long as there are good teachers who can set an example, the process can be greatly accelerated."

As he spoke, Fitz looked at Eric: "And we obviously have ready-made teachers. Boss, you came up with the idea of ​​the oil pipeline. I think no one in the world knows how to do it better than you."

"Besides, MGM has so many professionals, why not lead them to do it together? First make a batch of high-quality videos, and the popularity will increase, which will instantly increase the popularity of the comprehensive area."

Eric nodded slowly: "It seems it's time to show you guys a lesson!"