Recently the awareness of emerging local online video channel Bacalhau has become famous day by day. This is the result from cooperation by a creative team in Macao. The producer’s vision and experience of the cultural and creative market in Macao are hidden behind these humorous stories.
Naming through introduction of Macao’s local culture to enhance happiness in daily life
Bacalhau is a well-known Portugal dish in Macao, which is commonly known as salted fish. Such food had ever appeared in the Hong Kong-made film Shaolin Soccer and up until now Stephen Chow’s film line “you will be no different from a salted fish if you have no dreams” has been still pleasing people greatly. Bacalhau integrated such food into the core spirit of the team and the team realised the happiness spirit with the Bacalhau attitude to bring happiness to plain life.
One of the founders of Bacalhau, Leng Wing Hou (Rico), recalled the reason for such channel title: “One kind of Macao’s local food provided idea for the name of the channel. We also hope that such name can trigger local unique culture. Many people may not understand the meaning of the name, but they would feel very interesting and want to learn more. This also implemented our initial intention for happiness.”
Insisting in trying just for triggering resonance
Another founder and actor Leong Chi Long (Dragon) explained: “Although short videos in Bacalhau are funny and a group of actors played happily in these videos, the time and efforts taken for such videos are never shorter than those taken for meticulously made films.” Each shot and preparation is the result from numerous trials and introspections.
To find funny topics from daily life, Bacalhau in the early phase tried different methods and combined popular models online with different videos to determine its own positioning in addition to drawing materials from daily life and games. For the purpose of not fatiguing audience with video style of the same series, they also began to consider their direction. To realise the concept that “we will not make videos others have made and we will create a road to innovation” and develop more unique video types, in the future they will release more online entertainment and game real-time response videos to present a pleasant change of atmosphere to audience and bring a different style to Macao’s creative market.
Lao Wing Him (Sergio) responsible for business development said: “After analysis, we found that the type of entertainment programmes attracted greatest attention. However, such type is more difficult to produce and has high requirements on actors’ real-time response. But, Bacalhau’s leading actors 'Flower Gentlemen' have rich performance experiences and are very good at improvisation, in terms of local speaking, which is ‘quick-fried tripe’, so we all can perfectly present our ideas in our mind.”
Becoming an idea innovator and endeavoring for ideals
The team consists of members from three independent companies. They have their own special skills; some are responsible for acting, some for shooting and production and some for marketing. Each of them contributes their most excellent skills to make Bacalhau become famous rapidly. Maybe “Crazy”, “Unrestrained” and “Unlimited Creation” are the best expressions for Bacalhau. The producer Wu Ka Fong (Kira) said: “We are different from other channels. We can be said to be a team of great innovators and cannot be more creative.” They never follow the common route but always make a great coup. They have their own unique opinions on the development of Macao’s local emerging media market. They hope to make Bacalhau the frontline platform for those likeminded by leveraging the situation that Bacalhau was continuously reported, recognised and understood. They hope to become the pioneer to lay ground for future innovators and enable Macao’s new-generation actors to open up their own performance career and to have opportunity to find their own stage in the industry.
Bacalhau considered that Macao’s current market has already adapted to online marketing gradually and they are continuously digging for unique contents of local culture. In the future development, we hope that they can find their right position and bring new culture and shock to Macao.
