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

Chapter 256 Crew Issues
"Pharaoh!"

Meng Bai greeted, "How are the preparations going?"

"Not very good." Wang Wei raised his head and waited for Meng Bai to come to him before continuing: "The difficulty of shooting a long sports shot is much higher than previously imagined."

The opening scene of "Day and Night Chase" is the scene of a "dismemberment case", which is also the first unit story of the whole play.

When setting up the shots, Wang Wei and lead photographer Sun Jianying came up with an idea to make the opening scene into an 8-minute continuous long shot.

The advantage of a long shot is the equivalence of story time and the audience's real time.

In other words, it takes 8 minutes for the characters in the play, and it also takes 8 minutes for the audience to watch the play.

There are no cuts or transitions. This way, the story can be as close to reality as possible, allowing the audience's emotions to be quickly brought into the story.

The overall style of "Day and Night Chase" is mainly "realistic".

Of course, apart from this, this is also a kind of showmanship.

Ever since Noon Sunshine’s “golden spiral composition” and “lens aesthetics” in Nirvana in Fire became popular, many viewers have gradually begun to pay attention to these technical aspects outside of the plot in the past two years.

Therefore, "Day and Night Chase" has such a long shot at the beginning, which can show the level of photography and the acting skills.

Thirdly, it also tells those knowledgeable audiences, "Come and watch, it's all the excitement you want."

However, ideas are just ideas. It is extremely difficult to realize them.

Long shots are difficult to shoot in themselves, not to mention that this is a moving shot that requires constant camera movement, which adds a bit of difficulty.

In order to shoot these short 8 minutes, the entire director team and photography crew arrived at the scene three or four days in advance and began designing the shots.

Then, it took more than a day for all the main actors to rehearse their movements.

The hardware equipment is also fully equipped. The main cameras used are ALEXA-MINI and AMIRA, the lenses use ARRI UP fixed-focus lens set, and 4 Angenieux zoom lenses are added.

In addition, considering the long-distance movement, a 45-foot telescopic cannon and a 20-meter guide rail were also brought in.

The rental fee for this set of equipment alone is 200 million.

But even with so much preparation, various problems still existed when it came to the actual shooting on site.

"What's the problem now?"

Wang Wei stepped on the ground below his feet and said, "This is a ruin. When we were laying the track, we found that the ground was too rough. We originally planned to find a machine to level it, but when we tried it this morning, we found that it didn't work."

Meng Bai glanced at the scene and saw an excavator not far away.

Looking at the ground again, from his perspective as a half-full bottle of water, it was actually quite flat.

But for professionals, the standards are definitely different.

Until he came just now, Wang Wei and a few others had been discussing how to solve the problem.

After squatting on the ground and watching for a while, Meng Bai stood up and said, "Since digging doesn't work, why don't we try a reverse approach."

"How to say?"

"Let's get some wooden boards and pave the ground here. Do you think it can be done?" Meng Bai said.

He got this idea from the "apple boxes" commonly used by the crew.

The so-called "apple boxes" are not really boxes for apples, but boxes that the crew usually uses to "increase the height" of the actors.

Many actors, especially male and female actors, cannot appear in the same frame during close-up or close-up shots due to the height difference.

At this time, either the tall actor has to bend his legs and waist, or the short actor has to step on the box.

There are many theories as to why it is called an "apple box". The more mainstream one is that apples in the United States are usually packed in wooden boxes, which are cheap and can be found everywhere.

Therefore, in the early years, film crews in Hollywood would use apple boxes as stepping stones, and it gradually became a commonly accepted nickname.

In addition to this, the crew has many other strange names.

For example, the "caterpillar" is the air duct of the air conditioner used to cool the site; the "rice pineapple" is the foam lighting board, etc.

These are basically all passed down from the early years, similar to some kind of "industry jargon".

When Wang Wei and Sun Jianying heard Meng Bai's proposal, their eyes lit up. After looking at each other and discussing for a few sentences, they both felt that this method was feasible.

"I'll ask someone to find some wooden boards right away." Wang Wei said, and raised his hand to call for the props team to come over.

"Don't bother, I'll take care of it." Meng Bai said with a smile, "I'm a local after all, so it's easy for me to get some wood planks."

"Yeah, I forgot you're from Blue Island."

Wang Wei was relieved after solving a difficult problem, but he added one more thing: "The wooden board needs to have a certain load-bearing capacity to support the track and the machine."

"Don't worry, I understand."

Meng Bai flipped through his address book and called a high school classmate who worked in engineering in the local area. The other party was also very generous and said that he would deliver it soon.

It would take some time for it to be delivered, so Wang Wei was not idle either. He led the director team to start simulated scheduling again.

Meng Bai first went to say hello to Pan Yueming and other leading actors, and also chatted about "The Lost Tomb" which was about to be aired.

Compared to its rival "The Lost Tomb", "The Lost Tomb: The Mystic Nine" has more post-production special effects shots, so the production time is also longer.

The two dramas were launched at about the same time, but their broadcast times differed by one month.

"The Lost Tomb" has been on the air for a month and has reached about one third of the way through.

Although this project is still a collaboration between Qiyi TV and Bai Yicong, this time it is not a pure online broadcast, but a "TV and Internet sync" with Mango TV.

The premiere ratings exceeded 1, and the average ratings were around 0.8.

The Douban score is 6.8, which is a huge improvement compared to last year's "Grave Robbers' Chronicles".

As for the number of online views, it has exceeded 30 billion - of course, this is the data without dehydration.

However, the so-called "playback data" of major video platforms today is extremely inflated.

The 20 billion views generated by dramas such as "Forensic Qin Ming" and "The Rise of Phoenixes" last year are no longer considered top-notch.

The online broadcast volume of a large number of TV dramas is beginning to move towards 30 billion, 50 billion or even 100 billion.

Like the previous "The Journey of Flower", it is said that the online broadcast volume has exceeded 150 billion.

This drama has a total of 50 episodes. Even if you take into account all those extras, trailers, MVs and other miscellaneous things, it is equivalent to tens of millions of viewers watching this drama seven or eight times.

I guess only "Journey to the West" can receive such treatment.

It has basically become an industry consensus that the number of views on video platforms is inflated, but there is little that can be done about it.

Everyone else is registering, but you are not. The data is an order of magnitude different, and advertisers can cut their fees in minutes.

Therefore, unless some restrictive policies are introduced from above, the money will continue to be injected like this.

After chatting for a while, Meng Bai decided to go and see if the wooden board had arrived.

As soon as I went out, I saw Meng Ziyi head-on.

(End of this chapter)