I became financially independent right after entering college.

Chapter 124: The Return of the Dragon King
“The skit is really good.”

Zhang Junjie nodded slightly. "Our senior Bai Ke and his friends seem to have started out with short plays. I particularly like their show 'Report to the Boss,' especially the remake of Tiny Times, 'Little Four Generations 4: The Other Side of the Soul.'"

It is a shame that as a media arts college, the most famous and promising graduate of Nanchuan University is only Bai Ke, the Wang Dachui of Wanhe Tianyi.

"The short drama I want to shoot is very different from 'Report to the Boss'. It should be said that it is closer to a serious drama..."

Bai Chou briefly described his thoughts.

Short plays, micro-dramas, and micro-films are a relatively recent phenomenon. While they're relatively new, they're not exactly booming, having yet to establish a significant industry. However, they have certainly spawned several well-known companies and artists.

The two most famous ones are "Never Expected" by Wanhe Tianyi and "Diaosi Man" by Dapeng.

Diaosi Man can generally be seen as a collection of fragmented jokes, but I never expected that there is actually a bit of a plot in it.

But generally speaking, they are more comedic and have the effect of making people laugh.

Bai Chou wanted to make a serious drama, at least on the surface, rather than a comedy or a joke. The general idea was to condense the plot of an online novel or a melodramatic urban drama into two or three hours.

Only the most essential, dramatic, and pivotal plot points and dialogues are extracted, all the watered-down and polished parts are removed, and the plot development speed is accelerated from the very beginning...

"How do you put it? What does it mean to speed up the plot as much as possible from the very beginning?" Several people in the dormitory were a little curious.

Bai Chou explained, "For example, let's take the pretentious, face-slapping plots from online novels. In the first minute, the protagonist, the forbearing son-in-law of the Dragon King, is looked down upon by his wife. In the second minute, he's looked down upon by his mother-in-law. In the third minute, he's looked down upon by his wife's mistress. In the fourth minute, he's insulted by his wife's family. In the fifth minute, his engagement is broken off. In the seventh minute, he meets a considerate, perfect girl. In the eighth minute, the three-year period is up...

Each segment only features the most tense plot and shots, ignoring all rationality, and using the fewest, most captivating lines to tell the audience what's happening."

"Isn't this just distilling the plots from online novels and filming them?" Zhang Junjie suddenly realized.

"Strictly speaking, it should be about extracting the detailed outline or even the outline of the online novel and filming it..."

After hearing this, Zhou Haoyu and the others immediately lost interest. This sounded too ridiculous and too makeshift, not up to standard at all. However, Zhang Junjie, an online writer, showed great interest.

"Brother Bai, what you mean is, you want to do a movie like Urban Son-in-Law Returns of the Dragon King?"

"That kind of thing, the kind that's a bit high-energy, and the kind that's mindless and enjoyable, you can take pictures of it."

"How brainless and cool is it?"

"Half a step to the realm of reciting pi backwards, traveling back to ancient times and rubbing Barrett with your hands, making nylon stockings directly in ancient times and distributing them to the whole county."

Zhang Junjie took a deep breath and said, "Isn't it too brainless? Is there really anyone who can stand watching this kind of stupidity?"

"Of course there are. Even in novels, there are people who like the mindless and exciting ones, right?"

Zhang Junjie nodded slightly. That's right. Online literature is an industry that is difficult to satisfy everyone. Most of the time, in order to achieve results, one has to ignore certain rationality for the sake of pleasure.

However, traveling back to ancient times and being able to casually play with a Barrett... this cheat is really too brainless and too big.

Can you make high-precision, high-quality seamless steel pipes? How do you carve rifling? How do you mix gunpowder? Creating a modern firearm like the Barrett requires at least a considerable degree of industrialization...

However, there is no need to consider all these things in novels and online articles. One minute the enemy is at the gates of the city, and the next minute the protagonist takes out a Barrett, which is simply made by hand.

Bai Chou and Zhang Junjie discussed various issues enthusiastically.

Why do we have to shoot movies like Urban Son-in-law and Return of the Dragon King instead of movies like traveling back to ancient times to shock Li Shimin? Time travel to ancient times is also quite popular.

Bai Chou’s answer was that it was difficult to reduce costs.

Historical time travel is indeed a very good theme. Over the years, many formulaic exciting points have been summarized, such as making glass and penicillin...

But if we really want to shoot it, it’s difficult to control the cost.

If you're just having fun, then spending any amount of money doesn't matter. But if you're starting a business or investing, cost is something you absolutely must consider.

For costumes and props of the same quality, ancient costumes are more expensive than modern ones. Furthermore, the venue is also a problem. Even if we ignore the cost, Jinling doesn't seem to have a large-scale ancient costume film and television base, so we can only go to Hengdian...

What are the specific broadcast and profit models? How do you make money from filming?

Bai Chou's idea is that each episode is about 1-2 minutes long, and each episode has a main plot and exciting points. After filming, it will be released to large platforms such as Douyin, Bilibili, Kuaishou, etc., and agreements will be signed with them to invest in traffic, that is, spending money to buy traffic.

I'll start with a free drama of more than ten minutes to pique the audience's interest. Once they're hooked, I'll let them switch to my app or mini-program to pay for the show. For the specific charging model, you can refer to Qidian. Each episode can be purchased separately. Once there are more short dramas on the platform, I can also open up a paid membership function...

The two discussed enthusiastically for an entire afternoon, and finally hit it off, let's do it!
During the project's preparatory stage, Bai Chou paid Zhang Junjie a fixed salary of 8000 yuan per month to review novels on related themes, including outlines and detailed scripts.

This salary is determined based on Zhang Junjie's royalties. This guy's novels are quite successful and he can actually get several thousand yuan in royalties every month. He also has a certain understanding of the online literature industry.

Bai Chou doubled Zhang Junjie's salary based on his current level of royalties.

Zhang Junjie was very satisfied with the salary. His only concern was why he had to look at the outline and detailed outline. Couldn't he just buy the copyright directly? He remembered that there was a small website that specialized in writing about urban son-in-law-related themes. It contained a lot of failed son-in-law novels, and the copyright of a short play of a book could be acquired for a few thousand yuan.

Is there such a thing?
Bai Chou asked Zhang Junjie to describe the website in detail.

Zhang Junjie said he'd only vaguely heard of the website, which contained a plethora of metropolitan son-in-law novels that copied the trend. The plots and climaxes were all pretty much the same, and the main difference between good and bad reviews lay in the writing, the flow of the plot, and the pacing...

Bai Chou finally decided to spend a few thousand yuan to get the copyright of a short play based on a failed book to avoid copyright disputes in advance, but he still had to copy some of the main exciting points of other books, and he still had to copy the plot connection and detailed outline...

This is the subject matter. You all wrote the same thing, so why do you say I copied you? Besides, since I'm adapting this for film and television, it's reasonable to have some adaptations, right?

Zhang Junjie is responsible for the script, and Bai Chou is responsible for all other issues. He is the boss, so the more capable he is, the more work he should do.

The next day, Bai Chou's second month's living expenses arrived, over 3 million yuan. He immediately paid off the remaining balance on the villa and contacted a bank for a mortgage. Using the villa and the GT800RS as collateral, the bank quickly approved a loan totaling over 5.25 million yuan, with an annual interest rate of %. Over two years, he only had to pay back a little over yuan per month, practically nothing.

This is why Bai Chou insisted on buying the house in full. As an outsider with no collateral, it was really difficult for him to get a loan to buy such an expensive house.

But if you have collateral, it is easy to get a loan, and you can set the repayment period at will. Bai Chou also knows how to consume in advance and make money with the bank's money.

The balance in the bank card returned to more than 100 million yuan. Bai Chou quickly registered three companies, and the registration cost of each company was million yuan in actual payment.

The first company is called Jinling Eclipse Investment. Bai Chou holds 100% of the shares and serves as the legal representative. Then, through this investment company, he controls the Eclipse Music Instruments Company and the Eclipse Film and Television Entertainment Company.

Bai Chou intends to pursue two business projects simultaneously. Of course, this doesn't mean they're truly synchronized; there will be a rough order of priority for a period of time, with film and television entertainment being the primary focus.

The moment the company was registered, Bai Chou obtained two more skills from the system.

[Electroacoustic Engineering - Vocational Level 6]

Director - Professional Level 2

Emmmm...How should I put it, both skills are somewhat useful, but not too useful.

The professional level 6 electroacoustic engineering will probably enable Bai Chou to acquire abilities comparable to those of top electroacoustic engineers from world-class audio equipment manufacturers such as Sennheiser, Harman Kardon, and Burmester in terms of music instrument tuning and audio signal processing.

It is no exaggeration to say that Bai Chou is now a leader in the industry.

But the same thing goes, as long as the sound is not extremely bad, the sound level of a set of musical instruments is actually the least important, and audiophiles will play it in their own minds.

This thing mainly relies on marketing and storytelling.

Take Sony as an example. Do Sony’s headphones that cost a few thousand yuan and players that cost tens of thousands of yuan really sound good?
Bai Chou felt that it was a piece of shit. It was no exaggeration to say that the electronic smell was anti-human, but there were some Sony fans and loyal fans who liked this Sony smell.

Is the Harman Kardon curve proposed by Harman Kardon Vocal Laboratory really the industry standard?
That's not the case. It's just a reference thing developed by Harman Kardon, and even Harman Kardon itself is constantly fine-tuning this curve.

When making headphones or other musical instruments, sound quality isn't important once it reaches a certain standard. This ability has saved Bai Chou over a million yuan in daily salary and communication costs with acoustic engineers.

The second ability allows Bai Chou to shoot short dramas by himself. With the ability of a second-level professional director, he can handle most TV dramas without any problem. Shooting short dramas is a complete waste of his talent.

But at the same time, this is a skill that is just enough. It is the same as spending tens of thousands of dollars to hire a director as a tool after the script is written.

How to say it, the two new skills are a bit useless to Bai Chou.

What he wants more is the ability related to investment and business management, or the system will open new modules after he establishes a company, and reward him with a certain amount of money based on how well he runs the company.

Unfortunately, it's just a delusion.

The system only gave two useful but not very useful skills, and did not open up new modules. Everything still depended on Bai Chou's own efforts.

What a useless system! Why can't it give me gold coins, shares of LV Group and Porsche family like other super-rich systems?
Despite all the complaints, Bai Chou is still full of energy.

At least at this stage, Bai Chou is very enthusiastic about his work. Just like when he was learning music or anything else in the early stages, he is eager to become familiar with and master everything in this field in the shortest possible time.

Even when eating and sleeping with Kim Hyo Joo, they no longer discussed trivial matters like love and romance, but dreams, passion and big careers.

Kim Hyo-joo doesn't think Bai Chou is more attractive now than before, but she supports Bai Chou no matter what he wants to do, and asks if there is anything he needs her help with.
Bai Chou directly brought Jin Xiaozhou into Eclipse Film and Entertainment as a guest accountant. From now on, you are the chief financial officer of this company.

But in fact, there are only two people in the company at present, a boss Bai Chou and a Kim Hyo Joo.

Bai Chou was busy with the planning, but Li Xue, who had been left out, was unhappy. We were all girlfriends, so why did you only accompany Kim Hyo Joo and not me?
Li Xue, who was resentful, intentionally or unintentionally looked for opportunities to meet Bai Chou in various occasions in the school. After they really met, she pouted and ignored Bai Chou, sulking on her own.

Bai Chou privately asked Li Xue on WeChat, "Why is baby Xiaoxue ignoring me?"

"Go with your Kim Hyo Joo."

Bai Chou only replied with one word: "Okay."

Then there is no more.

Li Xue was so angry that her chest hurt. "If I ask you to accompany me, will you really do it? Don't you know I was just saying that in anger?" Finally, three days later, when Bai Chou was driving out of the school, Li Xue stood at the school gate and blocked Bai Chou's car.

Bai Chou originally wanted to tease Li Xue a few more times, but when he saw Li Xue standing outside the passenger door without saying a word, with her lips pursed and her face tense, as if she was about to cry, he gave up the idea of ​​teasing Li Xue.

"Get in the car." Bai Chou opened the door lock.

Li Xue opened the passenger door of the Lamborghini and got in, with her legs pressed against the door to prevent Bai Chou from touching them. Her face was very serious, as if she was angry.

About a kilometer after driving out of the school, Bai Chou found a shady spot to stop. He smiled and asked Li Xue, whose little mouth could be used as a hook, "Baby, why aren't you talking?"

"Wow wow wow..."

Li Xue, who had been tense for several days, burst into tears. She unbuckled her seatbelt and threw herself into Bai Chou's arms, crying, "Don't you want me anymore? Are you lying when you said you liked me? You've been spending the last few days with Kim Hyo Joo instead of me. I even ignored you when I chatted with you on WeChat..."

During the holidays, the two of them spent several days together every day, and Li Xue was almost Bai Chou's real girlfriend.

After school started, not to mention classes, Bai Chou had to accompany Kim Hyo Joo and busy himself with his entrepreneurial work after class, so it was natural that he neglected Li Xue.

Li Xue couldn't bear such a huge gap between the past few days.

(End of this chapter)