Chapter 305: Digital Film Production Base

Last night Fang Hong and Liu Tianxian chatted until the small hours. Couples are like that — as long as they like each other, even topics they've never touched on before can get them wildly excited.

If they don't like each other, no matter what topic you bring up, they can't be bothered to pay you any attention — like a simp.

Afterwards, the two of them played until they were tired, then lay down together!

In the morning, when Fang Hong came out of his room, he happened to see Liu Tianxian walking out of hers.

Seeing each other, they both smiled knowingly. Fang Hong said, "What are you grinning about?"

"You're the one grinning!"

Liu Tianxian stepped forward and playfully patted his head — calling her a fool for grinning first thing in the morning.

In the morning, after Liu Tianxian finished her meal here, she stayed until noon. Fang Hong drove her home; she still had elders at home who needed her company.

Now that both sides have formally met each other's parents, the next step is to set a date for the elders to meet — that needs a buffer period.

Let's see how Liu Xiaoli arranges it. Really, this matter mainly depends on Liu Xiaoli's attitude; everything else is fine.

Liu Tianxian's family has many and complicated relatives. Her father's side has a new family, and the relatives are also very complicated — it needs communication and discussion on how to handle it, and attention to etiquette.

It also depends on what Liu Xiaoli says — after all, he's the ex-husband!

Liu Xiaoli only has this one daughter. Whether she's marrying or whatever, all the rites must of course be completed in full, with plenty of ceremony — it can't be so casual.

This thing called ceremony — when you say it's important, it really is important!

Recently, Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons' box office has dipped a bit, but not outrageously so — it's held steady.

And this film has also exploded across the entire internet, bringing along a bunch of actors to fame. Xing Ye's films really do make people famous — Wenzhang, Shu Qi, Tang Yixin, Xiao Zhu and other stars all blew up from it.

And as the film screened, word-of-mouth and reviews also appeared online on a large scale.

This film's storytelling can be said to be terrible, but that's not just Xing Ye's problem — all big directors have this common ailment. Lao Mouzi, Chen Daren are all the same: the films are well-made, but the storytelling is super weak.

But Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons being a hit also has its reasons — one is Xing Ye's own influence, and another is that this film has many interpretations.

Interpreting Xing Ye's life, saying it was made for his moonlight-white lover, that he didn't cherish love, all sorts of messy interpretations fishing for sympathy.

As if nobody's life is without regrets.

Any film that can blow up always has polarized word-of-mouth — this film is exactly that. Those who praise it say it's especially good; those who don't like it go into frenzied roasting mode.

"Inspiration dried up, emotions hollow, repeating the past — seeing a thoroughly aged Xing Ye."

"The whole thing is just a Xing Ye impersonation show. Every character in it, big or small, male or female, young or old, immortal or demon, lead or supporting, all seem to be cast from the same mold. Every figure's speech and manner is nothing but diligently imitating Xing Ye!"

"."

These are the film's reviews. The audience can't see any particularly vivid characters — it all seems to be comedy for comedy's sake, all bearing the Chow-style comedy stamp.

But Huang Bo is definitely one of the big highlights of this film, delivering iconic scenes and god-tier acting — completely different from the Sun Wukong of before.

Huang Bo at this time was truly at his peak. From the New Year Slot to the Spring Festival Slot, he had three films, and two of them were massive hits.

One was Lost in Thailand, the other was Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Not just that — in one year he acted in over a dozen films.

Extremely prolific — and on top of that, he himself invests in film and television!

Previously, when Fang Hong signed Zhang Songwen, it was with the deliberate intention of letting him replace Huang Bo's position in the entertainment industry.

No other reason — Zhang Songwen is easier to control.

But after a few films, he still hadn't been elevated. He has name recognition, but the gap with Huang Bo is still too far — he hasn't even taken home a mainstream award.

Just as the saying goes — it depends on fate!

On February 13, Fifty Shades of Grey opened simultaneously in 3,646 theaters across North America, earning $30.2 million on its opening day.

It crushed Mojing Xianzhong, which opened the same day, and took the top spot for North America's box office of the season!

Spreading out from North America, the film quickly swept the globe, releasing in 58 regions worldwide.

Didn't expect there were so many places where you can watch porn!

Thanks to the novel's buzz, the film already had extremely high heat globally — lots of people came out of curiosity for something fresh.

On the international market, opening day broke through $100 million. With so many countries, it was simply impossible to tally them all — specific data would have to wait until next week.

According to initial estimates, Fifty Shades of Grey's global opening week is guaranteed at $200 million.

Humans really do love watching porn, SM and that sort of thing — there are even audiences who specifically go to IMAX screens to observe!

If only I could watch it with Liu Tianxian — let her see how other people play.

Actually, this film isn't very good — the whole thing is bland as water. It got criticized by audiences worldwide, with only a 25% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, getting roasted into a pile of shit.

But that doesn't stop its heat. Audiences are like their spirit and lust are separated — on one hand roasting it as a bad film, on the other sneaking off to the cinema to watch "new positions"!

The Hollywood Reporter published an article saying: "As the first installment of the trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey holds great appeal for fans of the original novel and for many young men and women. In every respect it can be called a phenomenon-level film.

Although the large amount of erotic scenes in the book have been somewhat restrained in the film, and the film's rating is only R-rated, this is still the first Hollywood blockbuster in all these years to boldly display desire. Unlike films such as 9½ Weeks that wink at the male audience, this film is shot from a female perspective."

Anything aimed at women is guaranteed to make money. Women bring men along, then after doing it, experience the wax-dripping, bondage, whipping from the film — very exciting.

Once the men are satisfied, they stop caring whether the film is good or not.

Variety believed: "Relying on the excellent performances of the two young leads, the production team adapted the Fifty Shades of Grey novel into a cunning tragicomedy, brandishing whips, playing with dripping wax. The film cutting out the long stretches of inner monologue from the original is truly a great relief. The handling of the camera is also very good, and the female lead successfully conveys that feeling of a little girl losing her innocence and gradually building confidence."

Time Out reported: "Not very satisfied with the film's restraint on its scale — it's like going to Disneyland and only riding the monorail there."

The New York Times reviewed: "The director successfully removed some of the flaws from the original. The female lead's performance is smart and convincing, although she doesn't have strong chemistry with the actor playing the male lead."

"."

All the world's mainstream media reported on this phenomenon-level film. There were even media outlets who felt the film was shot too restrainedly — it should have been bolder, more unrestrained.

If you shoot it unrestrained, can it still be released? Wouldn't it just be like AV then.

Just as Fifty Shades of Grey continued to blaze across the globe, Fang Hong had already arranged how the money from this film should be...

Part of it goes to building the Digital Film Production Base, for his own film shoots — no more renting from China Film Group in the future.

This base is mainly to prepare for shooting the upcoming special-effects blockbusters — Gravity, Interstellar and such — getting the infrastructure ready.

Qindao's Dongfang Yingdu hasn't risen up yet, so he can only build his own. Waiting for that one to rise up — you'd wait till the year of the monkey and the month of the horse.

The reason China could later shoot special-effects blockbusters is that Qindao's Dongfang Yingdu has the world's most advanced sound stages and hardware facilities.

Later, special-effects blockbusters like The Great Wall, The Wandering Earth, A Writer's Odyssey, Creation of the Gods, and others were all filmed here.

Pacific Rim 2 was also filmed here.

Originally it was meant to attract Hollywood studios, but those in the know understand, and those who don't, there's no way to explain.???? So although Dongfang Yingdu is impressive, with dozens of top-tier sound stages, it has always been lukewarm. The domestic film and television market simply can't sustain it, so it can only become a showpiece, and even its partner Wanda had no choice but to pull out.

That's later news, and has nothing to do with Fang Hong.

He wants to build his own Digital Film and Television Base, not open to the public, not grandstanding, just a solid internal film and television base.

Not only films, but also TV dramas, web series, and the like, making full use of it, forming a one-stop production process, bringing production and post-production all together.

In the future, when filming or doing post-production, if it's possible not to run around everywhere, then don't, this way it can also save time and production costs to the greatest extent.

Moreover, many professional shoots, virtual reality shoots, motion and facial capture, and other technologies also need a dedicated place for technical development or research.

Building the film and television base is expected to invest 2.1 billion, in three phases, phase one 700 million, the Zhong family and Jade Rabbit cooperative project, HR District new city supplying the land.

China Film Group's Digital Base is right here, this area hasn't been over-developed yet, there are still many farmlands, looking quite desolate, and later Beijing Film Academy's new campus will also move here.

So this place is intentionally being built into a new film capital, and it happens that Jade Rabbit's specialty is a perfect match, so it's still quite easy to get the land.

If Jade Rabbit wants to take it, 500 mu is enough, 160,000 per mu, about 80 million and it's done.

Actually the Zhong family is just putting up the money, letting it have a nominal participation, just to create a convenient label for accounting purposes, this money can't be given as a gift, giving it as a gift would be very troublesome.

As for the ownership of this Digital Film and Television Base, of course it belongs to Jade Rabbit, increasing its company's fixed assets.

Jade Rabbit is still in debt, with current earnings it simply can't build such a film and television base, and the Zhong family can't build it either, but combined, the two can stretch out the timeline, and still manage to pull it off.

As for the land acquisition process, before the new year they had already applied to the local government for approval, once approved, it would be handed to a third-party planning institute to design the architecture, and once designed, construction could begin, Jade Rabbit is only responsible for "putting up the money" and acceptance inspection.

This is where part of the Zhong family's money goes, roughly a few tens of millions of dollars is enough, because it doesn't go out all at once, estimated to take two or three years.

The other part is of course buying Nvidia shares. CFO and Board Secretary Meng Jun called and told Fang Hong that Nvidia's current market cap has already reached 7.6 billion dollars.

It's infinitely close to the 7.5 billion dollars Fang Hong mentioned before, so it's about time to buy.

This market cap was already the last critical point, back in December when it hit the lowest 7.5 billion dollar market cap, Fang Hong had no money.

After this, there would never be such a market cap again.

If he doesn't buy shares now, the more it develops and grows, the more money-starved it becomes. Any enterprise in its early development stage, aiming to quickly capture the market, requires massive capital.

And making movies is still too slow, increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of the times.

Buying shares isn't without benefits either, every quarter there are dividends. Take Nvidia for example, once it rises, every quarter there are dividends of over ten billion dollars, incredibly lavish.

Their Chairman is also a Shareholder, so the dividends are essentially being paid to himself.

On February 14th, the fifth day of the first lunar month, Valentine's Day, Fang Hong drove to Liu Tianxian's Villa gate, didn't drive in, just stopped at the entrance.

Liu Tianxian was already waiting, walked over with her hands behind her back.

The car window slowly rolled down, and there was Fang Hong with a rose stem held between his teeth appearing before her eyes, just like some chuunibyou youth, looking quite childish.

"Here, hold it with your teeth." Fang Hong bit down and stuck his head out.

Quite the look. Liu Tianxian sidestepped him, cheek to cheek, and bit the stem.

"Do you like it?" Fang Hong released his mouth and kissed her cheek.

"Just one?" Liu Tianxian held the bloom in her hand, not quite satisfied, too few.

"This is called 'The One and Only.'"

Fang Hong turned around, took out a big wrapped bouquet of roses from the back seat, very bright, very beautiful, handed it to her and said: "This is called 'Everlasting Love!'"

That's 99 roses!

Liu Tianxian's eyes curved into lovely crescents, reached out and took them, smelling an intoxicating fragrance, her mood beautiful, and full of love.

This was the first time this man had given her roses.

She tucked that one stem in: "Does this represent 'A Hundred Years of Harmonious Union'?"

"Yes." Fang Hong nodded.

Liu Tianxian smiled gently, handed the gift she had prepared to him: "This is for you."

Fang Hong looked at the square-shaped wrapped box: "What is this?"

"Open it and see." Liu Tianxian said.

Fang Hong opened the box, inside was a ceramic mug with a handle, the pattern on it like a starry sky, very artistic, and it reflected two letters "l", with a heart between the letters.

The first "l" is the initial of Fang Hong's name; the second "l" is the initial of Liu Tianxian's name, the meaning is obvious.

"This is a couple's mug, I have one exactly the same, don't lose it, don't break it, keep it safe." Liu Tianxian said earnestly.

Fang Hong felt this task was quite heavy, a custom ceramic mug, and it can't break, what if it breaks?

"Does it have any special meaning?"

"A lifetime!" Liu Tianxian said softly.

Cup (杯子), lifetime (辈子), it's a homophone. Fang Hong felt the task was even heavier, he must treasure it, if this breaks, their happiness breaks too.

Although the gifts the two exchanged weren't very expensive, they both represented each other's heartfelt intentions.

Liu Tianxian lowered her head to look at the one in her hand, smelled it with her nose, looked up and said: "Do you have anything else? Where are you going?"

"The company has an appointment, I'm going to discuss some business." Fang Hong put the mug away safely.

It's about the Nvidia matter, this needs to be discussed and arranged in advance, without his approval, CFO and Board Secretary Meng Jun wouldn't dare to operate freely.

No choice, the amount is huge, easily hundreds of millions, who would dare to make that call.

"You still have to work today?" Liu Tianxian's face showed heartache, everyone else is resting, this man still has to go to work.

"Yes, for the United States side." Fang Hong said.

The United States stock market changes every day, miss the opportunity and you earn a lot less, besides other people don't celebrate the Spring Festival.

"Then be careful on the road."

Liu Tianxian leaned over and pressed her cheek against his.

(End of this chapter)