Chapter 332: Maximizing Interests

December 31st is the last day of 2006.

On this day, the Berlin International Film Festival solemnly held a press conference. Dieter Kosslick, in his capacity as the film festival chairman and organizing committee chairman, announced the nine-member jury list to the outside world.

According to practice, after the invited jury members of the film festival are determined, they will not be announced so solemnly by the film festival chairman. Doing so is a bit of a fuss.

However, when the nine-member jury list was announced this year, the media and reporters didn't think so.

No one expected that this year's Berlin Film Festival would be so prestigious.

Dieter Kosslick formulated two backup lists after deciding to invite Cao Yang.

If Cao Yang accepted the invitation of the Berlin Film Festival, the other members of the jury would be one list.

If Cao Yang didn't accept the invitation of the Berlin Film Festival, all the members of the jury would be another list.

Moreover, after Cao Yang confirmed that he would be the jury president of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, Dieter Kosslick also gave that list to Cao Yang, fully seeking Cao Yang's opinion.

The reason why this list could cause a sensation and make people feel that this year's Berlin Film Festival was prestigious after it was announced was because the jury president was Cao Yang, which was enough to make the media excited for half a day.

After all, as everyone knows, Cao Yang rarely appears in public media except for promoting films, and has never been a judge of a film festival. Although there are countless invitations every year, there has never been a successful example.

So this first time is considered very precious.

Just Cao Yang's jury president is already considered big news.

However, the Berlin Film Festival or Dieter Kosslick was not satisfied. He felt that since he could invite Cao Yang, why not make it more sensational?

Then, on this list, there was Johnny Depp, a two-time Oscar winner.

For Depp to become a member of the jury, everyone was surprised but felt it was reasonable.

No one felt that Depp was unqualified to become a member of the jury. Although the European art-house circle generally looked down on Hollywood and didn't look down on the Oscars, the Oscar Best Actor also represented artistic achievement and represented acting.

Depp is a weirdo and hard to invite; this is a recognized fact.

Not to mention that Depp is now a superstar, a superstar with super influence that the three major European film festivals want to rack their brains to invite.

Many people know clearly why Depp came to be a member of this jury. To tell the truth, if Cao Yang didn't come to be this jury president, Depp definitely wouldn't come to Berlin to be this judge.

In terms of global influence, Depp's arrival will bring a big wave of ratings to the Berlin Film Festival, and advertising fees will also increase a lot.

Of course, this is not over yet. Dieter Kosslick finally invited Cao Yang and promised to clarify some things, so he must maximize Cao Yang's role.

He also invited Charlize Theron, who had won an Oscar Best Actress award.

Initially, Charlize Theron refused.

The Berlin Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival are the same; their influence is getting smaller and smaller, and many Hollywood big stars and superstars are not very willing to come.

Although Charlize Theron failed to impact the superstar status, she is also a person who has won an Oscar Best Actress award, a proper Hollywood big star, and no longer needs to be a judge at the Berlin Film Festival to improve her status.

However, Dieter Kosslick told Charlize Theron and her agent that Cao Yang would be the jury president this year.

Then, Charlize Theron and her agent agreed and were willing to come to the Berlin Film Festival to be a judge on the jury.

Just as Dieter Kosslick thought, which actor in Hollywood today doesn't want to get on good terms with Cao Yang?

The Berlin Film Festival can be considered very courageous and also very good at seizing opportunities, very good at "struggling," which is probably related to their tradition.

In later generations, because of the epidemic, the Berlin Film Festival once had a Jin Xiong Award "all-star" jury—the six judges at that time were all directors who had won the Jin Xiong Award.

However, although the gimmick was full, the influence of the Berlin Film Festival had already been greatly reduced at that time, plus special reasons, it didn't cause too many waves in the end.

Sometimes, many things are no longer changeable by manpower, just like Germany, wanting to "struggle" again, placed in the current international pattern, without major changes, it is basically impossible.

This Berlin Film Festival jury invited a total of nine people; perhaps this can also be considered a kind of forced move.

Cao Yang's influence is too great. If Cao Yang insists on giving the Jin Xiong Award to a certain film, if there are only the traditional seven people in the jury, it is highly likely that it cannot be stopped.

If there are nine people, in addition to inviting two Hollywood big stars to ensure influence, they can also invite four or five "their own people," which can prevent Cao Yang's "arbitrariness" at critical moments.

Of course, Dieter Kosslick is still very good at being a person.

In order to show sincerity and ensure Cao Yang's right to speak, fearing that Cao Yang would have opinions, he invited two Chinese people again—Ning Ying of the 78th recording class of the Beijing Film Academy, and Shi Nansheng, a famous producer in Hong Kong and the wife of Xu Ke.

At least on the surface, these two people look like they will support Cao Yang's decision.

However, it is hard to say. Ning Ying is from the 78th class of the Beijing Film Academy, but she went to Italy for study with a public scholarship in 81.

Shi Nansheng is a Hong Kong person. No one dares to guarantee whether she will become Dieter Kosslick's dark line because of some reasons, such as Dieter Kosslick promising to promote the films of her and Xu Ke's company at the Berlin Film Festival in the future.

As long as the interests are large enough, nothing is strange.

Of course, this is just the worst plan. As long as Cao Yang doesn't "act arbitrarily" on the ownership of the Jin Xiong Award and completely breaks with the Berlin Film Festival, I believe many follow-up moves cannot be used, and it is still good for everyone.

Looking at this list on the surface, among the nine people, Depp and Theron will definitely support Cao Yang's decision, and the two Chinese judges will also support Cao Yang, plus Cao Yang himself, this is five people, mastering absolute decision-making power.

Dieter Kosslick gave Cao Yang enough respect. As he said, except for the Jin Xiong Award that needs to be discussed, Cao Yang can decide the other awards for himself. Anyway, this is also reflected in this list.

According to general rules, one month before the opening of the film festival, the list of films entering the main competition unit will be announced.

The 57th Berlin International Film Festival opens on February 8th and ends on February 18th. Under normal circumstances, the nomination list is announced around January 15th.

However, Dieter Kosslick expressed again at this press conference in his capacity as the film festival artistic director and selection committee chairman that the nomination list for the main competition unit of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival will be announced on January 28th.

The Berlin Film Festival can be considered a highly centralized organization. Dieter Kosslick serves as the Berlin Film Festival chairman, artistic director, organizing committee chairman, investment promotion director, selection committee chairman...

If it weren't for the fact that too little time left for the jury would increase their workload and the jury members would have opinions, Dieter Kosslick would like to postpone this time even more.

Directly postponing the announcement time of the main competition unit nomination list by about half a month, this date is only ten days away from the opening of the Berlin Film Festival.

Why postpone so much time?

Dieter Kosslick has his own calculations. He knows very well that although it is only postponed by about half a month, it is now the end of December, and there is almost a month left before the announcement of nominations.

Although nominally the time to participate in the main competition unit has ended, those famous directors, as well as directors specially invited by the Berlin Film Festival, definitely don't need to comply with this time.

After announcing the matter of inviting Cao Yang to be the jury president, Dieter Kosslick believes that many interesting things will happen in this month.

There will definitely be many famous directors who didn't intend to participate in the Berlin Film Festival who will change their minds. A film festival with Cao Yang, Depp, and Theron will definitely increase its influence by more than one level.

Before the filming of "New Pirates of the Caribbean," Cao Yang needed at least half a year for props and studio construction according to the plot needs, the filming cycle was expected to be about 80 days, and the post-production after visual effects also needed half a year.

However, he didn't expect Disney to still retain the previous props, and the studio wasn't dismantled, shortening the half-year preparation period to more than twenty days.

After adding the immersion experience, several main actors filmed both easily and quickly. The 80-day filming plan should be able to be shortened to more than 60 days.

However, post-production special effects couldn't take shortcuts, and Cao Yang had strict requirements for this, and added quite a few scenes that he didn't intend to do special effects for before, so post-production adding special effects, half a year would definitely not be less.

Filming started on December 4, 2006. According to the current filming progress, Cao Yang expected to complete filming during the Berlin Film Festival.

But he had to go to the Berlin Film Festival to be the jury president, had to watch the films entering the main competition unit, and had to evaluate the awards of the main competition unit. These all had to be done by going to Berlin in advance.

Therefore, he now has two choices.

One is to speed up the filming progress and try to see if it can be completed before February.

The second is to follow the current progress, and before February, film as much as possible, and leave the rest to be filmed after the Berlin Film Festival.

However, this second point is a bit offensive to Disney.

According to the plan, when the nomination list for the main competition unit is announced on the 28th, all members of the jury must arrive in Berlin. That is to say, on this day, their work officially begins.

That is to say, from January 28th to the closing of the Berlin Film Festival on February 18th, there are two more days to participate in celebration parties and other social and human relations, and also count the round-trip time of taking a plane.

These add up to at least 25 days.

In the case that the film is not finished, the director leaving for 25 days is very unfriendly to investors.

Even if the crew doesn't film during these 25 days, they still need to spend a lot of money every day—staff wages, prop rentals, studio rentals, etc.

Therefore, we must think of a way to have the best of both worlds.

Cao Yang considered this problem when he agreed to Dieter Kosslick to serve as the jury president of the Berlin Film Festival.

He gathered several assistant directors, coordinators, and field managers to re-plan the shooting plan.

Separate a shooting team, and hand over some unimportant shots, such as location shooting, some scenes without main characters, etc., to this team to shoot.

Moreover, he also specially increased the daily shooting plan a little bit.

According to the current plan, if everything goes well, the crew will finish filming on February 1st.

That is to say, adding up, the filming was compressed to 60 days, which was about 6 days earlier than the accelerated progress.

Subsequently, the crew entered a fast-paced shooting mode. Several main actors didn't feel anything; they were still filming very easily, but other actors needed to adapt.

This led to sometimes needing to work overtime to complete the shooting plan.

However, Cao Yang's current status is different, and his influence is naturally not what it used to be, so no one complained about anything among those staff members.

At least on the surface, no one dared to complain.

This point made Cao Yang think of the staff of domestic crews again.

When filming a movie or TV series, working overtime is a common thing. Sometimes to catch up with the progress, there are situations where they work overtime until the early hours of the morning.

Some people say that Hollywood is particularly humane, strictly following the prescribed time, and when the time is up, the staff will go off work directly, so many people are very envious.

Cao Yang doesn't know who spread this, anyway, since he came to Hollywood to film movies, whether it was "Milk" filmed when he first came, or "New Pirates of the Caribbean" filmed now, working overtime is also a common thing.

But he had never encountered staff members who dared to drop their work and not do it when the time was up.

It was when he first came to Hollywood to film "Milk" that some people couldn't help but complain a few words about delaying off-work, but now, even those who dare to complain are gone.

When Cao Yang was intensifying filming here, on January 28, the Berlin Film Festival finally announced the list of films shortlisted for the main competition unit.

The films shortlisted this time were 22, and the most were actually Hollywood films, reaching as many as 6. The Berlin Film Festival also began to try to embrace Hollywood.

This can also be seen from the Berlin Film Festival inviting Depp and Theron.

Moreover, these six selected films almost all have Hollywood big stars.

Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, George Clooney, Tobey Maguire, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas, etc.

As long as these stars can come, this Berlin Film Festival will definitely be the most successful one in recent years and will also be the one with the greatest influence.

For this reason, Dieter Kosslick was very happy and believed that inviting Cao Yang was definitely the wisest decision.

The second most shortlisted were French films, which also had 5.

Instead, German films only had 3 entering the main competition unit, and two of them were co-productions with other countries.

German films performed so poorly while occupying the right time and place, and they had indeed declined.

Chinese-language films had two shortlisted for the main competition unit, all of which were mainland films.

One was Wang Quanan's "Tuya's Marriage," and one was Li Yu's "Lost in Beijing."

After the list of films shortlisted for the main competition unit of the Berlin Film Festival was announced, domestic media reported it extensively. In recent years, mainland films could be considered to have "comprehensively" risen.

Not only is the annual box office growing every year, but even awards with world-class influence have been won every year in recent years.

With the announcement of the main competition unit list, Cao Yang's phone almost became a "hotline."

Very many media reporters, domestic and foreign, all wanted to interview Cao Yang, hoping to understand what the criteria for award evaluation were as the jury president of the Berlin Film Festival.

Wang Quanan and Li Yu also called Cao Yang, but didn't say much. They just chatted simply. Everyone knew what it meant to call at this time, and saying more was useless.

The six Hollywood films that were shortlisted, their directors or producers, or the stars and the film studios behind them, as long as they knew Cao Yang, all called Cao Yang.

Who said foreigners don't understand human feelings and sophistication? The whole world is actually the same.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 333 =====