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

Chapter 394: Film and Television Winter
"Tsk, tsk, how miserable."

Song Zhi looked at his phone and shook his head, "There was basically no mention of other winners online today. Everyone was criticizing last night's 'Best Actor and Best Actress' awards. Especially Reba, who accounted for four or five of the hot searches alone."

"Haha, normal." Meng Bai on the side snorted and laughed: "I originally wanted to ambush a history book, but unfortunately the nominated work was too outrageous. This time it's ruined."

Everyone is in the same industry, and they are familiar with each other's tactics. As early as when the list of winners was announced, he understood what Jiaxing Media, the agency behind Reba, was thinking.

According to their original plan, they wanted to win the Golden Eagle Award through the behind-the-scenes operations. They had expected the online criticism, and they were betting on the fact that "the Internet has no memory."

Just survive the first wave of public opinion, and as time goes by, the controversy will slowly fade away. After another three to five years, few people will remember whether this year's awards are fair or not, and Reba will be the real "Golden Eagle Award Winner".

There are precedents for doing this successfully. No award ceremony, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, can guarantee that there are absolutely no behind-the-scenes deals. As long as it looks generally acceptable, it's fine.

But the problem is that the Golden Eagle Awards this time was a bit outrageous. Just like what netizens complained, even if they changed other supporting roles, they would be better than this drama that scored less than 4 points. Now, not only has it been completely nailed to the pillar of shame, but the entire Golden Eagle Awards has also sunk with it.

I guess the ones who are laughing the most right now are the organizers of the Magnolia Awards. Every time the Internet mentions the three major awards, they kick them out. Now, the Golden Eagle Awards have dealt themselves a blow, so they don’t have to show off anymore.

High-end competition often only requires the simplest means, without any need to make any progress, just wait for the opponent to make mistakes.

"Forget it, never mind them, it has nothing to do with us anyway." Meng Bai glanced at Song Zhi who was fiddling with his phone for a long time, "What are you busy with?"

“Pick a photo.”

Song Zhi held up his phone and swiped between two photos. "The publicity team is going to send the photos of yesterday's awards ceremony to the fans. Let me choose one. Which of these two do you think is better?"

Meng Bai squinted his eyes and looked at it for a long time: "Isn't this a photo?"

"What? How can they be the same photo when there are so many differences?" Song Zhi said dissatisfiedly, "The angle of the face, the position of the hair, and the state of the mouth are all very different."

"...Next time you're filming, if you're as demanding of your performance, you'll definitely win the Best Actress award."

"..."

Song Zhi pursed his lips and turned his face away, too lazy to explain to this straight man.

After a long time of selection, she finally picked out eight photos, but still needed one to complete the nine-square grid. She looked for them but couldn't find any that satisfied her, so she searched through her selfies from last night.

Do you want to add a photo with Meng Bai?
Song Zhi looked at the photo of the two of them on the screen of his mobile phone and hesitated.

After thinking about it, I felt that this seemed a bit too obvious. After all, it was an award ceremony and the two were not from the same crew, so it was a bit too forced.

Thinking of this, she went back to the other inventory. After searching for a long time, she finally found one that satisfied her.

This photo was taken after she sat down at the scene. In the inconspicuous corner of the photo, you can just see most of Meng Bai's face in the distance.

Compared with the straightforward group photo, this photo is much more subtle and euphemistic. Moreover, this can also satisfy her desire to secretly show affection, and give her a sense of romance that belongs only to her.

Just like many men would fantasize about becoming heroes, leading a charge under the watchful eyes of the public and ultimately sacrificing their lives heroically, women often like the kind of relationship that "cannot be made public, and requires silent endurance and self-sacrifice."

In a sense, they are all extensions of the second-year syndrome.

She sent the selected photos to her team, and her publicity and promotion agency Photoshopped and beautified them. Finally, she sent out the retouched photos to welcome all kinds of compliments from fans.

Song Zhi refreshed the comment section several times, but didn't see anyone noticing his "selfishness". He felt proud and a little disappointed. He sighed, laughed to himself, and stopped paying attention.

Despite "training" together for so long, Song Zhi's "little sloppy" attribute has not improved at all. He was bullied all night last night, and today he didn't get up until noon.

After washing up and cleaning up, she was just about to eat when she suddenly thought of something.

"The crew of a new drama has contacted me recently, but I don't know whether to accept it or not."

Meng Bai didn't notice the strangeness in her tone and asked casually, "What drama?"

"It's a novel adaptation project co-produced by New Classics and Tencent, called Celebrating Yu Nian." Song Zhi stared at him straight in the eye. "My role is the second female lead. I heard from the crew that the female lead seems to be an actress from Taiyang Chuanhe. Do you know who she is?"

"..."

Meng Bai paused for a moment while drinking water, but he, who had been through many battles, immediately recovered as usual. He put down the cup in his hand and said naturally, "I really don't know about this. I don't usually pay much attention to the movements of Taiyang Chuanhe."

"Oh, is it so?"

"Why would I lie to you?" Meng Bai smiled as usual, "If you're curious, I'll ask for you later."

Song Zhi stared at him for a long time, but just like when she was in school, she still couldn't tell whether this guy was telling the truth or a lie.

Humph, if I had known, I shouldn't have kept him in the acting department. He didn't learn much about stage acting, but his life-like acting skills improved rapidly.

"Forget it, no matter who plays the role, I have rejected it anyway." Song Zhi said.

If she could only dislike Li Qin a little, apart from the competition, then she hated Li Yitong even more.

There's nothing you can do about it. After Meng Bai broke up with her, he has been with this woman ever since.

She squints her eyes and smiles so fakely every day, it's annoying no matter how I look at her!

So when she heard from the crew that the female lead would be Li Yitong, she refused without a second thought.

It would be fine if it was someone else, but as for this "little white lotus", I have no interest in being her match.

Hearing Song Zhi's words, Meng Bai was relieved, but pretended to be indifferent and agreed, "It's good that you refused. There's no need for you to play the second female lead. It just so happens that Huace has recently launched a historical drama. I'll have someone bring the script to you later."

"Guou..." Song Zhi became more energetic, "What's its name?"

"The name of the drama is 'Liuli', which is also adapted from a novel, and it's about the immortal hero." Meng Bai said: "Although this project is only a medium-sized production, the team is pretty good. The director is Yin Tao, who previously directed 'The Glory of Tang Dynasty' and 'Legend of the White Snake'."

“Ah, I know these two dramas.”

The Glory of Tang Dynasty was a drama released in 16. Its greatest achievement was that it finally made the long-unpopular Da Tian Tian popular. As for Legend of the White Snake, it was also a small hit at the time. However, because the plot had Fa Hai and Xiao Qing in love, it attracted many Buddhists to report it, and it had to be removed from the shelves in the end.

Although the plot has been modified, the ratings and playback volume are still very good, proving that director Yin Tao is quite capable in ancient costume dramas.

Although it is not a big production, Song Zhi is quite satisfied. She has been filming spy war and urban dramas since "The Disguiser" and is tired of them. It is a good opportunity for her to try ancient idol dramas.
-
The Golden Eagle Awards ended amid a barrage of criticism, but the public opinion storm it triggered has not subsided.

The two new award winners, Li Feng and Reba, have been dubbed "Water Emperor and Water Queen" by netizens. At the same time, many netizens also angrily accused the Golden Eagle Awards organizers of shady selection.

In the past, it wouldn't have caused such a big stir. But don't forget that the entertainment and film industry has been at the center of controversy due to various events in the past six months. The "degeneration" of the Golden Eagle Awards this time has become the final spark that ignited public opinion.

Li Feng's fans are smarter and have not dared to speak much since the award ceremony. In discussions on various community platforms, apart from their own topic groups, they do not confront others.

On the contrary, Reba's fans have a stronger fighting spirit. At the beginning, as soon as they saw "slanderous remarks", they rushed to the front and manipulated the comments to force the other party to delete them.

Unfortunately, they greatly underestimated the scope of the impact of this incident. In addition to the fans of the rival fan club, a large number of passers-by who have long been fed up with the chaos in the entertainment industry have also stood up.

No matter how powerful Reba’s fans are, they cannot resist the public excitement and are quickly suppressed.

But this is not the end. Netizens who had no place to vent their anger began to attack the official Weibo accounts of the Golden Eagle Awards and Mango TV, forcing the other party to block the comment section for a while.

It’s no wonder that everyone is so angry this time. It’s just that in the past six months, there have been too many things in the entertainment industry that have refreshed the views of ordinary people like them.

These artists and celebrities are paid millions every day to make all kinds of crappy dramas, and then they want to win awards. It's really shameless.

Just as a group of netizens were expressing their dissatisfaction with the chaos in the entertainment industry, an official announcement directly suppressed the voices of everyone in the entire industry.

At the end of October, led by the Central Propaganda Department, five departments including the Radio, Film, Culture and Tourism, and Taxation Bureau jointly issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Management of Radio, Television and Online Audiovisual Programs."

[…In recent years, some cultural and artistic programs have seen problems such as too many film and television stars, star-chasing, pan-entertainment, high pay, and fake ratings (click-through rates). These not only push up production costs and undermine the industry’s order and ecology, but also mislead young people to blindly chase stars, fostering wrong values such as materialism and overnight fame. Effective measures must be taken to correct these problems…]

The document is not long, and it only contains seven items in summary, but everyone who has read this "Notice" was shocked by these seven new regulations.

[1. All companies and practitioners in the entire film and television industry will conduct tax self-examination and self-correction from now on. Those who actively make up for the arrears or evasion before the end of the year will not be punished.]

【40. Call on film and television production companies and broadcasting platforms to jointly resist the "sky-high pay" of stars and reiterate the "salary limit order". For all kinds of prime-time works, the actor's pay shall not exceed 70% of the total cost, and the lead actor's pay shall not exceed % of the total pay. 】

【3. Strictly investigate all types of film and television data fraud, including cinema box office, TV ratings, online work playback volume, etc. All broadcasting platforms should strengthen content construction and avoid data competition.】

[2019. Regarding the issue of ratings fraud that was recently investigated, the statistics department has decided to stop using the traditional CSM city network ratings and switch to the new comprehensive broadcasting and television big data (CVB) from January 1, 1. ]

[V. Crack down on online trolls and strictly regulate the self-media marketing accounts that are spreading and spreading wildly.]

[Sixth, the review standards for online audiovisual works are the same as those for traditional radio and television works. Projects with problematic content orientation shall not be broadcast online or offline.]

[Seventh, abandon the use of celebrities as a selling point, strictly control variety entertainment and reality shows involving celebrity children, and reduce the broadcast volume of entertainment games, reality shows, singing competitions, etc. involving film and television stars.]

The seven new regulations, from heavy to light, almost all hit the core of the entire industry.

For a time, the entire film and television industry was in chaos. Some were checking their accounts, some were paying back their debts, some were canceling their accounts, and some were running away. It can be said that no force could remain unscathed.

In the stock market, the already fragile film and television sector has been hit even harder, and is experiencing another sharp drop. Coupled with this year's bear market, the capital behind them has also stalled.

There is widespread grief in the film and television industry, and the previous momentum is completely gone.

Now no one is shouting "winter is coming" anymore, because the winter of film and television has really arrived.

……

"No, it's only been a short time since I last came out. Why does it feel like the entire industry has been turned upside down?"

In the messy studio, Guo Fan, who has become as thin as a middle-aged trendy man, touched the stubble on his chin and sighed as he read the latest news.

Since the film was finished last year, he has been shuttling between the post-production studio and various special effects teams for more than a year. Especially in the past six months, due to the tight schedule and heavy tasks, he often stayed in the studio for more than half a month.

The little free time he had was spent on spending time with his family, wife and children, so he knew almost nothing about the major events in the circle during this period.

"Don't worry about them, they are just trivial matters." Meng Bai said nonchalantly, "A bunch of stupid humans are racking their brains and using all means for their own selfish interests. There is no need to pay attention to them. Let's continue to focus on the stars and the sea."

The two are now in Guo Fan's post-production studio. With them are Gongger and a dozen production staff from the post-production team.

After more than a year, The Wandering Earth was finally completed. In a few days, China Film will organize a viewing party. Guo Fan took advantage of this opportunity to find Meng Bai and asked him to help watch it first. If there are any adjustments that need to be made, he can take advantage of these few days to cram for them.

Meng Bai had just watched it once, and the final effect of the film was the same as expected.

No, it should be said that it was far beyond his previous imagination.

The magnificent doomsday cold, the majestic earth engine, the space station in the vast space... This is the "end of mankind" created by six special effects teams using more than 2,000 sets of special effects shots.

Looking at the projection screen, the camera gradually rose from the ground until the blue planet finally came into view. Meng Bai couldn't help but think of Carl Sagan's famous quote:

“This is this place. This is home. This is us. Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of… everything we hold dear is on this pale blue dot.”

"what happened?"

Seeing Meng Bai staring at the projection screen for a long time without saying anything, Guo Fan asked.

"Nothing, just something suddenly occurred to me."

"what?"

"As long as there are works like The Wandering Earth, there will be no real winter in the film and television industry."

(End of this chapter)