Why we make movies

At Strategic Partners, we continue to commission startups and make films. Recently, I made a short film “Tatara”, which depicts parent-child love, set in Shimane Prefecture’s ancient tatara ironmaking.

Both the film two years ago and the previous film have won awards at both international film festivals, and this film will also be entered for each international award from November through the Berlin International Film Festival until next September. I don’t know if I can win the award, but I’m looking forward to it. So why do we make films? The reason is as follows.

The first objective is employee training. Employee education also has two meanings, one of which is to improve video production skills. (1) Improving video skills Since our company undertakes video production such as commercials and PVs from companies, we have to develop various human resources such as screenwriters, producers, directors and production managers who are in charge of production. Therefore, if you are a mid-career hire, there are experienced people, but if you are a new employee, it is common to learn on site, but it is a courtesy to the client to solidify the site as a professional. I can’t wear a “training” badge on set. Therefore, our company’s style is to create a video production site in-house and conduct employee training. In the old days, if an acquaintance or friend got married, they used to make a “marriage video” for free. While listening to the wishes of the bride and groom before marriage, I decided what kind of project and what kind of shooting to do and broadcast it at the wedding ceremony. Since the wedding is a real place, you can also check the reactions of the participants. In this way, I taught the newcomers the basics of video production through the “marriage video” before the production site of a client’s practice. However, weddings, as we all know, do not happen on a regular basis. That’s what made me think of making a movie. Once every two years, we set up a film production site and train newcomers. The other is ② team building. All the work related to the foundation of this movie production is solidified by newcomers. Examples of core duties include writing, directing, and producing. Staff related to technology such as photography and lighting will be asked by seniors. This mix of rookies and seniors is very important. Newcomers can learn a lot from their seniors, and as a result, even if they are newcomers at the core, they can expect a high degree of perfection because of their support. However, on the other hand, it also affects the education of seniors. Seniors have a wealth of experience, but there are many cases where the accumulation of that experience hinders innovative thinking. Let me give you an example of how this movie was made. Even if you say movie production, you don’t have a sponsor, so the budget is limited. If you don’t think about how to budget and what you can’t change, the budget will exceed. When we were adjusting the budget for this movie, we had to keep the costume costs down. The budget was 300,000, but it seems that it will cost 700,000, and the excess is 400,000. When I asked the seniors in charge of the production about the breakdown, it was the cost of the stylist who handled the costume, the rental cost of the company that rented the costume, and the cost of purchasing other costumes that were not included in the costume rental. Of course, it makes sense that the general breakdown of costume costs would be something like the one above. When I thought about how to keep this budget down, a new employee of our company suggested the following. “I picked up all the costumes on Mercari. The total cost is 120,000. So I have a request. There are new items with tags, so please do not fix the tags with gumtie. Because I will send them to Mercari again. I will resell it for 130,000 yen and make a profit of 10,000 yen.” The seniors were at a loss for words (laughs). In fact, the mix of rookies and seniors often causes trouble, but when they merge, it is easy for big innovations to occur. I often hear cases where seniors crush their subordinates (newcomers). There are many subordinates who hesitate to make suggestions to seniors. By properly facilitating this in-house project, seniors learn how to train their subordinates and how to bring out their potential, juniors learn how to communicate with their seniors, and at the same time learn team building methods. That’s it.

The first objective is employee training. Employee education also has two meanings, one of which is to improve video production skills. (1) Improving video skills Since our company undertakes video production such as commercials and PVs from companies, we have to develop various human resources such as screenwriters, producers, directors and production managers who are in charge of production. Therefore, if you are a mid-career hire, there are experienced people, but if you are a new employee, it is common to learn on site, but it is a courtesy to the client to solidify the site as a professional. I can’t wear a “training” badge on set. Therefore, our company’s style is to create a video production site in-house and conduct employee training. In the old days, if an acquaintance or friend got married, they used to make a “marriage video” for free. While listening to the wishes of the bride and groom before marriage, I decided what kind of project and what kind of shooting to do and broadcast it at the wedding ceremony. Since the wedding is a real place, you can also check the reactions of the participants. In this way, I taught the newcomers the basics of video production through the “marriage video” before the production site of a client’s practice. However, weddings, as we all know, do not happen on a regular basis. That’s what made me think of making a movie. Once every two years, we set up a film production site and train newcomers. The other is ② team building. All the work related to the foundation of this movie production is solidified by newcomers. Examples of core duties include writing, directing, and producing. Staff related to technology such as photography and lighting will be asked by seniors. This mix of rookies and seniors is very important. Newcomers can learn a lot from their seniors, and as a result, even if they are newcomers at the core, they can expect a high degree of perfection because of their support. However, on the other hand, it also affects the education of seniors. Seniors have a wealth of experience, but there are many cases where the accumulation of that experience hinders innovative thinking. Let me give you an example of how this movie was made. Even if you say movie production, you don’t have a sponsor, so the budget is limited. If you don’t think about how to budget and what you can’t change, the budget will exceed. When we were adjusting the budget for this movie, we had to keep the costume costs down. The budget was 300,000, but it seems that it will cost 700,000, and the excess is 400,000. When I asked the seniors in charge of the production about the breakdown, it was the cost of the stylist who handled the costume, the rental cost of the company that rented the costume, and the cost of purchasing other costumes that were not included in the costume rental. Of course, it makes sense that the general breakdown of costume costs would be something like the one above. When I thought about how to keep this budget down, a new employee of our company suggested the following. “I picked up all the costumes on Mercari. The total cost is 120,000 yen. So I have a request. There are new items with tags, so please do not fix the tags with gumtie. Many companies are engaged in activities related to social contribution.Our company has been thinking about and implementing social contribution for some time, but it is more efficient and effective to think about social contribution in our specialty field. When I was making this movie, I met with the people of the local government in Shimane to cooperate with the filming and to meet with them. When I asked them if there was anything they were worried about, they said that most of the film companies would talk about money in the end. “Since we are making this movie, we can publicize our hometown. Can you prepare 000,000 yen?” I told you that So, finally, I feel relieved. (Laughs) The main issue is social contribution, not Shimane’s PR, so our company’s stance is natural. The main purpose of this movie is not to be a PR video that conveys the culture of Shimane (as mentioned above), but to depict the love between parents and children. In particular, we include the message that “unless we change our parents’ beliefs, we will not have a good society.” Yes, I made a hypothesis that “by changing the assumptions of parents,” from small troubles to big troubles (eg war) can be avoided. . Therefore, we plan to exhibit it at film festivals around the world and have it seen by people all over the world, and also to have it broadcasted by various environmental groups and educational groups. This may be a small effort, but I believe that the accumulation of these small efforts will have a positive impact on society.

In fact, we are also researching the monetization of video content through this film. In the past, we relied on advertising revenue for TV images (dramas and variety shows) and theater revenue for movies. However, the last few years have seen a rapid change in revenue patterns. Television and movies are being replaced by Internet viewing, and are being replaced by profitable forms such as PPV. Still, TV production and movie production sites are old-fashioned and the profit structure is bad. While the content business such as video is changing, we are proceeding with this movie production project to create a new profit model through movie making, although we will keep the details confidential. At first glance, the aforementioned social contribution and monetization seem to contradict each other, but we believe that this contradictory thinking creates the above profit structure. I hope that by exploring and building a combination of social contribution and monetization, the real charm of video production will be created.

Text: Hiroshi Ashida