Chapter 57 Both Parties Are Satisfied
Jerry has seen a lot of directors who want to add actors to their casts.
It was really the first time for him to meet the director who wanted to recruit crew members to join the set.
Considering Wu Yuan's nationality, he understood instantly.
In the eyes of Hollywood, the current Chinese film industry is basically equivalent to a barren desert.
Although Chinese-language literary and artistic films are indeed very popular in Europe, the domestic film market in China is almost zero, and the box office of a year is less than a fraction of the box office of a month in North America.
The market gap is almost a hundred times!
Such a barren soil is indeed unable to cultivate a film industry system like Hollywood, and the crew's working model is relatively primitive.
Among other things, a Hollywood commercial blockbuster crew has nearly a hundred positions in various positions, and can be divided into about ten groups, adding up to 500-600 crew members, each with a clear division of labor.
In China, there are only 20 or 30 people working on a film crew, which is more than 50 or 60 people. Moreover, many common positions in Hollywood crews are not filled by anyone in China.
For example, art directors, gunsmiths, digital imaging technicians, instrument technicians, maintenance engineers, pre-visualization technicians, etc...
Most of their work is generally covered by "field affairs".
This also leads to the fact that in the Chinese domestic film crew, those who work on set are like bricks, they can be moved wherever they are useful.
This kind of approach is called humane at best, but unprofessional at worst.
It is quite normal for Wu Yuan to want to use the crew of a film with a mature industrial system like "Pirates of the Caribbean" to train his own crew.
Jerry pondered, thinking.
Do you want to agree to this condition?
Jerry never thought that Wu Yuan could use this method to imitate the Hollywood film industry and replicate it in China.
Are you kidding me? A mature film system cannot be established by just a few professional crew members.
At most, Wu Yuan can use this method to cultivate a crew close to the Hollywood system.
It seems that this is not a difficult condition to agree to.
At least it's easier to talk about than asking for splitting accounts at the box office.
"Daniel, I can agree to your condition, but the number of people cannot exceed 30 people, and you need to bear their own wages for the crew." Jerry shrugged and agreed without much hesitation.
"No, you still need me to pay for the wages of several crew members?" Wu Yuan said speechlessly.
"Hey, Daniel, I'm doing this for your own good." Jerry looked directly into Wu Yuan's eyes and said meaningfully: "This way you can sign a reasonable long-term employment contract with them, right?"
Huh, Wu Yuan was stunned.
As expected from a capitalist country, Jerry is still the best.
It is true that Wu Yuan cannot train the crew in vain. He has to sign a guarantee contract. It is indeed more suitable to pay the salary himself.
But this matter can be arranged slowly later.
With a smile on his face, Wu Yuan stretched out his hand to shake Jerry's hand: "Then I wish us a happy cooperation in advance!"
Wu Yuan initially agreed to direct "Pirates of the Caribbean".
The director of Tool Man will be Tool Man. After all, the script of this movie is very good. Even if he didn't change anything, it would still be a commercial film that would be well-received and well-received. Otherwise, it would be impossible to make five movies.
Although it is impossible to talk about the box office share, eight million US dollars is not a small amount of money.
The most important thing is that he really needs a crew that is at or close to the level of Hollywood.
After training in the three parts of "Pirates of the Caribbean", Wu Yuan believes that he can use this platform to train himself a Chinese crew that can handle commercial blockbusters.
In this way, after the filming of "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" is completed, the mainland market is about to pick up. If someone has money, he can create his own Chinese-language commercial blockbuster!
Thinking about it this way, it was difficult for Wu Yuan to give a reason for rejection, both emotionally and rationally.
The only pity is that he has to sacrifice his rest time.
Originally, Wu Yuan planned to take a break after filming "The Embalmer", but now he has to continue filming "Pirates of the Caribbean", and it seems that he has no time to spare.
After discussing the intention, Jerry was not in a hurry to return to the United States, but went to Anshan with Wu Yuan.
During the day, he followed the crew almost the whole time to watch Wu Yuan direct the play, and judged Wu Yuan's directing level from the side.
In the evening, he and Wu Yuan discussed the big project of "Pirates of the Caribbean".
According to Disney's plan, the film must be launched in November 2002 at the latest.
Before that, the crew had to do a lot of preparation work.
Including building a one-to-one physical version of the Dreadnaught, the Black Pearl, and multiple 17th-century pirate ships. These must be made of real objects rather than using CG special effects.
Moreover, Disney also plans to film the final plot point of the first part, the cave where Barbossa hides his treasure, in real life. The construction of this cave alone is time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Although Wu Yuan does not need to do these things personally, as a director, he also has the right to make suggestions and information, and Jerry must communicate with him.
In addition, the most important issue is the selection of actors.
The script is in place, the investment has been received, and the crew is making preparations in an orderly manner. The only thing missing now is the actors.
Jerry still attaches great importance to Wu Yuan's opinion in this regard. He held video conferences with Wu Yuan and two screenwriters every night to select suitable actors.
Because Wu Yuan's focus was mostly on his "Departures", and he thought the original casting of "Pirates of the Caribbean" was good, he did not give too many suggestions.
In the end, the crew still chose Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley to play Jack, Will and Elizabeth.
The villain Barbossa in the first film was still played by Geoffrey Rush.
Everything was no different from the original trajectory, the only difference was that a Chinese director was changed.
Wu Yuan did not plan to change anything about "Pirates of the Caribbean" this time.
The movie was good enough, and the script was not his original work, so he completely put himself in the position of a tool man.
Jerry was also very satisfied with Wu Yuan's attitude. He did not want a Chinese director who did not understand the Caribbean in the 17th century to be too bossy in the script and casting. Professional matters should be left to other professionals.
On the contrary, after observing the crew of "Departures" for half a month, Jerry was very satisfied with Wu Yuan's directing skills.
Regardless of whether he can shoot big scenes, at least in the field of feature films focusing on small scenes, Wu Yuan did shoot very well, with impeccable pictures, composition, color, and shooting techniques.
Even Wu Yuan's skilled directing skills do not look like a new director who has just been in the industry for two years.
Jerry naturally did not know that Wu Yuan had been doing related work in his dreams for 20 years. He only felt that the director he found was really talented and at least he was definitely capable of shooting "Pirates of the Caribbean"!
Jerry, who was very satisfied with Wu Yuan, said goodbye to Wu Yuan with confidence after finally finalizing the casting of "Pirates of the Caribbean", flew back to the United States, and began to prepare for the filming of this movie wholeheartedly.
Wu Yuan also needed to take time to make storyboards based on the storyboards after finishing "Departures", and frequently exchange ideas with the production designer and several screenwriters to improve the filming plan of the film.
After that, before November 2002, he took more than 20 "trainees" to the United States on time to take over the filming of "Pirates of the Caribbean"!
Thanks to the leader!
The leader added three chapters, but I owe them first, and I will add them together after the release.