Digital Domain CEO was very enthusiastic about the arrival of Zhang Yida and Bao Fan.
He and several company employees were waiting at the door early.
Seeing Zhang Yida and his entourage walking out of the elevator, he immediately greeted them.
"Mr. Zhang, welcome to come and guide us."
Xie An kept a low profile. Through several friends, he also knew Zhang Yida's background and energy very well, not to mention that the other party controlled Ruixiang, China's third largest technology company.
For a boss of this level, even if the business cannot be concluded, he still needs to form a good relationship.
Zhang Yida looked at Xie An. He wore black-rimmed glasses, had a round face, and a slightly high hairline. He looked very ordinary.
However, Zhang Yida will not be fooled by appearance. Can an ordinary person become the CEO of one of the world's top special effects companies at the age of 28?
"Mr. Xie, you're welcome. After all, you are still my senior brother."
Zhang Yida's statement made Xie An overjoyed.
He knew that Zhang Yida graduated from Peking University, but he didn't want to rush into a relationship.
Since Zhang Yida took the initiative to approve this relationship, he followed the stick.
"Haha, Mr. Zhang, you are too polite. What is the difference between a senior brother and a senior brother? Those who are wise come first. Just call me Lao Xie."
Zhang Yida chatted with him for a few words and said with a smile: "I'm going to bother senior brother today and show us this famous special effects company."
Xie An wanted to refute this statement. Their main external label now is not a special effects company.
The main reason is that the special effects company has been losing money for many years and cannot scare investors.
The concept they are currently focusing on externally is: the only AR/VR concept stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
However, he did not forcefully defend them, he just wanted to give a good introduction later to change Zhang Yida's view of them.
After all, a special effects company and a VR company have different prospects and valuations.
"Mr. Xie, don't just chat, show us the technical achievements of Digital Domain?"
Bao Fan reminded him loudly.
"Hey, yes, yes!"
Xie An patted his head and made a "please" gesture, "Guys, please come in!"
Xie An first took Zhang Yida and his party to an exhibition hall, where the walls were densely covered with movie promotion posters.
Xie Hai pointed to the advertising wall and introduced, "These are the works of Digital Domain in the past 25 years. There are hundreds of them in total. We have participated in the special effects work and have won 10 Oscars."
"Hey, you guys also made this "Gulu" character?"
Zhang Yida saw his childhood nightmare, the deformed monster "Gulu" in "The Lord of the Rings".
When I was a kid, I was afraid to watch this magical movie because of this character.
Xie An smiled and nodded, "Yes, it was made by Digital Domain. We also made Thanos in the recently released "Avengers", and "Ready Player One" also participated.
"Gulu" is called "virtual human" technology in the industry.
The young and old Brad Pitt in "Return of the Aged" and Paul Walker, who died unexpectedly after filming only 10% of the scenes in "Fast and Furious 7", were all created using virtual human technology.
At present, our company has relatively rich experience in the production of biological special effects such as monsters, animals, and characters.
The biggest breakthrough in technology is that in addition to the most primitive face scanning through several systems, we can also make people older or younger, or even resurrect them.
In 2013, we "resurrected" Teresa Teng and let her appear in Jay Chou's "Devil" world tour concert."
Zhang Yida thought about what effect this technology could have on Ruixiang.
It's a pity to just produce content. It would be great if we could create virtual idols and make them into IPs.
Xie An said: "In fact, Digital Domain is a technology company driven by technology. The NUKE we invented is the most used visual effects software in the world and won the 2017 Oscar Science and Technology Award.
We also have a large number of software technology R&D teams from MIT, California Jet Laboratory, etc."
Zhang Yida nodded. The reason why he fell in love with this company was the accumulation of industrial technology and talents.
Be it Rocket Video, Bilibili or several short videos, the requirements for content quality will only become higher and higher.
By acquiring a special effects company, you can not only save some content production costs, but also achieve a closed ecological loop.
As for the VR industry, it is also supplementing the content ecosystem and investing in the future.
Xie An took Zhang Yida and others to an audio-visual playback room and played several special effects videos in which Digital Domain participated.
"Take the scene in "2012" where the plane crashes into the White House."
Xie An introduced the special effects realization process, "To show the scene of the building collapsing, bricks, tables, chairs, and glass shattering and scattering, it is unrealistic to just rely on the artist to draw the fragments one by one in the later stage.
So we generated a self-learning program called DRid Body Dynamics, which can use computers to calculate the order in which objects fall and the motion state of impact and rebound."
Zhang Yida nodded slightly. It can be seen that Digital Domain's special effects production requirements are very strict.
It doesn't matter if it's strict, at least there won't be special effects scenes like "throwing a grenade and blowing off the plane", it should be logical and not insult the audience's IQ.
Xie An continued, “Digital Domain Group has reorganized its business and divided it into four sectors: visual effects, virtual reality, virtual humans, and original IP.
I will focus on the virtual reality sector. Currently, our VR business covers three sub-modules: hardware, channels and content.
The hardware includes VR headsets. In terms of channels, we have cooperated with Poly to build an offline VR space DD Space. It has been implemented in more than 50 commercial properties across the country in the form of VR experience halls. In the future, we want to become a VR content distribution platform.
In terms of content, we research and produce it ourselves.
The long-term development direction is to connect these four major business segments with each other and further consolidate the operating model including technology research and development, content production, and multi-channel distribution.
Build a virtual world for the consumer market before 2045 - "Oasis"."
The ambition is not small, Zhang Yida naturally knows what this "oasis" is, like the kind of world in virtual online game novels.
It’s not easy to say whether this will be technically possible more than 20 years later.
Zhang Yida nodded, "Not a bad idea! However, I looked at Digital Domain's last year's financial report. The company's annual revenue was HK$703 million, of which visual effects revenue was HK$606 million, accounting for 86%.
In addition, the business team is mainly located in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Hyderabad, India, London and other places.
The main income of the business comes from doing special effects for movies, right?”
Xie An said with a smile, "After all, the transformation has just begun. Special effects companies still account for the majority of revenue, but in two or three years, the situation will be different."
Zhang Yida almost knew it. He took a long breath, looked at Xie An, and said calmly, "Ruixiang has traffic and content carriers. Are you willing to cooperate, Brother Xie?"