Huayu: Director started with art films

time flies.

In a blink of an eye, it was the eighth day of the first lunar month.

That morning, the crew was still filming and Han Sanping came over by car.

Seeing that the crew was filming, he did not disturb Li Yishu, but went to find Xie Jin and got straight to the point: "Director Xie, when can the movie be edited?"

"Edit it?" Xie Jin was slightly stunned and said, "Director Han, the film hasn't been finished yet."

Han Sanping said: "I know it's not finished yet, but I just want to ask if you can edit out one first. Aren't you guys currently filming the second part of Red Cliff? Can you edit out the first part?"

"Is there something wrong?" Xie Jin was not a fool, so how could he not hear the hidden meaning in Han Sanping's words.

Han Sanping looked around and whispered, "A leader watched the promotional video for the Spring Festival Gala and was quite interested in our movie. He wanted to ask when we can finish filming."

"That leader?"

"Hard to say."

"clear."

Xie Jin nodded, without asking any more questions. He just thought about it and said, "Editing is definitely not a problem. Now we only have to finish the last big scene of the next part. It should be done in about a month. But you have to tell the director about this. He seems to have different ideas about editing."

Han Sanping: "I know. I'll tell the director later. As long as it can be edited, it's fine."

after awhile.

After Li Yishu finished filming a scene, Han Sanping immediately took Xie Jin over and talked about this matter.

"no problem."

Li Yishu, like Xie Jin, didn't ask who wanted to watch it. He just nodded and agreed, "Director Han, ask the people from Zhejiang Film Studio to bring the equipment here and find more editors. There's a lot of material. If you want to edit it as soon as possible, you have to work overtime."

"Okay, I'll contact them later." Han Sanping agreed readily. Without Li Yishu's instruction, he would contact the people from Zhejiang Film Studio and ask them to bring the editing equipment to Hengdian World Studios as soon as possible.

Find a place here to set up an editing room.

Li Yishu asked, "Since we've started editing now, can we ask the cinema to help coordinate the schedule?"

Han Sanping said proudly: "I have already communicated with the cinema. We can choose any schedule throughout next year!"

At present, all cinemas in China are still state-owned units. There are some scattered private cinemas in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, but they are not large in scale and cannot form a single cinema chain. They often cooperate with state-owned cinema chains to schedule films.

"Then let's discuss it later and determine the specific screening time."

Li Yishu nodded. The specific scheduling of the film would have to wait until the film was finished and then be considered based on the time for post-production.

However, if we start post-production now, it can be released at the beginning of next year.

Han Sanping suddenly asked, "How about the Lunar New Year film?"

"Lunar New Year holiday?" Li Yishu raised her eyebrows.

"Yes, wasn't the movie 'Rumble in the Bronx' that you and Cheng Long did before introduced to the mainland in the name of the Lunar New Year holiday? It set off quite a wave of moviegoers at the time. The scale of the Lunar New Year holiday last year was also very good, and it increased compared to previous years."

Han Sanping said enthusiastically: "I think we should release the first part of Red Cliff in December and the second part during the Spring Festival in February next year. In this way, we can not only tap into the commercial value of the Lunar New Year period, but also use the Spring Festival holiday to attract more audiences to the cinema."

Hearing this, Li Yishu frowned and began to think about the schedule.

Although "Rumble in the Bronx" opened the first film introduced into China under the name of the Lunar New Year period, it was not until later that Feng Dapao's "Party A and Party B" really formed the habit of audiences to go to the cinema to watch movies during the Lunar New Year period.

Considering that "Red Cliff" is the largest-invested film in China so far, and it has the Spring Festival Gala as a stage for promotion,
Maybe it can trigger a wave of movie-watching in the mainland, and use this opportunity to finalize the concept of the "Lunar New Year period" and deepen the audience's habit of watching movies during this period, which would be a win-win situation.

However, Li Yishu would like to release "Red Cliff" Part 1 and Part 2 when the Art Media Group goes public, so as to maximize the group's stock price.

But what Han Sanping said makes sense.

Li Yishu said: "We can consider the Lunar New Year period, but the specific time still depends on the post-production."

"Yes, the director is right. We should still follow the post-production schedule."

Han Sanping nodded and said nothing more. He just suggested the Lunar New Year holiday. The specific arrangements still depended on Li Yishu.

Just remembering one thing, he winked at Li Yishu.

Seeing that Han Sanping seemed to have something to say to her, Li Yishu said, "Director Xie, go help arrange the next scene. Director Han and I have something to discuss."

"Okay, director." Xie Jin responded and went to arrange for the crew to start preparing for the next scene.

As soon as he left, Han Sanping couldn't wait to say, "Yishu, the post-production of the last film must be fast. If it's not possible, make a rough cut first, but it must be in accordance with the specifications of a normal movie."

in such a hurry?
What a huge level this is!

Li Yishu raised his eyebrows, and suddenly had several candidates in mind, but in order to avoid review, he did not ask, but just nodded and said, "As long as you find all the people for me, I will give you a rough cut within half a month."

The tone of the movie "Red Cliff" itself is here. Even if Li Yishu doesn't specifically say what kind of editing he wants, the editor can edit it out roughly based on the plot of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms".

After all, the plot is here and the changes won't be that big.

Unlike Chen Kaige's "The Emperor and the Assassin", which almost subverted this history.

So half a month is enough to roughly cut the first part of the story.

"Tomorrow... the day after tomorrow, I'll help you get the people and equipment here the day after tomorrow."

Han Sanping wanted to say tomorrow, but considering that it would take time to transfer the equipment, he decided to postpone it to the day after tomorrow.

"Okay, the day after tomorrow, I'll be in charge then."

Considering that the person watching the movie was an unusual person, Li Yishu decided to personally supervise the editing process.

Anyway, his job now is just to check for omissions and fill in the gaps in the filming. It will not be his turn to shoot the big scenes later. That is Shen Haofang's job.

After more than half a year of training in the army and actual drills of battles between two armies, if Shen Haofang were in the Three Kingdoms era, he would definitely be a talented general.

"I'll feel relieved if you take personal responsibility." Han Sanping breathed a sigh of relief, a look of joy on his face.

His look made Li Yishu more certain of what she was thinking.

"Director Li!"

At this time, Zhang Jian, one of Li Yishu's bodyguards, ran over and said, "Director Li, your phone just rang."

"Thank you." Li Yishu thanked him, then took the phone and looked at the caller ID. It was an unfamiliar number, but from the international number at the beginning, he recognized it was from Hong Kong.

"Uncle San, I'm going to make a call."

"Well, go ahead. I haven't been to the crew for a long time, so I'll take a look around."

After saying something to Han Sanping, Li Yishu went to the side to answer the phone.

After a few beeps, the call was connected, and Li Yishu said, "Hello, this is Li Yishu, who are you?"

"Mr. Li, I'm Lin Baixin."

Lin Baixin?
Li Yishu raised her eyebrows: "Boss Lin, how come you have time to call me?"

"Haha, I have something to tell Mr. Li. I don't want to disturb him from filming, right?"

"The shooting just ended. Mr. Lin, please talk. I'm listening."

"That's good, that's good." Lin Baixin paused and said, "It's like this, Mr. Li, TVB's Fang Yihua came to me yesterday..."

Blah blah, Lin Baixin told the story about ATV poaching a lot of TVB employees, "Originally I didn't want to disturb Mr. Li from filming, but Shao Laoliu called me this morning and asked me to help mediate."

Speaking of which, Lin Baixin was also quite helpless. Yesterday afternoon, he had already made it very clear to Fang Yihua that he was now only a shareholder of ATV and did not participate in the daily management of the TV station at all.

The poaching issue has nothing to do with him.

Fang Yihua had no choice but to say nothing. This morning, she used her connections to arrange a meeting with Huo Wenxi.

But the result of the meeting was not ideal.

Huo Wenxi's attitude is very clear, this is just normal business behavior.

Poaching employees is a very common practice in major companies, and those who are poached must have done so after weighing the pros and cons.

If TVB wants to avoid being poached after paying the full penalty for breach of contract, it can either increase its own remuneration or poach people from ATV.

Fang Yihua had actually considered poaching people before, but after discussing it with his subordinate He Dingjun, he found that he could not poach them, nor could he increase their salaries.

Because once you poach people with high salaries, the chain reaction will be huge.

And improving the remuneration of TVB employees is not something that Fang Yihua can decide on a whim.

TVB has been established for almost 1967 years since 30. It is true that Uncle Run Run Shaw is the chairman of the board of directors of the TV station, but things like collective salary increases are not something that can be decided casually.

TVB has adopted a basic salary strategy for many years. In the past, there have been too many cases where popular artists have turned against TVB because of low salaries.

The most typical one is the five tigers of TVB back then.

It was well known that TVB’s salary contracts were harsh at the time. At the beginning, the artists were unknown and weak, unable to compete with the agency, so they could only swallow their anger.

But as the fame of the Wireless Five Tigers grew, Andy Lau and Tony Leung became famous and highly sought after. The Wireless Five Tigers were at the peak of their careers, so everyone started to think about negotiating with TVB.

But who could have imagined that the negotiations broke down, everyone wanted to jump ship collectively, and were eventually divided by TVB's top management. As a result, everyone knows that Andy Lau, who was the first to stand out, was cruelly banned for several years.

In fact, it is normal to adjust the salary contract after an artist starts to become popular, not to mention that TVB’s own salary is not high, so it is completely reasonable to increase the salary appropriately.

But TVB is like the local rich people of the past. They really don’t want to give their employees any extra money. This is a typical exploitative mentality.

So after learning clearly that Huo Wenxi would not stop and would continue to poach TVB employees, He Dingjun proposed a plan to appropriately increase employee salaries. After considering it, Fang Yihua decisively rejected it.

In Fang Yihua's view, employees' salaries do not depend on their abilities but on the platform.

This is like an outstanding talent, who can become an outstanding person not because of his personal ability, but because of a big platform.

In other words, TVB is their bread and butter, paying them wages and giving them opportunities to become famous. Forget about raising their wages, it's good enough if they don't have their wages deducted.

If the company doesn't grow in size or poach people with high salaries, then He Dingjun won't have any better solution.

Even if you sue ATV, they are acting in accordance with the contract. If they poach your people, they will pay you the liquidated damages they are owed, not a single cent in arrears.

After a few days of delay, I thought ATV would not poach any more people.

But who could have imagined that on the morning of the 7th, dozens of people submitted their resignation reports, and this time they were not only TV station employees, but also artists and screenwriters.

Xuan Xuan and Ouyang Zhenghua, who became famous last year with "The Magistrate IV", Zhang Huabiao, who participated in the screenwriting of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes Trilogy", and Chen Baohua, who participated in the creation of "True Feelings".

Xuan Xuan and Ouyang Zhenghua were poached, and that's it. What TVB lacks the least is artistes. Although these two have been very popular in the past two years, TVB is not without other more popular actors.

However, the poaching of two capable assistants in the screenwriting department was Fang Yihua's biggest headache.

There is no need to say much about Zhang Huabiao. The "The Legend of the Condor Heroes Trilogy" he participated in is still very famous in the screenwriting industry.

Chen Baohua is even more extraordinary. After the TV series "True Feelings" was aired in May last year, it quickly became a favorite TV series among Hong Kong housewives.

Moreover, the TV series is very popular, so TVB will naturally continue filming and also plan to change it into a weekly drama.

According to the original history, "True Feelings" is the TV series with the most episodes in Hong Kong's history, with a total of 1128 episodes. It is somewhat similar to Guangdong's later "Foreign Daughter-in-law Local Son-in-law", both of which are about the daily life of three generations living together.

The best thing about this kind of drama is that missing a few episodes doesn’t stop you from continuing to watch it.

Moreover, the audience stickiness is very high. Once they get interested, most of the audience will watch it on time as long as they have nothing else to do, and gradually develop a habit.

With so many people being poached at once, and two of them being gold medal screenwriters, Fang Yihua had no choice but to ask Uncle Shao for help, hoping that Uncle Shao would talk to Lin Baixin and let Li Yishu come forward to resolve the matter.

"Boss Lin, this matter is not easy to negotiate."

After learning the whole story, Li Yishu didn't expect it was because of this. He pondered and said, "You also know that the group will soon raise funds and prepare to go public next year. This year's performance will have the greatest impact on the stock price after the listing next year."

"I know, but it's hard for me to refuse this call from Shao Laoliu. Why don't you tell Director Huo that you can poach people, but don't make such a big fuss and poach dozens of people at once."

"Okay, I'll tell Director Huo and ask her to be more careful when recruiting people."

"Then I'll trouble Mr. Li."

"Okay, Mr. Lin."

After exchanging a few more pleasantries with Lin Baixin, Li Yishu hung up the phone and called Huo Wenxi instead, asking her to be more careful when poaching people, and not to recruit so many people at once, and not to do it openly with Fang Yihua.

And we don’t have to poach talent. We can just recruit people with high salaries, with no limit on the number of people. There will always be people who will choose to resign and try their luck at ATV. (End of this chapter)