After seeing Zhou Ruolan off, Xiao Weiguo fell into deep thought.
He arranged for Zhou Ruolan to take advantage of the album's great sales to promote it everywhere and put on performances, with the main purpose of raising the company's profile.
With increased brand recognition, many aspiring entertainers will likely want to join Panlong Culture & Entertainment Company.
It's impossible for Zhou Ruolan alone to support the entire company's performing arts business.
He needs more outstanding talents to join his team so that he can compete with the entertainment and media industries in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and abroad.
His approach is already starting to pay off. As Panlong Entertainment's reputation grows, the HR department has received numerous inquiries from artists hoping to join Panlong Culture & Entertainment Company.
Xiao Weiguo had only two requests.
First and foremost is professional ethics. No matter how talented or famous someone is, the company won't accept someone with questionable character.
If a time management guru were to appear in the company, like the one who later caused a major blunder, the losses to the company would be immeasurable.
Secondly, it requires that anyone who wants to join Panlong must have enough passion for their career.
Some artists become complacent once they achieve success and rely solely on their past achievements to make money everywhere.
Even if such a person succeeds, he cannot bring much benefit to the company, so Xiao Weiguo rejects such people from the bottom of his heart.
Compared to Zhou Ruolan's current glamorous life.
Xiao Weiguo invested a large amount of money in Zhang Damao's side.
The crew of "Green Apple Love" had a much tougher time.
Zhang Damao, along with all the actors and staff, traveled all over the country every day.
Sometimes, to capture a scene that only takes a few seconds, they might travel thousands of miles.
They spent every day navigating various environments in the wild. Zhang Damao lost a lot of weight. However, neither Zhang Damao nor any of the actors complained about the hardship or fatigue.
It's important to understand that at this time, China's film and television industry was still in its infancy.
All film crews currently operating face one crucial problem: funding.
As we all know, this industry is extremely capital-intensive. Not only does much of the equipment need to be imported, but many technologies are also immature and require foreign technical personnel to implement.
Therefore, compared to their predecessors, actors today not only do not enjoy the same level of fame and fortune, but they also have to endure much more hardship than those in ordinary jobs.
Take, for example, the movie "Journey to the West" which was released just before the Lunar New Year.
The entire series consists of 25 episodes, with a total funding of 3 million yuan from the government.
While the number may seem large, it's just a drop in the ocean when considering such a massive production.
Because Journey to the West required a wide variety of scenes, the director led the entire crew to travel to all 26 provinces across the country, and the expenses for so many people on the road were astronomical.
Their film crew only provided the actors with 50 cents a day for food. They couldn't even afford a bowl of wontons.
Can you imagine that such a grand production was made with only one old 300P camera? There wasn't even the most basic equipment like tracks or camera cranes.
The wire ropes used for stunt work were military-grade steel cables used in aviation. However, because they were too thick, there was no technology to hide them later, so they had to be broken into several strands. As a result, the load-bearing capacity could not meet the requirements, and almost every actor in the crew fell from them due to the wire ropes breaking.
In their words, each time they were suspended in a solemn ceremony, it was a test of life and death.
Due to insufficient funding, each actor basically played several or even more than a dozen roles. If you look closely, you will find that many of the monsters were played by the actors who played Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing.
Even so, the 3 million yuan funding, plus the sponsorships the director managed to secure from various sources, only lasted for fifteen episodes before the production ran out of funds.
The remaining ten episodes were only kept afloat thanks to three million yuan in funding that Teacher Li, who played the centipede demon in the show, brought in from a certain production company.
It's fair to say that this drama is so poor in terms of acting skills that it has nothing else to offer.
The hardships the film crew endured were even more arduous than the eighty-one tribulations described in the book.
For Xiao Weiguo, he wouldn't let his actors be troubled by funding. Whether it was food or salary, he ensured it was on par with actors from Hong Kong and Taiwan companies at the time. Regarding equipment, he even went so far as to have Zhang Damao import the most advanced foreign filming equipment. This shows his support for him.
Panlong Group is not short of money right now, so Xiao Weiguo will not be too stingy in this regard.
So, Zhang Damao, who had finally found his mentor, threw himself into his career like a madman.
Of course, perhaps this state of mind can help him stop thinking about too many things.
Zhang Damao was extremely demanding of his actors, and even of himself, in every aspect.
He would never overlook any scene or any action by an actor that didn't meet his standards, even the slightest flaw.
If one take wasn't enough, they'd do it twice; if two takes weren't enough, they'd do it three times. There was even an actor who only had a crying and laughing expression, but because that actor had no experience in this area, it was difficult for him to meet his requirements. They filmed it more than fifty times in a row. In the end, it was because of this one action that Zhang Damao replaced the actor in a fit of anger.
You have to understand, if you replace one person in the middle, many of the earlier scenes have to be reshot. How much loss would that cause?
However, no matter how much everyone tried to persuade him, Zhang Damao insisted on his own opinion. He declared that even if they complained to the chairman, he would not allow an actor with insufficient acting skills to stay in his film crew.
Xiao Weiguo understood his thoughts and fully supported him.
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