Immersive room escape, from "rubbing IP" to paying millions of copyright fees to adapt film and television IP, Beijing News reporter visited and revealed the secret
Is it worth 700 yuan to pass through the secret room of "The Twelfth Hour in Chang'an" per person?
After Escape Room cooperated with film and television IP, various immersive rooms were launched.
Players need to spend hundreds of yuan per person. For example, "Ice Breaker" costs 368 yuan per person for two hours, and "Changan Twelve Hours" costs 688 yuan per person for three hours.
The relatively expensive price will also discourage some people.
Beijing News reporter Wu Longzhen Zhang Kunyu/photo
After Escape Room cooperated with film and television IP, various immersive rooms were launched.
Players need to spend hundreds of yuan per person. For example, "Ice Breaker" costs 368 yuan per person for two hours, and "Changan Twelve Hours" costs 688 yuan per person for three hours.
The relatively expensive price will also discourage some people.
Beijing News reporter Wu Longzhen Zhang Kunyu/photo
The scenery investment is huge.
Photo by Beijing News reporter Wu Longzhen
Xiao A came to a "Chang'an Twelve Hours" theme secret room in Beijing, and once again spent nearly 700 yuan to experience three hours of life in the Tang Dynasty. The people here are enjoying the lively festival atmosphere, but he knows the future" Twelve hours" He will have the task of saving Chang'an City...
This is the immersive escape room that has been popular among young people in the past two years.
As IP has become an important part of the film and television industry, the linkage between immersive chambers and film and television IP has become closer.
You can play the role of Hu Bayi in "Ghost Blowing the Lantern" and go to the tomb to touch the "Zongzi", you can be Li Fei in "Ice Breaker" and the drug dealer in the "cat and mouse" battle of wits, or you can play "Fang Hua" "He Xiaoping" in "Return to the 1980s to reveal the truth about the past... more than that.
It is reported that the movie "Yabai" may launch an immersive chamber in the future.
Offline immersive live entertainment seems to be quietly becoming an essential part of the film and television industry.
Development route
People are yearning to experience another life
First generation
At the end of 2011, Yu Kun, who loves brain-burning and puzzle-solving stories, opened a private room with friends in Beijing as a side job after his job.
Most of the secret rooms at that time were called "escape rooms".
Rent a room of more than 100 square meters to separate two or three areas. Simply decorate, place some cabinets, locks and paper codes to open the business.
Limited to technical ability, at that time, apart from lights and electromagnetic locks, there were almost no electrical appliances and mechanical mechanisms in the entire game area.
But it is this mode of entertainment with low cost and high difficulty that attracts a large number of young consumers who like to solve puzzles and pursue a sense of mystery.
Little A is the first wave of secret room players.
At that time, he was only 16 years old, and he had to meet with his classmates to check in different secret rooms almost every month.
The brain-burning stimulation and urgency made him want to stop.
At that time, the secret room would often hang a striking sign in the crowded hall, saying "A certain theme has only been cleared by xx people since the opening of the store", "Once you clear the level, I feel like Conan, with a sense of accomplishment. Addictive."
Second generation
The speed of escape room in Beijing is far beyond market imagination.
And Yu Kun and other first-generation secret chambers are also in the process of expanding, constantly exploring the preferences of players.
As consumers are no longer satisfied with simple decoration and ordinary single organ presentation methods, practitioners have begun to increase the use of electromechanical equipment.
Simple standard engineering equipment such as push rods, motors, and complex hydraulic devices, hoists, etc. began to be widely used, which also made the second generation of secret rooms.
Third Generation
On the basis of the second generation, practitioners began to think about how to let consumers have an immersive experience, player role playing, and also with NPC (Non-Player Character abbreviation, refers to the game in the game is not controlled by the player Role) Interactive third-generation chambers are born one after another.
Fourth Generation
Today, the most common "immersive theater" in the market is the fourth generation of secret rooms.
In the fourth-generation secret room, players are no longer satisfied with simple puzzle solving, finding clues, and passing through organs. Instead, they can “traverse” the situation at any time, from ancient times to the future.
Players can walk into the world of zombies to avoid attacks, become "Hu Bayi" to touch zongzi in ancient tombs, and go back to the Ming and Qing dynasties to fight with the harem beauties.
In the few hours without a mobile phone, you transformed into another identity and entered a completely different life.
Man Yi, who created an immersive chamber in 2015, claims to be the first person in China to test this type of chamber.
In 2012, Man Yi was also doing film distribution and production in film companies.
In those years, small theaters similar to happy twists were very popular.
He wondered if he could create an immersive small theater.
At that time, "Party A and Party B" created the first Chinese New Year movie. "This proves that people are longing for experiencing another kind of life."
Man Yi wrote four different experience scripts corresponding to the themes of the movie in half a year, with up to tens of thousands of words, including the anti-terrorist action "Counter Strike" similar to the movie "Wolf Warriors", the horror theme "Resident Evil", and adventure Similar to "Exquisite Tombs" and "Val Base Project" which is biased towards feature films, "This is also our initial connection with film and television. The immersive secret room is actually an immersive movie experience hall, all of which are small games and small theaters." And the "sky price" of nearly 300 yuan per game in the secret room is also determined with perseverance and insistence on the price of the drama.
In his opinion, the four games of the immersive secret room are actually equivalent to four movies; a game of two hours, receiving 6-10 players, a day's traffic is equivalent to the number of viewers of a drama a day.
"But I also told the management, we bet for half a year, this shop will not be popular, we will close."
But half an hour before the opening, Man Yi successfully welcomed the first wave of players.
"This buddy was'crazy' after the game. He didn't expect the experience to be so hilarious." TFS quickly realized profit after half a month; after half a year, even the stars would "go the back door" to book weekend games.
Immersive offline live entertainment has begun to set off a wave of trends in China.
IP cooperation
I thought that "the temple door could not be found"
Most of the secret rooms project their eyes on the film and television works by "rubbing IP".
Before 2015, a large number of secret rooms named "Tomb Raider" and "Ghost Blowing Lantern" came into being. Many book fans and drama fans came here, only to find that their content had nothing to do with the original.
But no one cared, "Because no player would spend 30 or 50 dollars extravagantly, playing in the secret room where the ghost blows the lamp in the 20 square meter office building, if you really see the sky collapse and the coffin move. The copyright owner will not be entangled, because They have no time, and the lawyer's fee alone is more than the compensation." Xiao A recalled the situation of the industry a few years ago.
In 2016, spy war dramas such as "The Pretender", "Sparrow", and "Rouge" were all the rage. Man Yi's escape room also launched the wind sound immersive theater, which has nothing to do with the 2009 movie "The Wind Sound". The background is completely different.
However, Man Yi still hopes to obtain a genuine license from the film producer Fang Huayi, but "can not find the temple door with the pig's head". No department of Huayi can match this matter.
It was not until two years later that Man Yi officially won the copyright of "The Wind".
A few years ago, the film "Fang Hua" directed by Feng Xiaogang was released. Man Yi's Escape Room released the secret room "Fang Hua Has Passed" and officially launched an in-depth cooperation with Huayi.
After the movie "Yao Bai" was completed, Man Yi visited the filming location and planned the possibility of turning it into a large immersive chamber.
In the same year, Man Yi's Chamber of Secrets cooperated with the hit drama "The Twelfth Hours of Chang'an" to launch the Secret Chamber of the same name, and Yu Kun obtained the original authorization of "Icebreaker".
Since then, the secret room operators have moved from self-creation to positive cooperation, and film and television companies have also begun to actively seek the development layout of offline immersive entertainment.
It is reported that the copyright of some film and television IP cooperating with the secret room will sell for about one million yuan.
Actual operation
The film and television adaptation must conform to the IP tonality, and cannot destroy the story
A.
The plot cannot be changed magically, and the experience should be given the highest degree of freedom
When Yu Kun and his team were creating the theme of martial arts, the script had been written intermittently for more than a year.
Expanded from 110,000 words in the first edition to 160,000 words, but he didn’t have any writing experience before, "If you love and want to express this thing, then you can definitely write it. On the other hand, if I had to write science fiction works, I don't have that brain hole either, so it must be difficult to write."
But the theme of film and television IP adaptation does not have such a high degree of creative freedom.
The plot adaptation is detailed in the contract, and all content IP parties will supervise and review the finished product. The secret room can only create a second time within a limited range.
"Chang'an Twelve Hours" Copyright Fang Yuyue Culture’s requirement for the IP to be handed over to Man Yi’s team for adaptation is that the plot adaptation must conform to the tonality of the entire IP, and the integrity of the story must not be destroyed. The general direction of character adaptation, scenes, and plot cannot change.
"We fully respect the creative logic of the entire immersive entertainment, but we can't change the tonality of the original book itself, and only cater to this part of the audience." Li Anning, vice president of Yuyue Culture, said frankly.
But at the same time, they will also provide scripts, research on historical materials related to the play, etc., so that the secret room can restore and expand the content that is not shown in the TV play.
In the end, the "Twelve Hours of Chang'an" secret room was built with millions of dollars, covering an area of nearly 1800 square meters, and referring to the original setting in the play, it truly restored the Tang style and Tang appearance.
It seems to have the same work as the screenwriter, but the immersive secret room has a completely different creative logic.
In Man Yi's view, film and television scripts are more like a "tool". The actors must act according to the script's settings, and the lines cannot be used at will.
"But players spend money to play, I can't let them follow my script. So you have to give the experience the highest degree of freedom within the controllable range. Otherwise, he will still watch TV dramas and dramas. That's right. The creators have very high requirements for control, rhythm, and preset ability." It is reported that the immersive script of "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an" has been written for nearly ten months, with nearly 200,000 words.
B. NPC can’t just know acting
In a secret room theme created by Kun, the plot sets the player to be divided into two groups. The first group must shut the NPC in the cabinet and lock the door to trigger the next link.
Next, the second group of people need to find a way to steal the key, release the NPC, and the game continues.
However, the player who came here once "sees through" the game routine, and secretly brought a lock of his own when he swipes the second time, and completely locked the NPC. "As a result, in the second half of the story, there is no male character in the whole story. We I'm blinded." Yu Kun said helplessly.
In the immersive secret room, such scenes where the player and the NPC "love and kill each other" and molested each other are staged at any time.
TFS has even seen the "unexpected joy" that players can't get out of the experience and finally get married with NPC.
But at its root, the interactive skills of NPCs, to a certain extent, determine whether players can better "enter into the play".
When the secret room first opened, most of the NPC actors Man Yi hired were “special actors” in Hengdian who paid 200 yuan per game.
But later Man Yi discovered that the NPC in the immersive chamber was just a repetitive plot character, and did not require the “heavy” performance of professional actors. Later, most of the TFS actors were amateurs from non-disciplinary backgrounds, but they had certain skills. For example, they have a good command of lines, strong improvisational ability, or horse riding, martial arts, etc.
"They may make 50 yuan a day in Hengdian, but here there is no wind and rain, and there is a fixed salary of several thousand yuan."
But NPC also needs professional training.
In the beginning, TFS actors were trained by Man Yi hand in hand, and on-site resilience was the core training course.
NPCs need to face completely different players every day, and NPCs need to advance the plot normally on the basis of all being able to speak.
For example, the actor in the theme of "Valkyrie Project" looks a lot like Hitler. He does not need to say any lines. As long as he sits behind his desk, the player is already very excited; but if you want him to speak in the tone of an officer, add Action, this is an extremely difficult leap, "because once you can talk, the player will play against you," Man Yi told the actors, don’t think of yourself as a staff member, but the same person who comes to play in the secret room. Enjoy the performance together with the state of experience, and at the same time enjoy the fun brought by the players, which can stimulate real interaction.
Yu Kun has formulated a strict "professional course" for NPC, and the most basic training-style training is done every week, and the lectures are all professional teachers.
In addition, for different themed scripts, the actors have to crammed up to accept the guidance of individual roles.
"Many NPCs only know about acting and will not be strained. If the next plot should go to the lobby, the player will not pull you to the cellar, do you go or not? At this time, the NPC will be very blind." In addition to the twelve hours of "acting" during the day, he also had four or five hours of meetings with Yu Kun every day to replay his performance on the day and form a response plan.
C. Service Huadao must be strong and durable
In Kun's work, nine players can share a private space of hundreds of square meters.
Once you change into the ancient costumes and enter it, the gravel roads, the mottled shadows of the trees, the dilapidated ancient beams and the old elm wooden tables, on the table are half a roast chicken, a cage of steamed buns, and a cup of beef soup, all edible , The player seems to be in the movie scene for an instant.
Little A, after "cutting the meat" and experiencing "Changan Twelve Hours", did not hesitate to spend 688 yuan again for "second brush", just because its Tang Dynasty costumes are so beautiful that they are reluctant to take it off, and the theme is very delicious. "The lamb miscellaneous soup, beef steamed buns, and fire crystal persimmons completely restore the same delicacy in the film and television drama.
"Actually, in our industry, from the standpoint of stage art, investment is not lower than that of film and television." Man Yi said frankly.
Many film and television dramas use green screens or stickers, and the beauty of the landscape depends on the later stage; and the seemingly real props are put on a shelf in the plastic foam and fly with a kick.
But in the secret room, players will touch and shake with their hands, and climb on high places. All props must be reinforced with real materials.
Man Yi calculated an account. In addition to rent and staff salaries, an immersive secret room has almost no operating costs. Only the initial construction is the largest one-time investment.
To make a new theme, an average investment of about 1 million is required, and a professional filmmaking team is invited to be responsible for setting the scene. "For two or three hours of experience, you don’t do it real, and I feel a little sorry for the audience."
In addition to some of the costumes for NPCs and players, many special characters also need to be customized.
For example, Yu Kun’s new thriller and suspense theme, in which NPC headgear, costumes, and props are all customized by a film and television prop company, and the price ranges from thousands to tens of thousands.
"Film and television props are no longer needed, at most two three months, but the props in the secret room should be used. They must be sturdy and really look like that. The actors should be easy to wear." Yu Kun once and someone deliberately entered the secret room. Film and television practitioners in the industry have visited the prop warehouse and look forward to strengthening cooperation in props and clothing when they have the opportunity to cooperate with film and television companies, in addition to enhancing the sense of experience.
Written by/Beijing News reporter Zhang He, intern Cao Yuxin