The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 538 "The Beginning" Finalized

"Is "The Beginning" going to be online so soon?"

Zhang Ruoyun half-lyed on the chair, raised one leg so high that the masseur pressed his muscles, and flicked his mobile phone in surprise, "Hiss—I remember it wasn't finished until October?"

Chen Jingxing looked at the screen of the TV camera without turning his head: "This drama is a low-cost sci-fi sketch, and it didn't take much time in the post-production..."

He watched the shot several times before, but still felt a little dissatisfied, so he turned around and said, "Reshoot this one again."

"No--"

Zhang Ruoyun wailed weakly.

The filming of "[-]" was undoubtedly a huge test for the actors, especially for the leading actors Zhang Ruoyun and Bai Yu.

It is not only a test of performance, but also a test of physical strength.

Repeated rehearsals and cross-scene scheduling of long shots are quite a lot of exercise for actors, and the running distance in a day can even reach tens of kilometers.

This is also the reason why the crew hired a masseuse to massage the muscles of the actors, because this kind of excessive exercise is easy to get injured. Once the leading actor is injured, the entire project's construction period will be delayed.

Although Zhang Ruoyun was frowning, he got up immediately, adjusted his expression and physical condition, and prepared to retake this 6-minute long shot.

The project "[-]" is a very rare opportunity for Zhang Ruoyun, and he has put a lot of effort into this film. After all, this is his first time starring in an important film project.

The polarization of movies is much more serious than that of TV dramas. Most of the small and medium-budget movies are not splashy at all, so for Huaguo actors, the classification of resources is almost blockbuster > TV drama > small-budget movies.

Although Zhang Ruoyun became popular with the TV series "Signal", he has also acted in many TV series after that, and he is more or less a first-line actor, but the main battlefield is also TV series. The competition for movie actors is too fierce, and good movie resources are basically out of reach. to him.

Since last year's "Inception", it can be regarded as a big step in the film industry.

Chen Jingxing's movie plus gift movie, double buff superposition, the significance of "[-]" to him cannot be overemphasized.

Although generally speaking, the upper part of "[-]" has two male protagonists, but judging from the scenes, Zhang Ruoyun plays more signal soldiers than Bai Yu plays scouts.

And after joining the crew of "[-]", I got good news that the costume drama "Dynasty" jointly produced by DreamWorks and Netflix selected him as the leading actor.

Among the three dramas that DreamWorks approved at the same time, "The Beginning" had the lowest shooting difficulty and production cost, and the script was produced the fastest, so it was the first to start shooting, starting in August, and wrapping up in October.

The Omnic Crisis-themed "Elysium" was also launched before the release of "Matrix III" at the end of the year.

Due to the delay in casting the cast and the limited manpower and material resources, although the script of the costume zombie drama "Dynasty" has been completed, it has not yet started.

Overtly and secretly, there are many companies and actors competing for the role of this drama, especially the male lead candidate. Even Netflix has recommended Hollywood Asian actors, and they can speak Chinese.

However, Chen Jingxing flatly rejected it. The Hollywood Screen Actors Guild indeed has many Asian actors with good acting skills, but one is that their temperament is incompatible with domestic actors, and their acting style is also different from domestic actors.

The second is that the language is usually not good enough. This is the traditional arrogance of Hollywood. There are really many producers in Hollywood studios who think from the bottom of their hearts that these Chinese actors speak Chinese.

After all, they themselves don’t know Chinese. To them, foreign languages ​​like Huaguo are weird languages ​​that they can’t understand. They don’t care if they are standard or not. Some directors can’t even distinguish Cantonese from Mandarin.

Chen Jingxing finally decided to choose Zhang Ruoyun as the leading actor, which meant that "Dynasty" could start filming after "[-]" was finished.

Chen Jingxing looked up at the still cloudy weather, stared seriously at the actors and crew taking their positions, and shot the long shot that had already been shot before.

"[-]" was filmed together. After the first part was finished, the second part will be shot immediately. The workload is still quite a lot, and Chen Jingxing, as the director of "Interstellar", will also participate in the promotion of the upcoming Spring Festival, so The progress is rather tense.

But even so, he will not relax his requirements for shooting quality. Although "1917" refers to "[-]" from the previous life plane in many places, to some extent this is also his first film. original movie.

Chen Jingxing not only attaches great importance to this movie, but also has some nervous emotions, and the pressure is not small.

Even "The Beginning" that DreamWorks is about to launch, the video platform was disappointed that he could come out for an interview, but he refused.

Entering 2020, the box office of "Matrix III" has slowed down, but the discussion and interpretation of this movie are still hot. As the Spring Festival is approaching, DreamWorks' new drama "The Beginning" also quickly announced the finalization The launch date is January 1th, just one week before the Spring Festival.

Of course, the reason why it was set so quickly is that the Spring Festival is indeed the golden time for TV dramas.

Especially during the Spring Festival, it happens to be a period of scarcity of entertainment content. Because the Spring Festival Gala and other Spring Festival programs are broadcast, there is not much entertaining content on the TV except for the reruns of the Spring Festival Gala and sketches, as well as the rebroadcasts of old dramas. Hotness is actually related to this.

And this is a rare opportunity for online platforms.

However, the reason why "The Beginning" was so hastily fixed is mainly because of Netflix.

In the previous life, "The Beginning" sold the overseas network broadcasting rights to Netflix after the domestic explosion, but now, with the endorsement of DreamWorks and the blessing of the DreamWorks brand, Netflix has bought " Copyright of The Beginning.

Because the other two "Elysium" and "Dynasty" both have Netflix's investment, "The Beginning", which was established at the same time as these two dramas, naturally also entered Netflix's sight.

Netflix is ​​working hard to open up the Asian market, and it always welcomes dramas from Asia, especially East Asia.

And because its main revenue is membership revenue, not advertising revenue-at least Netflix still emphasizes maintaining no advertising, which is also a major feature of its attracting member users.

Because it does not rely on advertisements, there is no problem with the broadcast cycle of the TV series purchased by Netflix. They are all released at one time, and there is no backlog problem.

So when "The Beginning" was completed in the later stage and passed the review of domestic online dramas, Netflix couldn't wait to go online and broadcast it directly.

It is naturally impossible for domestic video platforms to wait for Netflix to take the first step, and I am afraid that it will have a relatively large impact on their own playback volume.

Therefore, after the coordination of DreamWorks, Netflix and the three domestic platforms that purchased the copyright, Penguin Video, Huanshi.com and Station C will broadcast simultaneously, and they will all be released at one time.

This news naturally made the audience very happy. Every audience does not like the way of squeezing toothpaste, especially domestic audiences have not been disciplined to watch dramas on a weekly basis. Some previous dramas of DreamWorks broadcast four episodes a week. Squeeze toothpaste was also complained by the audience.

Especially if you have just been emotionally lifted, and then you have to board for a week or several days, your emotions and expectations will be worn away, and even the previous plot will be almost forgotten after a week.

It's just that the number of episodes of DreamWorks is relatively small, basically only 20 episodes, and the pace is fast, which can create a sense of expectation, so compared to other dramas that often squeeze toothpaste for [-] or [-] episodes, it seems that there is no such "" Heinous."

Although the one-off news made fans and audiences cheer, it was not good news for video platforms.

Penguin Video and Huanshi.com's hasty official announcement in advance is also to attract investment and find advertising sponsors.

However, it is impossible for DreamWorks dramas to find advertising sponsorship. Even if they can’t make a lot of money, it’s okay for the platform to recover the cost of the copyright fee or even make a small fortune, because it’s not an exclusive broadcast copyright, and the three platforms can’t compete with each other. It cost about 3000 million yuan, which is not much in today's copyright trading market.

This is why DreamWorks is increasingly accommodating Netflix in TV dramas.

As far as the subject matter is concerned, DreamWorks dramas are usually more than a dozen short episodes, which is very unfavorable under the current domestic network platform revenue model. In domestic TV drama copyright transactions, the longer the episodes, the more make money.

Even though Radio and Television has introduced a policy to limit the number of TV episodes, there are policies above and countermeasures below. If you don’t advocate the number of episodes exceeding 40 episodes, then I will divide the works that exceed the limit of episodes into two parts and broadcast them to take advantage of the loopholes.

No matter how you squeeze toothpaste in different ways, the broadcast cycle of a dozen-episode TV series is not as good as that of a TV series with dozens of episodes. The broadcast cycle is closely related to advertising investment, and it is also closely related to the number of broadcasts.

For advertisers, it is difficult to compare the broadcast volume of twelve-episode dramas with forty or fifty-episode dramas.

Even if Chen Jingxing sold the exclusive copyright, he would not be able to sell the copyright at a sky-high price.

In addition, "Elysium" and "Dynasty" both introduced Netflix's investment, and it became a matter of course to gradually adapt to Netflix in the playback mode.

However, although "The Beginning" was set in a hurry, the popularity is not small.

In addition to the well-known sci-fi dramas of DreamWorks, the fame of the heroine Zhao Jinmai also surpassed that of her previous life.

In "The Wandering Earth", her role is actually not played very well. If there is any blessing, it is the blessing of the coffee position.

The main reason is the influence of "The Walking Dead". Not only is the influence of the show phenomenal, but Zhao Jinmai's character arc in "The Walking Dead" is also very brilliant.

The audiences of sci-fi dramas such as "The Walking Dead" and "The Beginning" also have a relatively high degree of overlap, and they are mainly young audiences such as students.

So when each platform announced the launch date, DreamWorks did not launch much marketing, and the popularity of "The Beginning" on the Internet rushed up all of a sudden.

(End of this chapter)