Hong Kong Entertainment: The King of Kung Fu

They did not learn from the previous experience of Hong Kong filmmakers cheating Taiwanese investors and losing the Taiwanese market.

Ten years later, mainland China and Hong Kong signed a services trade agreement, and Hong Kong filmmakers collectively moved north.

The atmosphere at that time was like this: You bunch of unsophisticated coal bosses, take out your investments, tell me which female star you want to promote, don’t ask about other things, just wait to make money.

It may sound a bit crude, but for filmmakers, this is the best investor.

Screenwriter Wang Hailin once said: "To this day I still miss the days when coal bosses were investors. Apart from asking for actresses, they had no other requirements and never interfered with our creations..."

Wang Hailin also said that at that time, when investors came to discuss scripts with their screenwriters, they would either discuss it in a foot massage parlor while massaging their feet, or in a nightclub while drinking.

All the expenses were paid for by the coal boss.

The coal boss is not stupid, so why is he willing to be taken advantage of?

Because their money is more or less shady, they can launder it through making movies, and playing with female celebrities is just a side job.

On the other hand, although Hong Kong filmmakers' move to the north has harmed their investors, it has played a positive role in the upgrading of the mainland film industry.

Wei Junzi, a famous mainland filmmaker, later made a documentary called "Dragon and Tiger Martial Arts Masters", which clearly showed that most mainland martial arts directors were trained by Hong Kong martial arts directors.

Another important job type is editor. Lin An'er and Hu Dawei have also trained many editors from the mainland, such as Kong Jinlei, who won the Golden Horse Award for "Tuina".

Yang Ye does not need these investors. He does not care about the money from the coal bosses. The film and television projects he invests in are basically under his control.

In recent years, most of the movies invested and produced by Yang Ye have not only been box office hits, but also won numerous international awards. Everyone admires his sharp vision and wants to get on board and get a piece of the pie.

But Yang Ye doesn’t accept investment from just anyone. Overseas, he usually chooses to cooperate with large companies and conglomerates.

For example, Haruki Kadokawa of Japan, Miky Lee of South Korea, and Dana White of the United States, these people are already wealthy people, own large enterprises, and have a certain amount of power in their country.

Before Yang Ye was banned in Taiwan, he only cooperated with Taiwan's China Film Corporation.

After the ban was lifted, it also accepted investments from the eight major film companies just to consolidate the Taiwan market.

So even though the Big Eight film producers had a falling out with Hong Kong filmmakers, they still had a good relationship with Yang Ye, and Yang's films were still able to enter Taiwan unimpeded.

When he arrived in the mainland, Yang Ye only cooperated with local governments and state-owned film studios.

So this time, Yang Ye plans to attract Hong Kong filmmakers to Shenzhen to film, and everything is under his control, so he will not let these people do anything wrong.

……

After Yang Ye met with the mayor, preparations for the promotion of Guangming Film and Television City began.

He continued to shoot his movies at Guangming Film and Television City.

I work during the day and go back to Hong Kong to be with my family at night.

Occasionally, I would stay in Shenzhen to accompany He Qing and the others.

He Qing likes filming very much. She hopes to continue filming after her children grow up, and Yang Ye follows her.

Fu Yiwei is not interested in filming, she only likes money and wants to do business.

She was doing business in the original time and space, with enthusiasm but no plan. She thought Lin Qingxia's husband was very rich, so she decided to be the agent of his products. In the end, she lost everything and had to come out to film again.

However, she started a business again later. This time, she learned her lesson, started small and expanded step by step, and achieved good results.

Yang Ye had no objection to Fu Yiwei's desire to start a business. After thinking for a while, he said, "Why don't you start a restaurant business?"

For celebrities to start a business, the best thing is to go into the catering industry. There is no threshold, anyone can open a business as long as they have money, and they can also use their fame to reap profits.

Fu Yiwei asked, "You mean, let me go to your Typhoon Shelter Restaurant?"

Yang Ye shook his head: "The Typhoon Shelter Restaurant is run by someone else and is doing well. Why would they let you parachute in?"

"What to do?"

“Make fast food!”

"fast food?"

Fu Yiwei was confused. I am a big star after all, and you want me to sell fast food?

“Don’t underestimate fast food. McDonald’s and KFC are fast food. McDonald’s is one of the Fortune 500 companies, and its chain stores are all over the world.

Four years ago, the first McDonald's opened in Shenzhen, and it is still the most profitable restaurant in Shenzhen."

After hearing this, Fu Yiwei suddenly felt embarrassed, and she realized how stupid she had just been.

For a rich man like Yang Ye, there is no such thing as small business.

Yang Ye said casually: "McDonald's can be sold all over the world because of their standardized management.

Their signature product tastes almost the same anywhere in the world.

Let’s follow this model and create a standardized Chinese fast food chain brand.

The first goal is to have our stores in major cities across the country, forming a large-scale fast food trust, and then expand overseas."

Although Yang Ye was just bragging, Fu Yiwei's eyes were already shining.

Because she thought Yang Ye was awesome, if he said so, then it would definitely work.

Seeing her enthusiasm, Yang Ye poured cold water on her: "But this matter still needs to be considered in the long run. You should take good care of our son first, and then we can talk about it when things are clear!"

Just kidding, even if this thing really needs to be done, it will not be directly handed over to Fu Yiwei, a business novice.

And it’s not that simple. The first step is to solve the problem of Chinese food being difficult to standardize.

It’s just a difficult problem for others, but it’s the simplest thing for Yang Ye.

All you need to do is design a computer-controlled integrated steaming cabinet and sell steamed dishes.

The headquarters prepares the meal packages and sends them to various stores. They can be served after just heating them up, without even the need for a chef.

And the most profitable business is not selling fast food, but real estate.

This is how McDonald's makes its fortune. The profit from selling fast food is only a small part; the value of the stores is the majority.

If Yang Ye bought commercial stores in major cities across the country to start the fast food business, these stores would become a huge fortune in twenty years.

However, Yang Ye did not tell Fu Yiwei about these plans.

It’s not a question of whether or not to believe her. She wouldn’t understand even if I told her.

Anyway, she gave Yang Ye a son, and Yang Ye would not treat her badly.

When a wild goose passes by, it leaves its voice behind; when a person passes by, he leaves his name behind. Yang Ye’s journey through this world would have been in vain if he hadn’t come here.

His posthumous reputation will depend on his children and disciples to spread it.

……

The three-part shoot takes a long time, but the advantage is that it saves a lot of production costs.

However, filming continuously for such a long time is also a big challenge for the actors.

In the studio of Guangming Film and Television City, Yang Ye is shooting the most classic bullet time in the movie.

Bullet time existed long before The Matrix.

Bullet time has appeared in Hong Kong movies such as "The Rise of Skywalker" and "Bodyguard from Beijing", but they were rather crude.

In The Matrix, Neo slowly leaned forward to dodge a bullet in a rotating camera movement, allowing people to truly see the trajectory of the bullet and the 360-degree panoramic scene of the bullet's stagnant rotation. This visual effect of using "slow" to reflect "fast" is very impactful and has been imitated by many later movies.

When shooting, 122 cameras are first placed precisely on a line according to the computer tracking system, and then all the shutters are concentrated at the same time to control the cameras.

Then take 360° panoramic photos according to the sequence and time intervals pre-edited by the computer.

At the starting point, there is a high-speed camera, and the shooting speed of the camera can be adjusted to match the camera taking pictures.

When it came time for the official filming, a wire was tied to Yang Ye's body to help him complete the entire set of movements.

This movement is actually a simple iron bridge.

The Iron Bridge is a life-saving move in martial arts, used to dodge enemy hidden weapons.

Usually the hidden weapon comes too fast, and there is no time to jump up or dodge to the side, so the body has to stiffen, and suddenly lean back to let the hidden weapon pass by, while the feet remain firmly nailed to the ground, in this way to avoid the enemy's hidden weapon.

Of course, this kind of action usually only exists in martial arts novels.

If someone really stabs you with a dart, you won't have time to pretend to be cool.

This set of actions is very troublesome to shoot and consumes a lot of film.

It is necessary to shoot several different speed effects. The whole process is to first transmit all the actual camera speed, position, lens focal length and other data to the motion control system.

The actual scene taken is then transferred to the computer and remodeled through an image recognition pattern program.

Generate 360° coherent and smooth action shots of the protagonist.

Finally, the coherent dynamic images and background are integrated to create the stunning effects in the movie.

This cool move of dodging bullets is a perfect combination of traditional martial arts and the latest computer technology.

By the 1990s, green screen technology had become very mature, and some scenes that seemed ordinary to people were actually shot using green screen technology.

For example, in the movie "Forrest Gump", at the beginning, Forrest Gump sat on a bench and said his famous line: "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know which one you're going to get next."

At this time, a feather was flying around him.

This feather is actually a staff member in green clothes, who is holding it in his hand and walking around.

Afterwards, we used computer technology to remove the green man, and what we got was a feather floating in the wind.

On the set, what Yang Ye and Ziqi Company tinkered with opened the eyes of many people.

For example, when they were filming the major action scene of the highway battle, they actually produced the entire action in the form of an animation.

When shooting actually, the camera position and angle are set according to the animation demonstration, and the actors just need to act accordingly. This way, the effect will be more realistic and smooth.

People never thought that filming a movie could be so fun, and all of a sudden, many people came to visit the set.

However, the cost of Yang Ye playing this way is too high, and most people can only watch and cannot afford to play.

For the original Speed ​​Racer, the Wachowskis actually built a highway for filming, which cost several million dollars.

Yang Ye doesn't need that, he can just shoot on the Beijing-Hong Kong Line which has not yet opened to traffic.

……

The filming continued until June, when the first Zhuhai Film Festival officially opened.

As Yang Ye's fame grew, he was invited to attend many film festivals around the world.

He declined most of them, but he had to go to the Zhuhai Film Festival.

The Zhuhai Film Festival was only held twice in the original time and space before it died. Yang Ye felt that this was a great pity.

At the beginning, it was a good platform for filmmakers from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong and Macau to communicate with each other.

By the second session, we were determined to make the film festival an international Chinese-language film festival.

Both film festivals were very successful. Later, the country suddenly felt that there were too many film festivals in the country and wanted to remove one.

The Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Awards and the Shanghai Film Festival are definitely not to be removed.

The only choice is between Zhuhai and Changchun. Changchun was once the film capital, and Changchun Film Studio is the cradle of Chinese films. Zhuhai couldn't compete, so it died.

In fact, from the perspective of development prospects, the Zhuhai Festival is far better than the Changchun Film Festival.

The problem with the Changchun Film Festival is that its definition is unclear. Although it has been held since then, no one takes it seriously and its influence is almost non-existent.

Even those who won the Best Actor or Best Actress awards at the Changchun Film Festival were too lazy to issue press releases to promote themselves.

The fact that Zhuhai Film Studio is committed to communication and exchange among Chinese-language filmmakers around the world is a good gimmick.

If it develops well, it may even have a chance to replace the Golden Horse Awards.

When the Zhuhai Film Festival was first established, the Zhuhai government stated that apart from reviewing the shortlisted films, it would not interfere with the film awards, and the judges of the film festival would decide on their own.

With this premise, things will be much easier. At the very least, when it comes to overseas filmmakers, you can't be too shady, right?

Besides, Yang Ye is now building a film and television base in Shenzhen. If Zhuhai has another film festival, the two cities will complement each other, which is great.

Zhuhai was later designated as a tourist city. If the Zhuhai Film Festival is well organized, Zhuhai may become the Cannes of Asia.

So Yang Ye hoped that the Pearl Film Festival could be preserved in the end.

To achieve this goal, the first thing is to increase the popularity of the Pearl River Film Festival.

In fact, there is no need to remove one. Can't we all do it together? Who would complain about having too many awards?
……

In June, Yang Ye returned to Hong Kong to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival.

Then he called his friends and entered the country from Macau and arrived in Zhuhai to cheer for the Zhuhai Film Festival.

Knowing that they were coming, Zhuhai organized a special welcoming event, and many people came to see the stars.

Hundreds of media outlets came to report, including those from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and four places, as well as Chinese media from the United States.

In an instant, the square of Gongbei Port was crowded with people.

A large number of big directors and stars from the Hong Kong film industry, including Yang Ye, Lin Qingxia, Chen Long, Hong Jingbao, Xu Annhua, Xu Ke, Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai, etc., appeared, giving the Pearl River Film Festival enough face.

They got on the car, and on both sides were people lining the streets to welcome them. Yang Ye sighed, "They really gave us enough face!"

When we arrived at the hotel, Taiwanese directors and actors such as Li Xing, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Jin Chengwu had already arrived.

Ling Zifeng, Xie Jin, Chen Daoming, Zhang Yimou, Jiang Wen, Ge You, Gong Li and others were also dispatched from the mainland.

There were more than one hundred celebrities from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and four places attending the event, and the red carpet was star-studded, making it definitely a film event.

The next day, the Pearl River Film Festival held a press conference.

At the press conference, a reporter asked: "Do the films participating in this film festival represent the highest level of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong?"

The judges from the three locations who served as judges in this review all gave unanimous affirmative answers.

Yang Ye did not serve as a judge, he came to cheer for the Pearl River Film Festival, but he is the top star of Chinese-language films and also sat on the stage.

Regarding this issue, he sang a high tone: "The films of the three places are now tending to converge. If Hong Kong films want to be better, they must be combined with traditional Chinese culture.

Our Baiyang Film Company will be committed to cooperating with domestic film companies in the future to produce more and better works, and together promote our Chinese culture to the world! " (End of this chapter)