Huayu: Director started with art films

Chapter 197 207 [The sluggish film market, the arts and commerce are both flourishing]

"Good boss."

After nodding in agreement, Amy hesitated for a moment and asked, "Boss, do you want to integrate the resources of the art film companies in the mainland, Hong Kong, and Japan?"

Hearing this, Li Yishu raised her eyebrows and said, "Tell me about the current situation of these branches."

As the person in charge who was most involved in the market development of the art film company, Amy also spoke nonstop: "Boss, our art film company is currently in Hong Kong... in Japan..."

Li Yishu's art film company has now grown to a large scale, with branches in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. It is no longer the makeshift team with only a few people.

Of course, the mainland and Japan can only be said to be offices now.

The mainland offices are better. The Yanjing office has basically participated in all the films that Li Yishu has collaborated with others to shoot over the past year or so. They have participated to varying degrees in everything from the film production budget and crew preparation to the post-production box office sharing, including subsequent videotape copyright transactions, etc.

On the contrary, the Japanese office seems to have nothing to do. They have almost no chance of getting movie copyrights because the copyrights of most of the films shot by Lee Yi-su have been sold in the form of full copyrights in Japan.

There is no need to think about being a producer. Since the filming of "Love Letter", Lee Yi-su has not made a movie in Japan. The only time was probably when she took on a camera advertisement for Canon Group.

Therefore, the employees of the Japanese office are mainly responsible for the copyright operation of the novel "Love Letter".

Thanks to the huge sales of the movie in Japan, the term pure love has become the "love" that Japanese young people are loyal to, which has also led to the rapid development of the copyright operation of "Love Letter".

We have currently cooperated with Shuei Co., Ltd. to develop a comic book, which has good sales and is already working on an animation. Recently, TV Asahi came to our office, hoping to cooperate in the development of a TV series of "Love Letter."

"Well, it's time to integrate it."

After listening to Amy's brief report, Li Yishu felt that it was time to integrate the company's resources and business.

He opened this company before, mainly to serve himself, to facilitate his daily work, so that he would not have to take care of other messy things while filming.

However, as the company's business developed, we did not expect it to grow so rapidly. Branches or offices were established in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States.

However, these branches and offices still have certain business profitability and cannot be disbanded at will. The Japanese office is currently only responsible for the copyright operation of "Love Letter", which may seem a bit boring, but it is indispensable.

Because Japan is the world's second largest movie box office market, even though they are still experiencing wealth decline caused by the economic crisis, its position as the world's second largest movie box office market cannot be shaken by other countries.

It was not until twenty years later that it was gradually surpassed by the domestic film market, but it was still ranked among the top five movie box office markets.

Today, Lee Yi-su has long been regarded as China's number one director in Japan with "The Mountain", "Love Letter" and "Sword Rain", so it is impossible for him to give up such a large box office.

"Amy, when you go back this time, communicate with the people in each branch, and then set up an art and entertainment group. Separate the business in Japan and the United States and set up two separate subsidiaries. In the future, the Japanese subsidiary will be responsible for the Japan and South Korea regions, and the American subsidiary will be responsible for the North American and South American business..."

At this point, Li Yishu paused and said, "All the film and television copyrights we hold must be collected by the parent company, and only authorized to each subsidiary."

"Okay, boss." Hearing this, Amy was excited. She knew that her boss was setting up an entertainment group and she had the best chance of becoming the group's president.

Although this art group still looks shabby now, Amy believes that as long as it can successfully invest in the works of several directors and manage the copyrights of several European films, allowing the group to break away from the relatively single profit model, it can develop into a normal film and television group.

After all, almost 99% of the business of art film companies now revolves around Li Yishu.

However, this model is only suitable for small companies. Once a group is established and each department is standardized, if they continue to rely on Li Yishu, then this profit model will be too distorted and have poor risk resistance.

Li Yishu suddenly said, "By the way, I have communicated with Qiong Yao and plan to participate in the production of their company's new TV series. I plan to let Yongmei take charge of this matter. If the business is good, I plan to hand over the production of film and television dramas to her in the future."

"TV series?" Amy was a little surprised: "Boss, our company is also going to start producing TV series?"

Li Yishu nodded: "Well, the mainland film market is gradually sluggish, and the film market in Hong Kong and Taiwan is also a little abnormal. I think the film market in the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong will not be very good in the next few years. On the contrary, the TV drama market has great potential. The price of color TV sets in China has dropped sharply, and the number of families buying color TV sets will increase exponentially in the future..."

He was very clear that Hong Kong films would be almost extinct in the next few years. It was not until the millennium's "Infernal Affairs" that a new era of Hong Kong films was ushered in. Since then, Hong Kong films have basically been dominated by police and gangster films and crime films.

Although the mainland market is larger than Hong Kong, its basic base is limited.

In Li Yishu's previous life, in the mid-to-late 1990s, although he did not personally direct a movie, he also participated in the creation of many crews and paid close attention to the film market at that time.
He remembered that Feng Dapao had made a few comedy films in the late 1990s, which earned 20 to 30 million yuan at the box office, so he held a big celebration banquet. In addition, there was also competition from imported blockbusters, which showed how sluggish the domestic film market was at the time.

The fundamental reason for all this is not the lack of good movies, but the increase in ticket prices after the reform of cinemas. In the past, a movie ticket cost a few yuan, but later it soared to more than ten or twenty yuan.

For citizens in second- and third-tier cities, spending dozens of dollars on watching a movie is not as good as watching TV at home, or going to a disc store to rent a disc to watch at home.

This also led to a booming TV drama market. In the years after the millennium, a large number of people from the Hong Kong film and television industry entered the TV drama industry, including the film director Wang Jing.

This is the general trend of the market, and Li Yishu cannot change it. So if she cannot change it, then naturally she has to enter the blue ocean of mainland TV drama production in advance.

Nowadays, most TV dramas produced in mainland China are produced by major TV stations themselves, and the quality varies. "The Yanjing People in New York", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "Water Margin", etc. are all very well-made, but it is really difficult for them to compete with Qiong Yao dramas in terms of ratings.

Because those who provide ratings are often housewives, and they like to watch dramas like those by Qiong Yao.

Including in the later Internet era, Li Yishu has participated in the production of several web dramas, among which the most obvious are Mary Sue-type web dramas, which have a higher click rate.

The Qiong Yao dramas of this era really turned mainland housewives, who had never seen such bloody and abusive love stories, into devout audiences.

A typical example is "My Fair Princess". This TV series has all the hot spots that most TV series should have, such as: funny things, melodrama, bizarreness, love triangle, amnesia, blindness... and so on.

This is also why in the era of short videos, those who like to watch various mother-in-law and daughter-in-law short dramas are all middle-aged women in their fifties and sixties, because they are all the same audience.

As Li Yishu continued to talk and analyze from various angles, Amy was also awakened from the bubble of the current prosperity of the Hong Kong film industry.

She has been working in the film industry in Hong Kong for many years, so she naturally knows that the actors' pay has been getting higher and higher in recent years. However, most actors do not have the ability to attract certain box office revenues in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and other regions like Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

Therefore, if the pay is too high in the future and cannot support the profits of the investors in Taiwan, the glory of Hong Kong films will be cut in half in an instant. And with the rampant American blockbusters, this trend is already obvious. Jurassic Park has been released in Hong Kong for more than a month, and the total box office has reached 6223 million Hong Kong dollars, which is 2000 million higher than the second Hong Kong film.

The trend of Hollywood blockbusters sweeping the world has become unstoppable.

Hong Kong, the Hollywood of the East, can no longer bear it.

Thinking of this, Amy couldn't help but ask, "Boss, then...then should we recruit a team to produce the TV series ourselves?"

"can."

Li Yishu pondered for a moment, nodded and said, "Take advantage of this opportunity to work with Qiong Yao to recruit a group of people and learn their production process."

"Good boss."

The two chatted for a while, and Amy left in a hurry.

She still has a lot of things to do next. Not only does she have to integrate all the resources of the art film companies to form a group, but she also has to discuss with Yongmei the recruitment of film and television production teams.

Time passes little by little.

In the blink of an eye, it was early September.

Jiang Qinqin, who was far away in Yanjing, had officially started classes after half a month of military training.

This girl called and complained for a long time, saying things like she got tanned from military training, she wasn't good-looking anymore, she became a dark girl... and so on.

Li Yishu also laughed. Military training is much better now than in previous years. When he was a freshman, he went to a military unit near Yanjing for training for a month.

Because the Laoshan Campaign was being fought at that time and the country was in a state of war readiness, and college students were a scarce talent in that era. Even though Li Yishu was a student at an art college, he still had to undergo the military training because it was a unified system for all universities across the country.

It was not until mid-September that Li Yishu had roughly completed the post-production of "Nobody". Originally, he wanted to find a few people to watch the film in a small circle, but after Han Sanping knew that the editing was completed, he also suggested inviting the leaders of the production studio to watch it.

Li Yishu did not refuse. She thought about inviting the factory leaders to watch it and contacted the main creative staff of the crew.

Originally, he didn't expect Zhang Manyu to come. After all, she was so busy. She had no worries about filming in Hong Kong, and it would take two days for her to go back and forth.

So he just made a phone call and said that it was okay if she didn't come, but he didn't expect that after learning that the film was roughly edited, Zhang Manyu booked a flight and flew over that night.

According to Zhang Manyu herself, she put so much effort into this film that she definitely wanted to see the results as soon as possible.

September 9, Emei Film Studio.

In the large screening room exclusively for the studio.

There were about 300 people watching the movie on site, including factory leaders and main creative staff, as well as all employees in the venue, including some of their families.

“Thank you all for coming to the Emei Film Studio’s internal premiere of “Nobody”!”

Lee Ye-su smiled and held a loud speaker and said, "Originally, we were only going to watch the movie in a small circle, but my mom said that she would take this opportunity to invite everyone to watch my new movie so that she can show off~"

"Haha~~"

There was a lot of laughter at the scene.

Zhao Xue blushed and said angrily, "This brat! Just wait and see how I'll deal with him when I get back."

Li Jian on the side didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "Okay, Yishu was just joking."

"I am also a child of our Emei Film Studio. Except for my first film, That Mountain, which was screened inside the studio, I never had the chance to screen the following films. Now I have this opportunity. I would like to thank all the leaders and the main creative team for their support, which made our film, Nobody, possible."

"Okay everyone, I won't waste any more time talking, let's watch a movie!"

After saying that, Li Yishu also went downstairs with a loud speaker. He had not expected so many people would come.

After he left the stage, the theater began to darken.

As the light from the projector shone onto the screen, the words "Director Li Yishu's work" were printed on it in large letters. Some employees of the Emei Factory who had watched the internal screening of "That Mountain" were filled with emotion.

Li Yishu's film "That Mountain, That Man, That Dog" was also screened internally at the Emei Film Studio. When people saw these words, they just smiled and said nothing. It seemed a bit ignorant for a young man to put his own name directly at the front of the film.

But in just over two years, Li Yishu went from a little-known new director who needed her parents to spend all their savings to support her, to the director with the highest total box office in China, and even won two gold medals in Europe.

It is a true fusion of art and commerce.

The movie began to be shown, with a total length of 112 minutes. This is the uncut version, and there are no large-scale shots. It is mainly for better storytelling. It is estimated that a few minutes will be cut when it is released later.

The movie is shown bit by bit, and the shots in the first ten minutes switch very quickly. Often after one scene happens, the next scene immediately follows.

To be honest, people who first see it may find it a bit messy.

Especially for current mainland audiences, this fast-paced editing style is not something they are used to, and they rarely see it.

Fortunately, this is an internal screening within the studio, so there are still people who know the business.

(End of this chapter)