Chapter 2 Making Movies Is Really Expensive!
Evening.
Wu Yuan, holding a cigarette in his mouth, tightened his coat around him and rode his bicycle home.
Business was OK today.
In the morning, he wandered around the alleys and sold three discs in addition to one to his senior.
In the afternoon, because he had important professional classes, Wu Yuan couldn't skip classes anymore, so he had to stay in school until after four o'clock. However, he later seized every opportunity he could and sold two more discs on the street before it got completely dark.
The sales of six discs was 60 yuan, minus the cost of 10 yuan, and the net income today was 50 yuan, which was a good result.
However, this income was completely a drop in the bucket for Wu Yuan.
"It's better to save a little bit, just wait for the 2002 World Cup to come back." Wu Yuan muttered as he walked.
He was a serious student at the Film Academy, but he didn't take classes seriously in school. He often ran out to sell homemade pirated discs everywhere. Of course, there was a reason.
Even though his attendance rate was not high at all, Wu Yuan was still loved by all the teachers in the department. Naturally, it was because his academic performance and practical operation were perfect, which made the school teachers very tolerant of him.
Of course, this was not because Wu Yuan was a genius who could learn without a teacher and become a top student by just learning casually, but because these knowledge were familiar to him.
In fact, Wu Yuan had a big secret in his heart that no one knew.
When he was 16 years old, he had a dream.
In this dream, he was admitted to the film academy he had always dreamed of, and studied hard in school for four years. After graduation, he successfully entered the film industry.
Three years as a camera assistant, three years as a deputy cameraman, five years as a camera director, three years as an executive director, and four years as a co-director.
Finally, in 2022, at the age of 40, he became the chief director and pulled together a film crew with an investment of nearly 50 million yuan.
Then, at the banquet for the crew to start filming, Wu Yuan, who was drunk with the investors and dreaming that the box office of this movie would break 1 billion or 2 billion, woke up from his dream and returned to the morning of 16 years old.
At first, Wu Yuan thought it was just a long lucid dream. Although he was a little melancholy, he didn't care.
But in the following days, he found that the director knowledge and experience he had learned in the dream were clearly imprinted in his mind and could not be erased.
And some major social events that he had experienced in the dream actually happened in reality.
Wu Yuan realized belatedly that the 20 years in the dream were not just a dream!
He was ecstatic and immediately chose to return to his old job and chose to apply for the Beijing Film Academy again.
There was no way. In the 20 years he experienced in his dream, everything was centered around the profession of "director".
If he were to do it again, of course he would choose to dive into this industry again, instead of trying to engage in the Internet and real estate.
At least with these experiences in his dream, his next life will definitely be extremely successful and brilliant!
So, Wu Yuan, who only went to elementary school for five years and skipped a grade in high school, woke up from his dream and was admitted to the 1998 directing department of Beijing Film Academy at the age of 16.
Since entering the film academy, Wu Yuan's mind has not been on studying. He has already learned these things. The reason why he still wants to apply for the film academy is that on the one hand, it is his alma mater in his dream, and on the other hand, if you want to make a movie in this era, it is better to go to a professional school.
After entering the school, he has been thinking about assembling a crew to make a movie.
If it is 2008 now, Wu Yuan believes that he can get investment from the coal boss with the promise of "just stuffing a little honey".
If it is 2012 now, Wu Yuan thinks that with his rich experience in drawing big cakes, he can also get investment from those real estate people.
If it were 2016, it would be easier to say. When those Internet developers entered the market, they had so much money to burn. Wu Yuan could have made a script that met the requirements of big data screening and waited for those Internet giants who used money to pave the way to rush to spend money.
Unfortunately, it is 2000 now. There are no coal bosses, no real estate developers, and no Internet giants in the film industry. Even the film industry has not yet been marketized.
The major state-owned film studios are now in control of the film shooting funds!
Private film companies are generally not allowed to make movies independently!
Even if individuals can raise funds to make independent films, it is unrealistic to find capital to invest money. They have to raise money by themselves, and they have to use the name of a state-owned film studio.
Of course, the sixth generation directors love to shoot their own films and show them abroad, and they don’t apply for them domestically, but doing so is a very dangerous behavior!
And don’t think about doing things like "spending little money to do big things" or "low-cost counterattack at the box office".
On the one hand, the current domestic film market is indeed immature. Last year, in 1999, the box office champion in the mainland was "See You Tomorrow" directed by Feng Xiaogang.
Box office: 43 million!
And after this one, the box office directly dropped to about 10 million, and the box office of other movies below it was only a few million.
The plate is so big, and there are so many screens in the country. Even if Wu Yuan brought those movies with a box office of billions in his dreams, he could not replicate the results, and naturally this industry could not attract any capital to enter.
On the other hand, it is really expensive to make movies now. DV movies like "Paranormal Activity" or movies that cost tens of thousands of dollars in the digital film era are simply impossible to show these days.
Because it is still the era of film movies!
All movie theaters across the country use film projectors to show movies, and they must use copied film discs to be shown in theaters!
You can only choose film to make movies.
But film is expensive!
With digital shooting, you only need to rent a camera and shoot as many takes as you want, and the cost is almost zero - except for the cost of the machine.
But a box of 400 feet of 35MM film can only shoot less than four minutes, and the price is four or five hundred yuan per box.
For a 90-minute movie, if the photographer is a skilled master and the actors are of high level, the film ratio of a movie is 1:3, and it takes about 270 minutes of film.
Add to that the cost of developing and matching lights…
To shoot a 90-minute film, not counting other expenses, the film alone will cost 50,000 to 100,000, and that’s the most ideal situation.
In fact, it’s impossible for Wu Yuan to achieve a 1:3 ratio, and 1:4 is considered a saving.
Wang Xiaoshuai can use 200 boxes of 400 feet of film to shoot an art film.
For Wu Yuan, as long as he wants to make a movie, no matter how low-cost the script is, he must spend 100,000 to 150,000 on the purchase and development of film, plus other expenses of the crew. Without 200,000, he can’t even think about making a movie.
200,000 in 2000, which made Wu Yuan, who had less than 50,000 in savings, discouraged.
This 50,000 was all the savings left for him by his grandfather when he died last year. It was all saved up by his grandfather bit by bit, plus the pension left by his parents after they died on duty.
Wu Yuan, who had a big dream, regretted why he didn't pay attention to the lottery winning numbers of previous years and why he didn't do some side business of investing in stocks in his dream.
Although he knew some very powerful companies with high profits and high market value, even if he invested in those companies now, he would not be able to get rich profits in one or two years.
Everything is difficult at the beginning, and this first start-up capital is always the hardest to earn.
Wu Yuan, who had been a director for his whole life in his previous life, thought about it and thought that it was a good choice to bet on the 2002 World Cup.
Although he never watched football or basketball games, the black whistle of the Korean team in 2002 was so famous that he was impressed even if he didn't play football.
As long as he bet on the Korean team before the semi-finals, it would be done. Without saying too much, it should be no problem to earn the money for the first movie.
"It's not that I don't have money."
Wu Yuan, who had returned to the doorstep, looked up at the home left to him by his grandfather, an old courtyard house in the east city of Beijing.
Although this courtyard house has no heating or air conditioning, the decoration inside has not changed since the 1950s.
But this courtyard house covers an area of more than 200 square meters. If it is really sold, it can still be sold for one or two million!
However, this idea was soon dispelled by Wu Yuan. He shook his head and sighed in his heart: "The next 20 years will be 20 years of crazy house price increases."
"If I sell this courtyard house now and use the money to make a movie, I am afraid that the money earned from making a movie in a few years will not be enough to buy back this courtyard house."
He knows clearly that the courtyard house is a non-renewable resource. With the acceleration of the old city renovation, it will become less and less, and the price will continue to rise.
In a few years, a foreign media tycoon will buy a courtyard house in Dongcheng at a price of 40,000 per square meter, with a total price of 10 million. Then by 2014, this courtyard house will be worth 100 million. Before he wakes up from his dream, the price has already reached 200 million.
This courtyard house of Wu Yuan is a priceless treasure to him, and it will become more and more valuable as time goes by.
In his dream, he just couldn't figure it out. After graduating in 2001, he sold his courtyard house at a low price of 3 million, invested the money in his directing career, and then worked hard for 20 years, and found that the money he saved was not enough to buy back a wing room of this courtyard house.
Wu Yuan will not make the same mistake twice!
Anyway, the domestic film industry has not yet been marketized, and the box office era has not yet arrived. He does not need to rush to make movies in the next two years.
It is still not too late to enter the market after the box office blockbuster "Hero" is a groundbreaking movie.
"It's better to accumulate more capital now and wait until the 2002 World Cup to make a fortune."
After taking out the key to open the gate of the courtyard, Wu Yuan did not go back to the main house directly, but turned into the right wing.
In the right wing, there were some movie copies he borrowed from the school projection room, and on the right wall of the wing, there was also a movie screen and an old 35MM movie projector.
But compared to these, the most important thing was a second-hand DVD burner and a second-hand VCR on the table in the middle of the wing.
This wing was Wu Yuan's usual studio.
All the discs he was wearing and tied to his body were made here.
The method was very simple. After borrowing the copy, play it in the wing, then shoot it with a VCR, and finally convert the image into data and burn it on a DVD. This was the process of making pirated discs in a traditional way.
As long as a movie was pirated with a VCR, it could be copied in batches with a burner.
Although this is not as clear and easy to mass-produce as directly recording audio and video, it is good to have a pirated version of the film these days, what else do you need a bicycle!
This immature industry chain can also generate about 1,000 yuan of income for Wu Yuan a month!
Of course, although Wu Yuan is the "King of Gun Versions in Dongcheng", he also has a bottom line!
He will never burn the movies that are currently being shown, and will not go to the cinema to steal!
He will only burn foreign films that have been completely withdrawn from the cinema, or that are determined to be unable to be publicly shown in the mainland and have not been introduced.
And the clarity of the pirated discs he burns is completely incomparable to the genuine discs.
He serves the ordinary people who are short of money and cannot afford genuine discs, and the main focus is on differentiated competition!
These days, watching movies is a luxury, which is completely different from 20 years later.
Compared to going to the cinema, the first movie that most young people come into contact with is a disc without a cover.
Writer's words: I really don't know how much the film of movies in 2000 cost, but the prices in the book will only be lower, not higher.
Film is more expensive now. A 35mm Kodak original movie film sells for about 1,500 to 1,800 yuan. Due to the shrinking overall environment, very few movies are shot purely on film. The demand is low, and there is no mass production, so the price cannot be lowered.