Companies

Movie trailers become stars in their own right

By Huang Ying (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-20 10:01

A still from the trailer for the movie A Chinese Ghost Story. China's booming movie market has led to the creation of professionally made trailers as a profitable business. [Photo / Provided to China Daily]

BEIJING - The booming film market in China, besides generating box office receipts, is creating many commercial opportunities for businesses such as those that make trailers.

When people decide to go to the cinema, they have all been influenced by various means, including entertainment news, movie posters and trailers. All of them inform potential moviegoers of the plot, stars and director of a film in a way they hope is attractive.

In Wei Nan's opinion, movie trailers play a dominant role in all the means of encouraging people to see a movie.

Trailers started to attract attention in the industry when director Zhang Yimou's A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop received huge box office receipts. Wei made the two-minute trailer that was credited with the film's success.

Later, Wei established a company called Beijing Trailer Movie Culture Media Co Ltd in August 2010. It specializes in the production of movie trailers. It was the first and is currently the only professional company engaged in the business in China. So far it has made trailers for films including Wind Blast, The Lost Bladesman and A Chinese Ghost Story.

Before entering the industry, Wei worked in advertising for eight years and spent two years in postproduction for films. The experiences contributed a large part to his later success. A trailer as the advertisement for a film must be commercial instead of artistic, he said.

Wei said that his price for making a trailer is between 300,000 ($46,370) and 1 million yuan, the highest fees nationwide. However, he's never worried about the number of clients because his work enjoys a good reputation in the film industry among directors, producers and professional marketing personnel.

Different films have different marketing campaign plans, so they vary in the requirements for the production of trailers.

"Movies with a large investment behind them and more than a two-month promotional period usually need several versions of a trailer," said Wei. "A large investment refers to those between 30 million and 100 million yuan."

He added that he made six versions of a trailer for one film, the most he had ever done, but did not reveal its name.

Currently, the biggest deals for Wei's company are The Monkey King and Zhang Yimou's Nanjing Heroes.

The making of trailers is quite time-consuming. The creators often work at night to avoid being disturbed.

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The emergence of Wei's company heralded a more sophisticated specialization in the domestic movie industry. In the past, movie trailers were produced by the director and his team as a by-product. Sometimes no trailers were made. Furthermore, film producers would not specifically budget for the making of trailers.

Wei said that the production team should be responsible solely for shooting good films and the marketing team should be responsible for selling them well.

A few film conglomerates, such as Bona Film Group and Huayi Brothers Media Group, have set up special departments dealing with the marketing and publicity for films. Small film companies tend to seek cooperation with professional third-party marketing institutions and companies.

Zhang Wenbo's In Entertainment company specializes in the marketing campaign for film productions.

Founded in 2009, Zhang's company has been responsible for the promotion of films including Go La La Go and Ip Man 2, both of which generated more than 100 million yuan in box office receipts in 2010.

The rise of trailers also reflected a change in the industry: A growing number of film companies are realizing the importance of the marketing campaign for films, which has led to an increase in investment in this sector.

"About 60 to 70 percent of film producers have recognized the effect of trailers in movie marketing campaigns," Wei said.

"Previously, the marketing campaign investment only accounted for 5 to 10 percent of the total cost of a film. However, the proportion has climbed to about 50 percent in recent years," said Zhang, general manager of In Entertainment.

He took the movie Eternal Moment to demonstrate his point. The total investment in this film was less than 20 million yuan, but its marketing campaign cost more than 10 million yuan and played a significant role in its box office performance. The movie netted 200 million yuan.

"I think Wei's trailers are brilliant because they can stimulate people's desire to watch a movie," Zhang said.

"If the trailers are good enough, they will raise people's expectations of the film, thereby improving future box office receipts," said Wu Jialing, director of Marketing Material with Huayi Brothers Media Group.

She added that as the trailers give audiences a direct visual impact, they perform better than other promotional campaigns in attracting moviegoers.

"We are devoted to spreading the message of trailers to film producers who have no awareness of their importance and will continue to improve the quality of our work using market feedback," Wei said.