"Bold, honestly, unusual"

The head of the MTS Media company Igor Mishin about the new online cinema and the upcoming change in the layout of forces in the video industry

On Mosfilm, a magnificent presentation of the new Kion online cinema took place. Probably, with his arrival in the Russian online video industry, another revolution will occur. The output of such a powerful player with such a clip of potential hits and new formats will change the alignment of forces in the online video industry.

- Is it possible to say that Kion is a rebranding of your media platform?

- On a formal basis - yes. But this is not a change of sign, but a change in the status, quality of the sentence. The conclusion to the market of a new online cinema, therefore, combined two events-the emergence of a new name and the distribution of new knowledge: we begin to release our projects-Originals. We launch an online cinema, where there will be full meters that we will make, our original series, documentaries.

- How is Kion deciphered? A particle of God?

- Just an equaliber with the word "cinema". We checked the word in focus groups, the words “film”, “screen”, “cinema” pop up as an associative series of respondents.

- Your slogan: "Bold, honestly, unusual." Is it too bold and honest for today?

- Absolutely not. This is a promise. We represent ourselves to the market as a "hypermarket of impressions." “Honestly, bold, unusual” - a characteristic of our exit with Originals, accumulating general industrial experience. Recall what premieres of the series on OTT services have become massive, brought fame and success. These are series, made unusual, boldly. We enter this market, confirming our path within the digital industry.

- That is, a taboo on topics, on politics and relevance, on the problems of youth, including with freedom of speech ... does not exist? Will reality be reflected in your Originals?

- More than. We have many projects are titrated "based on real events." And on the film of Roman Super about Sakharov, who on May 21, on the day of the 100th anniversary of Andrei Dmitrievich, comes out, except for the titer “based on real events”, it is written “based on real words” ...

- “Sakharov. Two lives ” - a curious format: Documentary Film + Phenomenon Cinema + Theater production.

- We do not understand what kind of category he will be classified as. Sakharova is played by actor Alexei Usoltsev, but everything that Sakharov says as a character in the game part is the real words of Andrei Dmitrievich, collected from memoirs, chronicles, interviews, etc.

Another category of projects is “Stories prompted by life” as a thriller “Crystal”. What we do in world media practice is indicated by the English -language term Social impact entertainment - the entertainment of social influence. The digital environment, in contrast to the film distribution, where the attraction is dominated, and from the air television - makes it possible to make interesting experimental risky projects. On the one hand, it should be exciting, on the other, to initiate public discussions: inside some social stratum of people.

- Some time ago, you announced direct investments in film production, among the declared projects not only thrillers about the serial Kos of Voloshin and Gligorov’s “Khrustalny” killers, but the drama about the sexologist “Clinic of Happiness” with Daria Moroz, the provocative lavstory “Secrets of Family Life”, the Socialist Drada “Germans” according to the novel by Terekhova, Irony. Boris Khlebnikov’s comedy “Comrade Major”, film “Masha” Anastasia Palchikova, thriller Alice Khazanova about death groups “White List”, the discussion dock “Ask Stalin”, Parfenov’s films, and a portrait of Pavel Durov. Among the joint channel, the series "Vertinsky" Avdoty Smirnova ...

-The online cinema, which claims to be leadership, cannot focus on one genre, the interest of one address audience. The social digital environment has formed a new trend when the audience of a series or film is formed not according to socio-demographic characteristics, which is familiar to the etheric television, but, excuse me for a fashionable word, by the psychograph of content consumption.

- Explain in more detail.

- This is the study of consumers on the basis of their activities, interests and values, experiences. We see that the audience of one or another series released on OTT platforms is mixed. Traditional socio-demographic characteristics cease to determine the target groups.

Therefore, a variety of genres, the differentiation of the audience is necessary. The range of our interest is from iconic, semantic paintings, such as a “blocked diary” to the blockbuster “nine” , which we made with Timur Bekmambetov. The adventure military action based on the real feat of the pilot Mikhail Devyataev. And the center of this range is the art chainstam.

We carefully make the first cinema investments, it is risky: it is difficult to guess the rolling fate and success of the film.

-But the market for online cinemas is more than saturated. What does the ambitions of leadership feed with such rigid competition?

- We do not formulate claims to become the only leader. I said that we should break into a leadership group, which will be less than the current number of online cinemas.

For any new industry, the emergence of a larger number of players applying for leadership is useful than the market is able to feed.

This happens when new technological niches open, markets are formed. The increased competition leads to the fact that the viewer begins to receive more high -quality offers for less money. The configuration of current players will undergo changes in the next few years. We will find interesting transactions on the merger, acquisition, and unite resources. As an OTT industry, we are at the beginning of the journey.

-So still, what is the advantage of Kion over the existing ones?

-There are three types of online cinemas. Independent from television channels and ecosystems, as the current leader of the IVI market, online cinemas that exist within the framework of television holdings, and online cinemas-living within the framework of the ecosystem. There are three such in the country - the multimedia service OKKO, the KinoPoisk HD and we. Ecosystemicity gives undeniable advantages. A person uses an online cinema as a gate in an ecosystem. And as a result, it can receive a huge list of different services - from financial to exotic ones, such as a “smart collar” for a dog, purchases of entertainment tickets, of those that modern digital services offer. It is convenient to have one entrance to use the services that go beyond the scope of "View Cinema".

- Will you work like that?

- We were born inside MTS as a natural logical course in the development of the ecosystem. Today we have more than 2 million consumers, their significant part came to our platform.

- That is, they will become your spectators?

- We do not limit our proposal. We call it “two at a hundred”: subscribe for 100 rubles and get 100% cashback according to the MTS Cashback system. You can spend this money on the purchase of a smartphone, ticket tickets, any additional service.

- Including watching the film ...

-In fact, you start using the online cinema-theater for free.

- Is it possible to say that Western giants, like Netflix and Amazon, overtook us forever? Or, conversely, are we gaining pace?

- I am acknowledge comments on such questions. In my opinion, they are somewhat scholastic. What was it overtaken? Netflix as a leader in the quality of the production of series? Of course yes. Netflix as a business in the Russian Federation? There is no far. It depends on which side to watch.

- I'm talking about the volume of the library, substantial offers.

-It is difficult to predict a specific configuration over two or three coming years. If about today, then the Netflix business in Russia did not come close to the indicators achieved by Russian leaders of the OTT market ... How much funds they generate, how many subscribers they have. What will happen in the next few years, who will agree with whom, who will buy whom, merge, how the three leaders will look at the end of 2023 - no one knows. The parameters of the industry today are not able to predict a single person.

-This is interesting.

- We will all be participants, observers or in your case with observers of interesting events whose scenarios have not yet been written.

- Yes, we generally ended up inside the unpredictable script, at least in connection with Pandemia.

- This is the acuteness and “charm of the moment” ...

- By the way, is the pandemic one of the participants stimulating the Ott-Industry?

- Undoubtedly. For many industries, the pandemic caused irreversible damage, not to mention the health and psyche of people. For the content industry on the Internet, she gave a powerful impetus.

People limited in movement, entertainment can develop, relax without leaving home.

-I do not work in an industrial publication, so I would like to consider something semantic, artistic behind the words “hypermarket”, “consumer”, “user”, “product”, and I’m afraid to say the word “art”. Do you have ambitions and a desire to create films, rising to the heights of a genuine art?

- This is a matter of balance. Each platform in the asset has some significant image projects that have become public revelations, but, from a commercial point of view, ineffective. On the other hand, there are commercially successful releases of series and paintings on platforms. Each platform, OTT service will be set up individually. Life will confirm the correctness of the choice. In this balance there is a place for audiovisual works with artistic value.

In fact, the whole powerful drama went into the series. In this meadow, the tone is set by OTT services, not film rolling companies or broadcasting.

- But the path is also the choice of authors, directors, scripts.

- It seems to me that today this process is not that it has begun, rather ends. The strongest authors who made the name and career in the cinema write and shoot dramatic or detective series for platforms.

- But by the way, Igor, is there any desire, for example, to invite Andrei Zvyagintsev, who does not shoot the series yet?

- We have not yet removed. Still, this is not so much an invitation from the platforms, rather a personal matured creative need of such a strong author as Andrei. And we have many such examples. Talented directors from the artificial segment came to us ... If you take the leaders of the same “Kinotavra” of the last three to four years in all nominations: “Best Film”, “Best Director”, “Best Author of the Script”-they work on platforms, including with us.

-Sigarev, Smirnova, Khlebnikov, Voloshin, Gai-Germanic, Constantinople ...

-Meshchaninova, Bychkova, Khazanova ... OTT-service gave these people to be heard, to realize their aspirations. This is a global trend.

-I think that you are also interested in the “nine” Bekmambetov and Trofimov because of the vertical format for viewing in smartphones.

- This bonus plus is not the main argument for making a decision. OTT services should provide people with new perception opportunities associated with the convenience of digital technologies. Our new Kinostoris format, which we bring to the Russian market, and would like colleagues to support this term. Russia would become the ancestor of this format: we combined a full-length feature film with the format of the web series.

Everyone is used to the fact that the web series is an industrial term. 10 episodes for 10 minutes. With a modest budget, young teams and usually for free hosting. What is 10 episodes for 10 minutes? An hour forty, that is, a full -length film. OTT service makes it possible to choose a viewing option. You press the “Watch as a Film” button, sit at home on the couch, turn on a full -length movie. But if you are on the road, you are waiting for the flight, click the "Watch as a series" button. This is not a long film cut into parts, each series is made as a finished dramatic act. Such a project has full -fledged movie budgets with good casting, objects, graphics, with all the components of rolling cinema. We are about eight projects in this format this year will release.

These are the first experiments. In the coming years, I hope that our call is “bold, honest, unusual” will become universal. We urge the OTT services to go to the unhust paths, come up with formats, not knowing whether the viewer will like them.

If you don’t take risks, do not invent something unusual, we will not understand what the viewer will prefer tomorrow.

It is necessary to use digital technologies as much as possible with their capabilities of a different communication compared to the cinema or with air television.

- Which movie/the series will be the first in this line?

- “Scam” is a folk post -carantine movie comedy about adventures in the village. Clear genre gradations are in film strokes: comedy, horror, thriller, vampire thriller ... And the time of modern serial dramas become a mix of different genres ... Short forms allow you to maintain a spectator interest in genetic cinema.

- I recall Netflix scandals with a Cannes festival. What will be the relationship between online platforms and cinema rental? How will competitive relations develop?

- We see that releases of full meters are increasingly taking place in a digital environment. First of all, this applies to low-budget art mainstream paintings. Often it is more profitable for producers to sell them on a platform or on two platforms than to take risks with rental. Especially in the conditions of quarantine restrictions.

- Moreover, rental is two weeks in the repertoire of the cinema.

- And here is a new reality given to us in the sensations, as the classics wrote. The rental will remain for high -budget blockbusters, attraction cinema. For the attraction, a large screen and sound 5.1 play a decisive role, people pay for this.

-It seems to me, also for art house, paintings by Bela Tarra, Roy Andersson, requiring concentration.

- And this is a curious question. When a person at home watches on broadcasting and when a person at home watches a series or cinema, including it on an OTT service, in an online cinema-these are two different types of look. The airtime telik at home has turned into a background, people are engaged in household chores, talk, cook food, etc. But the same people who buy a viewing, subscription, waiting for the premieres of the series, sit in the same house at the same screen ... And there is a communication close to the sensation that you experience in a regular cinema.

- Minus is a collective experience.

- Also a discussion question. Strong art house films parts of the audience are curious primarily by personal experiences. This is a comedy -

The hall laughs and you become infected with laughter. Therefore, comedies also relate to attractions and will be shown in cinemas for a long time.

- And the relationship with the TV? I know that, unlike pessimists, you have your own concept of Telik's survival.

- Television as a sociocultural phenomenon will not go anywhere, we will accompany us for decades, transforming us technologically. The traditional TV technology dies, in the end it is a hundred years old. Now we are approximately in the same situation as Moscow in the 1920s a hundred years ago: the first taxi has already appeared, but the cabmen are still driving. A taxi appeared-these are OTT services, but diligenes continue to ride ... A period of peaceful coexistence will last a few more years. Essential television is early to write off accounts. Moreover, when the online cinemas lifted the quality bar, we observe how the etheric television begins to accept these calls, pull ourselves up so as not to lose the audience. Strengthening competition occurs not only between online cinemas, which are too much for the Russian market, competition is growing between the digital environment and the traditional one. The viewer wins.

“But there is more freedom in the digital environment.” And at the level, and even in vocabulary.

- I would not say that the difference is freedom. If now it will not work out to say to the air television. Because the channels have fed the audience that is used to a certain content, if you begin to change the repertoire sharply, the audience can leave. The question is not the administrative presence of freedom or lack of freedom, but in the fact that the general television audience melts over the years, the channels do not allow themselves sudden movements, semantic and emotional risks. It is already not clear what is primary - chicken or egg ...

- The channels first feed their audience with certain dishes, and then become slaves of a specific “diet”.

- Advertising business, the sale of the audience - this is the financial mechanism of existence. OTT services provoke them in search, at least in a serial grid.

The ethereal telly will answer, we are at the beginning of competitive battles.

- Yes, you are an optimist. A few words about interactive. What will it be on your platform?

- At least in the choice of viewing: film stroke - as a film or as a series - this is an element of an interactive, a step towards non -ire consumption.

-I imagined the special offers for the viewer to participate in the narrative: choosing the finals of the film, choosing a hero for spin-off.

- Now and like it will begin to appear. We enter in a period when the emerging technological innovations will be more than those that will take root, which the viewer will accept and love.

- Production is an expensive thing. I understand that you are MTS. И все же, качественные фильмы, триллеры, комедии… Вы думаете об окупаемости, как будете выживать?

— Мало того, что «МТС Медиа» — компания, существующая в рамках экосистемы и поэтому у нас консолидированный бюджет с МТС — прибыльной компанией. Кроме того, внутри нас — «дочки» «МТС Медиа» — OTT-сервис. Это инвестиционная часть нашего бизнеса. У нас традиционные три среды — кабель, IPTV — спутник, где «МТС Медиа» продолжает предоставлять услуги по доставке телевизионных каналов для населения. Успешный финансовый бизнес с хорошей маржинальностью. Заработки инвестируются. Плюс дополнительные инвестиции со стороны материнской компании.

— А какая компания среди ваших конкурентов для вас привлекательна, чей опыт вы принимаете и преобразуете?

— Не открою Америки, зафиксирую общее индустриальное мнение. Безусловно, есть пионеры рынка — Ivi, Okko, Megogo, возникшие, когда сама задача развивать бизнес платного потребления контента в интернете была фантастикой. Мне это напоминает мою телевизионную юность. В 1990-м я сказал: «О! Можно делать эфирное телевидение! Давайте создадим частную телекомпанию». На меня смотрели, как на сумасшедшего. Зачем на это время тратить? Лучше редкоземельные металлы будем продавать или алкоголь из Польши завозить. Какое эфирное телевидение?! Так же десять лет назад воспринимались пионеры OTT-бизнеса. Есть онлайн-кинотеатр Premier, первым у нас открывший originals. Мы же помним феерический успех «Домашнего ареста» в 2018-м. Сейчас наблюдаем, как онлайн-кинотеатр «Кинопоиск» наращивает объемы качественного репертуара, предлагая все больше оригинальных сериалов. В адрес практически каждого игрока, а их сегодня плюс-минус десяток, можно сказать комплиментарные слова. Возьмите хотя бы More.tv, прогремевшее с их «Чиками» в прошлом году. Относимся ко всем ним с уважением, в некотором смысле они протоптали для нас дорожку.

— Сколько надо времени, чтобы заговорили о платформе KION?

— Индустрия об этом заговорила уже утром 20 апреля после нашей презентации. А зрительская популярность — процесс накопительный. Нам надо сделать несколько ярких релизов за первые два месяца работы. У нас необычный график выпуска оригинальных новинок: документальное кино и сериалы, киносториз и полный метр, которые мы спродюсировали. Надеюсь, к ноябрю месяцу мы станем заметным игроком. Вы о нас еще услышите. Вы нас увидите.