On 27 November, Guan Jianing, Vice President of Guangdong Southern Film Engineering Technology Research Institute and Managing Director of Shengfeng Southern Film Industry Investment (Guangdong) Co., Ltd., delivered a keynote speech titled “Dedicated to Digital Film Industry for Benefit of the Future of Asian Films” at the Culture, Education, and Tourism Development Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

It is a great honor for me to be invited to the Asia Youth Leaders Forum and share with everyone here some of my thoughts about the film industry.

Guangdong Southern Film Engineering Technology Research Institute was established in Guangzhou on April 18, 2021. I'd like to share with you what we have found and learned in our work and what we have been studying, as well as our expectations for the future. 

Films are an important medium to demonstrate a nation's ideology, sentiments, and humanistic and artistic creativity. The film industry is a globally recognized leading industry that integrates cultural communication, soft-power development, technological innovation, and industry progress. A great film can often cross the boundaries of regions, races, nations, languages, and beliefs, becoming a public cultural product for the whole world.

Firstly, I'll talk about modern films. Today, in the whole world, the film industry has entered the digital age. Traditional films based on analog photography are no long existent. The traditional film production pattern of photographic films as the medium and distribution of copies as the way of release has been replaced in the digital age. Through the Internet or satellites, films are now directly transmitted to cinemas or the terminal of a home user. The constantly evolving digital technologies make filmmaking increasingly convenient. You can make whatever you want. Everything is possible. Digital technologies are increasingly popular and empowering more and more relevant industries. It has greatly expanded the film industry and unleashed the potential of film technologies to a greater extent.

At present, the film industry in China – and the entire Asia – is faced with such a question: How to develop an industry system of digital films and how to perfectly apply the ever-changing digital technologies throughout the filmmaking process? In China, people generally consider The Wandering Earth, released in Chinese Mainland in February 2019, as China’s first film in a sophisticated film industry and define that year as the first year of China’s film industry sophistication. That film opened a window for Chinese people. Through this window, we see more possibilities and more space for imagination for future Chinese films.

In fact, the digital revolution of the film industry has completed the transition from traditional optical tricks of stop-motion animation to digital technologies in Hollywood. The turning point of the film industry's digitalization was in 1993, with the advent of the film Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs created by CGI are seamlessly integrated into the motions. It symbolized Hollywood's increasingly better transition from stop-motion animation and traditional optical tricks to digital technologies. So, what position did this leave films and filmmakers in other countries and regions in? Behind, on par with, or ahead of Hollywood? Since we are not able to go ahead of it for the time being, we can try to be on par with it. If that cannot be achieved either, we can try to shorten the gap. In short, if we're farther and farther away from Hollywood's digital film technologies, it is likely that our films will be marginalized or even abandoned by the age.

It is in this context that the recently-released “14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Chinese Films” demonstrates its strong strategic value. In the plan, there is a summarizing sentence that says, “We need to grasp the development trend of new technologies, create a mature film technology system of independent innovation, and achieve major breakthroughs in key technologies and equipment R&D.” This implies a sense of mission and self-confidence. It sets a goal for Chinese filmmakers. As we all know, putting aside the ideological aspects, the production of films is an all-encompassing collaborative process at the top of the audio-visual pyramid.

Here is what we at Guangdong Southern Film Engineering Technology Research Institute want to do: with the production of films and the overall filmmaking process as the focus, we'll extend the limits of film engineering technologies and explore the boundaries of commercial applications of film technologies. We'll focus on the overall solution of applying cloud computing, big data, 5G, VR, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, trusted computing, blockchain, and other next-generation ICTs as well as intelligent technologies to make the entire filmmaking value chain more information-based, cloud-based, and intelligent. We hope to promote deep integration of the film industry and related industries, discover and foster both new nodes on the value chain and new technological and industrial highlights, advance the formation of the value chain, and improve the industry's ability to continuously evolve.

Our mission statement is "being based in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, facing China and Asia, and connecting the world". Our strategy is slightly different from most think tanks. At the very beginning, Guangdong Southern Film Engineering Technology Research Institute has connected itself with the investment capital of the film industry, hoping to realize the effect of 1+1>2 through the coordination of technology and capital.

It was under this background that Guangdong Southern Film Engineering Technology Research Institute was established in Guangzhou on April 18 this year. Upholding the principle of making continuous contribution to Chinese films, we focus on the integrated innovation and R&D of film engineering technologies and promote the development of a new industry system of Chinese films. We will help form a system for the training and qualification of well-rounded filmmaking professionals, carry out standardization research on intelligent manufacturing of film equipment and artificial intelligent systems for films, and expand the research boundaries of trend-setting topics in the field of film engineering technologies. In so doing, we hope to contribute to the overall improvement of the sophistication of China’s film industry. At the same time, we are also committed to promoting collaborative production in the film industry, connection between the film industry and its upstream and downstream industries, integration of all relevant factors, scaling of the industry, and utilization of international professional resources. In the news released by Xinhua News Agency about the establishment of our institute, it was described as "the first film-industry think tank in China". What I want to emphasize is not the fancy definition of our institute, but what we want to do in the future.

At this assembly of young Asian leaders, we're thinking together about the future development of Asia. I was asked if I could propose a few concrete projects on the sophistication of the film industry that may create new business forms. Here I'd like to introduce you to some projects we've been working on.

The first project is that we are going to build the largest super digital-studio complex in Asia. It is a landmark project proposed by Guangdong Southern Film Engineering Technology Research Institute and Shengfeng Southern Film Industry Investment Company, based on current trends of digital-film development and industry demands in China and Asia.

The studio complex will feature China’s – and even Asia’s – largest digital studio, trailer production center, digital film-set production center, digital modeling center, digital production center for televised reality shows, and vlog production center. It will form a whole value chain of digital film production and a system of digital equipment. With advanced digital technologies and super-popular films, a new digital cultural tourism experience zone will also be built in the studio complex. It will promote a cross-industry integration of the new film industry and cultural tourism. The super digital-studio complex is defined as "super" because its capacity is designed as 100 films and TV series produced and 3 million tourists received every year. It will directly promote the development of local transportation, hotels and catering services, commercial services, and other related industries and will lead to the emergence of industries such as professional film and television services.

The main building of the project will cover an area of 6.7 hectares, with a maximum height of 100 meters. Large UAVs and airships can easily take off and land in the studios. The studio complex is a dozen-billion-yuan industry agglomeration of super symbols, super IPs, new business forms, new content, and new patterns. It will become a landmark of the Chinese film industry. As the project is implemented in Guangdong, it will help Guangdong become the third hub of Chinese films, after Beijing and the Yangtze River Delta.

I'd like to emphasize that the super digital-studio complex is not a closed system but an open platform. It welcomes the participation and synergy of all innovative technologies in different ways. All directors and producers in Asia – such as our peers in South Korea and Japan – and in other regions of the world, are welcome to shoot and make films here. Different types of capital in the industry are also welcome to incubate and commercialize more film technologies so as to extend the long-tail effects of the film industry.

The second thing we hope to do is establish a vocational college of film engineering technology. In China, as well as the entire Asia, there is a great lack of digital-film professionals and versatile professionals. Without talent, all equipment will be useless, and all grand strategies will be in vain. There are many film and television academies and schools in China. If you pay a little attention, you'll find that most disciplines set by the academies and schools are aimed at the earlier stages of film and television production – that is, acting, directing, cinematography, screenwriting, etc., – while very few of them focus on the latter-stage disciplines that matches the digital age. It has led to a surplus of earlier-stage creative talent and an extreme shortage of latter-stage technical talent and versatile talent. This will hold back the development of films in the future.

Therefore, based on the development trend and demand of the new film industry in China, we hope to establish a vocational college of film engineering technology that integrates industry, teaching, research, and application. The college will focus on the disciplines of engineering technologies for the production of films and TV series. Apart from conventional courses on the art of motion pictures, we'll set up many other disciplines, such as post production, digital media technology, electronic virtual production, visual effects and sound effects engineering, filmmaking process management, film production management, game development and production, and old film restoration, as well as the new disciplines of media asset management, media asset transaction, film and television financing, etc. We'll keep training the craftsmen of film engineering for the sophistication of the film industry. We'll make the college a cradle of technical engineers for Chinese films.

The college is an open platform, too. We hope to attract students from both China and other countries and regions in Asia. The students of this college can learn and practice in the super digital-studio complex. We hope even more that the experts and scholars from all Asian countries and regions who focus on the development of film technologies would come here to teach, research, and exchange ideas, helping the college contribute to the future of Asian films, so that the entire Asian film industry will benefit from it.

We have good reasons to believe that Asian films will have a more wonderful and admirable prospect and that Asian films will become a fascinating piece of the puzzle of future civilization. Thanks again to the forum for giving me the opportunity to share with everyone in detail the goals I'm hoping to achieve. My thanks also go to all the officials, young business leaders, experts, and scholars here for the attention and patience.

And I have another request to make. I hope to receive your guidance or advice about the course we are pursuing. I particularly hope that the officials of relevant government departments, entrepreneurs, and investors present at the forum would care about or even participate in the projects that may change the future structure of the Asian film industry. 

Thank you all!