3.1.1. Copyright Value Evaluation Index for Online Movies Both before and after Broadcasting
Unlike traditional movies, the production team for online movies mostly comprises the exclusive production team of online content, and the online movie’s promotion, distribution, and revenue methods are mainly determined by the online video platform. There is no single correct way to evaluate copyright, and the characteristics of the assets to be evaluated should be considered comprehensively in multiple intellectual property evaluation methods. Movie and television works are special products with humanistic value and economic value [
38,
39], and therefore neither the income method, cost method, market method, or other basic evaluation methods are applicable, so it is necessary to integrate more methods into the value evaluation of movie and television works. In this study, a fuzzy evaluation method is used to establish an evaluation index of online movie copyright value. Then, select a variety of evaluation methods, according to the applicability of different weights assigned to indexes, weighted to find the copyright value of online movies. With the gradual penetration of traditional cinema movie companies and professional teams into the field of online movies, the quality of online movies has continued to improve, and there has been a precedent set for substituting cinema output with high-quality online movies. Therefore, in the future trend of online movies, there are hidden development opportunities for secondary sales and copyright derivatives, and the copyright value evaluation needs to be divided into prebroadcast indexes and postbroadcast indexes so that the establishment of an evaluation model is forward-facing. The first-level index meant to capture a movie’s value before the initial broadcast includes the value of the work and other factors, and the first-level index meant to capture a movie’s value after the initial broadcast includes the value of the work, broadcast strategy, and communication effect. The first version of this index was initially established by combining relevant literature, various reports issued by authoritative agencies, the latest relevant industry policies, and video platform cooperation methods for online movies. The index system is divided into two parts, the first to capture a movie’s value before broadcast and the second to capture it post-broadcast, both of which use three-level structures.
The fuzzy evaluation method is a comprehensive evaluation method based on fuzzy mathematics. According to the membership degree theory of fuzzy mathematics, the method is used to transform a qualitative evaluation into a quantitative evaluation; that is, the fuzzy mathematics method is used to evaluate targets that are restricted by various factors [
40]. By using the fuzzy evaluation method, the factors affecting the copyright value of online movies in this study are divided into three levels of indexes with hierarchical relationships, and data are directly collected and assigned to the objective data indexes in the third level. The subjective data are divided into two or three value levels according to the literature research results and market feedback. The evaluation index system of the copyright value of online movies both before and after broadcasting includes 24 and 25 third-level indexes [
41,
42,
43,
44,
45,
46,
47,
48,
49], respectively, as shown in
Table 1 and
Table 2.
In the prebroadcast index, the copyright value of online movies is mainly affected by the value of the work and other factors. The value of the work refers to the inherent value generated in the process of script selection and production, including the quality of the script, the main creative team, the characteristics of the work, and other second-level indexes. The quality of the work includes the source of the work, the theme type, uniqueness, and other indexes. The main creative team includes the influence of the leading actor, the influence of the producer, the influence of the writer, the influence of the director, the production team, and the production cost. The characteristics of the works include social topics, online sense, artistry, thought, entertainment, narrative, professionalism, and other indexes. Other factors are the strength of the production, publicity, and the level of distribution prior to broadcast, and they include second-level indexes such as publicity plans and financing methods. The publicity plan includes the type of distribution company, the capabilities of the distribution company, the method of publicity, the user profile, and other indexes. Financing methods include crowdfunding, video website self-production, movie and television enterprise production, grassroots self-production, and other indexes.
Among the postbroadcast indexes, the copyright value of online movies is mainly affected by the value of the work, its broadcast strategy, and its communication effect. The value of the work refers to the inherent value that is generated in the process of script selection and production, and it includes the quality of the script, the main creative team, the characteristics of the work, and other second-level indexes. The quality of a script is affected by the theme type. The influence index of the leading actor determines the main creative team. The characteristics of the work include social topics, online sense, artistry, thought, entertainment, narrative, professionalism, and other indexes. Broadcast strategy refers to the broadcast strategy adopted by the online movie when offered over the platform, and it includes the broadcast schedule, broadcast channels and broadcast content, and other indexes. The broadcast schedule includes indexes such as the release schedule and release date, and the broadcast channel includes indexes such as the influence of the broadcast platform and the number of broadcast platforms offering the movie. Broadcast content is influenced by the golden six-minute metric. The communication effect refers to the effect of online movies on the broadcasting platform, search platform, social platform, and other media, including the communication effect of the broadcasting platform, the influence of other important platforms, and the platform’s star-making ability. The communication effect of the broadcast platform includes the number of plays, playing time, number of bullet screens, user rating of the broadcast platform, amount of paid movie purchases, the possibility to purchase membership, and various other indexes. Other important platform influence indexes include the Baidu index, Weibo popularity, and Douban rating. Star-making ability is affected by the platform’s star-making ability.
To ensure the validity of the index system, two rounds of expert questionnaires regarding the evaluation index were conducted to ensure the scientific and comprehensive results of the research. The Delphi method is used to construct the index system to determine the degree of influence of each factor affecting the copyright value of online movies. The Delphi method is a kind of anonymous correspondence method for obtaining expert feedback. In its operation step, the problems to be predicted are summarized, and relevant statistics are collected after obtaining the opinions of experts. The expert opinions are anonymously fed back to those experts, and they are then asked for their opinions again. This process is repeated until a unanimous opinion is obtained [
50]. By conducting multiple rounds of questionnaire surveys directed at experts, the opinions regarding the indexes and weights were repeatedly consulted and summarized, which ensured the scientificity and effectiveness of the evaluation index system of online movie copyright and the weight design of each index to a certain extent. An expert questionnaire was designed for this study based on the above index system, and a survey was conducted with 106 experts from the movie and television industry in the form of a paper questionnaire. Respondents were asked to score the impact degree of each of the third-level indexes to report which indexes they thought were influential. The responses used a scoring mechanism ranging from 0 to 10 points to determine the impact of each index on the value of online movie copyright. A score of 10 indicates the greatest effect, and a score of 0 indicates no effect.
Through data sorting and index screening, 74 valid questionnaires were finally recovered. After the statistics were calculated for the mean value, standard deviation, and median of the retrieved valid questionnaires, the outliers that fell outside the range of “mean value one standard deviation” were marked as outliers. The number of outliers in each questionnaire was calculated, and those questionnaires with more than half of their responses determined to be outliers were removed. Questionnaires with relatively stable data were retained, and the mean value, standard deviation, and median of the questionnaires were calculated again. Finally, 62 questionnaires were retained. The survey results show that the average value of most of the indexes falls above 7 points. Therefore, the first version of the indexes is considered to have strong persuasion and can basically cover all the relevant indexes. Thus, it is combined with the results of the second round of questionnaires and used as a means of data collection for comprehensive analysis.
On the basis of the first round of expert questionnaires, the second round of expert questionnaires was conducted through an online medium, and 31 valid questionnaires were collected. For the statistical analysis of the two rounds of expert questionnaires, the prebroadcast and postbroadcast evaluation of the copyright value of online movies and shows that are in the prebroadcast evaluation system, there are nine indexes that fall below 7 points, and the scores of five of the indexes, namely, the influence of the producer, artistry, the type of the distribution company, crowdfunding and grassroots self-production, are the same as in the first round of expert questionnaires, and they still fall below 7 points. In addition, four new indexes that fall below 7 points were added, including the source of the work, the influence of the writer, thought, and movie and television enterprise production. To simplify the research, the influence of the producer, the influence of the writer, and the type of the distribution company were deleted, and the index for the financing method was changed to the type of production company to make the indexes more concise and accurate. In the postbroadcast index system, there are eight indexes that fall below 7 points, among which the release date, the number of broadcast platforms offering the movie, and star-making ability are consistent with the results of the first round, and they still fall below 7 points. In addition, five new indexes that each fall below 7 points are the theme type, the influence of the leading actor, artistry, thought, and the Baidu index. To simplify the study, the three indexes of the release schedule, the release date, and the star-making ability were deleted. In addition, considering data availability, this study excludes those indexes for which objective data could not be obtained and subjective values could not be assigned, such as the production team and the method of publicity in the prebroadcast index, the amount of paid movie purchases, the possibility to purchase a membership, and the popularity of the movie’s official Weibo in the postbroadcast index.
3.1.2. Data Collection and Analysis
With the rapid development of big data technology, the mining of commercial value or scientific research value from massive data has become the mainstream method by which industry and academia conduct market or academic exploration [
51]. The period from 2016 to 2018 is important as it is characterized by exponential growth for online movies, exhibiting a maturing market and diverse content types. Based on this, the sample data used in this study come from 2808 online movie works collected from Tencent Video, iQIYI Video and Youku Video, and 246 of these works have been selected as the key research objects to be analyzed in this study to form a set of scientific and effective online movie copyright value assessment methods and systems based on theoretical exploration and empirical research. The aim of this study is to provide a set of scientific and effective online movie copyright value assessment models and practice methods for all kinds of movie production institutions and video playback platforms.
Through data extraction, screening, and analysis, a wealth of data information has been collected for this research, causing the online movie copyright value evaluation system to be well aligned with the actual context of the industry. According to the statistical results, in the above time frame, iQIYI Video offered a total of 1579 online movies, Tencent Video offered 633, and Youku video offered 596. According to the distinct broadcast data of the various video platforms, a stratified sampling of the above movies has been conducted, with a sampling ratio of 20%. A total of 575 movies were selected from 322 iQIYI online movies, 130 Tencent online movies, and 123 Youku online movies, which is basically a representative set that reflects the overall situation of China’s online movie industry. In the process of data collection, in addition to ensuring the truth and effectiveness of the objective data collected, it is also important to establish the evaluation criteria for subjective data. After completing objective data collection, repeated movies and movies with seriously missing data were excluded, and subjective indexes were assigned to the remaining 246 valid sample movies, using a maximum value of 3 and a minimum value of 1, to ensure the objectivity of the subjective index assignment as much as possible. The evaluation methods, judgment, standard basis, grading standard, and assignment standard for all of the index data of the online movie copyright value evaluation system both before and after the broadcast are shown in
Table 3 and
Table 4.
There are detailed standards and methods for evaluating prebroadcast index data. In terms of script quality, the source of movie scripts is established according to the audience’s viewing preferences and feelings as expressed in the previous audience survey, and the theme type and theme uniqueness are graded according to the relevant data contained in the 2018 Online Audiovisual Program Report. In terms of the main creative team, the influence of leading actors is graded according to the combination of the number and scores of their past works. Director influence is graded according to a combination of the number of the director’s past works and the highest score among them. Production costs are divided according to the data contained in major reports, and the production costs of other movies are estimated according to the production costs obtained for a few movies. In terms of the features of works, the degree of social interest is graded according to whether the theme, topic, etc., is related to current hot topics and actual events. The online perception is graded according to the amount of online culture contained in the content, the degree of matching to the mode of communication used on the online platform, and the degree of public interest. Artistry is graded according to the artistry of the narrative structure, plot, characters, scenes, shot design, and other movie aspects. The ideological nature of the characters is graded according to the depth of thought contained in the theme, as well as the presentation of advanced thoughts and noble sentiments through vivid and touching artistic images that enable people to enjoy and edify the art of beauty to continuously improve ideological and spiritual development. Entertainment is graded according to the rhythm, plot, characters, and interactive design, enabling an audience perception of a positive, healthy, pleasant, and happy life, an emotional experience, and a psychological compensation through popular, intuitive, life-oriented, and interesting narrative techniques. The story is rated according to the degree of “drama”, including the storyline and narrative techniques. The level of professionalism is graded according to the performance level of the actors, the shooting techniques, editing skills, clothing, lighting and sound effects, and other professional aspects. In terms of production and promotion, the capabilities of a distribution company are graded according to the name of the distribution company and the number of fans of the movie on the video platform. The user portrait rating is established according to the relevant data contained in the “2018 Online Audiovisual Program Report”. The types of production companies are categorized according to reports related to online movies.
The value of the index data used after the initial broadcast is different from the value of the index data used before the initial broadcast. In terms of broadcast channels and broadcast content, the influence of the broadcast platform is assessed according to the statistics of the daily active number of third-party data platforms and the member data publicly provided by the official. The number of broadcast platforms is assigned according to that number. The golden six minutes of broadcast content is graded according to the literature related to online movies. The rating of play volume is based on Tencent play volume, iQIYI heat peak, and optimal heat degree. The playback duration rating also serves as the maximum value after the three video platforms are graded. The rating of barrage volume is established according to the data obtained from the video platform and the Guduo movie and television data. The ratings of broadcast platform users are established according to the video platform’s data. The Baidu Index, Weibo topic popularity, and Douban rating are established according to relevant platform data.