Chapter 1126: Mainland, US, TV, DVD

There is no limit to the length of an episode of an American drama on starz, most of which exceed 50 minutes, and some even exceed 1 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 terms of broadcasting.

must be clipped.

The editing of "Band of Brothers" ran into trouble. The 10-episode American version of "Band of Brothers" was cut into 14 episodes, which broke the rhythm and messed up the rules.

Since CCTV wants 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 it according to the Chinese people's own movie viewing habits!

The US version is so extravagant that all the water-injection episodes are deleted and only dry goods are released, causing a lot of shooting material to be wasted.

But in fact, the water injection plot 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.

There is one thing to note.

starz is a pay TV station! Subscription fees are extremely high!

It is irresponsible for users to play water-filled episodes in starz. Moreover, the user group of starz station is generally of high cultural level, capable of receiving a large amount of pure dry goods, and unwilling to waste precious time watching water injection episodes.

Compared to this, the other extreme is the stinky, long and ink-stained Korean dramas.

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

This leads to the fact that the content of the TV series must not be too deep, and must not be too informative.

Even if one or two episodes are occasionally missed, the plot can still be connected.

This is important.

Otherwise, the housewives would watch TV while working, and they would not be able to catch up with the plot without watching a single scene, and they would give up 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 protracted, the information supply should be slow, and the audience should have enough time to react.

This requires a large amount of water injection.

With the failure experience of "Band of Brothers", Director Zhao has understood that even if "One Bamboo Dignity Gold Mountain" is shot well, if it can't be edited into a version that conforms to national conditions, it will still not have a good ratings.

Tang En can understand Director Zhao's thoughts.

A set of American edition clips, pure dry goods, fast-paced.

The mainland version has a set of edits, with complicated branch lines and irrelevant dialogues, and the content of the TV series is lengthened by injecting water.

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 included in 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 grading, ordinary special effects production, then fine cutting, high-end special effects production, and then dubbing and post-production soundtracks, subtitles, etc.

The process varies from company to company, but the general direction remains the same.

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

Take "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" as an example, an 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, another round of fine-cutting becomes a 1-hour version, followed by a more refined round of post-production. A final round of final trimming and remedial modifications may also 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 the mainland version of 30 episodes, you need at least 50 episodes for rough cuts! Even if China's requirements are lower, at least 35 episodes must be cut.

The post-production team would then post-process the 35 episodes.

The workload is far more than the US version!

"One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" does not require too much special effects processing, but don't forget, it is a story 100 years ago, in order to present the appearance and architectural style of that era, computer model processing and color rendering are indispensable. .

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

The mainland version has a lot of content, and the cost is large.

The $40 million budget is simply not enough.

Director Zhao is an expert in the industry, of course he understands this and smiled: "Boss Tang, you are overthinking it. New Universal just needs to make the US version broadcast on starz in its own way. As for the mainland version... ...you just hand over all the raw material and finished dailies to us and we'll take care of it ourselves."

"What do you guys do?" Tang En shook his head again and again, "Director Zhao, it's not because I underestimate your strength. If you plan to borrow some of the post-production materials we've produced, you can make the extra parts yourself, and then combine them. It may be difficult to assemble a TV series of 20 or 30 episodes. Even if we tell you all the rendering parameters without reservation, you will not be able to do it.”

The dailies are 100 years old and are dark toned. The original footage was shot live and was bright toned. CCTV wants to post-produce the same tone as the US side, which is a technical obstacle.

Not to mention CCTV, China Film is currently unable to print commercial blockbusters, mainly because of the technical bottleneck of rendering in terms of color difference, shadow, brightness, black point, contrast, etc. Still waiting for the approval of the joint venture with Kodak.

Director Zhao was not surprised by Tang En's remarks and said with a smile: "If you just hand over all the materials and documents to us, this will naturally not work. However, I plan to send an experienced and capable post-stage team. The production team went to the United States to study, and followed you to make the American version of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan". After your people have finished making it, 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 laughed too.

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

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

The two hostess were shocked that the always strict Director Zhao would have such a "presumptuous" side.

Qingtian blinked with big eyes, and the admiration was beyond words.

She didn't hear any cause and effect.

She only knew that it seemed that the big boss of China Film and the director of CCTV were begging for help from her godfather.

Ha ha!

Godfather is amazing!

What a happy feeling!

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

Director Zhao quickly refused, "No, no need. Our CCTV has few resources and few talents. This is an opportunity to go abroad for further study. I would like to cultivate more talents for CCTV."

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

Tang En waved his hand and said, "You should understand from my level of Chinese that I am a good friend of 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 specifically reported this to the leaders yesterday."

Director Zhao said with a moving expression: "Boss Tang, this is the first time I have met a foreigner who can speak Chinese to this level. This shows your enthusiasm for cooperation with China better than countless paper evidence. On behalf of CCTV, Thank you."

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

This experience is so precious!

Don't look at what Director Zhao said just now, when the post-production of the US version of "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" is completed, the team of New Universal can all withdraw, and the people from CCTV will take over and continue to produce the mainland version.

However, they are inexperienced and lacking in ability. Once they really run into trouble and need help, will New Universal watch it?

It is a great kindness for Tang En to express his promise in person.

Tang En waved his hand lightly, "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 want to help you. Of course, when you send it. The production team, all the expenses and additional expenses, you need to bear by yourself, and the money is not a lot."

Director Zhao assured: "We have a special talent training fund to ensure that it will not cause trouble to New Global."

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

This statement, Director Zhao did not understand.

China does not have Dunn explained it to him.

In addition to being broadcast on starz, "One Bamboo Ding Jinshan" also has a major source of income from DVD sales.

The question is, many people have already watched it on starz, why do they still buy DVDs?

In the same way, most movie fans have already seen movies like "The Lord of the Rings" and "Titanic" in the cinema. Why do they still sell well after DVDs and videotapes are released?

The reason is the extra content!

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

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

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

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

Of course, there are still many TV versions with too short duration and too little content, which lead to unreasonable plots. They will also supplement the missing content in the DVD version to make up for the loopholes.

The mainland version naturally cannot have any large-scale pictures, but the content will be richer and the logic will be clearer.

This is equivalent to stealing part of the DVD version of the market.