China Entertainment King of Science Fiction

Chapter 155 Premium Drama Strategy

When Chen Jingxing was still in the United States, he received information from Xu Wenshen and went online to watch some video clips of web dramas shot by Tian Xinye. Some of the shots were indeed very designed and could be described as carved on shit.

Chen Jingxing does not believe that every director must write his own screenplay, and it is not easy to visualize the script, so after some exchanges with Tian Xinye, he believed that he is indeed an excellent candidate to direct the "Signal" TV series.

After the success of three consecutive films, Chen Jingxing has basically established a label in the minds of the audience as "Chen Jingxing's production must be a high-quality product." Let's not talk about the box office, just in terms of word-of-mouth, "Comet", "Fatal Identity"

" and "The Signal" are currently among the top 250 movies on Douban.

The Top250 is mainly selected from multiple dimensions such as ratings, number of raters and number of collectors, so not only must the score be high enough - usually above 8.5, but the number of raters must also be large enough.

"Comet" ranked 208th with a score of 8.5, and "Fatal Identity" ranked 82nd with a score of 8.8. Although the current score of "The Signal" has dropped to 8.6, it still ranks 180th among the Top 250.

Among mainland directors, only Jiang Wen can match him in the number of films shortlisted on Douban's Top 250.

In the entire Chinese film industry, there are only a handful of directors who can do this.

Of course, the Douban rating is actually a very narrow evaluation system, and it is too popular, and even extremely commercial in the eyes of professional film critics - although Douban is already very pretentious in the eyes of many people.

So when it comes to the artistic value of films, Chen Jingxing is completely a younger brother and is basically not ranked among directors.

"Signal" will not be the last TV series produced by DreamWorks, so directors like Tian Xinye are very valuable to cultivate in Chen Jingxing's eyes. He has a good script here, and Tian Xinye has artistic talent. If they are combined well, they can produce high-quality products.

And it doesn’t have to be limited to TV series. Some of DreamWorks’ future film projects can also be directed by him.

Most of the dramas that often have fifty, sixty, or seventy-eight episodes are shot within two to three months, which is shorter than the shooting time of many movies. If we shoot like this, the shooting time will explode, and the crew will have to spend a lot of money.

Not to mention, an actor's schedule is very valuable. How can he have time to spend half a year with a drama?

He wanted to change the phrase "Produced by Chen Jingxing, must be high-quality" into "Produced by DreamWorks, must be high-quality".

He naturally knows about DreamWorks. Although the big stars in the film industry are far less powerful than Penguin Video Network, in the eyes of directors like him, their status is much higher than that of video platforms. He works as deputy to Chen Jingxing.

Being a director is also a rare qualification, and it is also in the film industry. For him, as long as he does not shoot commercials, he can accept it.

To be honest, Penguin Video Network treated him badly. They let him direct two web dramas in succession. Although he did not decide the scripts and actors, and the production costs were very tight, he was still very grateful for letting a person who did not have

A rookie who has directed any film and television dramas would start filming a TV series as soon as he comes on. Such a decision cannot be made without courage.

However, in the eyes of ordinary viewers, Chen Jingxing has indeed established his own brand. After all, most viewers don't really care about the artistic value of movies.

No matter at home or abroad, ordinary people, whether they watch movies or TV series, actually watch stories. If the story is good, it will cover up all the ugliness. If the story is not good, it will be useless even if you adjust the light and shadow to the sky.

That is to say, Penguin Video Network, as an Internet company, lacks a foundation in the film and television industry, so it can generously invest a lot of money to cultivate director talents, while strengthening its production experience of self-produced dramas, and at the same time supporting its 18th-tier stars who have signed contracts.

After being idle for half a year, the contract he signed with Penguin Video did not include the provision of on-time wages. The salary he received from the two online dramas was not much. In order to support his family, Tian Xinye finally made up his mind and prepared to find a job.

Several advertising companies are applying for jobs as directors and assistant directors. If not, they can become storyboard illustrators.

The films made by Chen Jingxing are actually better than the scripts, and are not outstanding in light, shadow and camera. Of course, this does not affect the audience's love for watching his films.

This is also the reason why Chen Jingxing can only be a commercial director. It is absolutely impossible for him to play with light and shadow art like Wang Jiawei.

Hearing this question from Chen Jingxing, Tian Xinye was a little panicked. Shooting a TV series and drawing storyboards sounded a bit outrageous in China today.

Maybe it's because Tian Xinye is really unlucky, or maybe he's really not good at carving things out of shit, so both web dramas fell into obscurity.

As a result, DreamWorks was incredibly fast and quickly provided him with a contract, which required him to shoot three film and television dramas for DreamWorks within five years. If the agreed number of works were not completed, the cooperation period would be extended until the agreed number of works were completed.

During the filming of the film and television drama, DreamWorks will pay the film remuneration normally.

Therefore, even if he is producing a TV series, Chen Jingxing must strive for excellence in his work. "Signal" already has a very good script foundation. For TV series, a good script is the foundation of everything.

This means that "Signal" already has a relatively high lower limit, and what Chen Jingxing needs to do is to work hard to raise his upper limit.

Unexpectedly, Penguin Video Network suddenly told him about DreamWorks' recruitment of directors and told him that he was already on the candidate list.

Having established a reputation in movies, Chen Jingxing would naturally not allow him to fail in TV series.

And there’s a signing fee of 1.5 million!

"I heard that when you are filming a TV series, you have a habit of drawing storyboards before shooting?"

Usually for web dramas, a double harvest of word-of-mouth and clicks is the best result. If the word-of-mouth is not good, a good click-through rate is also a good result. However, the two web dramas produced by Tian Xinye had a bad reputation and a low click-through rate.

Not many viewers cared about the language used in some of Tian Xinye's scenes in the play. The script's crotch stretching was obviously something that light and shadow could not remedy, and only some colleagues in the industry praised his scenes on Weibo.

Tian Xinye signed the signing agreement in a daze. To this day, he still feels a little incredible about the sudden olive branch extended by DreamWorks.

Tian Xinye himself was also worried and even suffered a big blow. Although Penguin Video Network did not kick him out directly, maybe it was unwilling to part with the liquidated damages, or maybe it wanted to save some favor and wanted to wait until the contract expired to break up automatically.

Anyway, no more projects were given to him.

This thing is talent. Tian Xinye has such talent. Chen Jingxing even thinks that without him as a variable, Tian Xinye will probably leave the video platform completely and go to art movies after experiencing another failure. Maybe he will soon be in Europe

Sanda saw his figure.

This requires the matching of lens language, which is commonly known as film quality. In his opinion, Tian Xinye's lens language is very good. To put it bluntly, it is better than many directors he knows, including himself.

When Tian Xinye first started filming web dramas, his habit of drawing storyboards delayed the filming progress. The producer was dissatisfied at the time.

"Don't worry, Director Chen, I won't delay the filming progress, and I don't draw storyboards for every shot..."

Chen Jingxing smiled and said: "That's not what I meant. What I like is your composition and lens language. Drawing storyboards is a good habit, so just go ahead and draw them!"

Then he pulled out a script and said: "Here, this is the script of "The Signal". Make up the storyboards while reading it and give full play to your artistic talent."

(End of chapter)