【Native Speaker每日综合训练—39系列】【39-07】经管 Film Industry

小蘑菇开始打怪

内容：小蘑菇开始打怪 编辑：小蘑菇开始打怪

公益申请名额，每月一名

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写在前面：
暑假到了，又到了电影市场火热争抢票房的时节...现在票房过亿也不再是一个传说~最近真的有很多电影上映，其中最令人（wo）期待的莫过于《后会无期》（我真的不是给岳父打广告写软文...）。那我们就来看看这几年中国电影业的发展以及好莱坞面临的挑战。
每期都把经管做出文史哲的意味真的好嘛。。

Part I: Speaker

US National Film Registry

[Rephrase 1, 06:09]

Source: 6 Minute English
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/2012/01/120119_6min_english_films.shtml

小蘑菇开始打怪

Part II: Speed

The red carpet
Dec 21st 2013 | BEIJING | From the print edition

[Time 2]
THE buildings on the studio lot of China Film Group, a vast government-owned company, are grey, windowless and identical. The air, even 20km outside Beijing, is heavy with pollution. Inside, Jiang Wen is filming his newest movie, “Gone with the Bullets”, about a dance competition in 1920s Shanghai. He is standing on a stage with sequined dancers. Around 400 extras in black tie look on from a Gaudiesque theatre, built for the shoot. Mr Jiang, in a grey T-shirt and 3D glasses, scurries up and down the stage giving directions. Mr Jiang has been known to hold up a white board with “Sexy” written in red marker pen, and show the dancers how it should be done. Cameras swivel around the dancers, capturing their gyrations and the audience’s reaction.

Mr Jiang, an actor as well as a director, is one of the stars of China’s film business. His 2010 movie, “Let the Bullets Fly”, attempted to invent a new genre: the Chinese Western. It was about a bandit who poses as the mayor of a remote Chinese town. The government did not appreciate its portrayal of an illegitimate leader gulling the masses, but the film was wildly popular. If everything goes smoothly “Gone with the Bullets”, which is being shot in 3D, will open in theatres in China and around the world by the end of 2014. In terms of cost, the film is pushing the boundaries. It has a budget of around $50m, a princely sum by Chinese movie-making standards. A Broadway choreographer and American dancers have been brought in. On stage right near the dressing rooms, Keith Collea, an American 3D expert, sits in the dark watching his screens. “China is where it’s at,” he says.

Last year China overtook Japan to become the second-largest film market after America, with box-office receipts of around 17 billion yuan ($2.8 billion). Some people think it will be the world’s biggest in five years’ time. Young people, flush with cash, are eager to get out of the house. Films have become central to Chinese courtship and consumption. Enormous IMAX screens and 3D films are the rage, and in big cities carry a similar ticket price to America. Screens are flickering on around the country. More than ten a day were erected in 2012; today there are around 18,000, more than four times the number five years ago. “Journey to the West”, an adventure film released in 2013, has grossed more than 1.2 billion yuan ($205m).
[414 words]

[Time 3]
Most Chinese movies lose money: only around a quarter make it into theatres, and piracy means there is no legitimate DVD market. But then many films in Hollywood and elsewhere are unprofitable these days: according to a report by the British Film Institute earlier this month, only 7% of British films turn a profit. Chinese people like films and they like to gamble, so money is racing into the movie business. In September, for instance, Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, announced he would build the world’s largest film-studio complex, for an estimated $8.2 billion, in Qingdao.

Hollywood is also trying to push in. Only 34 big-budget films, and a handful of independent foreign ones, are allowed into China each year, and foreign producers are allowed to keep only a small share—usually less than 25%—of box-office revenues. Even so, foreigners are desperate to get their product into China. Sometimes films are specially adapted for the market: four extra minutes of footage, featuring Chinese actors, were added to the Chinese version of “Iron Man 3”, made by Disney’s Marvel.

To gain a foothold in China, Hollywood studios are helping finance films or co-producing them. Mr Jiang’s “Gone with the Bullets” has backing from Sony, a Hollywood studio; DreamWorks, which made cartoon hits like “Shrek”, has set up Oriental Dreamworks, a joint venture with Shanghai Media Group, a state-owned studio, and two other firms, to make animated films for the Chinese market. There are risks to working in China as Relativity Media, a Hollywood studio, discovered in 2011. It got flak from the Western press for shooting a movie in Linyi, an ambitious city in Shandong province, when Chen Guangcheng, a well-known human-rights activist, was being held under house arrest in the city. But the lure of the Chinese market tends to outweigh reputational risk, and Relativity is financing a new film located in the city of Linyi.
[317 words]

[Time 4]
American influence in China’s film business is nothing new. “Everything we learned, we learned from Hollywood,” says Yu Dong, the boss of Bona Film Group, one of China’s largest independent studios. In some ways China’s movie industry resembles 1930s Hollywood, when studios controlled all business lines—from talent to production to theatres—before a 1948 Supreme Court ruling forced them to divest. In China, this is called “being a dragon from head to tail”. Huayi Brothers, one of China’s largest studios, whose name evokes the fraternal Warners, oversees actors, production, distribution and cinemas.

Yet the differences are more obvious than the similarities. China’s film industry lacks Hollywood’s technical sophistication. Even costly Chinese movies often look amateurish. “I fell asleep,” confesses a woman when the lights come on at a Beijing cineplex. She had left work a few minutes early to catch a late afternoon screening of “Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon” in 3D. During some scenes the special effects looked like a 1990s video game. The plot and dialogue were not much slicker.

China’s movie business also lacks Tinseltown’s glamour. Mr Yu’s small office is on the 18th floor of a dingy Beijing tower block above a busy road. Smoke from his cigarettes fills the air; honks rise from the street below. There is no Hollywood-style party scene because stars tend to keep out of polluted Beijing. They treat club openings as work events and expect to get paid to turn up.

But the big difference is in the location of power. In America power lies with the studios; in China with the state. The government controls which films are made and has a hand in every aspect of the film business, from production to exhibition. China Film Group produces movies and distributes Hollywood and Chinese films. The government rewards independent producers for making films it approves of—Desen International Media, a production company, received a bonus of 3m yuan for “Full Circle”, which promoted filial piety, for instance—and blocks Hollywood films during national holidays, to help Chinese ones.
[343 words]

[Time 5]
Hollywood has always been the world’s dream-maker, but China’s government wants the country to make its own. A communiqué released after the Central Committee meeting of the Chinese Communist Party in 2011 announced that “it is a pressing task to increase the state’s cultural soft power” and to “build our country into a socialist cultural superpower”. When Shanghai Media Group signed its deal with DreamWorks last year, Xi Jinping, then vice-president and now president, attended the ceremony in Los Angeles.

The government has twin ambitions in fostering the film industry, one domestic and one global. At home, it wants people to see films that will inculcate Chinese values and culture. And it wants them to go voluntarily: the party used to force people to watch propaganda films, but even it saw that this was like winning an ice-skating medal after beating up the competition with a bat. Abroad, the government wants to spread a more attractive image of the country. Hosting the Olympics was one attempt at this; but film premieres can happen more often. Yet China punches well below its weight in the film world: it has won the Palme d’Or at Cannes only once, 20 years ago, for Chen Kaige’s “Farewell My Concubine”—which was banned in China at the time. The government wants to change that, and has recently helped organise events to showcase Chinese films in places as diverse as Fiji, Cambodia and New York.

As with the Olympics, the government does not feel comfortable leaving creative elements to chance. Except during the 1930s, when China had a thriving independent film industry centred in Shanghai and operating with relatively little interference, the political climate has defined and confined its films. Private studios were dissolved after the Japanese occupied Shanghai in 1937. When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, it recognised that movies could be useful. Government studios made films packed with peasants and propaganda, and wheeled mobile projectors to rural areas to ensure they reached millions. Tickets were given out at work, and everybody had to attend. Independent movies started again in the 1970s, and then sputtered along. Now a few independent studios operate within the constraints of a state-controlled system.
[367 words]

If it’s entertaining, cut it
The head of the censorship board has privately described the films being made today as “trashy”

[Time 6]
“The Chinese producer is the best producer in the world,” claims Mr Yu. “He has to negotiate the Chinese government and the market.” China does not have a sex-and-violence ratings system of the sort that operates in most of the rest of the world to protect children and young people, but films cannot be screened until they have been signed off by censors at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. Film-makers must submit a draft of the script in advance of shooting, and later a final cut of the film. The censorship board, which has around three dozen members, objects to violence, sex, drugs and anything critical of the party, either explicitly or implicitly—in other words, every ingredient that might be used to fill seats. Success comes from predicting what censors will object to, and writing scripts in such a way that they do not. Overt political commentary is unacceptable; that is probably why so many films are set in the past.

Censors often ask for multiple script revisions before giving the go-ahead, and, after seeing the final cut, request that scenes be eliminated. Film-makers’ reactions to these restrictions range from acceptance to outrage. Zhao Wei, a famous actress and the director of “So Young”, a drama about college in the 1990s that came out this year, had to axe a masturbation scene. She considers herself lucky: movies can be held up for years. In April the China Film Directors’ Guild honoured Feng Xiaogang, a director. In his acceptance speech he complained about the “torment” of censorship. Even when films have been given a green light, censors sometimes change their minds. Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” was pulled from theatres after a few days.
[288 words]

[Rest]
While producers in Hollywood try to drum up as much interest as possible in their films, those in China keep them quiet, so as not to pique censors’ interest or suspicion. Your correspondent visited the set of a movie that had gone through around 20 versions of the script before it was approved. The censors signed off on it only after a sympathetic communist hero was written in. A crew member confided that the censors were still going through the script, even though shooting had begun, and were trying to get the final, climactic scene eliminated. When some of the producers heard a journalist had been on set, they were horrified, lest the movie’s name be printed.

Some say that the censors are loosening up a bit. A racy scene was cut from “So Young”, for example, but several abortions were left in. “No Man’s Land”, a sinister thriller, was held up for more than two years because censors thought it was “too dark” and “too distant from real life”. But after what are believed to be significant modifications, it was released in early December. “Hunger Games: Catching Fire”—this autumn’s Hollywood blockbuster, in which a totalitarian regime sacrifices its young for the entertainment of the masses—was, to general astonishment, screened in Chinese cinemas. Popular online video sites, such as Youku, host original movies, called “microfilms”, which are not subject to the same censorship process, but this is probably an oversight rather than progress.

The government uses subsidy as well as censorship to get the kind of films it wants made. It forks out increasing sums for propaganda films, which account for an estimated 10% of movies being made each year. “The Founding of a Republic”, a 2009 film celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, was a glossy Hollywood-style epic featuring so many stars that some had to be cut out of the final version.

Yet for all its efforts, the government is not really getting what it wants from its film industry. Far from inculcating the masses with Chinese culture and values the party approves of, successful films are often adaptations of Hollywood hits. “Lost in Thailand”, a comedy about male friends reminiscent of Hollywood’s “The Hangover”, did well last year, as did “Tiny Times”, a film about four materialistic friends in Shanghai and their luxurious lifestyle, which has been described as a cross between “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Sex and the City” (without the sex). A saccharine tribute to materialism, “Tiny Times” did particularly well in smaller, less-developed “tier 3” and “tier 4” cities, whose citizens aspire to be rich and fashionable but want to watch characters that feel home-grown. Ann An of Desen International Media, one of the producers, says the film appealed to stressed, overworked audiences. “We provided a two-hour dream for them.” A film-maker says the head of the censorship board has privately described the Chinese films being made today as “trashy”.
Nor do Chinese movies travel well. “Lost in Thailand” grossed around $192m in China, but a mere $60,000 in America. Even audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong do not have much interest in mainland films. The plots tend to be blunt and the acting melodramatic. “Flowers of War”, a costly movie about the Nanjing Massacre starring a Hollywood actor, Christian Bale, was intended to go global. But it fell flat outside China and failed to win the awards or critical acclaim officials had been hoping for.

Too many films are both too foreign and too familiar for audiences abroad: “Finding Mr. Right”, for instance, is a romantic comedy about a woman who goes to Seattle at the behest of her married lover to give birth to their baby, and finds love there. The story feels relevant and modern to Chinese audiences, but to foreign ones it has no surprises and too many echoes of “Sleepless in Seattle”, a Hollywood classic.

A lighter touch by the censors might produce films that were more authentically Chinese and artistically interesting. It would also avoid embarrassing incidents. The Chinese film that has garnered most attention in the West lately is “A Touch of Sin” by Jia Zhangke—a gloomy art-house portrayal of modern China that won the award for best screenplay at Cannes this year. The government has banned it from cinemas and journalists from interviewing Mr Jia. More Westerners have probably seen reports of this in recent months than have watched a Chinese film.
[744 words]
Source: Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21591741-red-carpet

小蘑菇开始打怪

Part III: Obstacle

Hollywood's new model
How new money is changing the film industry
Mar 15th 2007 | los angeles | From the print edition


[Time 7]
JUDGING by the number of times each was gushingly thanked by this year's Oscar winners, the people who finance films are now more important than God. Investors are certainly omnipresent in Tinseltown these days. If all goes according to plan, they will soon resurrect United Artists, a defunct studio, and the career of Tom Cruise, a star with a public-image problem. It is just one sign among many of how money from outside Hollywood is changing the film industry.

Film has traditionally been a good business and a bad investment. The dream machine has been oiled by sources as varied as property developers, tax-averse Germans and (in the case of the 1959 film “Plan 9 from Outer Space”) the Baptist church. But returns have usually been disappointing. The inherent riskiness of the film business is one reason; another is the studios' accounting practices, which, until recently, were as laden with special effects as the films they produced.

The need for serious money has changed all that. The big studios now spend an average of just over $100m making and selling each film. Led by Disney, they are cutting back on the number of movies they produce, making the gambles they do take all the more risky. The studios' corporate parents would prefer it if their financial reports were a little less suspenseful. Hence the new, more open and honest attitude to private investors.

For the past few years the big studios have encouraged hedge funds and other investors to back “slates” of several dozen films spread over more than a year. Although the financiers are not allowed to get their hands on reliable money-makers such as “Harry Potter” or “Spider-Man”, they still find the slates less risky, and hence more appealing, than individual films. Last September Merrill Lynch estimated that outsiders cover more than 30% of the cost of film production.

One result is that Wall Street now knows much more about how the film business works. As their experience grows, some investors are beginning to think they can “beat the house”, as John Burke, a Hollywood dealmaker, puts it. Rather than backing every film put out by a studio, they are investing in producers with good records. Michael London, who specialises in making family dramas, and Joel Silver, who is notably good at blowing things up, are among the recent recipients of such largesse. Several more such deals are rumoured and the pace may increase if JPMorgan goes ahead with its plan to set up a film-finance arm.

This has changed the arc of Hollywood careers. Not so long ago, producers and film stars who fell out with studio bosses might retire to write books with titles like “You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again”. These days they round up some private equity and get back to work. Thanks to Goldman Sachs, Bob and Harvey Weinstein were able to set up a new film studio just two months after they angrily left Disney in 2005.

Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, his producer, were talking to investors even before Paramount Pictures cut them loose last year. MGM, the largest stake in which is held by Providence Equity Partners, quickly gave them offices. It is trying to raise $500m or so to pay for the production of four to six films a year. If the deal comes off, United Artists, a moribund label owned by MGM, will return to its silent-film era roots as a studio run by the talent.

Although the big names get most of the attention, Wall Street money is churning the independent film business, too. Until recently, investors were nervous about dealing with firms that produce only a few films a year. But financiers have noticed that cheap hits such as “Little Miss Sunshine” can be hugely profitable. And beneath their maverick exteriors, such outfits are reassuringly obsessed with cost control. Jim Stern, a former fund manager who has raised enough money to start producing films, reckons he can undercut the big studios by making them for $20m-35m.

Such a minnow tries to protect its investors by pre-selling films abroad and exploiting tax rebates offered by other states to filmmakers who shoot outside California. Overture Films, a four-month-old studio, plans to follow a similar strategy. It will eschew broad teenage fare (which is expensive to advertise) in favour of movies targeted at narrower audiences such as blacks and young women.

Chris McGurk, who runs Overture, reckons that three-quarters of the newly financed outfits will be gone within five years, and he may be right. The film industry's real problem, says John Sloss, a consultant, is not so much a shortage of films as a shortage of eyeballs. Getting movies to the screen and the DVD racks, and persuading people to see them, is the tricky part. Here the established studios have a huge advantage. They have global networks and legions of marketing men—and can attach their trailers to blockbusters.

The other problem is that film is such an unpredictable business. Who could have predicted, for example, that Americans would spend some $70m in just three days last week to see “300”, a poorly reviewed film featuring a Scottish-accented Spartan warrior? Perhaps nobody—but a studio like Warner, which produced the film, probably had a better chance than a hedge-fund manager trying to beat the odds. New money is transforming Hollywood, but institutional memory will always count for something.
[903 words]

Source: Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/8853762

疏离无罪

沙发~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaker: US national film registry was founded in 1989 to make some good films kept in good preservation.And the speaker talked about the several old movies that they have watched as first movie.The movie Gone with the wind earned the most money in the film history.

02:03
Introduce Jiang Wen and his film Gone with the bullet.China has become the world's second largest film market now.And more young people have money and are eager to go to the cinema.Some people say chinese film market will over come America's.

02:11
Most Chinese movies lose money.But there are still many people and much moeny entering this industry.So did Hollywood.But for the Chinese policy,only a few foreign films can go into theatres.So hollywood tried to co-produce movies with chinese companeis.

02:14
Chinese film industry assembles 1930s Hollywood when studios controlled all business lines.But China’s film industry lacks Hollywood’s technical sophistication and Tinseltown’s glamour.And Chinese government has the power to decide which movie can be made.

02:15
Chinese government wants to make a own Chinese Hollywood.It has twin ambitions in film industry.One is to makes films to inculcate Chinese value and culture.Another is to spread Chinese culture and influence to the world.And film is always a good method of propaganda.

02:09
China does not have a sex-and-violence ratings system.But a film need to be censored and cut by the censorship board before being screened.Many movies were banned by this organization and many people have complained about it.

07:00
The money outside Hollywood is entering the fil industry now,which is also changing the whole industry.
Film is always a good business but bad investment.It is highly risky to invest a film with big sum of money.Now many some Hollywood companeis is cutting numbers and moeny invested in films.They are now having a open and honest attitude to private investors,which can share the risk.
But after being familiar with the business,investors from wall streets tried to invest directly in producers with good record and left the firms alone.These money outside the Hollywood helped those talented people who left firms to build their own studios.Investors are also churning the independent film business.,which can also be profitbal with small investment.
The big problem in Hollywood now is not the shortage of film but the shortage of eyeballs.And also the unpredicatable outcome of a movie can be a serious thing to a business.

小蘑菇开始打怪

自己也来占一个首页。。
-------------

speaker:

gone with wind is the most selling film in the history

US use registry to let the good film passed to the next generation

time2；

Jiang’s new movie called gone with the bullets will be published by the end of 2014

China overtook Japan to become the second-largest film market after America

time3:

the increase of the film market of China

many Hollywood company invest in domestic studio

time4:

we learned from Hollywood

the difference is more than similarity

lacking tech

lacking glamour

films are controlled by the government

time5:

two ambitions in fostering the film industry

domestic: inculcating Chinese values and culture

abroad: spreading a more attractive image of the country

the effort in developing independent studios

time6:

even though China does not have rating system but each film should be passed by the government

time7:

film has traditionally been a good business and a bad investment

studio encourage hedge funds to invest

wall street knows much more about how the film business works

a strategy of protecting investors by pre-selling films abroad and exploiting tax rebates

the real problem of the film industry is not persuading people to watch the movie but get enough funding

film is such an unpredictable business

vsetteacher

1:54,1:38,1:50,1:45,1:34,4:00,4:30
最后一篇看得好累啊。好多细节都没吃透。

LUCY小可

thanks！！
3‘34
2’41
3’39
2‘40
1’56
4‘09

obstacle
4’27

ffffionabear

占~感谢蘑菇桑~！！
————感谢！！！嘿~你的作业~不，是你的作业~(￣_,￣ ) ~~~#作业天天见~~#~~~进击的阅读小分队~~~\(^o^)/~——————————————————
[speaker]
The American list from 1989 which ranked the most 25 films that had historical important impact and high level of preference in the film industry.
early film memory:ET-alien and human friendship
"Gone with the wind" had made more money than any other films  
[speed]
3'09
Film becomes the most favorite way in youngsters' courtship and consumption.Chinese film now has founded a new genre----the Chinese Western,take "Gone with the Bullets" as an example.
2'43
The lure of Chinese film market is outweigh its reputation risk like piracy,especially in those fruitless days.Even for Hollywood,few films can enter theatre,and fewer of them can make a profit.To gain a foothold in China,those who create films are likely to get financial aid from Hollywood studios.
2'26
Hollywood have a huge influence on China's film business,but differences are more obvious than similarities.Firstly,chinese films lack the sophistication technique of Hollywood,so it don't have the glamour like them.Secondly,the power of the film is held by the state's government,not the studios.Government interference happened in the whole film production chain,which blocks chinese film.
2'26
Hollywood is the World's dream maker,but the chinese government want to make theirs own.They spare no effort to foster local film industry for two reasons: to consolidate chinese value and culture inland and to create a better chinese image global.
2'04
Chinese film censorship is rigor,which always include explicit and implicit rules,so that many film makers are tortured by that.And any film about sex,violence,drugs or factors that threaten the benefit of Party will be frozen or eliminated.
4'48
There is a oversight of censorship on microfilms,which become more and more popular among the 20 somethings.But in the traditional film industry,the government doesn't really reach the target that inculcating the masses with chinese culture or values.For the local citizens,Hollywood films are much more glamours.And for the foreigners,chinese films are either too strange or too familiar.
[obstacle]
5'28
main idea:Investors have became the essential part of film industry.Money can help to solve the film market's inherent riskness and the studios' accounting practices.
Influence:
1.Wall street now knows much more about how the film business works,and the film making process become more open and honest to those investors.
2.film market tends to produce more films to attract investors.
problems:
1.narrower audiences
2.unpredictable result

晓野的野

先占个座位吧
-----------------------------------------
SPEAKER:

talk about films---preference about film---3 movies---titannic---film can make a lot of money---70 years old but just be added---old movies can give a hint for future---sound of music---which made more money---titanic---not true---gone with wind
-----------------------------------------
掌管 6        00:05:30.70        00:16:28.08
掌管 5        00:01:39.75        00:10:57.38
掌管 4        00:02:23.13        00:09:17.62
掌管 3        00:02:27.10        00:06:54.49
掌管 2        00:02:04.31        00:04:27.39
掌管 1        00:02:23.07        00:02:23.07
--------------------------------------
我国建立施行电影分级制度势在必行，统一的电影标准导致过度的删减，很多优秀的电影作品被剪得七零八落。中国电影发展起来还有很长的一段路要走，偶尔的两部优秀作品不能说明任何问题。这不仅仅需要一代又一代电影人的努力，还需要广电总局的配合与支持。虽说都是要带着脚铐跳舞，但是脚铐太重真的跳不动啊。
另：期待 后会无期 。

cherry6891

39-07
time 2
Jiang wen 's new movie tells the story of a dance competition in Shanghai
Then recall his last successful movie "let the bullet fly"
Last year china took over Japan to become the second-large film market after America, IMAX screen and 3D movie are very popular and screens number are four times of years before

Time3
Most Chinese movie lose money cuz only a quarter can play in theater and there is no legitimate DVD market

But still Chinese business man chases racing on investing on films and Hollywood is trying to push in too

Some movies got footage or invite Chinese actor to adapt the Chinese market
To foothold in china, foreign company financed the movies or co-produced the movie

Time4
American influences the Chinese movie but there still difference for example, Chinese movie lack the technical sophistication and glamour of Hollywood movies
The biggest difference is the location of power
Time5
Hollywood is the world's dream maker while China governments want to make its own
The government has twin ambitions of the film- in domestic he wants to inculcate Chinese value and culture , globally he wants to set good and new image of china.

Private studios dissolved after Japan invaded shanghai and the independent movie started in 1970

Time6
Chinese movie maker is the best during the world cuz they need to deal with strict censorship and picky audiences

The censorship board objects to violence,drug and other bad topics
Then he lists the successful directors and movies