1990: Starting from Baojia Street

The day after Zhou Yan returned to Yenching, he went to school to meet his teacher Shi Wanchun first, and then went to the principal Liu Lin to report on his work.

When he arrived at Liu Lin's office, Vice President Wang Cizhao was also there.

Seeing Zhou Yan, Wang Cizhao said with a smile, "Zhou Yan, you're back."

Although Zhou Yan is the assistant to the dean, he spends relatively little time in school and has relatively little time interacting with Vice Dean Wang Cizhao.

When Zhou Yan was an undergraduate student, Wang Ci Zhao was still in the Music Aesthetics Teaching and Research Department, and the two had little interaction.

"Well, I just got back yesterday, and I came here today to report to the principal."

Wang Cizhao joked, "Why do you need to report? We know what you have done by reading the newspaper. Your tour in the United States was a great success, and our teachers and students are very excited."

Although Zhou Yan had little contact with Wang Ci Zhao, he had some understanding of him.

Wang Ci Zhao speaks cheerfully and generously, has a very high emotional intelligence, and is not only at a good academic level, but is also very good at building interpersonal relationships.

In fact, Wang Cizhao's qualifications are not that deep. Although he is almost fifty years old this year, he has only graduated for thirteen years and is a contemporary of Tan Dun and other golden generation of the composition department.

Because when he was in middle school, it happened to be a special period, so he went to the Construction Corps to farm for ten years. By the time he was admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in 78, he was almost years old.

But in just these thirteen years, he climbed to the position of vice president, and was the vice president with the greatest hope of succeeding Liu Lin.

If nothing unexpected happens, Liu Lin will retire the year after next. If no one else emerges at that time, the position of principal will definitely belong to Wang Ci Zhao.

Although Wang Ci Zhao graduated from the Department of Music Theory, he is actually also from the Composition Department. He has a good relationship with Yu Runyang and Wang Yuhe.

Naturally, he also treated Zhou Yan as his own.

Although Zhou Yan had never thought about forming cliques, once you are in the world, you have no choice. Even if you do nothing, someone will naturally classify you into a faction.

In fact, doing nothing is the same as doing everything.

After Zhou Yan graduated, he never took the initiative to do anything in school. Whether he became the assistant to the department head or the assistant to the dean, it was always others who asked him to do it.

But he did not refuse. Since he did not refuse, people naturally thought that he was from the composition department and was the backbone of the composition department.

Principal Liu Lin smiled and said, "Your ten concerts in the United States this time have also attracted a lot of attention in China. According to media reports, your concerts are always sold out. Is this true, or is the media exaggerating?"

"It's a bit exaggerated, but it's basically true. The tickets for the ten concerts are definitely sold out, and the response on site is also very good. In fact, the time is too short, otherwise we could add a few more concerts."

"It's okay. We can take it one step at a time. If we hold ten shows in the United States this year, we can hold fifteen or even twenty shows next year. What are your plans for the future? Director Shi told me before that you only have one professional elective course left this semester?"

Zhou Yan nodded and said, "After school starts, I have a new movie to shoot. If I have too many classes, I'm afraid it will delay the students."

"That's fine. Teaching is important, but you have more important things to do. So it's a wise choice to focus more on other important things while you're in the academic affairs department. But you can't drop this last elective course. After all, you're a teacher after all. It's not justifiable if you don't even teach a single class."

"I understand. As long as I have time, I will definitely give priority to school matters."

Liu Lin smiled and said, "Besides teaching students, you don't have anything else to do in school for the time being. Although you are now the dean's assistant, you don't have to worry about the specific matters. I will leave everything to others."

……

Zhou Yan sat in the principal's office for about half an hour. Although he said he was going to report on his work, they didn't talk about work at all during this half hour.

After all, Zhou Yan didn’t do much work at school last semester, so he had very little to report.

After coming out of the principal's office, Zhou Yan went directly to the studio.

I haven't been back for some time, and have accumulated a lot of miscellaneous work, especially the preparations for the filming of "Time Traveler", which is finally about to officially start.

He first called Liu Hang over and asked about the recent situation in the studio, and then pulled Xiao Can and Li Hong over for a brief meeting.

During this period, Zhou Yan was out, but Xiao Can and the others did not rest for a single day. They were busy preparing for the filming of "Time Traveler".

Zhou Yan contacted various departments and learned about their recent progress.

After getting a rough idea of ​​the progress of each department, Zhou Yan said to Li Hong, "Li Hong, please invite the actors to come here for auditions according to the candidate list."

"What time?" Lihong asked.

"It's up to you to decide the time. I can do it in the near future. Just try to concentrate on a few days."

"Okay, I'll make the contact and give you an answer by tomorrow morning at the latest."

Zhou Yan nodded and asked, "What's the current situation with the clothing?"

"Teacher Dong will come to meet with you this Sunday."

He didn't ask Dong Wenmiao what time she would come over on Sunday, because he would call Dong Wenmiao later to ask about the situation.

In fact, there is nothing special about the costume design this time. Because it is fashion, there are relatively few details that need to be paid attention to. As long as the costumes are in line with the characteristics of the characters, it will be fine. Zhou Yan and Dong Wenmiao had a phone call before and talked a lot about it.

Moreover, Dong Wenmiao has the script of "Time Traveler" and even a small part of the storyboard. I think these things will be very helpful for her to design movie costumes.

Zhou Yan has always attached great importance to the costumes of movies, and he spends a lot of time and money on them every time.

Among domestic directors, there are probably only a handful who spend as much money on movie costumes as Zhou Yan.

Of course, this refers to fashion movies, which are definitely not comparable to those costume movies.

Generally speaking, domestic directors pay little attention to costumes when shooting modern dramas, and some directors even let the actors wear their own clothes.

Even if they have enough budget, they don't want to spend money on it.

And Zhou Yan’s money spent on costumes was not wasted, especially when filming "The Sixth Sense", the costumes played a big role in why the heroine looked so good.

……

After the meeting with Xiao Can and others, Zhou Yan returned to his office alone.

During the filming of his fourth feature film, he felt a lot more relaxed. For many things, he only had to give a direction, and Xiao Can and the others would execute it, and they did a very good job.

After taking a short break in the office, Zhou Yan called Xu Xiangjie of Huanyin again.

Xu Xiangjie was very happy to receive Zhou Yan's call. He first congratulated Zhou Yan on his successful tour in the United States, and then reported to him the development of Wang Lihong and Mayday. Wang Lihong and Mayday are now signed to Huanyin. Because the former is a "second-hand artist" and has just released an album, the company is basically cooperating with his new album to promote it.

Mayday is an amateur band, and the company needs to spend time to find their positioning in the early stage, and then provide them with a complete development plan.

The plan has been made, and the time for their group performance has been confirmed, which will be at the end of this month.

"Is Wang Lihong still in Taiwan?" Zhou Yan asked.

"No, he just went to the United States, but he will be back in a few days. He will be able to come over after he finishes some things at school."

Zhou Yan thought for a moment and said, "Let him come directly to Yanjing and record "How Long Will I Love You?"

"Okay, I'll tell him."

"There's one more thing. I want to find a female singer who speaks English well. Do you have any suitable candidates to recommend?"

"A female singer who is good at English? Is she going to record the theme song for a new movie?"

"Ah."

Xu Xiangjie smiled and said, "Okay, I'll sort it out and list a few candidates for you later."

"Row."

After saying this, Zhou Yan hung up the phone. There are many songs in "Time Traveler", and both male and female voices are needed, and the voices must be good at English.

Zhou Yan's idea is to look for one in China first. If he can't find a suitable one, he can also let European and American singers sing the song. Anyway, the theme song of his movie is to enter the European and American markets. Mixing in a few European and American singers will make the song easier to sell.

Because this movie contains a lot of pop songs, he plans to release the soundtrack in the same way as pop singers release albums, with a few hit songs that will top the charts in Europe and the United States, and maybe even a number one single.

……

After Xu Xiangjie hung up the phone with Zhou Yan, he sat in a chair and thought for a while, then called Zhang Gengyu, the president of Fumao Records.

After Zhang Gengyu received Xu Xiangjie's call, he said with a smile, "Boss Xu, you don't come to me for no reason. Are you trying to poach someone from our company again?"

"Mr. Zhang, you are joking. I am here to seek cooperation with you."

"Cooperation?" Zhang Gengyu became interested.

One of the main reasons why he handed Wang Lihong over to Huanyin so readily was that he wanted to cooperate with Huanyin. Now that he heard that Xu Xiangjie wanted to cooperate, he was of course happy.

"Didn't you say before that you were the agent for Kelly Chen's Mandarin album? She studied in the United States before, so she should have no problem singing English songs, right?"

"Of course, she speaks English very well, so there is no problem singing English songs. Why do you ask this, Mr. Xu?"

"We may need an English song to be sung, and we want to find a female singer who is good at English. It just so happened that you mentioned Kelly Chen last time, so I came to you as soon as possible."

Zhang Gengyu raised his eyebrows and asked tentatively, "Is it the song from Zhou Yan's new movie?"

It's no wonder that Zhang Gengyu would guess this. After all, when Wang Lihong was still at Fumao Records, he had already discussed with Zhou Yan about singing the theme song of the new movie, and that theme song was an English song.

Now Xu Xiangjie called and said he was looking for a female singer who could sing English songs, so he naturally thought of this.

Although Zhang Gengyu guessed it, Xu Xiangjie did not give him a definite answer. He just smiled and said, "Since Kelly Chen can sing English songs, I will consider her as a backup."

Hearing that Xu Xiangjie only considered Kelly Chen as a backup, Zhang Gengyu hurriedly said, "Kelly Chen has absolutely no problem singing English songs. How about this? I'll have someone send you a demo of her singing English songs this afternoon for you to listen to."

Since Zhang Gengyu said so, Xu Xiangjie naturally would not refuse. He nodded and agreed, "That's fine. Then please send someone to send the sample over. I'll make a decision after listening to it."

……

Here, Zhang Gengyu stood up and walked out of the office and found Li Yaming.

"Ya Ming, are you busy?"

Li Yaming was originally listening to the song demos that the company had recently collected. When he heard Zhang Gengyu's voice, he looked up and said, "I'm listening to the new songs that were collected. What do you want to talk to me about?"

Zhang Gengyu didn't rush to say anything, but walked over and looked at the music sheet. "How is it? Did you get any good songs?"

Li Yaming shook his head. "It's not that easy. There have been quite a few songs sent to me recently. It seems that more and more people can write songs, but there are only a few songs of high quality. Most of them are still very similar."

When their company produces songs for their singers, they either ask well-known musicians to write the songs, or they just wait for others to deliver the songs to their door.

There are many types of this type of door-to-door delivery.

Some are behind-the-scenes musicians who have already signed with a company, but they are not famous and send songs everywhere to promote themselves. Some are not in the music industry at all, but have just been playing music for a few years and want to write songs for singers.

Many of the songs their company receives every month are sent by the singers’ fans.

Some fans were quite generous and after sending the songs over, they even claimed that they would not charge any fees.

But songs like this usually can't be used because they're basically garbage.

There are also some people who blatantly plagiarize by making slight changes to some classic songs and sending them over.

As the head of the Mandarin department, Li Yaming insisted on listening to all the collected songs, for fear that there might be some missed gems. However, the result was that no gems were found, and his ears were damaged every day.

Zhang Gengyu said with a smile, "You don't have to have too high expectations for this kind of thing. It's more reliable to ask someone to invite you to sing."

"Maybe I can find something good?" Li Yaming shrugged and asked, "Why did you come to see me?"

Zhang Gengyu then got down to business, "Do you have a demo of Kelly Chen singing an English song?"

Li Yaming looked puzzled. "Yes, yes, what do you want this for?"

"Is such that……"

Zhang Gengyu briefly recounted the matter to Li Yaming, who thought for a moment and said, "That demo isn't very good. I think if you really want those songs, you can ask her to record another one."

Zhang Gengyu also felt that Li Yaming's words made sense. And because the Mandarin album was about to be released, Kelly Chen was in Taiwan, so it would be easy to ask her to come over. (End of this chapter)