On the afternoon of June 24, Huaciketon Group held a grand launch and promotion meeting for new dramas and new projects at the 2024 Shanghai TV Festival. Annual key projects such as "The Year of Peace", "National Beauty Youth", "Our River and Mountain", and "Shou Zang" and The latest results of AIGC Application Research Institute of Huace Group were unveiled at the meeting.

Zhao Yifang, founder and chairman of Huace Keton Group, and Fu Binxing, president of Huace Keton Group, attended the promotion meeting. Authoritative media, industry influencers, cooperative merchants of Huace Keton Group and special guests gathered together.

Creating excellence: Historical themes lead key projects

In the project promotion section, the most watched project "National Beauty and Youth" was "certified" that the filming was successful.

"National Beauty" Poster

Subsequently, Wang Yan, Vice President of the Hangzhou Drama Center of Huacekton Group, highlighted the upcoming 2024 cultural industry development special support project of the Central Propaganda Department and the major historical TV series "Taiping Year" of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and made it official for the first time. The main creative lineup was announced: it will be directed by the famous director Yang Lei, Lu Beike will serve as co-director, and Dong Zhe will serve as screenwriter.

"The Year of Peace" Poster

The series brings together the top domestic creative lineup and will tell the story of the more than 40 years from the mid-Five Dynasties to the early Northern Song Dynasty. Faced with wars and chaos in the world, Qian Hongchu, the leader of the Wuyue Kingdom in the southeast, and Zhao Kuangyin, the Emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty, cared about the people and yearned for peace. In the end, under the leadership of the two men, the Wuyue Kingdom completed the historical initiative of "returning the land to the Song Dynasty" in the third year of Taiping and Xingguo.

The script of "The Year of Peace" has been carefully polished by the famous young screenwriter Dong Zhe for more than three years. He has created many excellent works such as "The Great Cause of Party Building", "Taking Tiger Mountain by Wisdom" and "The Great Cause of Army Building".

Director Yang Lei's previous representative work was "Three-Body". He said that the creation of "Three-Body" took five years. During these five years, he went all out and focused on it because the project was too difficult. When he came across the project "The Year of Peace", he sighed, "The projects I have taken on in the past few years have become more and more difficult. But there is no way, I really like the script of "The Year of Peace" so much."

He said that when he saw the complete script for the first time, he was so excited that he couldn't sleep until after two o'clock in the morning. When he read the last episode, he couldn't put it down "because he couldn't bear to finish it." He said, ""The Year of Peace" is about the suffering of the people after the buildings collapsed and the mountains and rivers were shattered, and how we rebuild the mountains and rivers. I hope this story can inspire many people." It is reported that the drama is expected to start filming in Q3 2024 and be broadcast in 2025 out.

In addition, at the promotion conference, two major projects, "Our River and Mountain" and "Shou Zang", were released to the outside world for the first time.

"Our Rivers and Mountains" is a key TV series proposed and personally guided by the TV Drama Department of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and a key film and television project supported by the 2024 Special Fund for Cultural Industry Development of the Central Propaganda Department. The play released a project poster for the first time at the scene, and officially announced that it will be directed by Mao Weining, written by Liu Gejian, and starring Wang Lei.

"Our Rivers and Mountains" poster

The new mainstream youth historical drama "Shou Zang" focuses for the first time on the legend of the Palace Museum's southward relocation of cultural relics, with "not a single one of the 13,491 boxes of cultural relics being damaged." It is adapted from the novel of the same name that won the gold medal in the "2021 National IP" literary track, telling five different stories. Young people of different identities and classes work together to complete the task of protecting the treasure and realize the cultural heritage of the national treasure that "no one can be missing and no one can be lost".

"Shou Zang" poster

The reporter noticed that three of the four key projects released this time are historical dramas. Over the years, historical dramas have been absent from the Chinese TV drama market for a long time. Recently, the "return of historical dramas" has become a common call from the industry and audiences. This Huace project promotion meeting seems to respond to this expectation.

Zhao Yifang, founder and president of Huace Film and Television Group, said that over the years, historical costumes have been absent for a long time due to various reasons. “Chinese costume dramas, fantasy, ancient puppets, dramas, legends, etc., have been made in all forms. But ancient puppets are good-looking. , and it cannot satisfy all audience groups. There are still many audiences who want to see the true connotation of traditional Chinese culture, and want to see a historical drama with ancient style and cultural heritage. "

With the rise of national self-confidence among Chinese audiences and the increasing emphasis on traditional culture, Zhao Yifang believes that the time has come to create S+ level historical costume dramas. “For the new round of costume drama projects, I ask our team to not hesitate to create He worked hard and spared no effort to produce a historical drama that lifts high and fights high. "

She said frankly: "In today's market, if you don't go all out and do it to the highest standards, you will be very risky." Only truly high-quality masterpieces can convince the platform with content and lineup after reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and truly impress the audience. But at the same time, she also pointed out that for the long-term development of a group, two things are most important - stronger and newer.

Peixin: Don’t let newcomers “swim naked”

In addition to major themes and S-level masterpieces, Huace also attaches great importance to innovation. "First of all, the subject matter must be innovative, but if the subject matter is to be innovative, we must find creators who can innovate the subject matter." Zhao Yifang said that Huace is not afraid to hire new screenwriters, new directors, and new producers. In her view, innovative themes certainly require an innovative environment, innovative methodologies, innovative platforms, and innovative support systems. "We cannot let newcomers swim naked."

Over the years, Huace has maintained the concept of "early support, early investment, and continuous training" for new creators in the film and television industry, and has built a top talent circle. Lu Yang, director of "Assassination Novelist", Bi Gan, director of "The Last Night on Earth", Rao Xiaozhi, director of "Ten Thousand Miles Home", Dong Zijian, director of "My Friend Andre", etc., are all in the initial stage of the industry, and have demonstrated extraordinary performance in their work. When they have strong creative power, Huace promotes cooperation and works with them to create groundbreaking blockbuster movies; the same goes for TV series.

As for producers, Huace also has the courage to give opportunities to newcomers. It is reported that the "Excellent Producer Growth Plan" launched by Huace includes five parts: online courses, offline courses, must-read books, job rotations, practice and coaching. The entire plan is committed to building an iteratively optimized, integrated wisdom-enabled center-empowered incubation platform to provide producers with all-round support and ensure that they have access to necessary resources and guidance at different stages of the project.

The program has achieved remarkable results in recent years, such as the hit series "Go Where the Wind Is" produced by Huace, whose chief producer Long Ya is a post-90s generation; it was popularly broadcast on CCTV and Tencent in the first half of this year "Cheng Huan Ji", its chief producer Yang Liu is also a post-90s generation. At this promotion meeting, the project leaders who took the stage to announce several key projects all had extremely young faces.

Recently, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the "Notice on the Announcement of the Selected Cases for Deepening the Reform and Innovation of Talent Development Systems and Mechanisms in the National Radio, Television and Online Audiovisual Industries". With this growth plan, Huace became the only film and television company on the list. When Zhao Yifang talked about the project, she expressed her expectations for young producers, "Give them time to immerse themselves in the best projects to develop their methodology and professionalism."

Research and development: AI assists film and television creation

After the promotion of the four major drama projects, Shen Xiong, deputy director of the AIGC Application Research Institute of Huace Keton Group, used a short video to show the latest research results of Huace Group in the AIGC industry application at the promotion meeting.

Huace Group is the first A-share film and television company to have a self-developed large model that has passed the national "Generative Artificial Intelligence Service Registration". Based on the self-developed "Youfeng" large model, Huace Group has developed a script evaluation assistant, screenwriter creation A series of tools such as assistants and intelligent translation assistants have greatly improved the production efficiency of film and television production and publicity. It is reported that Wenshengwen functions such as the "AI Script Evaluation Assistant" have been used internally by Huace, which can shorten the time to generate an evaluation report for a 1.2 million-word novel from 5 to 7 days to 15 to 30 minutes, greatly improving the efficiency of creation and evaluation. .

It is reported that Huace has formed an innovative atmosphere within the company where “all employees know AI, can understand AI, and use AI”, forming a technology research and development, application promotion and talent training system that combines R&D, application, and training, and strives to become the current film and television The company is a leader in AIGC learning and application.