Hangzhou Economic Development Conference Opening Video

01

How Does an Economic Report Become a Two-Minute Opening Film?

The subdistrict gave us its full annual report: fiscal revenue, the building economy, industry, consumer spending, investment, R&D, foreign trade, honors and innovation, through to its 2026 goals.

We first read the script through as voiceover, and it ran over two minutes. So we trimmed the text while keeping the main thread, brought it down to about two minutes, and then found an image for each figure, one by one.

The subdistrict was also clear about what it wanted: bring the IP character into the real Cangqian and let it do the introductions.

So the whole film is one flight: fiscal revenue floats between office towers, service-sector revenue is a ring chart swiped open while flying past a hotel, industrial output stands on the roof of a glass factory, and consumer spending comes with gift boxes and gold coins raining from the sky.

Each shot runs as long as its voiceover line. If a line runs past 5 seconds, we generate a 10-second shot instead of forcing a hard cut.

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02

Getting Cang Xiaolong Right First

Cang Xiaolong is a character the subdistrict already uses, as an inflatable mascot and in flat graphics. Many in the audience know it, so it couldn't drift off-model.

We first made a three-view turnaround and checked it point by point against the character on the subdistrict's WeChat Channels account: the shoes changed to pale green with white socks showing; a small tail added; the upper body lengthened slightly and the legs shortened; no black outline, with the horns and clothing kept three-dimensional in texture.

Next we settled how it moves in the film: a hoverboard glowing blue. The turnaround, the hoverboard pose and the frames already chosen together served as references for every shot that followed.

Across two films and more than 50 shots, Cang Xiaolong looks exactly the same from start to finish.

03

Recognizable at a Glance: This Is Cangqian

Most of the audience at the conference were locals, so the city had to look like Cangqian, not just any city of the future.

Before production, we gathered real photos of the landmarks that would appear in the film: office towers, a hotel, the academic exchange center and innovation parks. When generating images, we first adjusted the real scenes to clear weather, then placed Cang Xiaolong in them and scaled the character down to match the size of the buildings.

At first, many shots were flying high above the rooftops. For the consumer spending figures, we brought Cang Xiaolong down to the shopping street and in front of the big screen outside a mall, and the frame suddenly felt alive with everyday life.

All frames share a 21:9 widescreen composition: Cang Xiaolong on one side and the data panel on the other, each in its own space, so they read clearly even from the back rows.

04

One AI Fruit Ties the Second Half Together

The first half covers the economy, with buildings and factories that are easy to film. The second half covers innovation and the future, full of abstract terms such as “national high-tech enterprises,” “Little Giants” and “patent counts.”

We added a prop for the second half: Cang Xiaolong rushes into a data tunnel and arrives before a giant tech tree, the camera switches to its point of view, and a pair of hands reaches out to pick a fruit marked AI.

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From then on it carries the fruit everywhere: flying over the “296X” industry characters, breaking through a red warning fog, passing the youth community in the old town, and finally walking into the control room to place the fruit into the console. The big screen lights up with “ALL IN AI, AI FOR ALL.”

A long list of innovation achievements became a single goal the audience could see and follow. The closing slogan, too, had something to land on.

05

The Second Film: The Same Cang Xiaolong, in the Subdistrict's Daily Life

After the first film was delivered, the subdistrict ordered another for its annual performance review conference: about a minute and a half, keeping the original IP and visual style, with the economic section reusable and the content extended to the international neighborhood, rural revitalization, community governance and practical projects for residents.

This time the data was more fragmented, with over twenty items. We paired each with a small scene in which Cang Xiaolong takes part in person: watching foreign residents handle business in the reception hall, scanning a code for a gift at the points redemption station, putting on VR glasses at the emergency center, playing chess with an elderly man, riding a newly installed elevator with an elderly resident, and playing with building blocks with kindergarten children.

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After the stills came out, we adjusted a few to fit the message more closely. For the Tiaoxi cultural landscape belt, the first draft had Cang Xiaolong taking a selfie in a railway-themed park; the final became an aerial view of fields with “Cangqian” planted into the rice paddies. For technology commercialization, the first draft had Cang Xiaolong playing with a robot dog; the final switched to a white robot handing over a pair of glasses, which leads straight into the following first-person shot of seeing Cangqian through the glasses.

Because the character and style were already in place, the second film took less than a week from receiving the script to finishing revisions.

06

What this project achieved

Figures in a government report are hard to remember when read out on their own.

This time we used a character everyone knows to string them into a route: setting off from a computer screen, flying over the real Cangqian, picking a fruit and bringing it back to the city. What the audience remembers isn't a data table, but the places Cang Xiaolong visited along the way.

For the subdistrict, Cang Xiaolong also went from a mascot to a character that can tell a story. The second film reused it directly, showing that the character and visuals can keep going.

AI let us create a dedicated image for each of dozens of data points within a few weeks; but which figure goes with which building, where the character stops and when the fruit appears still came down to creative judgment.