Huayu 1992, my entertainment era

Chapter 95: Directing Your Own MV
Pacific finally agreed to Zhou Ziheng's proposal of a 50-50 profit split.

However, they also signed a supplementary agreement with Zhou Ziheng.

According to the contract between Zhou Ziheng and Pacific, within five years, Zhou Ziheng needs to produce four albums and hand them over to Pacific for distribution.

But now, only more than a year or less than two years have passed, and Zhou Ziheng has already started producing his third album.

At this rate, Zhou Ziheng's contract with Pacific will end next year.

Pacific certainly does not want to watch Zhou Ziheng, its cash cow, break up with Pacific.

Therefore, Pacific came up with a supplementary agreement, hoping that Zhou Ziheng would sign another five-album contract with Pacific after the end of this contract.

Of course Zhou Ziheng would not agree to this.

He is a rare commodity now.

Many record companies were waiting for his contract with Pacific to end and then offer better terms.

He certainly wouldn't tie his future to the Pacific Ocean.

So, after his negotiations with the Pacific side.

He finally agreed to give Pacific only one more album release opportunity.

That is, it was changed from four albums in five years to five albums in five years.

This can be regarded as Zhou Ziheng's repayment to Pacific for his kindness.

The profits from the subsequent albums will continue to be split 50-50 as agreed upon this time.

……

At the end of October, the Chinese music scene lost another great figure.

Danny Chan, one of the three kings of the 35s, was confirmed to have died in hospital at the age of .

Because there was Wong Ka Kui before, he was once exposed in the Chinese music scene.

In addition, Danny Chan was admitted to the hospital last year for taking sleeping pills and has not woken up since then, so the media and even his fans had some expectations about his outcome.

Therefore, although his death still caused a certain degree of sensation, it did not become major news that attracted worldwide attention like that of Wong Ka Kui.

Just when fans in Hong Kong were deeply saddened by the death of Danny Chan.

Guangzhou is hosting a grand event.

Golden Rooster Awards.

This year, the 13th Golden Rooster Awards will be held in Guangzhou.

Zhou Ziheng, as the most popular singer in mainland China and southern China, was also invited to the event and became the performing guest for the Best Director award.

Walking the red carpet was not yet popular in China at that time.

After the guests and shortlisted crews arrived, they were directly led into the venue by the organizers.

Zhou Ziheng came with Chen Xiaoqi.

They entered the venue under the guidance of two young staff members.

To be honest, even Zhou Ziheng had to admit that Chen Xiaoqi was really a successful guy.

Whether in the music or film industry, his connections are excellent.

As soon as he entered the venue, someone greeted him.

"Xiao Qi, long time no see!"

"Hello, Brother Zhang! It's been a while since we last met."

"This is Zhou Ziheng, my friend!"

"Who was that just now..."

Compared to the music industry, Zhou Ziheng really knew nothing about the mainland film industry at that time.

Apart from Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Xiao Gangpao and others, he didn't know anyone else.

“Zhang Jianya, director at Shanghai Film Studio.

I don’t know if you’ve seen his film “Sanmao Joins the Army” last year, it was very well made and he has a good chance of winning the Best Director award this year.”

Chen Xiaoqi talked as he walked.

"I think the best director is 100% Zhang Yimou."

Zhou Ziheng knew about "Sanmao's Military Life".

But if I want to win the Best Director award, I have to ask Director Zhang if he agrees.

Zhang Yimou has been very successful in recent years.

Since the late 1980s, the films produced by the company have hardly had a bad reputation and have won numerous international awards.

At this time, Zhang Yimou had already begun to be regarded as the number one director in China.

This year, Zhang Yimou also has a work shortlisted for the Golden Rooster Awards, "Qiu Ju: A Story of a Woman."

A film that has won many awards internationally.

With this movie, no one else has a chance to compete.

Zhou Ziheng and Chen Xiaoqi were talking when they saw a commotion at the door.

The filmmakers who had been as steady as a rock just now stood up one by one, looking towards the door with smiles on their faces.

Zhou Ziheng and the other man also stopped and looked over there.

Speak of the devil, here comes the great director Zhang Yimou.

He was accompanied by Gong Li. As soon as the two of them came in, they were warmly welcomed by others, and many people came up to say hello.

"Don't you want to be an actor? Why don't you go up and say hello?" Chen Xiaoqi teased Zhou Ziheng with a smile.

He heard Zhou Ziheng say that he wanted to act in a movie.

Also asked him to keep an eye out for any suitable movies.

"Forget it. This guy's movies are all going for awards. My acting skills are still far from perfect."

Zhou Ziheng shook his head.

Most of the mainland directors during this period made movies for the awards, and they had very high requirements for the actors during production and filming.

Of course, new actors can certainly do it too.

Didn’t Zhang Yimou promote many of his actresses?

But they are girls, and Director Zhang is very patient when it comes to training girls.

But if it were a male actor, Zhou Ziheng believed that Director Zhang would not have the patience to train a newcomer.

……

For Zhou Ziheng at this moment, participating in the Golden Rooster Awards was purely a way to broaden his horizons.

He has no film works and is not a screenwriter or director, so even if he goes there he will just be a spectator.

So, he just went there to make friends.

During the entire Golden Rooster Awards period, under the leadership of Chen Xiaoqi, he got to know quite a few people, including actors, screenwriters, photographers and the like.

Because he is not only a popular singer in mainland China, but also has considerable popularity in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

These people in the film industry were actually quite polite to him.

Therefore, when the Golden Rooster Awards were over, Zhou Ziheng didn't gain anything else, but he did get a lot of phone numbers.

Among them were a few people from the Pearl River Film Studio, who were also introduced to by Chen Xiaoqi and Zhou Ziheng.

Zhou Ziheng saved all these people's phone numbers.

These are all connections, who knows where they might come in handy.

As November approached, the production of "Fairy Tale" entered a critical juncture.

The recording of the song has been completed, and the only thing left is the post-production work, which is also the most important part.

For a song, post-production is definitely the most important.

All post-production and mastering processes require very professional personnel. Fortunately, Zhou Ziheng's producer Du Baodong, who was recruited from Pacific, is quite experienced in this area.

Although he has never produced an original album, he produced many albums of ripped songs when ripped songs were at their most popular.

Therefore, he can have full control over the later work.

Zhou Ziheng started shooting the song's MTV.

Unlike other singers’ MTVs which only shoot a few main songs.

The songs in his album are of very good quality, so he decided to make MTVs for all eleven songs.

In fact, there is no need to produce "A Beautiful Night with Full Moon".

Zhou Ziheng has a good relationship with CCTV, so he can ask CCTV to edit the singing video of the Mid-Autumn Festival Gala and use it as an MTV.

However, considering that his new version was not sung with Meng Tingwei, if he used that stage version, he would have to pay for Meng Tingwei's portrait rights.

So, Zhou Ziheng thought about it and decided to reshoot a version.

By the way, for the new version of the song "A Night with Full Moon and Beautiful Flowers", Zhou Ziheng did not ask Meng Tingwei to sing it, but instead asked Faye Wong to sing it.

Good friends should help each other, of course, without talking about money...

Among the eleven MTVs, the one that Zhou Ziheng pays the most attention to is of course "Fairy Tale".

Judging from the song alone, the quality of this song is actually similar to other songs in the album.

But if you add MTV, the level will be raised to a whole new level.

For this song, Zhou Ziheng directly asked his girlfriend Gigi Lai to sing it.

Note that he is definitely not lonely.

He just heard Gigi Lai calling and saying that she and Jet Li went to Beijing to shoot "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber: The Demon Cult Leader". The original plan was to shoot for half a month, but Wong Jing, the quick shooter, finished it in just one week.

Gigi Lai’s visa still has more than ten days to run.

She had come to the mainland with great difficulty, so Zhou Ziheng certainly didn't want her to go back so easily.

Covering yourself with the quilt is the second best thing.

The most important thing is to recruit young men to shoot MTV.

Anyway, most of her songs require female lead roles in MTVs, so instead of giving it to others, she might as well let Gigi Lai play the role.

The original MV of "Fairy Tale" mainly tells the story of a boy and a girl falling in love. When the boy played the piano for the girl, the girl gave him a few notes, which gave the boy inspiration for creation.

Later, when the boy finished the piece and was ready to play it for the girl again, the girl fell seriously ill and fainted. She was then sent to the hospital and never came out again.

In order to fulfill the girl's wish to listen to his performance, the boy called the girl's cell phone during the performance. The girl listened to the performance through the phone on the hospital bed and eventually died during the performance.

Among them, what moved Zhou Ziheng the most was the scene where the boy carried the girl to the hospital on the street.

The girl was bleeding profusely and the boy was crying heart-wrenchingly.

When he saw this part for the first time, Zhou Ziheng, a grown man, couldn't help but shed tears.

Because times were different, although Motorola mobile phones had already appeared in 93, they were not yet popular.

So Zhou Ziheng changed the plot slightly.

The original method of listening to the performance over the phone was changed to watching the main character's performance through live broadcast on the hospital's TV program.

Overall, the plot of the MV has not changed much, it is still the same sad story.

In fact, there were no story-telling MVs like "Fairy Tale" in mainland China or even in the entire Chinese music scene at that time.

At this time, MVs in the Chinese music scene were still mainly based on lip syncing.

The singer chooses a place, and then the MV director sets up a camera and lets the singer lip sync in front of it, interspersed with some dances or scenery.

It’s not that the Chinese music scene at that time hadn’t thought about this kind of MV shooting method.

The biggest reason is that the investment is too huge.

During the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, film was still used for photography.

The film is composed of frames, and the 400-foot Fuji or Kodak film commonly used on the market at that time is.

价格大概是2元～2.5元一帧，正常影像1秒大约是24帧，也就是拍一秒视频大概要用24帧胶卷，而拍一分钟正常镜头至少要烧1400多个2元了。

Some slow motion shots require hundreds or even thousands of frames. Every second really costs money! Sometimes you may not be able to edit a satisfactory minute of footage after shooting for an hour.

All in all, a four-minute MV usually costs at least 20,000 yuan.

If you use a story-based MV, the investment may be even greater, because a story-based MV is almost equivalent to a low-budget movie and requires a certain level of acting skills.

If you take a bad photo, you may waste a lot of film.

Given that the investment is large but the returns are not necessarily great, naturally few people would do this.

Of course Zhou Ziheng also knew this.

But this song itself needs the combination of MV and song to become a killer.

Without the MV, the song would lose its soul and would be imperfect.

Although Zhou Ziheng does not have the habit of pursuing perfection.

But he is not the kind of person who does things casually.

Plus the emphasis on this album.

Therefore, a story-telling MV for "Fairy Tale" is naturally imperative.

There is another reason.

Ever since he starred in "The New Hard Times", he has become very interested in becoming a film director.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to make movies right now.

So he simply used "Fairy Tale" as his practice work.

To this end, he directly bought film worth 150,000 yuan, which scared Florence Hui so much that she scolded him as a prodigal son.

Guangzhou, Yuexiu District.

Zhou Ziheng contributed one of his houses in Guangzhou for the filming.

First arrange staff to check equipment and props.

Zhou Ziheng was chatting about filming with photographer Huang Wei.

Huang Wei is a photographer recruited by Zhou Ziheng from Shanghai Theatre Academy. He has just graduated and is not very old, about the same age as Zhou Ziheng.

"When I carry Gigi Lai down, remember to give close-ups, especially some shots of Gigi Lai bleeding, which can better reflect the anxiety at the moment."

Zhou Ziheng kept talking about his ideas.

Huang Wei didn't like to talk much, he just kept nodding.

"You are such a spendthrift. You spend hundreds of thousands for a music video, and I don't even make 50,000 for a movie."

After Zhou Ziheng finished talking to Huang Wei, the filming was about to begin.

The scenes in the house were filmed first. This part tells the story of the happy life of the male and female protagonists. Zhou Ziheng plays for his girlfriend, who listens quietly, and then playfully presses keys on the piano, giving the protagonist inspiration for a new song.

While going upstairs, Gigi Lai was still complaining about Zhou Ziheng for not knowing how to save money.

One MV costs 150,000. If this money is given to some quick-shooters in Hong Kong, they can make a movie.

And Gigi Lai, she is an actress of TVB.

As we all know, TVB is notoriously stingy. Even the most popular actors under the company don't get much money for a drama.

Fifteen thousand, this is almost equal to the salary she earned from filming several movies!
"What's there to worry about? There's no reward without hard work! With a big investment, my MV will be more exciting and more people will like it.

Moreover, this MV also allows me to experience what it’s like to be a director. With this experience, and some more study, I can make a movie myself.”

Zhou Ziheng thought she looked like a tomboy and couldn't help but smile and scratched her nose.

"You still want to be a director? Do you think it's that easy to be a director? I'm afraid you'll lose all the money you made from singing."

Gigi Lai pouted.

I have something to do during the day tomorrow, and I don’t know if I will have time to come back and write in the afternoon. If I come back, I should continue to write 8,000 or 10,000. If I can’t make it back, I will just make do with this 4,000.

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(End of this chapter)