Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 22 The crew of Soul Ferry begins recruiting
In late September, on the second day after the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Meng Bai signed a contract with Leshi.com on behalf of Arclight Films, announcing the official launch of the online drama "Soul Ferry".

As the third million yuan of funds was deposited into the crew account, Meng Bai also began his first crew preparation as a producer.

The first group to be established was the financial group. Leshi.com sent a middle-aged female accountant and a young cashier girl. They were responsible for auditing and paying every expense of the crew, including the main creative remuneration, staff salaries, props purchases, venue rentals, etc.

As a producer, Meng Bai first paid his own screenwriter fee, production fee and other remuneration. This amount of money was about 150,000 yuan, which was the salary Meng Bai gave himself.

Honestly speaking, if Meng Baida didn't really want to film the script, he could have used various means to simply withdraw the investment money and run away.

Don’t think that there will be no problem just because the financial team is from Leshi.com. For these old hands in the film and television industry, there are plenty of ways to cheat investors.

Don’t you see, the elites on Wall Street usually make a lot of money, but they are still cheated by Hollywood.

Of course, Meng Bai had no intention of running away with the money. The reason why he paid first was simply because he was too poor.

He couldn't put all the money into his pocket. He had to first pay the 50,000 yuan he owed to the Public Security Bureau, and then pay back the money he borrowed from Li Qin. In addition, he had to pay the rent, settle the IOUs at the teahouse, etc., and in the end, he would probably only have about 70,000 or 80,000 yuan left.

Even so, this is the most he has earned since graduation.

What's more, after the show is broadcast, there will be a "sky-high" profit share.

"Sure enough, working to make money is just for fun. If you really want to get rich, you still have to work on your own." Meng Bai said with emotion as he looked at the bank card balance information on his mobile phone.

After expressing my feelings, I continued to work.

Now that the financial resources were in place, Meng Bai quickly signed Li Qin's acting contract and Wu Bai's director contract.

Although Leshi.com had already made the investment decision, Meng Bai did not dare to act rashly until the contract was signed and the funds arrived.

After all, he had seen projects where investors temporarily withdrew their investment just before the start of production, or even after the project had already started.

The director contract at Wubai is relatively simple. In addition to the salary, it roughly stipulates benefits, project duration, work content, editing authority, etc.

In comparison, Li Qin's artist performance contract is much more complicated. Not to mention the salary, the salary requirements in the crew alone are two pages long.

Schedule deadlines, shooting duration, hotel specifications, three meals a day, the number of assistants, and whether there is a dedicated lounge on the set, a dedicated makeup artist, etc.

"Girl, don't you know the situation of our crew? Why are you talking nonsense to us?" Meng Bai slapped the performance contract on the table and looked at Li Qin with an expression of "Are you stupid?"

"Sorry, sorry, I got the wrong one. This is the template contract for my studio." Li Qin took the thick contract back awkwardly, and handed a much thinner one to Meng Bai: "This is ours."

Meng Bai curled his lips and flipped through the new contract given by Li Qin. In comparison, this one was much more normal, with only basic terms such as the schedule, shooting time, and accommodation room.

Li Qin smiled sweetly, looked at Meng Bai and said, "You know, sometimes we actors need some seemingly 'outrageous' requests in order to bargain with the crew."

Meng Bai was indeed aware of this, and this was a trick used by the actors to manipulate the crew. In comparison, Li Qin's demands were already very basic and practical - of course, this might also be related to her current low status.

When Meng Bai was in other crews before, he had actually seen some outrageous big-name actors.

For example, if you don’t want to stay in the lounge on the set, you can ask the crew to provide a special RV;

Some even asked the crew to provide a full-time assistant to take care of their dog during filming. But if we really want to talk about trouble, the actors are not that difficult. The most difficult ones are the singers, especially those who are in bands or rock music.

Meng Bai has a friend who works in the media and has hosted many music festivals. He complained to Meng Bai that the most outrageous request he had ever encountered was to cross two districts at 3 a.m. to buy a specific niche brand of French fries, and they had to be freshly fried.

"People say that you must eat this brand. Their fries are fresh. Eating other brands will make you cough." Meng Bai's friend said that at that time he really wanted to stuff the potatoes bought from the vegetable market into his mouth and asked him if they were fresher this way.

After signing the contract with Li Qin, she had nothing to do anymore. She just had to go back to prepare the script and wait for the styling test and the start of filming.

In comparison, Meng Bai was so busy that he had no time to rest.

Many people outside the industry always imagine that the composition of a film crew is very simple, with a director, actors, a photographer, and at most two assistants to do miscellaneous tasks.

But in fact, the department composition and personnel requirements of an ordinary and formal crew are no less than those of a small or medium-sized company.

First of all, from a big framework perspective, a crew can be roughly divided into the main creative part, the actor part, and the technical support part.

Taking the main creative department as an example, it can be divided into the production group, director group and screenwriter group.

The production team includes producers, executive producers, production directors, on-site producers, external producers, life producers, fleet and finance; the director team includes chief director, executive director, assistant actor director, script supervisor, coordinator and assistant director; only the screenwriter team is relatively simple, with at most just the chief screenwriter, episode screenwriter and assistant screenwriter.

There are also many types of actors, including main actors, supporting actors, special guest actors, stage actors, role-playing actors, non-role-playing actors, and extras. The number of actors varies depending on the size of the crew.

But the most complicated one is the technical support department. Without mentioning the specific positions, the department includes stage management, art, costumes, makeup, photography, lighting, recording, editing, props, post-production special effects...

These groups can be composed of one or two people at the least, or four or five people at the most. A whole play group often has forty or fifty people.

Of course, "Soul Ferry" is just a small project with an investment of three million yuan, and it is in the form of a unit drama. There is no need to set up such a complete crew, it is enough to have the necessary basics.

But even if we count it this way, there would still be about twenty people.

It would definitely be too late for Meng Bai to contact so many people one by one, and it would also be a problem to coordinate and manage them after the start-up.

Therefore, his top priority now is to find a suitable executive producer and form a production team to facilitate the preparation and subsequent management of the crew.

Fortunately, such people are not difficult to find. Just go to several film and television studios in northern Beijing and shout out, and you can recruit a carload of suitable candidates.

But since he wants to cooperate with me, I must find someone I know.

The person Meng Bai found was called Liu Zhi, a young man about the same age as him, but very experienced in all the intricacies of a film and television crew.

Liu Zhi didn't get into college after graduating from high school, so he came to Beijing to be a "drifter" and has been drifting in various film crews for many years. Fortunately, he is smart and is willing to work hard after entering society. He gradually went from being a stagehand who could only run errands and move props to being a site coordinator.

Meng Bai knew him because they had met in two consecutive crews and felt that they were destined to be together. In addition, Meng Bai wanted to make friends, so the two of them had a good relationship.

Because Liu Zhi has been with many crews for many years, although he is not a big shot, he has a wide network of contacts in the Beijing film and television circles.

And this is what Meng Bai needs most.

(End of this chapter)