Heads Up Hollywood

There is no limit to the length of an episode of an American TV series on Starz, most of them will exceed 50 minutes, and some may even exceed an hour. The duration of domestic TV dramas is fixed at 45 minutes.

If the mainland version directly adopts the content of the US version, it will first encounter obstacles in broadcasting.

Must be clipped.

The editing of "Band of Brothers" encountered trouble. It cut the US version of "Band of Brothers" from 10 episodes into 14 episodes.

Since CCTV is going to participate in the investment of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan", it is definitely not the cooperation model of "Band of Brothers". CCTV can request to enjoy all the shooting materials, and then edit them according to the Chinese people's own viewing habits!

The US version is too extravagant. All water-filled plots are deleted and only dry goods are included, resulting in a lot of wasted footage.

But in fact, the plot of water injection is not necessarily useless.

The plot has its ups and downs, and procrastination can often increase the audience's expectations and prepare for the climax.

But there is one thing to pay attention to.

Starz is Pay TV! Subscription fees are extremely high!

It is irresponsible to users to play water injection episodes on Starz. Moreover, the user group of Starz station is generally highly educated, capable of receiving a large amount of pure dry goods, and is unwilling to waste precious time watching water injection plots.

Compared with this, the other extreme is the stinky, long and ink-stained Korean drama.

This kind of TV series, commonly known as "soap opera", is specially for housewives. They have a lot of time to watch TV, and they can do housework while watching TV.

This leads to the fact that the content of TV dramas must not be too deep, and must not contain too much information.

Even if you miss an episode or two occasionally, the plot can still be connected.

This is very important.

Otherwise, housewives watch TV while working, and if they don’t watch a scene, they won’t be able to catch up with the plot, and they will abandon the drama.

As far as China's current TV environment is concerned, the main market is also soap operas.

The plot should be simple and procrastinated, the supply of information should be slow, and the audience should be given enough time to react.

This necessitates a large amount of water injection content.

With the failure experience of "Band of Brothers", Director Zhao has already understood that even if "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" is shot well, if it cannot be edited into a version that suits the national conditions, it will still not have very good ratings.

Tang En could understand Director Zhao's thoughts.

A set of American version editing, pure dry goods, fast pace.

The mainland version has a set of editing, with complicated side lines and irrelevant dialogue, and the content of the TV series is lengthened by water injection.

The US version has 10 episodes, and the mainland version can be expanded to 30 episodes.

"Director Zhao, this will be very troublesome. There are three main points." Tang En frowned, "First, it will greatly increase the production cost. This part of the cost expenditure is not within New Universal's plan."

Whether it is a movie or a TV series, the post-production process is usually rough cutting first, then rendering, color correction, general special effects production, then fine cutting, high-end special effects production, and then dubbing and post-production soundtrack, subtitles, etc.

Each company's process is not the same, but the overall direction remains the same.

The production team will only perform post-production on the part of the screen that may appear on the screen, and most of the original sample material will not be post-processed.

Take "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" as an example, one episode is 1 hour, and the rough cut version is 2 hours. The production team then post-processed the 2 hours of rough cut footage. After rough processing, there is another round of fine editing, which becomes a 1-hour version, and then a round of more refined post-production. A round of final cuts and remedial revisions may be required at the end.

This is the US version.

If it is the mainland version, it will be troublesome.

If you want to edit a 30-episode mainland version, you need at least 50 episodes in the rough cut! Even if the Chinese request is lower, at least 35 episodes must be cut.

Then, the post-production team will post-process the content of these 35 episodes.

The workload is far more than the US version!

"One Bamboo Dingjin Mountain" does not require too much special effects processing, but don't forget that it was a story 100 years ago. In order to present the appearance and architectural style of that era, it is necessary to use computer model processing and color rendering .

The American version has less content and less post-production costs.

The mainland version has more content and costs more.

A budget of $40 million is simply not enough.

Director Zhao is an expert in the industry, of course he understands this truth, and said with a smile: "Boss Tang, you are worrying too much. New Universal just needs to produce the American version broadcast on Starz in its own way. As for the mainland version... …you just give us all your raw footage and finished dailies, and we handle it ourselves.”

"You deal with it?" Tang En shook his head again and again, "Director Zhao, it's not that I underestimate your strength. If you intend to borrow some of the post-production materials we have produced, you can produce the extra part yourself and then combine it. It may be very difficult to assemble a 20-episode or 30-episode TV series. Even if we tell you all the rendering parameters without reservation, you will not be able to do it.”

The sample material is from 100 years ago, and it presents a dark tone. The original material is live action and is bright toned. CCTV wants to post-produce the same color tone as the US side, so there are technical obstacles.

Not to mention CCTV, China Film is currently unable to print commercial blockbusters, mainly due to technical bottlenecks in rendering such as chromatic aberration, shadows, brightness, black spots, and contrast. Still waiting for the qualification approval of the joint venture with Kodak.

Director Zhao was not surprised by Tang En's statement, and said with a smile: "If you just hand over all the materials and documents to us, it will not work. However, I plan to send a team of experienced and capable post-production The production team went to the United States to study and follow you to make the American version of "One Bamboo Dingjin Mountain". After your people finish the production, our people will take over and make the mainland version."

Tang En was stunned for a moment, looked at him blankly, and then laughed, "Haha!"

Mr. Han also laughed.

Director Zhao still looked embarrassing at first, but he was infected by the atmosphere of Tang En and Mr. Han, and he laughed uncontrollably.

As a result, the three women present all looked at each other in blank dismay, not knowing why.

The two hostesses were startled that the always stern Director Zhao would have such a "presumptuous" side.

Qingtian blinked her big eyes, her admiration was beyond words.

She didn't hear any causal relationship.

All she knew was that the big boss of China Film Group and the director of CCTV were begging her godfather for help.

Ha ha!

Godfather is really amazing!

What a happy feeling!

After laughing for a while, Mr. Han pointed to Mr. Zhao and said, "Old Zhao, Lao Zhao, I have convinced you. Okay, if you can negotiate, I will send you some brilliant film post-production masters."

Director Zhao quickly refused, "No, there's no need. Our CCTV doesn't have many resources and talents. This is a chance to go abroad for further study, and I want to train more talents for CCTV."

Mr. Han laughed and said, "Why go abroad for further study? Tang En hasn't agreed to help yet!"

Tang En waved his hand and said: "From my Chinese level, you should understand that I am a good friend in this country. It's just a little trouble, it's nothing."

Mr. Han said solemnly: "Brother, we all see your friendship with the Chinese people. I also reported this matter to the leader yesterday."

Director Zhao moved: "Boss Tang, this is the first time I have seen a foreigner who can speak Chinese at this level. This is more proof of your enthusiasm for cooperation with China than countless paper evidence. On behalf of CCTV, I want to thank you."

CCTV was able to send a team to participate in the post-production of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" to learn from a distance. And after learning, you can practice it yourself!

This experience is so precious!

Regardless of what Director Zhao said just now, when the post-production of the American version of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" is completed, all the New Universal team can withdraw, and CCTV's people will take over and continue to produce the mainland version.

However, they are inexperienced and incompetent. Once they really run into trouble and need help, will New Global watch it?

It was a great kindness for Tang En to express his consent in person.

Tang En waved his hand casually, "With the strength of New Universal, it is not a problem at all to produce "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" alone. I will choose to cooperate with CCTV, just to help you. Of course, when you send it As for the production team, all expenses and additional expenses need to be borne by you yourself, and this amount of money is quite a lot.”

Director Zhao assured: "We have special talent training funds, and we promise not to cause trouble for New Global."

Tang En nodded, then frowned again, "But there are two more points. The mainland version has more content, which will infringe on the follow-up long-term interests of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan". This is very serious."

Director Zhao did not understand this statement.

China do not have.

Tang En explained it to him.

In addition to the broadcast of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" on Starz, another major source of income is DVD sales.

Here comes the question, many people have already watched it on Starz, why should they buy the DVD?

In the same way, most movie fans have already watched movies like "Lord of the Rings" and "Titanic" in theaters. Why are DVDs and videotapes still selling well after they are released?

The reason is the extra content!

The DVD version will have more content than the release version!

For example, "Game of Thrones", DVD sales are crazy. Why? Because in the DVD version, more exciting content has been added!

The TV version of "Game of Thrones" is already pornographic and violent enough. But after watching the DVD version, it is an eye-stimulating one.

Many unfinished scenes on the TV station will be performed vividly and vividly in the DVD version.

Of course, there are still a lot of plots that are logically illogical in the TV version because the duration is too short and the content is too little, and the missing content will be supplemented in the DVD version to make up for the loopholes.

Naturally, the mainland version cannot present any large-scale pictures, but the content will be richer and the logic will be clearer.

This is tantamount to taking away part of the DVD version of the market.