Chapter 129: Post-Production

Of course, Xiao Ran wasn’t the kind of person who inspired hatred; otherwise, he wouldn’t have so many friends in the industry. That’s why, after Zhou Xingchi became famous, his fee was set at 200,000, while the price Meiying paid him to star in “A Family Celebration” was raised to 100,000—a compromise between the two sides.
Debao had already taken on such deals that were clearly unprofitable in the early stages, which meant Pan Disheng would continue working in film for a long time, rather than suddenly stopping all business operations at the height of his success, as had happened in history.
Although Xiao Ran had always regarded this as the biggest mystery in Hong Kong’s film industry and was eager to unravel it, he wasn’t there as a tourist but as a changer. Things that would happen now and in the future were different from what he had originally understood.
Xiao Ran no longer cared about money. Even though he held a significant portion of Microsoft’s shares, he really didn’t care about wealth. However, not caring about money didn’t mean he liked to be challenged. He hated being directly challenged, as it was an insult to his authority.
“I understand what you mean. You plan to use their strength to accelerate the development of Hong Kong cinema and save time,” Lin Qingxia said with a smile that was extremely charming. Xiao Ran swore he had never seen her look so adorable.
Lin Qingxia’s words surprised Xiao Ran greatly. He never expected her, who used to know little about finance and economics, to understand what he meant. Noticing the surprise in his eyes, Lin Qingxia subdued her exaggerated smile and said shyly, “I’ve been idle lately, so I’ve read some related books!”
Xiao Ran was stunned for a moment before realizing that Lin Qingxia was doing this to help him. A warm feeling spread through his heart. He hugged her tightly and whispered in her ear, “Qingxia, never leave me. Without you, my life would be incomplete!” Everyone loves sweet words, and Lin Qingxia was no exception. Her face turned red at Xiao Ran’s words.
The bad news kept coming. The next day, as soon as Xiao Ran arrived at the office, Wei Dongling rushed in like a whirlwind, delivering more bad news: “Fang Ruohai has acquired ATV for 300 million!”
Damn it! Xiao Ran was shocked and immediately stood up, stunned. This was definitely bad news. Now, Fang Ruohai would have a highly advantageous platform. He had long wanted to get involved in the television industry, and the talent training department was set up for that purpose. But the pressure from TVB was too strong, forcing him to give up the idea temporarily. He never expected Fang Ruohai to act first.
Thinking further, Xiao Ran smiled. The day before, he had personally called Fang Yihua, hoping to strengthen cooperation with TVB, but she politely refused. Xiao Ran knew TVB intended to stay neutral. But now that Fang Ruohai had acquired ATV, he would inevitably become TVB’s enemy. He doubted TVB wouldn’t turn to him.
Wei Dongling clearly thought of the same thing as well, looking at Xiao Ran with a smirk. Xiao Ran nodded at him without saying anything. There was no need to speak. If Wei Dongling couldn’t see this, he really didn’t deserve to be in this business.

Of course, Fang Ruohai was by no means blind to this, but he could never have imagined just how ruthless the tactics used by TVB throughout its monopoly over Hong Kong’s television industry. Xiao Ran smiled secretly—this way, TVB would help bear some of the pressure from Fang Ruohai, and it might even indirectly shake the alliance of the four major companies.

Two days later, Fang Ruohai announced the establishment of Hailue Group, with New Art City, New Art Treasure, and ATV becoming its subsidiaries. On the fourth day, Hailue Group acquired a newspaper and a magazine. A week later, Fang Ruohai announced a restructuring of New Art City.

The media soon noticed that, for some reason, the famous Fang Ruohai had reappeared and had even taken a series of bold actions, giving off the impression of being Hong Kong’s top entertainment company. The old incidents involving Xiao Ran and Fang Ruoxin were brought up again, and Fang Ruohai immediately issued strict orders forbidding his newspapers and magazines from covering them.

Xiao Ran, on the other hand, did the exact opposite—letting things take their course. This was perhaps the biggest difference between Xiao Ran and Fang Ruohai: Fang Ruohai always liked to strictly control everything, while Xiao Ran knew exactly when to loosen things up and when to tighten them. As an old saying goes, “There must be a balance between tension and relaxation.” Just like in writing novels—there must be intense climaxes, but also sufficient buildup and lulls.

What intrigued the media even more was that after the restructuring, New Art City’s structure was exactly the same as that of Shadow Company, seemingly a copy of Shadow’s structure. When the new management of New Art City emerged, the media went wild with speculation.

They discovered that several of New Art City’s senior executives were former employees of Shadow Company. From this, they quickly connected the dots and deduced that Xiao Ran had formed a feud with the Fang family over this matter.

Xiao Ran naturally dismissed this. If Fang Ruohai were someone who would sacrifice profit opportunities for revenge, he wouldn’t need to worry about Fang Ruohai becoming his enemy. Still, it was good—at least Xiao Ran saw it as a challenge to prove his authority.

While the media frantically tried to uncover any possible connections, whether intentional or accidental, Tianluo Company also underwent a restructuring, its structure still very similar to that of Shadow Company. This left Pan Disheng deeply puzzled—he didn’t understand why the two companies would do this.

After all, Hong Kong film companies generally had a hollow structure, with no clear departments. Even a few large companies like Debao and Cathay didn’t have many departments—usually just production, distribution, and finance. A structure like Shadow Company undoubtedly increased administrative costs significantly.

In Pan Disheng’s office, Cen Jianxun, with his extremely strange hairstyle, scratched his head, showing a shrewdness completely opposite to his screen persona: “Why are Tianluo and Hailue both imitating Shadow Company? Is Shadow’s structure really that excellent?”

Pandisheng couldn’t answer such a question, but the current situation gave him a strange feeling—one that told him he had fallen behind the three major companies. If he didn’t make a serious effort to catch up, it would be difficult to catch up in the future. Pandisheng was a very cautious person, but this time he truly felt stuck. He was faced with a dilemma: either follow suit or maintain the status quo. He knew well that when a company faced such a choice, it meant the company had reached a crossroads. After much deliberation, he finally made a bold decision: “We should reorganize too!”

When the news of DeBao’s reorganization reached He Guanchang, he couldn’t help but jump up in surprise. He was already astonished by the reorganizations of Yang Qi and Fang Ruohai, but now DeBao was also following in the footsteps of Shadow Company—it was utterly absurd. After discussing it with Zou Wenhui, they both thought these guys were crazy. Of course, this was just talk; they were confused as to whether Shadow Company’s film structure was really that excellent. At least they didn’t dare or want to try it. Jiahé was now a huge company, and any change would be costly.

What was Xiao Ran doing? He was celebrating with Fa Ge for becoming the best actor at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. He was also celebrating Shadow Company’s “Fairy Tale in Autumn” for defeating the South Korean film “Married Wife” and winning Best Film and Best Actor. Unfortunately, in Xiao Ran’s memory, “Ghost Story” was supposed to win Best Original Score at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival this year, but it had to be postponed because it wasn’t ready yet. Meanwhile, New Art City’s “Dragon and Tiger” won Best Editing.

Besides this, Xiao Ran was also surprised by Fang Ruohai and Yang Qi’s bold decision to learn from others. He wasn’t surprised that Fang Ruohai had such vision, but whether he could put aside his pride and imitate others was another matter. Yet now that it had happened, it only showed that after a devastating defeat, Fang Ruohai was more desperate than ever.

Xiao Ran wasn’t interested in this at all, as he was busy with the post-production of “Dark Flower.” The second trailer had already been broadcast on TV, and his magazines and newspapers had been leaking various details bit by bit, keeping the media’s interest high until the third trailer was released.

Among the entire “Dark Flower” crew, Xiao Ran was the busiest person. At Shadow Company’s special effects department, which handled post-production, after working with Fa Ge to finish the film’s narration, he started working on creating the sound effects. These sound effects included fight sounds and similar elements, all of which required skilled voice actors. Xiao Ran simply needed to convey his concepts to the head of the voice acting team. Fortunately, after shooting “Dark Flower,” every department approached their work with extreme rigor and enthusiasm, resulting in a perfectly executed post-production.

For example, the gunshots in the film—what Xiao Ran wanted was definitely not something extremely explosive and loud, but rather a more subdued effect, which would enhance the film’s perfection. The sound recording team worked extremely diligently; to create the few gunshots in the film, they came up with many ideas, such as using a cloth to muffle the sound, giving it a more subdued tone. Even for footsteps, like Yao Dong walking on the street, they needed sound effects that were spacious yet cold, and not rushed at all. In fact, the sound recording team did an outstanding job, much to Xiao Ran’s admiration. As for subtitles and voiceovers in other languages, Wei Dongling assigned talents from the human resources department who turned out to be elites. Among them were not only local language experts from Hong Kong but also experts from the mainland to facilitate translation into Mandarin, and even foreign language professors as professional consultants. Of course, language translation is by no means about literal translation—Xiao Ran has always thought that’s too foolish. So, the translators didn’t just translate word for word but analyzed the meaning of each line of dialogue in the context of the film. When translating, they also had to maintain consistency with the film’s atmosphere and style, which is an extremely difficult task. Fortunately, Xiao Ran had been preparing for all this since the founding of Phantom, so in terms of technical aspects such as pre-production and post-production, Phantom could be said to be the best in Hong Kong and even across Asia. Subtitles and voiceovers are merely tedious technical tasks, but scoring and editing are highly artistic endeavors. Lin Daoyun looked at the silent footage and asked, “Brother Ran, do you want synchronized sound and visuals or contrasting ones?” Xiao Ran was well aware that these two types were actually the technical approaches commonly used in scoring. During filming, Lin Daoyun would start composing music whenever a scene required it. In post-production, it was mainly a matter of selection. Staring at the film footage, Xiao Ran tapped his fingers gently; the rhythm helped him gradually tap into creative inspiration. This time, he wouldn’t rely on memory to choose the music. Suddenly opening his eyes, he pointed at the screen where Stephen Chow was in motion, saying, “This part needs music, but the rhythm shouldn’t be too strong!” In fact, this time Xiao Ran chose the technique of contrasting sound and visuals, where the music and visuals are opposite yet subtly unified to create depth. He didn’t want to disrupt the mood of the film’s several semi-static shots, so he opted to add music to less important scenes. Scoring is indeed a highly artistic task—considering not only the musical style, layout, and design but also whether they fit the film’s style and narrative changes. Each piece of music must start and end in a way that evokes the film’s emotions and atmosphere, and it must also complement the visuals. Either the director or the composer—anyone who slips up can easily result in music that doesn’t match the film.

Composing music is by no means an easy task. Composers often need to understand various instruments and orchestration, as well as have a thorough knowledge of different types of music and related materials. They must also be able to control the length, speed, and rhythm of music. It’s no exaggeration to say that composing music is far more difficult than creating a pop song.

Xiao Ran used very little music in this film because of its strong rhythmic flow; almost every piece of music was inserted sparingly. After completing this step, Xiao Ran wasn’t satisfied and watched the entire film again, then said, “Delete this piece of music; this part can be more intense.”

The remaining task was editing. In fact, several drafts had already been edited, and the scenes with music composed by Xiao Ran and Lin Daoyun were the result of those edits. The earlier edits were mainly to align with Xiao Ran’s creative vision by removing unnecessary segments.

In front of the rewinder and cutter, Xiao Ran quietly watched the film. The unedited version was simply unbearable to watch. Pointing to the scene where A Chen goes to meet Brother Ji in the dark, Xiao Ran narrowed his eyes and said to Zhang Yaozong, “I want to cut out this part…”

As he continued watching the film, Xiao Ran kept pointing out his requirements. Actually, Zhang Yaozong already had a pretty good idea of what Xiao Ran wanted, as he had been following the crew throughout the process and had a deep understanding of the film’s creative intent, overall concept, and character personalities.

Zhang Yaozong had edited many films, but he couldn’t recall any that were more special than this one. The biggest uniqueness was that the film remained eerily quiet from start to finish. Although there were occasional dialogues, that silence seemed to stem from within—cold and lonely.

Plus, since this wasn’t their first collaboration, Zhang Yaozong was always intrigued by the very distinctive and innovative works of Meiying. His interest was so strong that he even ignored the warnings from the four major companies. In fact, although he hadn’t signed a contract with Meiying yet, he kept working on their projects—their relationship wasn’t formal.

*****
Recommend Sima’s new book, *Shaolin Basketball*, at http://www.feiku.com/showbook.asp?bl_id=43207. Of course, I also recommend my own new book, *The Legend of the Gambling God*. Go vote!