The Industry Forum: Establishment and Breakthrough amidst the Changing Film Industry Landscape of the 14th Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) was recently held in Beijing. At the forum, Wang Changtian, Chairman of Ray Chairman of Enlight Media Co., Ltd., shared his views on the hot topics like artificial intelligence technology and the emerging industry of short dramas. He said that there will always be the next hot trend, but neither technology nor form can replace content. In his opinion, the Enlight Media aims to make the most difficult contents. In the face of uncertainties and pressure for survival, what we should do now is to build a good environment for creators and to do the best in the existing art category and choices. 

Forum

In the beginning of 2024, the birth of the Sora model triggered an industry-wide buzz, for which AI became the driving force towards industry's innovation and in a way led the film industry into a new era. Standing at the crucial time where old growth drivers are replaced by the new ones, Wang Changtian shared his views on AI technology. In his view, it may take 1-2 years to understand the impact of AI technology on the movie industry. By now, he believes that the application of this new technology has pros and cons for the whole industry. On the one hand, the application of AI technology may increase the efficiency of film production by at least 30%, especially for animated ones, as it may effectively resolve the problem of insufficient capacity and low production efficiency. Meanwhile, with continuous development, the technology may also lower the cost of film production and improve the film quality to a certain extent in the future. On the other hand, he believes that AI technology also has drawbacks. For instance, it may lessen the unique creativity and aesthetics; the increased production capacity brought by AI technology may also put producers under greater competitive pressure to promote their products, thus making it more difficult for a product to stand out. He said, “It's not an objective view that AI will replace us for fear of it or it is good in all aspects.” In addition, when asked how to make decisions on the extent to which a film is supported with AI technology for production from the perspective of an operator, Wang Changtian replied, “It is creators who have the right to speak.” Although he is now encouraging the conscious application of AI technology in every aspect of the animation production at his company in an attempt to refine and expand creativity, he holds that AI technology is used variedly within different products. Currently AI may play a greater role in reproducing reality and describing it, such as image and scene designing as well as lighting and shooting angle simulation. However, it may not be too helpful for the creativity and imagination.

 

Wang Changtian

In addition to the emerging artificial intelligence, Wang Changtian also participated in the discussion of the popular short drama, an emerging industry. Under the topic of “whether short drama will be a flash in the pan or a new art form”, Wang concluded that, “There will always be popular products, but no product can be popular forever.” For him, mini-short drama represents the current trend since it is relatively easy to produce and features a favorable business model, making it suitable for startups and young newcomers. Since film production is highly difficult, it may be difficult to survive if not prepared. In his view, each company has its own positioning, while his company aims to make the most difficult contents. This is one of the reasons for the full transformation of this company from China's largest TV program company to a film company. He also said, “Ordinary production of a film is not really a difficult thing, but it is actually very hard to make competitive, powerful, and influential works.” He believes that innovation is increasingly difficult as films have evolved. He also says that “all the 450 employees in the company are actually working on one thing at the moment, which is to produce a new film that has never been seen before.” In order to achieve this goal, he said that, his company must have a good organizational structure, timely apply the latest technologies and artistic achievements, and provide creators favorable conditions to protect. Talking about the status quo where audience are divided by various emerging forms of art and entertainment, he replied that this has led to great pressure on the survival of movie studios. “Our survival pressure is not simply from a specific product, but from the change of the whole environment, the change of entertainment, the change of interest of audience. I don't know what the next hot product will be. What we can do now is to do the best we can in the current artistic disciplines and positioning we choose.” Wang Changtian said.

 

Industry Forum

As one of the important activities of the 14th BJIFF, Industry Forum: Establishment and Breakthrough amidst the Changing Film Industry Landscape aims to bring together filmmakers from all over the world to provide forward-looking visions and solid support for the development of films in a calm and objective manner, so as to help films continue to move towards tradition and forward to a new realm of art.