Chapter 347: Planning for Sina and the Problem of Interstellar
With the development of the Internet, the music market has also undergone tremendous changes.

In the past, physical albums were released, but later on, physical albums only served as supplements, and digital albums became the main sales channel.

Starting next year, Tiantian Dongting will be the first to launch a paid music model, and other music websites will quickly follow suit.

The digital music market is expanding rapidly, and the total market value is increasing year by year.

Of course, Liu Zhou’s plan to build a music website is not just because of its huge future value.

The music industry is an important part of the entertainment ecosystem. If you want to build a complete cultural and entertainment industry chain, music is also indispensable.

In later generations, music websites have become the absolute top of the food chain in the music field. As long as you gain a foothold here, you will have a great say in the music industry.

Therefore, Liu Zhou has not been involved in the music field until now. He is just waiting for the arrival of the Internet wave and directly entering the music industry through music websites.

Otherwise, in the album era, you will not be able to compete with those old music companies because they have already initially established industry barriers.

Unless you can discover another singer as great as Jay Chou, it will be possible to ignore those barriers.

"By the way, Mr. Wang, how is the plan for you to acquire the online copyrights of songs from major music companies going?"

"We have acquired some, but they are mainly songs from the mainland. The big companies in Hong Kong and Taiwan are unwilling to sell the copyrights directly, and only license them for a period of years."

"It seems that we are still too late. They must have heard some rumors and knew that the higher-ups would pay more attention to copyright protection."

The mainstream of pop music is still in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but Hong Kong and Taiwan's music companies are influenced by the West and pay more attention to copyright.

Since it is impossible to obtain the online copyright of the music library of Hong Kong and Taiwan music companies, the only option is to authorize them.

But at least some music copyrights in the mainland were acquired, so it wasn't all in vain.

"Just authorize it. The price may be cheaper now. Try to negotiate a longer term with them and also discuss more music copyrights."

"Ok."

Then Liu Zhou looked at Cao Guowei and said:

"What's going on here, Mr. Cao?"

"Mr. Liu, didn't you arrange to contact the official departments and ask them to open an official account on Weibo? The results were not ideal, so I would like to ask you to see if you can find a breakthrough."

"This matter cannot be rushed. Official departments are quite cautious. Our Sina Weibo has only been in operation for less than two years. Once it stabilizes and they see the benefits of Weibo, they will naturally join us.

In fact, you can first contact TV stations or entertainment-related departments, as they may know more about Weibo. "

Many times, it is useless to pursue the right person first. Just like chasing a girl, you need to attract her.

"Another point is that the publicity effect of Weibo hot searches is getting better and better. When bidding for a sale, you should also be careful not to put all the news on the Internet just for the sake of money."

Just like Baidu's bidding ranking, Weibo hot searches cannot be ranked entirely based on real click-through rates, so Sina Weibo definitely has room for maneuver.

Moreover, this is also Weibo’s main way of making profits. Liu Zhou is not so noble as to completely give up bidding for hot searches.

"Ok."

"Mr. Cao, I heard that Tudou Video is preparing to go public in the United States?"

"Yes, they have gone through three rounds of financing, and Tudou Video has become the hidden leader of mainland video websites. In fact, even if the founder of Tudou.com does not go public, the capital behind him will push them to go public."

Tudou Video is one of the earliest video websites in the mainland and is willing to spend money. So even though Sina Video and Youku Video are catching up closely, Tudou Video's overall strength is still slightly better.

However, the strength of the three websites is not very different, and they are still in a melee and the situation has not yet been settled.

"Not only Tudou Video, Youku Video is also preparing to go public." Wang Yan also said at this time.

"Then there is no unrest within our Sina Video?"

"There should be. Some senior executives of Sina Video have also proposed to split Sina Video and list it on the stock market."

"Is this common?"

"It's not very clear. Mr. Gong from Sina Video should know more."

Seeing that the other two competitors are busy preparing for listing, the grassroots employees may be fine, but the executives of Sina Video will definitely be itching to go public.

After all, a company's listing is also a journey of collective wealth creation, and company executives are the biggest beneficiaries.

But if the company is not listed, then there will be nothing and you can only get a fixed salary.

This is also the reason why there is a high turnover of personnel in the old Internet giants. The wealth has been divided up and the structure has stabilized.

Unless you can reach the top management of the company, you may be rewarded with options, otherwise you will always be an employee.

Now Tudou and Youku are preparing to go public one after another. Gong Yu and Liu Zhou are not worried because they are already the top executives of Sina Group. Like Zhong Lifang, they have already obtained options of the company.

Liu Zhou is worried about the people below him. It would be funny if Sina Video encountered problems due to the popularity of the other two video websites going public.

Sina Video plays an important role in Liu Zhou's future layout of the entertainment industry, and he will never allow any accidents to occur.

“You will inform Mr. Gong directly later that nothing can happen to Sina Video, and have him tell his subordinates that Sina Video will not be split up and listed, but will remain within the corporate structure of Sina Group.

For those who are unwilling to give up, we at Sina support them to venture out, but if you choose to stay, then just work with peace of mind.”

Now Sina Video and Weibo are the main businesses of Sina Group, even the portal news and games that started it all are inferior to them.

It is impossible for Liu Zhou to allow Sina Group to be affected in order to allow Sina Video to go public.

Moreover, the split listing would not bring much wealth to Liu Zhou, but would instead cause more trouble.

The model of the Penguin Group in later generations is quite good. Except for the China Literature Group, all businesses are placed within the framework of the Penguin Group, and each business is not split up and listed.

Therefore, the coordination among the various businesses of Penguin Group is smoother, unlike the Ali series, some of which are fighting alone. This also keeps the market value of Penguin so high.

Liu Zhou has always planned to place all of his Internet businesses within Sina Group.

By the time Sina's various businesses are well developed, the market value of Sina Group will naturally increase, and Liu Zhou's wealth will not be reduced in the slightest.

However, Sina is listed on NASDAQ, but thinking about the bad things happening in the United States in the future, Liu Zhou wanted to delist Sina from NASDAQ.

But Sina is in a very good situation now, and it would be difficult to delist. Liu Zhou thought that if Sina's stock price was still okay, he could list it in Hong Kong again.

"Ok."

After the three of them discussed some company affairs, they left to go about their business.

Since he was at Sina, Liu Zhou might as well stay here and deal with the company's documents.

After returning home in the evening and playing with his son for a while, Liu Zhou went back to the study to continue writing the script for Interstellar. After writing for more than an hour, including what he had written in the previous few days, he finally finalized the first draft.

However, Liu Zhou did not continue writing the script as there was still a key issue before him.

When filming "Interstellar", Nolan used 70mm film IMAX, but currently there are basically no movies in China that use 70mm film.

In fact, even if you shoot with 70mm film, there are only a few versions of screens in China, including digital IMAX, ordinary digital, and 35 film version.

As for 70 film IMAX, there are only two screens in China at present.

There are very few film IMAXs in the world. IMAX company is promoting IMAX digitization globally, which has lower costs.

The Chinese giant screens developed by China Film Digital are all digital giant screens.

In this case, no matter how well the film is taken, it will be useless if the screening conditions are not up to par.

However, there is still some difference between the films shot with 70mm film and those shot with 35mm film even when projected on digital IMAX and giant screen.

After all, the former has higher quality film sources, so it will be somewhat better.

Liu Zhou even considered whether to shoot directly with digital technology.

It seems that the United States has now developed a 6k digital camera.

The film shot by a 6k digital camera can reach 4k after post-compression, which is clearer than 35mm film.

Different movies have different requirements for pictures. For example, most of "The Martian" was shot digitally, and some parts were shot on film.

But "Interstellar" is different. Unlike "The Martian", most of the scenes in this movie take place on Mars, and the surface of Mars can be artificially transformed.

Shooting with film definitely gives it a more textured feel.

70mm film IMAX is definitely the best choice, but there are only five such cameras in the world, so whether you can rent one is a problem.

In fact, it is not only a question of the camera, but also the choice between 2D and 3D.

It was not until the end of this year, after the release of James Cameron's "Avatar", that mainland audiences experienced the shocking 3D viewing experience, and 3D became completely popular in the country.

In fact, 3D is already a relatively mature technology abroad, but domestic directors have never used it.

As "Avatar" raked in over 1 billion yuan at the domestic box office, shocking domestic filmmakers once again, they are also looking for the secret of "Avatar"'s success.

But after searching around, they focused their attention on 3D because audiences had very high opinions of it and the ticket prices were more expensive.

Therefore, a 3D craze suddenly swept the domestic film industry.

Various 3D film projects have been launched, and even movies that have already been filmed have been converted to 3D for the sake of publicity, making it seem as if no one will watch a movie if it is not labeled as 3D.

In the end, there were not many real 3D movies, most of them were pseudo-3D, or 2.5D.

Thinking of all these problems, Liu Zhou couldn't make a decision alone, so the next day, Liu Zhou called Wang Xuan, the special effects director of Golden Harvest Special Effects Studio.

Wang Xuan is a special effects engineer specially invited back from Hollywood by Liu Zhou. Historically, he was also the co-founder and special effects production director of Tiangong Yicai, a well-known domestic special effects company.

Tiangong Yicai was formed by the merger of four well-known special effects companies in the industry, but at present, Golden Harvest Special Effects Studio has acquired and merged Tiangong Film and Yicai Film and Television.

These two companies, together with LeSheng Culture and Yicai Film, merged into the four companies Tiangong Yicai.

However, I don’t think the extraordinary beauty of nature will appear this time.

But now Golden Harvest Special Effects Studio has higher technical strength and level than Tiangong Yicai, which was established after the merger four years ago.

After several years of continuous development, Golden Harvest Studio has become a comprehensive special effects company with nearly 200 special effects engineers of various types and a complete range of departments.

At present, the special effects production capabilities are the strongest in the mainland. Even Wu Kebo, who did not get along well with Liu Zhou, had to ask Golden Harvest Special Effects Studio to do the special effects for "The Battle of Guandu".

Not only that, the special effects work of "Lucy" produced by Summit Entertainment will also be fully handled by Golden Harvest Special Effects Studio.

This was also the first time that Golden Harvest Special Effects Studio went abroad, and it went to Hollywood.

So this time, the general manager of the special effects studio personally led a team to Hollywood to assist in the filming.

Wang Xuan stayed at the base camp, after all, there are still many businesses in the country.

Liu Zhou and Wang Xuan are also quite familiar with each other. Most of the special effects of "The Martian" were done by his team, so the two have had a lot of dealings with each other.

Although there was no storyboard, Wang Xuan was a professional after all, and she knew the overall style of the film after reading the entire draft of the script.

Wang Xuan looked up and said to Liu Zhou:

"Mr. Liu, the background of your film is the end of the world, and the overall style of the early scenes should be relatively dark.

Even if you rent a 6k digital camera, the result won’t be much better than that of 35 film, and there is still a difference between digital and analog images.”

"Then by adjusting the overall ambient light and adjusting the light in post-production, is it possible to achieve a similar effect?"

Wang Xuan shook her head:
“If you’re shooting indoors, you’ll have to spend a month or so more to get close, but that’s just the extent of it. But it’s almost impossible to shoot outdoors, unless the exterior scenes are all shot in a studio with a blue screen.”

"So that rules out digital cameras."

"The style of your film is indeed more suitable for film cameras."

Since it really wasn't possible, Liu Zhou stopped hesitating and made the decision immediately.

If you're shooting a blockbuster like "Transformers," there's almost no difference between digital and film.

"Interstellar" is set in a post-apocalyptic setting, the exterior scenes are also desolate, and the overall tone is gray.

The images produced by digital cameras are digital images, while those produced by film are analog images, just like the difference between an LCD TV and a large desktop color TV.

The tones of large desktop color TVs are richer and far more delicate than those of LCD TVs.

In this case, Liu Zhou decided to use 70mm film like Nolan.

Although 70mm film is more expensive, the cost of "Interstellar" was not very high, so using 70mm film was within the affordable range.

Moreover, not the entire film of "Interstellar" was shot in 70mm film, only about one-third of the shots needed to use it.

On the contrary, the 70mm film IMAX camera is more troublesome, so Liu Zhou plans to go to Warner to see if he can rent it.

There shouldn't be many people in Hollywood using 70mm film to shoot movies at the moment. After all, not only in China, but also in the world, less than 70% of cinemas have 3 film IMAX projection equipment.

(End of this chapter)