Liu Yan: "Big Data" for the movie "fortune-telling" millions of years

People: Liu Yan   Fields: Large Data Application   entrepreneurship: In February 2012, Liu Yan with his girlfriend to marry 200,000 yuan, pulled up 4 companions, holding three or four computers began to the film "fortune-telling" business. As a team that earns money on data, computing and storing resources cost the bulk of the 200,000 dollars. But just 2 months later, because of technical skills, innovative ideas, they have won the million-dollar angel investment.   A year, the early data Model establishment, database maintenance, computing and storage resources costs, personnel costs have been invested in millions of dollars, the team just to make ends meet, a slight surplus. Not so long ago, Liu Yan's company had just signed a box office deal with a film-investing firm, sat in front of a computer and made suggestions to film investors, and then waited for the good days of the box-office harvest to come to them.   "is the movie on schedule or is it a half month's delay?" "This movie star A and actress B, which is the protagonist more money?" "How many box-office tickets can we get for this movie that we're going to show right now?" "Liu Yan's Daily job is to get a data report from a team of technicians, and then answer these" ask questions "from film investors such as media companies and directors. Someone jokingly called him "fortune Teller" for the movie, because by predicting the box office and offering online marketing advice, Liu Yan and his team could earn millions of yuan a year with less than 10 PCs.   Of course, what Liu Yan do is by no means the fortune-teller of feudal superstition "pinch point" so simple. Every day to deal with hundreds of millions of social networking sites on the evaluation of the film information, entertainment news and star gossip, and so on, every quarter to append new servers and hard disk to cope with the explosion of data processing, strictly speaking, they earn data money.   Successful Forecast "1942" box office   the second half of 2012 film "1942" on the eve of the release, in the outside world to the film a praise and optimistic, have predicted the box office will break 700 million yuan, Liu Yan but before the leave issued a micro-blog, asserted that "1942" box office will not exceed 400 million yuan. After a few days ' return from vacation, he found that his microblog, which is contrary to the views of many critics and industry insiders, has already exploded on the internet. The filmmakers of the film even come to question-"which competitor are you sending ' black ' to us?" "After the release of the   movie, Liu Yan's predictions were confirmed. The 1942 box office ended up at about 360 million yuan, almost the same as the team's predictions, reaching just over half of the studio's target and industry forecasts.   So, Liu Yan, where does this exact forecast come from?   Actors, subject matter content, schedule, the premiere of Word-of-mouth, will affect the box office. "Before that, we sampled four hundred or five hundred of films released since 1990, found data from the Statistical Yearbook, and then asked the computer toand various parameters are deduced quantitatively to determine the formula. predict, and then combine the factors that we extract from the mass of information in the social network to fill in the formula and calculate. "  Little known is that every day with a good few in the release preparation or also in the script writing, the selection of the initial stage of the planning phase of the film project Liu Yan, was originally a film layman."   2004, Liu Yan was engaged in hotel management in the UK after graduating from computer science. Carefully he found that by analyzing the age of guests, tablecloth color, juice type, can be summed up some of the effects of hotel occupancy rate of the law.   This lets Liu Yan note the commercial value of data analysis. After returning home in 2006, he found that data analysis in a number of large companies showed that attempts to apply new technologies were too slow in large companies. In order to make big data play a bigger role, Liu Yan resigned to start a business.   Let "data" speak for experience   tried tourism, medical and other fields, Liu Yan finally looked at a seemingly extremely perceptual, unpredictable field, the film. Through the SARFT on the 2012 domestic film statistics, Liu Yan learned that in about tens of billions of dollars in the domestic film market, 80% of the film is losing money. Can there be no way to change the brutal environment in which the film invests "10 to eight to lose"?   in February 2012, Liu Yan and 4 team members, holding several computers, began their "fortune Teller" career. Through the recent two-year release of the 300 dozen film, Liu Yan and peer partnership founded the studio number of the discovery, a movie sold not box-office, make money, not only depends on whether the actor is big enough, the subject matter is fresh enough to simply judge. The results of large data show that people's decisions based on common sense and sensory predictions often backfire in film investment.   The same year in May, Liu Yan initiative to find the film "painted 2" of the production side, the two sides began a few Chinese film industry cooperation: a computer-related film amateur, to film producers to provide new media publicity, release schedule and other aspects of the advisory services.   Some of the critics have questioned Liu Yan's work: How can people's preferences for movies be clearly stated?   However, the fact and customer feedback gave the Liu Yan team a pleasant echo.   Liu Yan with the film side in advance to understand, and Zhou Xun, Zhao Wei and other protagonists than, supporting Yang and Feng Shao in the "Painted 2" in the play is not much, its not very high. According to the common sense, whether these two people as a propaganda focus will not affect the box office. But the results of the analysis of the contrary, Yang and Feng Shao two people together, "peak power combination" in the film's box office contribution will be as high as 20%, if the supporting replaced by other actors or in the publicity played down the role of the two actors, it is likely to hurt and the box office. After the movie was released, their predictions were confirmed, and these two seemingly andNot big card, the appearance fee also not calculate the star of exorbitant price, its fan to the box-office contribution degree is biggest.   When the film was booked, the studios had considered a week ahead to catch the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. Studio the data to tell them that the main audience of the film is a student group, put on June 28, a large number of students on the release of the best, no need to advance a week to catch the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. Their predictions were also confirmed after the movie was released.   in the smooth cooperation with the "painted 2", the successful prediction of the "1942" after the box office caused a small disturbance, to find studio number of "seek gua" film production side more and more.   film "layman" play investment   in addition to film actors, the public opinion itself will affect the box office. Is it the famous film critics, or the other pundits in the literary circle, that affect the ordinary people's viewing behavior and the most box-office appeal on social networks? Not really.   "The best of crosstalk in the cooks, the best in crosstalk, the best in the players, the people who have the most box-office clout." Liu Yan, experts in the field of social networking research call these people "Bridge contacts." Popular say, is to be able to "cross-border" the information in a circle, conduction to another circle, speed up the spread of information people.   Through advanced data mining, technical analysis, Liu Yan can clearly see on the computer, whether there is such a box office influence "bridge Contact" released a film related information, thus affecting the box-office trend.   Now, Liu Yan's company studio has been working with more than 10 film and television companies for Wanda Entertainment, Huayi film, Pony Pentium, light media and other companies to do marketing strategy consulting, but also Hong Kong, Hollywood film companies to find them to do data measurement. The company also obtained the investment of the sea Silver Capital, become the Haidian District Zhongguancun Eagle Talent Base of a member. Liu Yan told reporters that due to the early analysis model and other technical accumulation and market development cost is high, the team just to achieve balance, but the annual revenue of more than 2 million yuan and the daily overwhelmed customer intention, has proved their market appeal.   to provide forecasts, consultancy services is just the beginning of their data nuggets. Liu Yan said that by using their own data to "fortune-telling" the ability of the film, they will personally participate in the film investment, using the power of data mining larger gold.

(editor: Heritage)