America: Starting with the acquisition of MGM...

Chapter 214, Section 213: It's time to set an example for you.

Strictly speaking, the story of "Saw 2" is not closely related to the first film; at least in terms of plot, they are relatively independent.

The only connection is that the mastermind behind it all is still Jigsaw, since without him, the audience would be halved.

Another connection is Amanda, the survivor from the first film. In this film, she has converted to Jigsaw's cult and her mental state is somewhat similar to Stockholm syndrome, but not entirely.

Eric did not participate in the writing of the second part's script; he only provided the story outline and development direction. Everything else was completed independently by Reyvonner.

His screenwriting skills far surpass his still-developing directing skills, and the plot remains excellent. James Wan will again serve as the producer for the third installment. With this old duo working together again, James Wan's directing abilities will be nearly mature enough for him to direct independently.

With the huge failure of Dead Silence, all eyes in the market have turned to Saw 2.

Lionsgate would certainly love for Saw 2 to fail, as would those who are envious of MGM and those who hate Chinese Americans, so that they can easily mock James Wan.

However, as the first batch of audience feedback came out, reality slapped these people hard in the face.

Fox News: "Saw 2 continues the tension and exploration of human nature of the first film. Compared to the first film, the second film is innovative and progressive in both technology and plot."

"But it still retains the core elements of the series, including highly intelligent murder mechanisms, complex interpersonal relationships, and profound thematic explorations, making it a worthwhile watch."

The Los Angeles Times: "Saw II is still a cleverly conceived film, continuing the formula of foreshadowing, which is both unexpected and logical."

"Watching this movie will solve a mystery from the first one: why did Jigsaw leave survivors? I highly recommend it to movie fans."

Salt Lake City Entertainment News: "You all know I like to recommend good movies to movie fans, but I rarely recommend sequels, because less than 10% of movies can make a good sequel."

"But without a doubt, Saw 2 belongs to that 10%. It's still an ingenious killing game, terrifying traps, and a brutal plot that gets your adrenaline pumping. Horror movie fans will find everything they want here."

Similar to the overwhelmingly positive reviews from film critics and media outlets, online comments from moviegoers also predominantly expressed their approval.

Iron Man fans' praise was even more saccharine, with terms like "highest praise," "highest honor," and "best of the year" appearing.

It achieved a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and opened with a 7.2 on IMDb. While it will likely drop later, it's already quite high for a horror film and falls into the category of a masterpiece.

The positive reviews are most directly reflected in the box office. It opened on Friday and grossed $3700 million in its opening weekend, $400 million more than the first film.

The cost was the same as the first film, with a production cost of $500 million and a marketing cost of $1000 million.

Dead Silence had been in theaters for six days, but had only grossed a little over $7 million.

While Lionsgate's operational capabilities were indeed inferior to MGM's, resulting in the film only being shown in a thousand theaters, the root cause was the film's poor quality and critical reception.

There were no worthy opponents or brilliant foes as imagined, and no protracted battle. The competition between the two films is over, and "Dead Silence" has suffered a crushing defeat.

The person who is suffering the most right now, besides Lionsgate, is James Wan. He is being criticized and praised by the outside world at the same time, which is making him almost have a split personality.

Eric and Reignard naturally stood up for him.

Eric: "Every director has failed films, which is not surprising. Even Hitchcock and Kurosawa could not guarantee that every film they made would be a success."

"The success of a film is the result of many factors, such as creativity, the overall market environment, the behind-the-scenes team, and the actors' performances."

"When a film is successful, we not only praise the director, but also, like when the entire crew goes on stage to accept the Oscar for Best Picture."

"Similarly, when a movie fails, the blame cannot be placed entirely on the director. I have always firmly believed that James Wan is a good director and will definitely become a successful director in the future."

James Wan: "Saw 2 was a collaboration between James Wan and me. Although I was credited as the director, he was a great help to me. It was actually a collaboration between the two of us."

"I've known him for many years and I never believed that one failure could defeat him. I believe he will get back up soon and bring us better works."

"In fact, I heard that MGM is already in talks with James about a new project. Wen is a man who can't sit still, and he will prove himself again."

The two men's unwavering support deeply moved James Wan. Since Dead Silence had become such a mess that Lionsgate was too embarrassed to promote it anymore, Wan simply threw himself into promoting Saw 2.

2月10日，《电锯惊魂2》在2700多家电影院上映了10天，已经锯下近6000万美元票房，北美破亿不成问题。

It will only be released simultaneously in some European countries overseas. After a large-scale release in a few days, it should have no problem breaking 200 million US dollars worldwide.

As for Lionsgate's "Dead Silence," nobody cares about it; it's already been swept into the trash heap.

However, Eric's focus is not on the movie right now, because today is the day it goes live on YouTube.

He hasn't been to the company in Silicon Valley for a month. As a decision-maker, all he needs to do is grasp the general direction and manage the people and the money.

Facebook is thriving, especially last month when it saw a small surge in new customers, most of whom were adults.

The number of registered users has reached 5000 million, accounting for nearly a quarter of the total US population.

With over 4200 million active users, the numbers are staggering.

This is just the actual data; the publicly released data is even more exaggerated, causing competitor Myspace to be constantly on edge, trying to catch up more and more aggressively.

Moreover, likely due to internal pressure from Fox, MySpace has recently started using Google Play.

GG has a significant impact on user experience, most obviously in that it makes loading the homepage take longer, which has drawn complaints from many users.

Last month, Facebook also updated a new feature called Message in a Bottle.

As for message in a bottle, almost every Chinese person knows what it is for: it can hold text, voice messages, and pictures.

As for whether the pictures and voice messages posted by users are borderline violations, it's difficult to control at the moment.

Moreover, Facebook isn't as stingy as WeChat; it has daily limits on throwing and retrieving bottles.

We've specially equipped ourselves with such a powerful server, shouldn't we just let it sit idle?

With no limits, absolutely no limits, send as much as you want, and as soon as the feature went live, all sorts of unorthodox methods were developed.

Some old perverts who couldn't stand the lag on MySpace naturally switched to Facebook.

Fitz was somewhat worried that this feature would affect Facebook's reputation, but Eric knew better.

The message in a bottle function is like a chamber pot; use it when you need to, but once MySpace and Facebook have a monopoly, just kick it under the bed.

Moreover, unlike MySpace, which launched with its focus on sexually suggestive content, Facebook is generally a normal social platform, with the message in a bottle serving as an embellishment.

Those old-timers who were attracted by the message in a bottle feature won't leave just because the feature is gone, because Facebook has other ways to keep people engaged.

With Facebook as a pioneer, YouTube's promotion became much simpler.

Major television stations, portal websites, forums, and chat rooms launched a carpet bombing campaign.

All Facebook users received an open letter stating that they can log in to YouTube directly with their Facebook account without having to register again, making it quick and convenient.

Hundreds of celebrities, both big and small, also helped promote the product on their social media accounts, and then opened YouTube accounts to upload a few short videos to attract fans.

Eric glanced at the video and realized that none of them had much experience; it was their first time doing something like this, and the video content was very simple.

It's basically about pointing the camera at yourself, introducing yourself, welcoming everyone to open an account on YouTube, and expressing your hope to become friends with everyone.

Eric shook his head. After being bombarded with videos of all lengths and lengths from later generations, seeing everyone's restraint now made him feel like he had returned to the Stone Age.

In addition to these conventional publicity methods, Eric also prepared a powerful weapon: a real lavish spending spree.

Unlike Facebook posts where you simply post a picture and a short text, creating videos on YouTube is much more difficult.

You'll need at least a DV camera, otherwise you can't shoot videos. To produce high-quality videos, you'll also need editing skills, and the cost alone limits many people.

Even though YouTube has built-in various editing plugins, the learning curve still keeps a large number of people away.

Therefore, the most direct way to quickly build up a pool of creators is to provide them with money.

As long as creators can earn money through videos, people will naturally join in.

However, Google Ads (GG) cannot be advertised at the beginning of the website, as there will be no GG revenue. Therefore, Eric will need to cover this cost.

Fortunately, he is not short of money. Even though his MGM shares are temporarily untouchable, he still has a considerable amount of liquid funds on hand.

First, allocate $3 million as an incentive, and if that's not enough, add more. If personal cash flow is still insufficient, then borrow money from MGM, transferring funds from one pocket to another.

Revenue is primarily calculated based on video completion rate, with a portion contributed by likes and shares. Pricing is tiered based on video length, similar to pricing for short, medium, and long videos.

There's only one standard: the more you work, the more you earn. The more exciting the video, the higher the earnings.

Currently, when you open YouTube, you can see that the entire website is only divided into a general section and a music section.

The music section mainly features songs and music videos from all artists affiliated with Sony Music, which are directly licensed to YouTube by Mikey at a relatively low price.

There were also some other companies that Mike helped negotiate with.

"Boss, I've got it! I've got it!"

"What?"

"The first video, the first video uploaded by a user, not one of those celebrities," Howard Hughes exclaimed excitedly.

Eric walked over and saw a user named Diablo on the computer screen who had uploaded a video of himself playing the game.

The video is short, only a few dozen seconds long.

On camera, the guy is pointing at his game screen with exaggerated facial expressions: "Immortal King, I've finally collected the Immortal King set!"

The young man jumped up and hugged the person filming him, and the video ended there.

Eric nodded after watching it. Although there weren't many interesting things to see, and it was more like a short video from later times, he had already earned the title of the first person to upload a video.

"It's alright. At least his exaggerated expressions will attract some users to click and watch. It's a good start."

After a while, another reviewer next to him shouted, "Boss, the second user's video has appeared."

Eric clicked to watch, and this time it was a female user filming her cat exercising.

"Hahaha. I've been looking for this guy for ages. Turns out he went to the neighbor's house and got involved with that female cat."

"I heard that mother cat meowing all night last night, you naughty thing!"

Next came the third, the fourth, and the fifth.

By 3 p.m., the YouTube channel had already surpassed 100 million views.

Registered users easily surpassed one million, given Facebook's large user base.

However, the vast majority of views in the general section are devoted to videos of major celebrities, with relatively few views allocated to general users.

Overall, the music section accounted for more than half of the page views, with the vast majority of users going there to listen to songs and watch music videos.

Mike's "Rolling in the Deep" music video garnered 73 views and over 5 likes in just one day.

This result was not unexpected, as the number of videos in the general section is currently relatively small, with only over 400 uploaded per day.

They're all short videos, and the quality isn't high.

Users quickly scroll through what interests them, and then naturally switch to the music section or exit YouTube.

This situation persisted for a week, but there was still little improvement, which was somewhat different from what Eric had expected.

"Howard, how's it going?"

Howard Hughes shook his head and nodded at the same time: "Boss, judging from the data alone, YouTube has developed rapidly as a new website."

"But the traffic all comes from the music section, which accounts for the majority, while the user-generated videos that we are promoting are relegated to a corner."

"If this trend continues, YouTube will turn from a video website into a music website, which goes against our original intention."

Eric nodded. "Where do you think the problem lies?"

"Obviously, because the video quality is not high enough, it is not attractive enough."

"Boss, YouTube is a very novel operating model that allows ordinary people to shoot their own videos, but most people have no experience in this area."

"Even the funny family videos that were popular in the last century were selected from all over the country and then carefully edited by the TV station before being broadcast."

"We can't expect users to learn how to make it quickly. Maybe we should give them some time. After two or three months, things will improve."

Fitzheisenberg shook his head: "I don't think it's a good idea, because people have personalities, and websites have their own labels."

"Once a website is labeled with its own tag, users who are not interested in that tag will ignore it."

"Boss, you work in film. Audiences who like horror movies won't watch comedies, right?"

"Go on," Eric nodded.

"If the music section is allowed to suppress the general section for an extended period of time, YouTube will be labeled as a music website."

"The vast majority of users it attracts will be music enthusiasts, and its video attributes will be greatly weakened."

"If another competitor suddenly emerges, like MySpace, and they only showcase their video capabilities, that will be a huge challenge."

"Therefore, my suggestion is not to give up two or three months, but to take all measures as soon as possible to stimulate users' creativity and autonomy."

"But the general public isn't a professional; they can't make great videos in a short time, or rather, they simply don't know how to do it!" Howard said, slamming his fist on the table in frustration.

"Then teach them how to do it!"

"What?"

"What they lack are teachers. As long as good teachers set an example, the process can be greatly accelerated."

Fitz then looked at Eric and said, "But we already have a ready-made teacher. Boss, you came up with the idea for YouTube, and I don't think anyone in the world knows better than you how to do it."

"Besides, MGM has so many professionals, why not lead them to work together? First, produce a batch of high-quality videos, and once the reach increases, the popularity of the integrated area will rise instantly."

Eric nodded slowly: "Looks like it's time to set an example for you!"

(End of this chapter)