Li Zhibai was in great pain.
It’s not because of anything else, but because he never realized that in the entertainment industry where he has been for so many years, there are so many weirdos of all kinds.
In order to find a suitable producer and director for "Nineteen Years of Crime", Li Zhibai met countless people this month.
Because there are no professional agencies for producers and directors in China, if they want to find producers and directors for a project, they can only do so through introductions from video platforms, film and television companies, and friends around them.
Li Zhibai had made many movies himself, and he knew some production companies and friends. However, even the people introduced by these acquaintances surprised him more than the last.
The people he had met on the crew before were all very strong in their professional aspects, apart from anything else.
This also gave him the illusion that everyone was very reliable, at least in their own professional field.
But he didn't realize that the projects he had participated in in the past were all at least A-level productions in the industry, and the people who could participate in these projects were the best talents in their respective fields.
People who don’t have good business skills won’t even have the chance to meet him.
This caused him to have a biased understanding of the industry.
Li Zhibai said to Lu Yanhe, "No, I still can't do this like you did and recruit a bunch of people to do it. I don't have that much ability. I have to find a production company to do it together. They can put more pressure on me. This is my first work, just consider it as my tuition fee."
Lu Yanhe was surprised that Li Zhibai would choose to compromise.
"Okay." Lu Yanhe also supported Li Zhibai's move. "In fact, if you ask them to do it, you can save a lot of effort."
Li Zhibai's work on "Nineteen Years of Crime" is very different from Lu Yanhe's work on his project. Li Zhibai's previous success as an actor did not make others trust his ability as a producer. The failure of the movie version also made his bargaining power weak.
If Li Zhibai wants to attract a good team to produce this drama, he cannot do it by his own strength for the time being. He can only choose to take a step back and compromise on his own interests in order to reach cooperation with others.
Finally, after some negotiations, "Nineteen Years of Crime Records", produced by Li Zhibai, signed a cooperation agreement with Dengta Video. Dengta Video will buy the broadcasting rights and its production company will undertake the production. Li Zhibai, Lu Yanhe and Yan Liang all made investments in their personal capacity and served as co-producers.
Li Zhibai played the villain in the play, and the hero of the story, the policeman, was played by Jiang Jun at the recommendation of Lu Yanhe. This was mainly because Li Zhibai's salary had already accounted for more than half of the budget for the actor's salary, and the salary of the other hero could not be too high. After weighing the pros and cons, Jiang Jun was the most suitable.
Finally, Jiang Jun was able to get the consent of Dengta Video to play the leading role in this drama for another very important reason: he was the leading actor in "Squid Game". In the industry, Jiang Jun is one of the male stars to be popular.
The long-awaited TV series version of "Nineteen Years of Crime" has finally made official progress.
Lu Yanhe felt more and more that his filming of Love Letter was really the result of the right time, right place and right people. He was lucky to have the help of Luo Yuzhong and Liu Bige, otherwise, with his mediocre skills, he might not even be able to start the filming.
Not every actor has the ability to organize a group and code.
However, when it comes to actors of the level of Lu Yanhe, Jiang Yuqian, and Li Zhibai, they actually have the resources to participate in the production process.
Lu Yanhe also thought this was a good thing. Especially for actors like Jiang Yuqian, who seemed to have passed the peak of their popularity, if they just kept waiting, waiting for scripts, waiting for others to come to them, they might be completely eliminated by the market.
Any top actor must have the ability to do his own projects. This ability does not mean that he has to do it himself, but that he can organize it.
Just like Jiang Yuqian found Ye Luo to work together on "Telephone".
Since Li Zhibai did not find such a person, he could only agree to the conditions of Lighthouse Video and rely on the power of Lighthouse Video.
But this is not a bad thing. Li Zhibai had his first experience in the production of the drama "Nineteen Years of Crime Records".
He will know what kind of people are needed to create a play, what steps it needs to go through, and what the twists and turns are.
In the process, he will also get to know talents from various departments and trades.
When Li Zhibai has the opportunity to do a second film and television project in the future, regardless of whether he has the ability to organize it himself at that time, he will be more confident than this time and will know more clearly what he has to face and what he has to do.
A person's growth is accumulated bit by bit like this.
At this time, Miao Yue told Lu Yanhe that she finally decided to take on the adaptation of the drama script of "Rouge".
Lu Yanhe was a little surprised, but not surprised.
This is a challenging script adaptation, and considering Miao Yue's gentle exterior but strong interior character, the possibility of her refusing it is really small.
"What about your own script?"
"Put it aside. I can write my own script anytime, but if I don't take on the drama adaptation of Rouge, I think I will regret it every time I think about it in the future."
Lu Yanhe certainly supported his classmate's decision.
He knew Miao Yue's abilities.
She may not be able to come up with a successful drama adaptation, but she will never be perfunctory or make random changes.
"It feels like you are a magnet, slowly attracting everyone around you."
Li Pengfei rarely went back to Yuming, and when he had dinner with Lu Yanhe, he made a joke.
Lu Yanhe asked with a smile: "When will you be attracted to me?"
Li Pengfei asked, "Is there anything you need me to do?"
Lu Yanhe: "You suddenly ask me if there is anything I can do for you. Of course I can't answer you."
Li Pengfei: "I don't know what I can do by your side. I don't have any outstanding abilities, so what can I do?"
"I don't need you to do anything special for me, but... we used to see each other every day when we were in high school. After entering college, you were not in Yuming and I was busy filming, so we rarely saw each other even during the winter and summer vacations." Lu Yanhe said, "If we can work together, we can see each other more often."
Li Pengfei: "How dare you say that? You've been filming during every winter and summer break, and you've never had a break."
"Before, we had to attend classes except during the winter and summer vacations, so of course we could only schedule filming during those times." Lu Yanhe said, "This situation should get much better in the future."
"But I'm graduating soon, so I won't have any winter or summer vacations." Li Pengfei complained, "However, no matter what I do after graduation, I will definitely return to Yuming."
"How can you be so sure that you are going back to Yuming?"
"Zijun wants to stay in Yuming. If I don't go back to Yuming, where should I go?" Li Pengfei said, "Didn't Chen Siqi buy a house in Lingyang District? Will the editorial office of Jump Up be located there in the future?"
"Yes, I forgot all about it."
Li Pengfei: "My name is on the first issue of Jump Up. I'm a founding member. Will your office hang my photo up there?"
Lu Yanhe: "...You can ask Chen Siqi yourself."
"Forget it." Li Pengfei shrugged. "One should be low-key."
Lu Yanhe: "Do you want to go back to Jump Up?"
"Why would I go back? If I was interested in that place, I would have stayed here." Li Pengfei said, "I hate reading so much, how can you expect me to run a magazine well? That's nonsense. Even my dad doesn't dare to think that way."
"Did your father ask you to go back and take over?" Lu Yanhe asked.
Li Pengfei: "I won't take over the business, that's my brother's job. I've told you my life goal, which is to do nothing and live happily. I will rely on my father for the first half of my life and my brother for the second half. I will avoid quarrels among brothers and infighting within the company, and have a happy and beautiful life. How wonderful it is."
"Every time you say that, I feel that you are not so willing to enjoy such a wonderful life. You just don't want to have any possibility of fighting with your brother."
Li Pengfei smiled.
He put his hands on the back of his head and leaned back.
"If I hadn't met you, I might have just been living a life of idleness and waiting to die."
"How could Xu Zijun let you just eat and wait for death?" Lu Yanhe said, "She is the real reason why you are unwilling to accept this. Don't talk about me. I don't have that ability."
Li Pengfei let out a long sigh.
"Fuck, we haven't seen each other much in the past few years. How do you know so much about what I'm thinking?"
"If I have to meet you often to know what you are thinking, then we would have ceased to be friends long ago."
The two people looked at each other and smiled.
For a moment, they both felt like they were back in their senior year of high school.
"Let's organize a class reunion sometime," Li Pengfei said. "We haven't seen each other for a long time."
In the past few years, the high school class had organized several reunions, large-scale ones where all classmates were notified, but because they were always during the winter and summer vacations, Lu Yanhe was unable to attend every time.
Lu Yanhe nodded and said okay.
He added, "But why did you suddenly think of organizing a class reunion? I didn't see you interested before."
Li Pengfei said: "Li Cui called me a few days ago and told me that Jiang Haitian's father had a car accident and died half a year ago. I didn't know about this. Jiang Haitian never told me. When I was in high school, he and I got along well. Later, when I went to college, although we didn't keep in touch often, we didn't lose contact. I felt very upset. There were some classmates who were very close and had a good relationship before, but gradually everyone became distant. I still hope that there can be such an event so that everyone can get together regularly, at least to understand each other's current situation and know in time if anyone needs help."
Lu Yanhe looked surprised.
Only then did he realize that Li Pengfei had such a motive when he said he wanted to organize a class reunion.
"So that's it."
"Ah."
Li Pengfei smiled and asked, "By the way, do you still remember Mei Ping?"
"Of course I remember. She was very active in the class," said Lu Yanhe.
Li Pengfei said: "It seems that she is going to get married soon."
"Ah? Getting married? So soon?" Lu Yanhe was shocked.
Marriage seemed to be a very distant thing for people of their age. Lu Yanhe had never thought that it would happen so soon to his peers.
"Yeah." Li Pengfei said, "You didn't expect it, did you? I was shocked too."
Neither Lu Yanhe nor Li Pengfei are single, but they have never thought about getting married so early.
"Have you and Chen Siqi considered this matter recently?"
"We even just agreed to rent a house together after graduation."
Li Pengfei: "You two are renting a house together? Why don't you just buy one? With your financial strength, you should have been able to afford it a long time ago, right?"
"Because I haven't paid enough social security, I'm not eligible to buy a house." Lu Yanhe said, "Unless I buy in a place like Lingyang District, there are no purchase restrictions there."
Li Pengfei: "Well, okay. If I tell anyone, no one would believe that you two actually rented a house."
"What's wrong with renting a house? The place where Li Zhibai, Yan Liang and I live now is still rented." Lu Yanhe said.
"It's mainly because it doesn't match the perception of you big stars that we ordinary people have." Li Pengfei joked, "In our minds, you have already lived in that kind of big mansion."
Lu Yanhe: "Living in a mansion is boring, at least I don't think it's boring now. Such a big house, but there are only one or two of us living in it, it's empty."
"Do you think there are only one or two of you living here? Butler, chef, security guard, cleaner... generally people who live in luxury houses have a professional logistics team." Li Pengfei said.
Lu Yanhe was surprised and asked, "Is it so exaggerated?"
"What's so exaggerated about this? If you have money, you will always try every possible way to improve your quality of life. Isn't the purpose of making money to spend? If you don't improve your quality of life, then what's the point of making all this money? Just put it in the bank and turn it into numbers?"
Li Pengfei's words made Lu Yanhe fall into deep thought.
"I have to admit that I used to have the idea that no matter how much money I make, I should not waste it."
“It’s not a waste.”
"Indeed." Lu Yanhe nodded.
Li Pengfei: "Yan He, don't forget that Chen Siqi was raised in luxury. Don't use your idea of thriftiness on her."
Lu Yanhe: "I didn't say that you should save money. Of course I saved money when I didn't have money before. Now you don't have money, right?"
"That's fine."
-
In fact, there are people who go into the Ziyuan Bridge area regularly to clean it.
Lu Yanhe and the other two often go out to film, so the house is empty most of the time.
When I signed the contract with the agent, in addition to the confidentiality clause, there was also a clause that the agent would be responsible for the daily cleaning and management of the house.
However, these things are usually done when the three of them are not around, so Lu Yanhe usually doesn't realize this.
Pay for services.
This is a very normal thing.
Lu Yanhe knew that he had a bit of an "ordinary family" mindset before. In fact? He had already begun to enjoy the convenience of "paying for services", but he still thought he was in a state of being as self-sufficient as possible.
Chen Ziyan, Wang Biao and the entire team help him with his food, clothing, housing and transportation.
Although Wang Biao is an assistant at work, many things in Lu Yanhe's daily life are also handled by him.
Whether it is work or life, he has long since deviated from the general public's pattern.
This sounded a wake-up call for him.
Not that much else.
When he is acting, what he thinks is the "ordinary person state" may not be the real "ordinary person state".
Lu Yanhe, who was always self-reflective, wrote this down in his little memory notebook.
-
Two days later, he saw the preview for the third season of Friends on the Internet.
This season, Zhang Lan joined and became one of the protagonists of the third season of "Friends".
However, this season has undergone another major change, with a change of director.
Bai Jingnian left Beijing and Taiwan and went to Northern Lights Video to film "Wulin Waijia" written by Lu Yanhe.
In this season of "Friends", the director is changed to Yu Yao.
Lu Yanhe also didn't know what style of Yu Yao's previous directorial works was.
Judging from the trailer, Zhang Lan did not have many roles, basically on par with the other five main actors, and did not do anything to overshadow the main cast. This made her first appearance receive much better audience feedback than Chen Ziliang in the second season.
However, the story of the third season seems to continue the bloody style of the second season.
Judging from the trailer, Zhou Zhixi, played by Bai Jin, is even suspected to be pregnant, and it is also possible that she is pregnant with Hu Fan, played by Yan Liang.
This clip in the trailer, unsurprisingly, became a hot topic.
After two years of fermentation, the drama "Friends" has basically become the drama with the greatest long-tail effect.
The strength of the audience base exceeds many people's imagination.
The number of people who are paying attention to the plot and character development of this drama has reached an exaggerated level.
Especially after the second season's reputation collapsed and the director was replaced in the third season, fans of "Friends" now seem to be ready to curse Jingtai until the end of time.
But no matter what, the popularity of the third season of "Friends" is still extremely high. Just a trailer came out, but it overwhelmed the popularity of all the TV series currently being aired.
This is the power of the drama king.
-
"We can synchronize the trailer data with the previous advertisers and tell them that their doubts can be completely dispelled. Even if there is no Lu Yanhe in Friends and the director is changed, it will still be the most watched and anticipated drama by the audience."
Xu Bin said to Hu Siwei.
Hu Siwei nodded.
The excitement of the third season trailer really made all of them feel relieved.
At least, the audience's expectations for "Friends" are still there, and they have not lost interest just because of the poor reputation of the second season.
After Hu Siwei nodded, he did not leave Xu Bin's office immediately.
"What's wrong?" Xu Bin looked at Hu Siwei and asked, "Do you have anything else to say?"
Hu Siwei thought about it and, as the producer of "Friends", he felt that he still needed to speak out.
"Director Xu, although the trailer has been very popular, there are many voices of doubt. If the controversy continues, it may affect the ratings." Hu Siwei said, "Are we really not going to invite Bai Jingnian back to direct the fourth season? The actors have said that the filming of this season... is much worse than before."
Xu Bin frowned.
"The second season was also very controversial, but in the end the ratings still held up. This shows that controversy does not affect the show."
Hu Siwei shook his head. "On video platforms, the replay rate of the second season is one-third less than that of the first season. Especially the clips where Chen Ziliang appeared. On video websites, 62% of viewers skipped them directly."
This was not the first time that Hu Siwei told Xu Bin about these data.
Xu Bin also knew it a long time ago.
"Aren't you shooting yourself in the foot by inviting Bai Jingnian back to direct the fourth season?" Xu Bin said angrily.
The reason Bai Jingnian wanted to leave was because he felt that he was not valued in Beijing and Taiwan, so he left in anger.
Hu Siwei said, "You've already seen the material for the third season. It's visibly worse than the previous two seasons. If we wait until the third season is badly criticized by the audience before inviting Bai Jingnian back to direct, we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot. We can still have some initiative if we invite him now before the third season airs."
Xu Bin: "I don't believe that he is the only one who can direct Friends. If he is so capable, why did he only come to the fore with Friends? He has made so many movies before, why didn't they make a splash?"
Hu Siwei: "...If he didn't have the ability, why would Lu Yanhe and Northern Lights Video invite him back to direct "Wulin Wai Zhuan"?"
Xu Bin's face was gloomy and ugly.
Hu Siwei continued, "To be honest, I can say now that the reputation of the third season will be worse than the second season, and the ratings may not be stable. If we can't invite Bai Jingnian back to direct, it's hard to say whether the fourth season can be filmed in Chengdu."
"What do you mean?"
"Yan Liang and Wen Minglan have not signed contracts for the fourth season yet," Hu Siwei said. "After the first season ended, we only signed agreements with them for the second and third seasons. They were the two actors who were most dissatisfied with the third season. They even had a conflict with the director on the set and had very different opinions on the filming."
Xu Bin's face became even uglier.
"The two of them... have expressed this before. If Friends doesn't make any changes, they will consider leaving."
Xu Bin, who had just been elated by the good trailer data, could no longer be elated for a moment.
-
"Minglan and I have reached an agreement. If they continue to film Friends in the same way as they are now, we would rather not show up again."
Yan Liang said to Lu Yanhe on the phone.
"At that time, they even arranged for a scene where Minglan and I slept together after getting drunk."
Yan Liang had never told Lu Yanhe about this matter before, so when Lu Yanhe heard it now, he felt incredibly shocked and stunned.
"We both got angry, so we asked them to delete this part and rewrite it." Yan Liang sighed, "Now they are making Friends more and more like a melodrama. When we were filming the first season, you said that Friends would become a lifestyle that many young people yearn for. I feel that they are not filming a lifestyle that everyone yearns for, but are deliberately creating conflicts."
Lu Yanhe: "Have you discussed this matter with them seriously? Who arranged this kind of plot in the script?"
Yan Liang: "It was someone in Beijing and Taiwan who suggested this, saying that only when the plot is richer and more unexpected, there will be more topics to talk about, and the screenwriters wrote according to this opinion. Anyway, the current directors and screenwriters will not go against the TV station people."
Lu Yanhe: "..."
"I just think it's a shame. Such a good story and characters, such a good first season, a sitcom that can be filmed without any mistakes, but they messed it up like this." Yan Liang was very annoyed, "It's a waste of the script and characters you wrote."
Lu Yanhe: "It's okay, Yan Liang, if it really doesn't work, we won't perform it anymore."
Yan Liang: "I should have stopped acting after the first season with you."
“That’s not the case. Even if Chen Ziliang’s part is deleted in the second season, it’s still watchable.” Lu Yanhe said.
Yan Liang was still angry, but when he heard what Lu Yanhe said, he immediately laughed.
"Oh." Yan Liang smiled and then sighed.
No matter what, it is always sad and depressing that a series that could have become a classic has ended up being a poor imitation.
Lu Yanhe asked: "Are you almost done with the filming?"
"It's almost done. The director is wrapping up. My scene should be finished in three or four days." Yan Liang said, "I won't have a rest after the filming is finished. I have to cooperate with the promotion of the third season of Friends. I really don't want to cooperate this time. What if I can't help myself and accidentally say something I shouldn't say? That would be very annoying."
Lu Yanhe said, "Haha, you are such a cautious person, that won't happen. When you come back, you can promote the movie, but you will still have time to have dinner with us. At the end of December, I will go to shoot Love Letter again."
Yan Liang said, "I will go and observe when the time comes."
"By then? You won't have to cooperate with the promotion of Friends by then?"
"I didn't sign a one-month promotional contract with them. I just need to cooperate as much as I can." Yan Liang's dissatisfaction with Jingtai could be felt even through the phone.
-
However, Lu Yanhe did not expect that just as the third season of "Friends" was announced to be broadcast, Northern Lights Video suddenly contacted Lu Yanhe and said that they wanted to postpone the broadcast of "Squid Game" to the end of December.
Although one is a TV series and the other is a web series, the fact that they are broadcast at the same time is obviously a competition in this age where everything is digitized.
Lu Yanhe was shocked and asked them, "Squid Game" was completed so quickly?
Northern Lights said that Squid Game is their most important project and they have been working overtime on it just to catch up with the winter vacation.
For this kind of subject matter, middle school students are an audience group that cannot be underestimated.
"Squid Games" is also a short series, with the original version having only nine episodes, each sixty minutes long.
The script written by Lu Yanhe was divided into twelve episodes in total, and each episode was about fifty minutes long.
Northern Lights plans to broadcast "Squid Game" in a daily format, which will be completed in twelve days.
Lu Yanhe was a little confused. For a short drama like this, you either release the entire series at once or broadcast it weekly. Why broadcast it daily?
However, the video platform naturally has its own considerations, and Lu Yanhe will not intervene to adjust such things.
"Squid Game" is finally going to be launched, and Lu Yanhe is quite nervous.
The main reason is that Lu Yanhe himself doesn’t know why this drama is so popular——
Therefore, he was afraid that when he wrote the script, he would not write out the truly attractive parts of it.
But it is an indisputable fact that this drama is a big hit.
Lu Yanhe will never question why a work is so popular with the audience. He will only ask himself, have you figured out why it is so popular with everyone?
If you don't figure it out, then you are actually unqualified as a creator.
Northern Lights Video released the trailer for Squidward Floyd three days after it released the trailer for Friends Season 3.
It was also at this time that Lu Yanhe learned why Northern Lights Video wanted to broadcast "Squid Game" in a twelve-episode daily format, because Maxine, the international streaming media broadcaster of "Squid Game", would release all the episodes online at once on the day the last episode was broadcast in China.
Lu Yanhe: "..."
He thought there was some special reason for the twelve episodes to be broadcast daily.
After all this time, this is it.
If the third season of "Friends" attracted much attention based on the previous two seasons, then "Squid Game" has been anticipated since the beginning of the project because it was written by Lu Yanhe and has the same battle royale theme as "The Seventeenth Floor".
The broadcasting schedule of these two dramas seemed like a competition, which made everyone excited as if they were injected with chicken blood.
Everyone loves to watch boxing matches.
especially--
The intersection of these two dramas is Lu Yanhe.
The media with a curious mind directly gave the title: Avenger Lu Yanhe.
No one has forgotten the conflict between Lu Yanhe and Jingtai in the drama "Friends".
This is not a past that can be whitewashed by a "great reconciliation" between him and Jiang Lan on stage.
In fact, that time they were on the same stage, they were just on the same stage.
After that, Lu Yanhe and Jingtai never collaborated on any drama again.
Judging from Lu Yanhe’s current output and the frequency of cooperation with Northern Lights Video, it is already obvious that there is a problem.
Everyone has their own opinion on what Lu Yanhe's true attitude towards Beijing and Taiwan is.
Which one will perform better, the third season of "Friends" or "Squidward Gamble"?
At this time, few people were particularly optimistic about "Squidward Floyd". After all, the latter is a new drama, while the former is a two-season drama. Even if the reputation of "Friends" Season 2 collapsed, the basic market is still there.
Of course, considering the configuration of "Squid Game" and its current data, it will definitely not be bad and will definitely be a hit.
Especially since it will be launched on Maxine——
Judging from Lu Yanhe’s past performance, people are actually more interested in seeing whether “Squid Game” can continue to be popular overseas rather than the performance of “Squid Game” in China.
This time, Lu Yanhe will not appear in "Squid Game".
Can Lu Yanhe’s “success miracle” be replicated?
-
Six thousand words guaranteed, with two thousand words added later.
It’s incredible that the update activity lasted for a week.
I really tried hard too.
I recommend reading my old book "I Became a Scandal Heroine Overnight". (End of this chapter)
