1991: The Era of Hong Kong Dramas

Huo Sheng's words of encouragement to Wei Jiahui and Yuan Yingming in the conference room that day were quite passionate.

But no matter how wonderful the idea was, he himself had never actually done editing and filming simultaneously. How to get started smoothly was still a question.

He could only be like a child just learning to walk, and everything had to start with falling down and carefully maintaining his balance.

In the following days, Huo Sheng spent all his time in the production building's archives room, except for overseeing filming and writing the script.

Starting in the 80s, TVB learned from Japan and began using a cheap and reusable media called Betacam SP.

It's equivalent to today's "top-of-the-line USB flash drive + hard drive".

However, Betacam SP is not transparent film; it cannot be seen what was filmed unless it is inserted into the camera.

Therefore, Huo Sheng could only make copies of the script supervisor's sheets for the first ten episodes, which were densely filled with notes on how many tapes were shot each day, the general content of each piece of footage, and the tape numbers.

He marked the positions very carefully, going over each scene several times to make sure he marked them correctly.

Ning Wan still brought him food without fail. Seeing him constantly flipping through the script, she couldn't help but ask, "Teacher Huo, what are you doing?"

"Pre-editing".

Huo Sheng didn't even look up.

"You can also edit videos?" Ning Wan was shocked.

"Won't."

He shook his head. "I'm still learning."

Huo Sheng has a good learning ability. By the third day, he had already accumulated a thick stack of annotated scripts.

From episode 1 to episode 10, the materials used for each scene, their approximate locations, and suggested cut lengths are all written down.

This marks the temporary end of the preliminary preparations.

Yuan Yingming wasn't idle either.

In one week, he and the crew worked non-stop to film most of the exterior and interior scenes needed for the first three episodes.

After work each day, the footage was neatly stacked on a rack at the entrance of the studio, with labels indicating the date and scene. Then, a designated person, Liu Yu, the assistant director, would escort it to Huo Sheng's office.

Huo Sheng then collected these Betacam SP tapes, piled them on a shelf, and carefully noted the shooting dates and sessions on the labels.

Liu Yu was a young man in his early twenties with tanned skin. He always wore a faded work vest and looked very much like a script supervisor.

He's also very talkative. He started working at TVB at the age of fourteen and developed a strong sense of the Shaw Brothers' underworld.

"Director Huo, the tapes have arrived."

He put the tin box on the table.

"You've worked hard." Huo Sheng was still flipping through the attendance sheet.

"It's nothing, just my job."

Liu Yu plopped down on the chair next to him, casually pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, then, remembering something, took one out and handed it to Huo Sheng, "Here, have one."

"I don't smoke."

Huo Sheng shook his head.

"You don't mind, do you?" Liu Yu asked again.

"It's okay."

After Huo Sheng finished speaking, he casually asked about editing, "Do you know anything about TVB's editing room?"

Liu Yu lit a cigarette, took a puff, and then relaxed. "How could I not know? I'm probably the one who goes to TVB's editing room the most often, besides the editors."

Speaking of this, Liu Yu was a little proud, "Old Liang, the editor at our station, gets annoyed just looking at me."

Huo Sheng twitched his lips, not understanding what was so proud of about being bothered by others. He continued to probe, "What's Lao Liang's temper like?"

"That was incredibly popular."

Liu Yu smiled and said, "That's why I advise you to be very careful when editing the footage. Otherwise, if you make a mistake, it will be very troublesome later. With so many tapes, if you want to make changes in post-production, just rewinding, remapping, and re-recording will take a lot of effort."

I remember there were problems when we were filming "Looking Back in Anger" that year.

"Um?"

Huo Sheng hadn't heard anything about Wei Jiahui's past and asked curiously, "What happened?"

Liu Yu laughed and said, "The film was already roughly edited, but Producer Wei felt that a piece of background music was wrong and insisted on changing it. Old Liang was furious at the time and publicly stated that he would never change it."

"Was it changed later?"

"Of course it was changed. Lao Liang was just saying it; if the producer said it had to be changed, he couldn't possibly refuse."

Huo Sheng nodded. It didn't sound so bad.

The two chatted for a while, but it was mostly Liu Yu who kept talking. They ended up going off-topic. Luckily, he had filming the next day and couldn't stay up too late, so he went back to his dorm to wash up after the chat.

The next day, Huo Sheng sent the footage to the editing room for transcription and uploading.

There hasn't been much work in the editing room lately, so there's no waiting list. I sent over the footage of the first ten episodes in the morning, and received the master tapes for rough editing that evening.

Huo Sheng breathed a sigh of relief when he received the master tape.

Uploading is no easy task. If the video recorder head wears out, the tape gets tangled, or the signal is lost, any problem in any of these steps could result in the footage being wasted, which would be a double blow to "The Greed of Man".

This kind of thing happens every now and then at TVB, it's not unusual.

After all these tasks were completed, Huo Sheng finally saw the initial results of Yuan Yingming's filming. The next step was editing, which was quite difficult.

TVB's editing room is on the third floor of the production building. He took the elevator down, found the door, and the glass window on the door was covered with frosted paper, so he couldn't see inside.

Huo Sheng knocked on the door, but no one answered.

He pushed open the door and went inside. The room was filled with smoke, and Old Liang was smoking a cigarette, looking at the two tapes with a troubled expression.

Hearing the door open, he didn't turn around, but mumbled, "Who is it?"

"I am Huo Sheng, the screenwriter of 'The Great Era'."

Old Liang then turned his head, looked him up and down, and asked with a scrutinizing gaze, "You're the one Producer Wei mentioned who's going to film and edit simultaneously?"

"Yes."

Huo Sheng placed the script and script supervisor's sheet on the table. "I've done some preparatory work. Please take a look."

Old Liang didn't look at it. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and exhaled smoke from his nose: "You say you're a screenwriter, so why can't I just write my script and edit my film? Outsiders are always daydreaming."

"I know."

Huo Sheng smiled and said, "If there were a better way, I wouldn't want to do it this way either."

Old Liang glanced at him sideways, "Rushing to meet deadlines isn't done like this. Isn't this just ridiculous?"

Huo Sheng didn't rush to reply.

He knew that Lao Liang wasn't deliberately making things difficult; he genuinely felt that this approach was unreliable—no one had ever done this at TVB in 1992, and it certainly sounded like a fantasy.

He opened the script to the first page and pointed to the annotation next to it: "I won't trouble you, just try one scene first. Look here, scene three, the scene where Fang Jinxin is hospitalized."

I checked the script supervisor's sheet; this footage is on tape B-03, timecode from 12 minutes 34 seconds to 15 minutes 22 seconds. You don't need to flip through each reel; just tune to this section.

Old Liang glanced down, said nothing, put the cigarette in his mouth, turned around, and put the B-03 tape into the playback machine. He rewound and started timing. The timecode on the monitor stopped at 12:34:00.

The scene jumps out: Fang Jinxin is lying in a hospital bed, and Ding Xie is sitting by the bed talking incessantly; it's that scene.

He glanced back at Huo Sheng, a flicker of interest crossing his face.

"Let's drag it out until 15 minutes and 22 seconds," Huo Sheng said.

Old Liang did as instructed, and the camera stopped at the moment when Fang Jinxin closed his eyes and shed tears, just as the emotion reached its peak.

"Just this part, record it directly onto the final tape."

Huo Sheng said.

Old Liang didn't say anything, but recorded the whole thing. Then he turned around and looked Huo Sheng up and down again.

"How did you know so accurately?"

"When I was writing the script, I checked the length of each scene," Huo Sheng said.

Old Liang was silent for a few seconds, then stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray: "Okay, then mark the locations of the footage for each scene for me, and I'll follow your instructions."

"It's already labeled."

Huo Sheng placed a thick stack of papers on the table. "This is the timecode index for the first three episodes. It clearly shows which tape was used for each scene and where it starts and ends."

Old Liang flipped through it, his eyes growing brighter with each page.

He looked up at Huo Sheng and grinned, "Hey, you've got some skills. I've been doing this for decades and I've never had it this easy."

"If it works, then it's fine."

Huo Sheng's thoughts were confirmed, and he felt reassured. He smiled and said, "Then let's continue using this method."