Eleven years after the company launch in 2005, Douban has just released its first brand film, a ‘visual poem’ created by prolific Shanghai agency W and director GingZim Lo.
Entitled ‘My Inner Space’, the abstract four-and-a-half minute piece puts us in the position of a young man as he endures a frightening journey from one harrowing real world scene to another, before breaking off his shackles and blasting off into the peaceful freedom of outer (inner) space.
Douban.com launched in 2005 as a broad platform for users to record information and create content related to film, books, music and events in China. At the peak of its popularity in 2012, the site attracted over 160m page views per day. However, amid fierce competition from emerging, more targeted social platforms, that number has plummeted below 30m.
从2005年创立开始，豆瓣已经迈入了第11个年头。这个主打电影、音乐、图书和同城活动的社交网站历经数次变动，在2012年时达到了日均浏览量1.6亿次的巅峰。近年来由于其他社交平台的掘起，加之豆瓣本身的定位模糊，这个数字已经跌落到3000万／日次。近日由上海W广告公司操刀，台湾导演罗景壬执导，豆瓣制作投放了公司11年历史上第一条广告宣传片，给豆瓣带来一个清晰的定位。
这则名为“我们的精神角落”的广告片在四分半的时间内用第一人称视角的方式，讲述了一个挣脱束缚，走向自由空间的抽象故事。对于许多豆瓣深度用户来说，这样一个故事正反应了豆瓣对于他们的意义：脱离日常的繁杂，进入一个简单的精神世界。
Douban’s poster: You are pursuing those you don’t want to lose
W ECD Li Sanshui suggests the sites ethos has remained unchanged from the beginning; it was merely the communication of their message that needed better definition. He explains, “This is Douban’s first full campaign integrating online TVC, digital interactive HTML5, WeChat, social promotion, outdoor advertising, subway ads and cinema ads. We want to better position the brand, to tell people what Douban is all about. We want to both advertise the brand and cement its meaning”.
He goes on to outline the creative rationale, “This is a poem about the spirit of communicating and connecting, about sending a signal from one corner to every corner. We found “My Inner Space” was the perfect tagline to define the brand and reflect its qualities. It presents the connection between Douban and its users. Douban is the place to fulfill our spiritual needs and find out who we really are, a spiritual place in a material society.
这则广告和整个营销战略都旨在为用户群清晰定义豆瓣。W公司的创意总监李三水说：“W在全局操盘的过程中，其实核心目的，是希望通过品牌整体的策略定位，为豆瓣塑造一个清晰的品牌形象。所有的具体创作，都是豆瓣品牌从模糊认识到目前清晰定位的具体衍生。简言之，面对大众正式宣布：豆瓣是谁。”
对于创意过程，李三水说：“这是一首豆瓣写给亿万用户的影像诗。豆瓣提供的所有服务，本质上都是一种精神消费，或尽其所能的在物质消费事实和现实人际沟通的规则下，为你保留一份它处难寻的精神附加值。多年来，豆瓣对受众的理解，抑或自我解读，都将通过这幕主观视觉化的影像纪录得以告白释意，并还原为别具意义的画面与声音，袒露在你的面前。这是一个人穿梭自我精神世界的旅程，也是一群人交换精神感受的心声。”
The spot marks the second major collaboration between W and Taiwanese director Lo. Having won widespread acclaim for their ‘True Colour Of The Youth’ film for New Balance last year, Li had the director in mind for the Douban film from the earliest stages of the creative process, “After determining the strategy and the creative concept, [Lo] was the best candidate because, in a sense, our visions, his, mine and Douban’s, are all the same.”
The film’s poem was a collaboration by Li, Lo and the client. For the visual direction, he drew influence from a host of dark films including Silence of the Lambs, Apocalypse Now, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Hungarian drama Le Grand Cahier and Lars Von Trier’s ‘The Kingdom’. As the action lurches from one unsettling scene to another, at times it feels as if we are trapped in a disturbing dream. For Li however, rather than a representation of a nightmarish fantasy, the depictions in the film are in fact closer to reality than those in most commercials, “I feel they’re realistic. If you find them depressing or nightmarish, maybe that’s because daily exposure to modern commercials has eroded our idea of what real life is.”
在片中，W加入了英文字幕，主人公拨打的也是美国的急救电话。李三水解释说这是W迈向国际化的尝试，也是希望中国影视广告行业能够在国际市场上占据一席之地。片中有许多向经典影片致敬的镜头，如《沉默的羔羊》、《现代启示录》、《恶童日记》、《图腾与禁忌》、《告白》、《医院风云》、《红白蓝三部曲》、《2001太空漫游》等：“影片各个片段，本身在设定上，就有向各类经典电影和书籍加以借镜反射的初衷，你可以在其中看到诸多人物广为熟识的镜头。这些也是我们借以解读豆瓣品牌独特气质的一种手法。”
“我们的精神角落”是W与台湾导演罗景壬继纽百伦“青春的原色”后第二次合作。罗景壬是李三水心目中执导本片的最佳人选：“某种意义上，我，他，豆瓣，其实属于同类。”
Douban’s poster: Everyone has a wild imagination
The film is comprised entirely of original footage, shot in Taiwan over three days and nights, mostly with a GoPro. Li believes the spot, managed by local production company Yuanyuan Film, was the first in the Asia-Pacific region area to be shot in its entirety with the mini sports camera. He explains the process; “We used GoPro to shoot all the first person perspective, and 35mm film camera to shoot the third person perspectives. After the shots were taken with a GoPro, a 35mm film machine was used in post to retake the shots, in order to make the spot appear more feature-like. The difficulty in using GoPro is that the actor is the one taking the shots, not the Director of Photography. So we needed an actor with an idea of how to shoot a film. Another difficulty is that the GoPro angle control is very hard. We had to adjust the camera repeatedly during the shoot.”
在制作方建议下，本片使用GoPro拍摄所有第一人称视角镜头。之前也有别的公司利用GoPro进行拍摄，但从头到尾几乎贯穿整部电影的使用GoPro，本片尚属首例。为了营造电影大片的质感，所有GoPro拍摄的镜头在后期制作过程中全部翻印为35mm胶卷。李三水说：“用GoPro摄影机拍摄的难度在于，摄影师变成了摄影技术的指导不需亲自掌机，我们必需要有一位懂得摄影运镜的演员来担此大任，带在头上的GoPro摄影机运镜的角度通常是最困难的，在拍摄过程中需一次次的校正。”
The Shanghai-based agency this time eschewed their usual in-house composed soundtrack in favour of ‘Sweet Little Hunter’, a haunting melody by songwriter David Gerard Lawrence. Also unusually, the film includes English language elements including subtitles and song lyrics, a first move in the agency’s initiative to ‘internationalize’ their output in 2016.
The film is the second phase of a two-part campaign, which began in late 2015 with an HTML5 online game in which the player must navigate a series of mystery levels, all rendered in the same moody design and tone as the film. Li explains the aim was, “to resonate with Douban’s reading, music, social and online-to-offline platform quality. We want the game to present interactive experiences based on five senses: sight (perception), sound (resonance), smell (search), speech (share) and brain (spirit). We also wanted a game to create an environment and generate power for the TVC.”
In its first few days since release, the enigmatic film has generated debate. It will be intriguing to see whether that discussion translates into users returning to their Douban ‘Inner Space’.
在背景音乐的选择方面，罗景壬导演与W选择了David Gerald Lawrence的《Murder Ballads》中的单曲《Sweer Little Hunter》。这首歌缓慢而略显压抑的风格十分适合本片的氛围。
2016年豆瓣整体营销的第一个阶段——手机端的解谜游戏已经引起了巨大的反响。“我们的精神角落”作为第二个阶段，将持续在网上与各大院线贴片式播放；同时广告海报也将在在全国各地地铁站内投放。本片不仅在中国大陆引起用户们的激烈讨论，在台湾地区也引发了热议。许多老牌豆瓣用户都对本片十分看好，认为它深刻的反应了每一个用户对豆瓣的感情。至于本次营销的具体效果，我们拭目以待。
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