The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 453 Drama and Screenwriters and Authors

Zhu Jianxuan looked at the feedback from the public and quickly issued several new arrangements.

First, the Royal Industrial Group was arranged to build factories to produce musical equipment, performance costumes, and props based on the experience gained from leading the performing artists.

Then let the Institute of Education step in and open new independent art performance courses in existing government-run schools, especially girls' schools.

Including creation, screenwriting, music, lyrics, singing and dancing, performance, etc.

If any existing students are interested in these technologies, they can actively sign up with the school’s administrative teacher. The school will determine the number of the first batch of classes based on the number of registrants.

Existing schools already have some subjects such as music, chess, calligraphy and painting, but they are basically the most traditional models, used to help scholars cultivate their character.

The new courses now being offered teach the new art that Zhu Jianxuan has transformed over the past two years, an art with a more entertaining nature aimed at the general public.

I believe that after watching Zhu Jianxuan’s new songs, dances and dramas, some students from these schools will be interested.

According to Zhu Jianxuan's judgment, these students will become the real new generation of performing artists and will also be used to fill various gaps in the early stages of the industry.

Art is too subjective, and the risks of starting and working in the industry are too high. Especially when the industry is not yet mature, it is easy to get stuck in art.

Therefore, early practitioners were either stuck in a pit with no other choice, or they brought children from wealthy families to fill the pit.

Once the industry is truly mature and all levels of the industry have their own position, ordinary people can treat and choose it as a regular career.

At this stage in the Ming Dynasty, this industry is certainly immature and has even just started.

At the same time, we will select those who are competent enough but have not yet become the main person in charge from among the creators, scriptwriters, performers, directors and performers following Zhu Jianxuan.

Talk to them individually and invite them to take turns giving lectures in the school to pass on the knowledge taught by Zhu Jianxuan to the students.

Make it clear to them that most of the students in these official schools come from wealthy families or even from noble bureaucrats, and most of them will not specialize in related industries.

Most of them now just have personal interests, but in the future they may be involved in investment and management within the industry.

What Zhu Jianxuan wanted them to teach was also new art.

So that these teachers do not have to worry about having their jobs taken away by them in the future, they should instead maintain good relationships with them, hoping that they will find their own disciples when they need people in the future.

In a word, it is to reduce the resistance of these older generation masters.

The explanations from Zhu Jianxuan and the Institute of Education were indeed true. What these people needed to learn were the technologies that Zhu Jianxuan had developed with them, so they really did not have much resistance.

This matter went quite smoothly, even too smoothly.

Many private investors who wanted to invest in the new film and television industry are now unable to enter and don’t know what to do.

Then I heard that classes were actually started directly in official schools.

Those whose children were already attending government-run schools were immediately urged to register for classes.

Children who were not attending school were also forced to register for school.

Because the Ming Dynasty did not enforce compulsory education, and did not control the number of children in any family.

Whether in wealthy families or ordinary families, there are always some children who don’t want to go to school since childhood, and it is easy for them to just drop out.

If there is one child who is capable of taking care of the household, then the others can really be left alone.

Now there is a new industry that can try to recycle the free-range animals.

These people are not interested in traditional education, but they may be interested in these new things. Anyway, wealthy families do not lack the tuition fees.

If you really learn it, it will be of great use.

The group of teachers selected by Zhu Jianxuan would work for Zhu Jianxuan in the future, organizing the compilation and filming of dramas such as The Three Kingdoms, while taking turns to go to school to teach.

According to Zhu Jianxuan's plan, after this subject has been offered for a few years, it can become an independent specialized school.

Zhu Jianxuan finally asked the Royal Industrial Group to set up a film and television industry company.

In cities and rural areas across the Ming Dynasty, some existing old towns, buildings and facilities were selected from the properties owned by the royal family and the court.

Transfer the ownership of local land and building facilities to industrial companies, and then transform them into special film and television shooting scenes.

In addition, the Ministry of Rites was asked to organize personnel to study and restore the architecture, clothing, and lifestyles of specific dynasties, such as the Three Dynasties, the pre-Qin period, the Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms and the Jin Dynasty, the Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, the Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties.

It can be used as a research project on etiquette culture, but the results can become a reference for film and television projects.

The Royal Film and Television Industry Company can, based on these research results, renovate or build palaces, costumes, and utensils that correspond to the appearance of the dynasty for use in future film and television industries.

At the same time, Zhu Jianxuan led a large film and television team to continue filming the story of the Three Kingdoms.

After shooting various types of scenes and plots several times, the film and television team gradually mastered the experience and skills, and there was no need for Zhu Jianxuan to keep an eye on them all the time.

The speed of releasing films is getting faster and faster. The official plot of the first part took almost half a year, and the second part was released two months later.

After that, it was basically stable to produce one film per month, and each film lasted at least 40 minutes and at most an hour.

The Three Kingdoms crew has entered a stable monthly update mode.

Zhu Jianxuan began to divide the overly large film and television team into groups, directly assigning half of the people from the existing team to directly start the filming of the Water Margin script.

After the Water Margin crew also started the monthly update period, Zhu Jianxuan turned around to deal with the creators' affairs.

The new art activities organized by Zhu Jianxuan have been going on for more than a year, and a large number of purely original creators have not played any practical role in most cases.

Because the current production of film and television dramas is too slow, adaptations of existing traditional dramas are sufficient.

A completely new story, without an audience base, is unlikely to attract the audience's attention directly compared to existing traditional famous stories.

If it is a completely commercial crew, it will naturally adapt the classics first.

In order to quickly make the new drama famous, Zhu Jianxuan will naturally adapt the most classic story.

After the audience has really seen enough of the classics, we can then consider arranging a completely new play.

So far, there are not many creators who are truly devoted to original works, and most of them become part-time screenwriters.

However, the screenwriter is also limited by the shooting speed and actually does not play a big role.

With the cooperation of a large group of dozens of screenwriters, the entire scripts of the two classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, can be completed in less than a year, while filming may take several years.

Compared with the crew on the other side, the relationship between the author and the screenwriter is a bit like that between buyers and sellers, and it is a pure buyer's market.

There are many people who can write scripts, and even the writing speed of a single person is much faster than the shooting speed of the crew.

Authors and screenwriters have a large number of products waiting to be selected by the crew for filming.

Zhu Jianxuan must find another way to make a living for the excessive number of creators and screenwriters, otherwise their status will decline rapidly due to the abnormal market relationship. There must be another platform that allows them to make profits separately and gain widespread influence at the same time.

There is no need to rely exclusively on the crew's choice.

The natural direction is to create special newspapers and magazines to continuously publish the fresh stories they have created.

In the existing market for literary and artistic works, there is indeed a large number of people whose demands are highly consistent with their abilities.

In the industrialized Ming Dynasty, many people in the vast citizen class loved reading stories since childhood.

They have read all the existing classic novels more than once, and as soon as the actors on the stage open their mouths, they know what the other party is going to say.

For these "old bookworms", they are tired of reading traditional classics, and new stories are more attractive.

They are also constantly looking for a variety of new stories to read.

In fact, even in the Ming Dynasty before Chongzhen, the local folk book market was quite developed.

New novels and story collections are constantly being created and published by various large and small publishing houses in the private sector.

However, the status of creators in this industry is very low and has always been considered as something of inferiority.

The people who wrote those classic novels were reluctant to use their real names.

Just like works like Journey to the West, the real author is not signed, and it is only analyzed in papers written by later generations.

At the same time, due to the efficiency limitations of woodblock printing, after a novel was completed, it had to wait a long time before it could be published, and there was no model for continuous updating of creation.

After the Chongzhen period, the Ming Dynasty had metal movable type and began to have a newspaper market, but the market for new novels remained lukewarm.

The most critical reasons are nothing more than two: one is the issue of monetary interests, and the other is the issue of social status.

These two problems can actually be regarded as one problem: the positive feedback problem.

The current model of this industry is basically that publishing organizations take the initiative to spend money to hire people to create new stories for printing, which is a direct buyout model.

The creative fees are fully paid when the manuscript is submitted. Since the creators have a low status, most of them are unwilling to sign their names.

Whether subsequent works are popular or not has no direct interest relationship with the author and has no social recognition at all.

Even if the publishing company knows who wrote a popular story, when it goes back to the original author to write a new story, the author may have already started another career.

Since everyone thinks that story writing is a low-class profession, people who write for a living will definitely stop writing if they have a proper job.

Even if there are a few authors who do not care about specific interests and create new stories purely out of personal interest, they cannot gain recognition from their families and society in such creations.

They have no actual interests to demand, nor do they receive recognition from their families and society, and they are even surrounded by various negative influences.

This kind of creation that is purely inspired by the moment is difficult to sustain against negative interference.

This industry is naturally like this, half-dead, intermittent, and whether it is popular or not depends entirely on luck.

Zhu Jianxuan already knew the current situation of this industry, so he just needed to refer to his previous life's experience and make targeted adjustments.

Zhu Jianxuan directly arranged personnel to establish a new newspaper and magazine company under the Royal Industrial Group.

Over the past year or so, these authors and screenwriters have written a large number of works, and the most popular ones can be selected and published.

These authors are required to sign their works specifically, using their real names or fixed pen names.

The royalties that magazines pay to authors are divided into two parts: creation costs and sales profits.

The magazines of the magazine company are also divided into two types, regular issues and special issues.

The main publication is divided into two categories: long story collections and short story collections, both of which are published every ten days.

A short story collection is a collection of multiple short stories published in one issue. Most stories should be within 10,000 words, or even just a few hundred words.

A few stories can be serialized in a short period of time, with the word count kept within tens of thousands of words, and can be completed within three issues at most, or one month.

A long story collection is a story that cannot be told within three issues, and may take a year or even many years of publication to slowly tell.

Authors of long-form stories for publication should produce at least 5,000 to 10,000 words every ten days, forming story segments with a certain degree of independence, but overall it should be a continuous long story.

The creation fee of the main publication is paid in the traditional way, calculated by the number of words, and paid when the publication is confirmed.

As a guaranteed income for all creators.

A special issue is a collection of stories by popular authors that are compiled and printed and sold separately every once in a while, perhaps half a year or a year.

The special issues are collections of creative short stories, or periodic compilations and summaries of long stories.

There is only one author or one story in the entire magazine, but the story is richer in content and more complete. Readers who like a specific author can read it all at once.

For long stories, once a long story is written, all the special issues are put together to form a complete story book.

When all special issues are published, authors can choose whether and how to disclose their identity.

Should I fully expose my true identity, or use a pseudonym to participate in activities and communications?

If the author is willing to reveal his or her identity, a brief introduction to the author can be included in the special issue, along with what the author wants to say directly to the readers.

In the future, the magazine will also accept letters from readers and forward them to the corresponding authors.

After the special issue of the corresponding book is published, the magazine will distribute the sales profit of the special issue with the author in proportion. The more it sells, the more the original author will get.

Profit sharing is the author's long-term benefit.

On this basis, the corresponding authors are graded according to the sales volume of the special issue.

Directly use the nine grades from one to nine that ordinary people are most familiar with, and give different guaranteed creation fees and corresponding social benefits to authors of different grades.

Overall, a business model is established in which publishing organizations and authors share profits.

In Zhu Jianxuan's view, there are two keys to this business model. One is the continuous profit sharing between publishing organizations and authors, and the other is continuous creation and updating.

The former can provide continuous positive feedback of monetary benefits to authors and publishing organizations.

Continuous creation can always provide readers with the freshest stories, which is the biggest advantage of new stories compared to traditional classics.

New ideological trends in society may be reflected in the stories of the day.

Various new folk memes will most likely be published in the magazine that month.

(End of this chapter)