2020-08-01

GGF | Film & Television Copyright Transaction and Service

In recent years, with the rapid development of the film and television industry in Shanghai, the creation, transaction and protection of film and television copyright have been paid more and more attention by all walks of life. In December last year, the Shanghai Film & TV Copyright Service Center was established, and the first batch of 20 copyright services in four categories was launched, covering the entire industry chain. At the Film and Television Copyright Transaction and Service Sub-forum of Golden Goblet Film Forum of Shanghai International Film Festival held today, guests from the fields of copyright development, film and television investment, finance and insurance, legal consultation and other fields discussed how to improve the public service platform of the copyright and transaction of film and TV shows, and provide accurate services for film and television enterprises in copyright development, copyright protection, project financing, etc. This forum is jointly sponsored by Shanghai International Film Festival and Shanghai Film and TV Copyright Service Center.

Telling capital what a good story is

“Since its establishment, the Center has evaluated and diagnosed professional scripts such as the TV show Daikuko 2013 and animated films, provided comprehensive copyright guidance for the film Happiness Lane 99, and provided financial services such as asset evaluation and financing guarantee for the film Wild Grass…” As one of the hosts of the Forum, Yu Zhiqing, director of Shanghai Film and TV Copyright Service Center, won constant applause for a “report” in his speech.

Yu Zhiqing believed that film and television copyright is the fulcrum of the film and television industry. Without a good story, a valuable copyright cannot be developed and the development of industrial chain is impossible. “Our task is to start from the source, serve the film and television copyright, create copyright production, copyright transaction and copyright authorization.” He stressed that the original intention of holding this forum is to help the film and television industry tell capital what good stories, good works and good projects are when it has a dialogue with capital.

The long tail effect of head IP is still being magnified

In 2020, most cyber culture giants have established strategic cooperation with platform. Zhangyue Technology and Baidu, Chinese All and Byte Dance have launched commercialized realization in the upstream and downstream industry chain. Lian Sanyue, general manager of copyright planning and operation of Yuewen Group, shared the mode of copyright operation under Tencent ecology. First of all, she was still optimistic about the value of head IP, and said that IP categorization has become a trend, “From the perspective of IP value, head IP is still sought after and affirmed in the market. At the same time, with the diversification of adaptation means, IP works continue to bring forth new ideas. The influence of head IP has not decreased with time, and the long tail effect are being magnified. In addition, with the decentralization of content, every IP can meet its fans who love it, and IP categorization has come.” She took Joy of Life as an example. The idea for creating this work is to continuously promote the value adding and expansion of IP emotion through film and television, literature, animation, games and so on, so as to make a broader emotional resonance.

Zhu Huilong, CEO of Mingjian Film, who has many years of experience in copyright transaction, believed that copyright operation is not only about copyright itself. For example, the film Duckweed used the title of Hong Kong film, which requires the authorization of the original copyright owner. “Nowadays all the character modeling and clothing in films and TV plays are designed with great efforts. In the future, copyright operation will not only be the overall copyright operation, but also be the careful management and rights safeguarding of all authorizations.”

“Standardized tools” are required for industry investment

Huang Chao, general manager of the Entertainment Asset Service Business Department of Maoyan Entertainment, mentioned the standardization of investment tools. He said that many professional investors still face many difficulties when they enter the film and television industry, such as the verification of the basic information of project. “We hope to help the industry standardized increasingly through professional tools. For example, we understand the box office and the production process by Maoyan Entertainment Professional edition. In addition, we read a large number of scripts and provide score for new scripts by means of artificial intelligence. However, such score is not an absolute value. It only provides a relative value for investors or financial institutions as a reference.”

Liu Lei, director of Far Eastern Horizon believed that in the uncertain capital market, entertainment consumption is still a promising industry. She gave some advices to the practitioners of film and television industry from the prospective of investor, such as paying more attention to “content-based” and issuance quality, paying more attention to controlling cash flow, maintaining long-term financing awareness, strengthening the compliance management of enterprises and tensing the credit awareness of enterprises.

Financial products contribute to risk management

Wang Jian, deputy general manager of the Shanghai Branch of the PICC P&C, revealed that as one of the first group of pilot insurance companies for cultural industry insurance, PICC P&C has launched such products as performance cancellation insurance and film and TB play production insurance, “We think that the risk management of the film and television industry is not only the economic compensation after production, but also how to carry out the risk management in the whole production process in advance.” He said that the establishment of the Film and TV Copyright Service Center is not only of great significance to the valuation of the film and television industry, but also provides an important reference value for the risk expectation of PICC P&C.

Hao Hongying, deputy director of Fund Business Research Committee of Shanghai Bar Association and partner of Shanghai Co-effort Law Firm, creatively proposed the concept of “film and television copyright securitization”. “To put it bluntly, asset securitization is to package our film and television copyrights on hand into a basic asset package, finance for it through capital operation. The raised money is used for the development of the company. The company gets funds and the investors get the corresponding legal income.” She said that the intellectual property securitization abroad started earlier and has been pretty mature. The basic assets of securitization have also expanded from music to cultural industries such as film, TV drama, variety show and game, which is a relatively safe investment tool, “The securitization of film and television copyright assets covers many fields, such as intellectual property, financial capital and law. If there is such a platform as Shanghai Film and TV Copyright Service Center for leading, matching and communication, it will certainly get twice the result with half the effort.”