2013 Platform Studio™

FTCG in Beijing consults and collaborates with Anna Chi, an independent film director, for a digital film production platform, known as Platform Studio™.

A consulting business usually focuses on international business development and related cross-territory fundraising. FTCG’s focus here is to create a efficient and lean-operation platform which produces low-budget, high-quality digital films. To initiate, we promotes a specific artistic style of Anna Chi’s, and facilitates a consistent collaboration among the director, the contracted production team, the China TV broadcaster and network movie channel owner, theater distributors and agents, in two territories: China domestic and international.

  1. Low-budget digital films: around USD1M per film, 45-day site production cycle, 90-day post production, produce 2 editions respectively in HDTV format and in theater format.
  2. High-quality: the films are shot and processed digitally. They strive for taking advantages of optimal modern technologies. The artistic presentation and performance are to be fine toned and paced through director’s creative treatment. Even it is a low-budget film, still its wide spectrum of audience deserves to enjoy vivid story telling and high image quality.
  3. Anna Chi’s artistic approaches: Chinese cultural subjects, dynamic yet fluent story-telling, meticulous and very color-visually conscious in design, directing and editing. The director’s intention in treating Chinese tradition and culture subjects is to present them objectively along with a Western parallelism. The results, hopefully will be more vividly reach out to both Chinese and Western majority audience in pop culture market sector (thus, good box office performance, too). Presenting a film setting in a specific culture or historic domain does not mean that the world’s people would not understand and enjoy it.
  4. Contracted Production: this platform consistently institutes the most professional contracting and delivery by an experienced film crew under one of the earliest-established and the largest state-ownership film studios of China.
  5. TV Broadcasting: this platform choose to closely collaborate with China’s major TV network’s movie channel, benefit its market-conscious subject selection and a majority funding power, to trade the China TV/network broadcasting right in front of production. Then the platform owns the international (plus Hong Kong and Taiwan) TV/network rights.
  6. Releases: by trading off China domestic TV/network right exclusively to the majority investor, the Platform hosts 100% rights of theater releases for its private investors, independently building up consistency with China and international agents and distributors. International TV/network broadcasting rights are also hosted by the Platform.
  7. Ownership, rights and ROI: As the counterpart of China state-owned TV network, the platform represents the private side of co-owner of a production, known as a Society Investor. The platform’s funding structure for each film project is relatively 2/3 invested by the China TV network, and 1/3 invested by the Platform. While the distribution rights are divided by market sectors: the China state-owned TV network exclusively owns China TV/network rights; while the platform exclusively masters international (plus HK and TW) TV/net works rights and international (including China) theater rights.
  8. The platform acts as a value added representative of the private investor for each film’s ROI. By establishing a franchise which consistently and increasingly refines a strategically organized film-making mechanism, the platform materializes the market-driven contents and distinguished art approaches into a well-specified mechanism of profit center.

Anna Chi: Started as a film editor in a documentary studio in Beijing, came to America in 1987, where she was formally educated and trained in UCLA Film School, and received her Master of Fine Art degree. Since then Anna has been a veteran film worker in Hollywood film industry, and lived in Los Angeles, for many years. Anna’s professional practices and deliveries include: scrip writer and treatment designer, editor, cinematographer, unit director, director’s assistant, producer, executive producer and director, etc. Anna Chi’s Filmography

The First Digital Film of the PlatformNiu Zihou Biography written by Guo Chen | producer: Wang Shu | director: Anna Chi | targeted release: Q4 2013 | current stage: pre-production