Chapter 22 The crew of "Soul Ferry" starts recruiting people.
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 "Soul Ferry" web drama.
With the third million funds deposited into the crew account, Meng Bai also began his first crew preparation as a producer.
The first to be established was the financial team. 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 creators' remuneration, staff wages, props purchases, venue rentals, etc.
As a producer, Meng Bai first paid his own screenwriter fees, production fees and other salaries. This money is about 150,000, which is the salary Meng Bai gave himself.
To be honest, if he didn't really want to film the script, Meng Bai could have used various means to directly withdraw the investment money and run away.
Don't think that the financial team is Leshi.com's own people, there are many ways for these old-timers in the film and television industry to kill investors.
Don't you see, the elites on Wall Street usually make 2.5 or 8 million, but they are still fooled by Hollywood.
Of course, Meng Bai has no intention of running away with the money. The reason why he paid it first is simply because he is too poor.
This money can't be put into his pocket. He has to pay the 50,000 yuan owed to the Public Security Bureau first, and then repay the money borrowed from Li Qin. In addition, he has to pay the rent, clear the IOUs in the teahouse, etc., and in the end, there will probably be only 70,000 or 80,000 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 do it yourself." Meng Bai looked at the bank card balance information on his mobile phone and said with emotion.
After sighing, he continued to work.
With the financial information, Meng Bai quickly signed Li Qin's performance 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 were received.
After all, he had seen projects where the investors temporarily withdrew their investment just before the start of filming, or even after the filming had already started.
The director's contract on Wubai's side was relatively simple. In addition to the salary, it roughly stipulated the welfare benefits, project deadlines, work content, editing rights, etc.
In comparison, Li Qin's artist performance contract was much more troublesome. Not to mention the salary, the treatment requirements for the crew alone were two pages long.
Schedule deadlines, shooting time, hotel specifications, three meals a day, the number of assistants, and whether there was a special lounge on the set, whether there was a special makeup artist, whether there was...
"Girl, don't you know what the situation is with 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 of my studio." Li Qin took the thick contract back with some embarrassment, and took out a thinner one and handed it to Meng Bai: "This is ours."
Meng Bai curled his lips and looked through the new contract given by Li Qin. In comparison, this one is much more normal, with only basic terms such as schedule time, shooting time, and accommodation room.
Li Qin smiled sweetly, looked at Meng Bai and said: "You know, sometimes we actors need some seemingly 'outrageous' requirements in order to bargain with the crew."
Meng Bai really knows this, this is a trick for actors to control the crew. In comparison, these demands of Li Qin are already very basic and very practical - of course, it may also be related to her current low status.
Meng Bai has really seen some outrageous big-name actors when he was in other crews before.
For example, if they don't want to stay in the lounge on the set, they ask the crew to provide a special RV;
some ask the crew to provide a full-time assistant to take care of their own puppy during filming.
But if we really want to talk about trouble, the actors are actually okay. The most difficult ones are the singers, especially those who play in bands and 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 demand he had encountered was to cross two districts to buy a specific niche brand of French fries at more than three o'clock in the morning, and they had to be freshly fried.
"They said that you must eat this brand. His French fries are fresh. Eating other brands will make you cough." The friend told Meng Bai that at that time he really wanted to stuff the potatoes bought from the vegetable market into his mouth and ask him if it would be fresher this way.
After signing the contract with Li Qin, she had nothing to do. She only needed to go back to prepare the script, and then wait for the styling test and the start of the filming.
In contrast, Meng Bai was so busy that he had no time to touch the ground.
Many people outside the circle always think that the composition of the crew is very simple, with a director, actors, photographers, and at most two assistants to do miscellaneous things.
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 large framework, 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 team, the
director team and the screenwriter team. The production team includes producers, executive producers, production directors, on-site producers, external producers, life producers, fleets, and finance; the director team includes chief directors, executive directors, deputy actor directors, stage notes, coordinators, and assistant directors; only the screenwriter team is relatively simple, and at most it is just the chief screenwriter, episode screenwriter, and assistant screenwriter.
There are also many types of actors, including main actors, minor actors, special guest actors, stage actors, role-playing actors, non-role-playing actors, and extras. The number of people varies depending on the size of the crew.
But the really complicated one is the technical support department. Without mentioning the specific positions, just counting the departments includes the field service, art, costumes, makeup, photography, lighting, recording, editing, props, post-production special effects...
These groups have one or two people at least, and four or five people at most. A whole drama group often has a scale of forty or fifty people.
Of course, "Soul Ferry" is only a small project with an investment of three million yuan, and it is also in the form of a unit drama. There is no need to set up such a complete crew. It only needs to have the basics.
But even if it is calculated like this, there are about twenty people.
It is definitely too late to expect Meng Bai to contact so many people one by one, and it is also a problem to coordinate and manage after the start of the filming.
So. His top priority now is to find a suitable executive producer and set up a production team to facilitate the preparation of the crew and the subsequent crew management.
Fortunately, such people are not difficult to find. Just go to several film and television cities in northern Beijing and shout a few words, and you can recruit a car of suitable candidates.
But since it is necessary to cooperate with me, I must find someone familiar.
The person Meng Bai found was called Liu Zhi, a young man of about the same age as him, but he was very experienced in all the ins and outs of film and television crews.
Liu Zhi graduated from high school but didn't get into college, so he came to Beijing to be a "Beijing Drifter", and has been drifting in various major crews for so many years. Fortunately, he is smart and is willing to work hard after entering society. He gradually went from being a field worker who could only run errands and move props to being a site coordinator.
Meng Bai got to know him because they had met in two crews in a row and felt that they were destined to be together. In addition, Meng Bai wanted to make friends, so the two of them had a deep friendship.
Because Liu Zhi has been with many crews for many years, although he is not a powerful figure, he has a wide network of contacts in the Beijing-Beijing film and television circle.
And this is what Meng Bai needs the most.
(End of this chapter)
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