Chapter 4 Just let them believe it
"A teahouse that combines dance?" Li Qin tilted her head, frowned and thought for a long time, and finally shook her head: "I can't imagine what it looks like."
"That's normal, most people can't imagine it." Meng Bai spread his hands and gestured to the store: "So you see there are not many customers."
"Wow, Brother Meng! I'm going to tell the boss that you're slandering our store's reputation behind her back again!"
As soon as Meng Bai finished speaking, a girl's voice sounded beside the two of them.
Li Qin turned her head and saw the girl she saw at the front desk when she entered the door just now standing aside, holding a bamboo scroll in her hand.
"What do you mean by 'slander'? I'm just 'describing it truthfully'." Meng Bai said nonchalantly.
The little girl curled her lips at Meng Bai, then looked at Li Qin on the other side, and said with a smile: "Hello sister, my name is Hua Yan, what's your name?"
"Uh, hello, my name is Li Qin."
"Li Qin? This name seems a little familiar..." Hua Yan muttered softly, and didn't think where she had heard it for a moment, and didn't think about it anymore, and then asked: "Sister, are you Mengge's friend?"
"Ah, not really. We should be, uh..."
Li Qin was also a little unsure about how to describe their current relationship, so he could only look at Meng Bai and let him answer.
"Partners!" Meng Bai gave an appropriate title: "Partners who are about to join hands and cooperate together."
"Oh, so that's it." Hua Yan responded with a vague understanding, and put the bamboo scroll in her hand on the table in front of Li Qin and spread it out, saying: "What would you like to drink?"
Li Qin glanced at the bamboo scroll, and then realized that it was actually a tea ordering list, with the name and introduction of the tea written in exquisite small characters on it.
Li Qin took a look and then pushed the bamboo roll to Meng Bai: "I don't usually drink tea, you can order it."
Meng Bai didn't refuse, glanced at the bamboo roll and said: "Let's have a pot of Biluochun, it happens to be a specialty of your Jiangsu."
"I'm from Kunshan." Li Qin corrected.
Meng Bai was a little confused: "Kunshan...isn't it from Jiangsu?"
"Yes, but...forget it, it's okay, just this one will do."
Meng Bai didn't delve into it, added another serving of sock bottom pastry, and asked Hua Yan to prepare it.
"Is this girl the boss?" Li Qin asked, looking at Hua Yan's busy petite figure.
"No, Huahua is a student of the nearby Zhongcai School, and she works part-time here." Meng Bai said, "The owner of this teahouse is a girl of the same age as you."
"Hmm..." Li Qin nodded, and then looked at Meng Bai suspiciously and said, "You know a lot about me, don't you?"
"Hey, as the second party, you have to know more about the boss who pays you, so that you can please him."
Li Qin's face darkened, and she whispered, "I don't have any money now."
Meng Bai coughed lightly, and asked again, "By the way, I never asked you before, how much money were you cheated of?"
"More than 600,000." Li Qin said in a depressed tone.
"Tsk!" Meng Bai sighed, "Otherwise, you have to say that you actors make money!"
Li Qin bit her lip, looked at Meng Bai with red eyes and said, "This is all the salary I got for filming for six years..."
Six hundred thousand in six years, that is, 100,000 a year, and a monthly salary of more than 8,000...
Well, it's not much in Beijing North.
Girl, you say that people who make millions and tens of millions of dollars by investing don't feel bad if they lose money. Even if you didn't get cheated, you'd still feel bad if you lost money.
What? No compensation?
Don't be ridiculous. There are at least 800,000 film crews in the country every year, and it's considered high if only one in ten projects can make money.
What's more, many times, investors can't make money just because the project is successful. For those outsiders or novice investors, producers and directors have many ways to turn the crew's money into their own money.
In fact, Meng Bai also thought at first that "Producer Lin" wanted to get some money from those investors through this method.
But I didn't expect that he didn't do these "fancy tricks" and was just a pure scammer.
Yes, high-end scams often only require the simplest methods... and a silly girl like Li Qin.
Seeing that Li Qin was about to start emo again, Meng Bai knocked on the table in time to interrupt her emotions: "OK, since the money is gone, don't think about 'what if' or something like that. What we have to do now is to think about how to make up for the losses?"
"The police are chasing the scammers. Let's not talk about when they can be caught. Just like the police said, even if they catch the person, it is still unknown how much money can be recovered in the end."
"So, if we want to make up for the losses, it is not enough to just catch the scammers. We must also think of other ways."
"What other ways?" Li Qin leaned forward on the table, staring at Meng Bai closely, with an expression of "I'm listening to you carefully".
Meng Bai was very satisfied with Li Qin's serious attitude. He took out his mobile phone, opened a document, and then put it on the desktop and pushed it over, saying: "My idea is to finish what we haven't done yet, for example, continue to film this script."
Li Qin looked at Meng Bai's mobile phone. The first page of the document opened on the screen had four words written on it - "Soul Ferry".
This was the script that caused her to be cheated of all her salary.
"Continue to film it?" Li Qin's face was full of confusion: "Just the two of us?"
Meng Bai had a look on his face that said "Are you mentally retarded": "What I mean is that you and I will be the main creators of this drama, and then we will work together to find a way to set up the crew."
"Oh..." Li Qin nodded suddenly, and then asked: "Then how should we do it?"
"To build a crew, there are two core elements, one is people, and the other is money. The problem of people is easy to say. As long as there is sufficient funding, I can pull out ten crews for you a day."
"But, but I have no money..." Li Qin's originally cold and elegant face wrinkled together, and said pitifully.
"I know, and I don't intend to ask you for money." Meng Bai looked at Li Qin and said, "What I need is you."
Li Qin frowned when she heard that, sat up straight and leaned back, and asked Meng Bai suspiciously, "What do you mean?"
Seeing this, Meng Bai sighed and said helplessly, "Girl, we are not that familiar with each other, so just understand what I said literally, and don't think about it in a crooked way."
Li Qin looked at Meng Bai's expression, which was indeed very serious. Only then did she realize that she had misunderstood.
Her cheeks flushed slightly, and she couldn't help but mutter in a low voice: "It's because what you said was ambiguous that I misunderstood."
"OK, my fault, let's not discuss it." Meng Bai didn't intend to dwell on this issue anymore. He took the responsibility on himself and said again: "What I mean is that I need your fame and background as an actor to solve our current funding problem."
"Wait a minute, I understand fame, but what does 'background' mean?" Li Qin said puzzledly: "Why don't I know what background I have?"
"Your agency, Rong Xinda."
Li Qin blinked, and after thinking for a long time, he said with an expression of "suddenly understanding": "You mean, let me recommend the script to the company?"
Meng Bai choked when he heard this, and after a few seconds of silence, he said: "If you have the confidence that you can convince your company to pay for the filming, that's not a bad idea."
"Hmm..." Li Qin pursed her lips in embarrassment, thought for a while, and shook her head, saying, "I feel that Aunt Li will definitely not agree to film a web drama."
Meng Bai was stunned for a moment, and then realized that the "Aunt Li" Li Qin was talking about should be Li Shaohong, one of the "three giants" of Rong Xinda. Li Qin was discovered by Li Shaohong, so she has a close relationship with her.
Meng Bai was not surprised by Li Qin's dilemma: "Online dramas are still in a wild state. Most of the traditional film and television companies look down on this 'little snack', so if we really want to find funds, we still have to rely on video websites to pay."
"But how do we convince the website to pay?" Li Qin asked: "Take the script to negotiate?"
"I went there before, but the negotiation failed." Meng Bai spread his hands and said: "These video websites currently have no ability to produce film and television, so they are more willing to accept cooperation from professional film and television companies. I am an unknown person and I came to them, but they don't believe me."
"Then isn't our current situation still the same?"
"No, no, didn't I just say that we have a company behind you."
"I just said that our company will not agree to cooperate."
"Alas..." Meng Bai sighed, looked at Li Qin with an expression of "a child who cannot be taught", and patiently explained: "We don't need to 'cooperate with your company', we just need those video websites to believe that 'we are cooperating with your company', do you understand?"
(End of this chapter)
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