Chapter 448

Chapter 448: Shooting done.

At the end of January, Xin Changkong finally returned with the film crew.

Unlike his energic self when he just started, he was tired now but he was filled with confidence.

Chen Huan felt that he was like those directors that just debuted and was filled with curiosity and audacity.

As for Xin Changkong’s work performance on the shooting, Bu Yiyi already told him over the phone.

At the beginning, everyone didn’t really buy in.

After all, Xin Changkong’s previous actions were too trashy and very few people trusted him.

Everyone would flatter him while he was successful but nobody wanted to play for him while he was down.

Had it not been Xin Changkong was appointed by Teacher Chu Liuxiang and that Teacher Lu Xiaofeng as the funder of the project vouched for his ability, the people wouldn’t want to work under him.

Then Xin Changkong won the admiration of the cast and staff by virtue of his own ability and hard work.

The average time he slept during shooting was 5 hours a day. He would work until midnight and inevitably wake up at 6 or 7 to prepare for a new day of work.

Whether it was the camera, location, clothing or other logistics, Xin Changkong didn’t push the work to others.

Under his leadership, it didn’t matter whether it was the rain or the wind, or other situations, none of it bothered the film crew.

He could always efficiently use his time.

Everyone wasn’t some newbie and knew from a glance that it needed a lot of energy and time.

During shooting, Xin Changkong was not only very strict but also controlled over every character in each scene.

Before the start of the shooting every day and during the meeting to discuss the plot, he usually would explain and analyze in detail to the actors how to do the rivalry between whom and whom and how to act in order to create comedic effect.

Even a TV superstar like Kong Xiangjun accepted the advice, let alone the other.

The young ones were shocked by him.

Gradually, they started to ignore his past scandals and earnestly followed the advice and instruction given by him.

Like that, operating the film crew was smoother and everyone was faster at the shooting.

‘Princess Returning Pearl’ was finished in just around 60 days and Xin Changkong had already edited the first three episodes.

There were many TV series that had been shot really fast in history.

This speed was nothing weird.

Back in 79 with the classic TV series ‘Chu Liuxiang’, which was the version played by Qiu Chi. It took less than days from the finishing of the script to the start of the shooting.

Then the entire TV series took a month to shoot.

For that, Qiu Chi was so tired he had to go to the hospital to take an infusion and then he ran back to start shooting again.

So the 2 month for 28 episodes of ‘Princess Returning Pearl’ wasn’t that fast.

The most important point was the quality.

It was useless if they shot it fast if the quality wasn’t good.

As soon as December, Xin Changkong already edited the first episode and sent it to Chen Huan.

Chen Huan took a look at this first-cut version of the first episode and felt it had many similarities to the first episode he saw back from his world but there were also many differences.

As people know, TV series from Taiwan, especially the TV series from Aunty Qiongyao, had a very empty or stage-like feeling when watching.

To put it more clearly, it was like watching theater plays.

That was how the original was.

For example, when Liu Qing met with the people at the inn, it felt like the background was irrelevant and it was all focused on the characters.

It felt like the effect would be similar even if they replaced the actors.

The background of ‘Green Grass by the River’ could be changed into ‘Princess Returning Pearl’ and it would be about the scene, except for the tone for the tragedy and comedy tone was a bit different.

Of course, Chen Huan looked at it with the perspective from 20 years later so the many shortcomings were obvious.

But in 1999, it looked great with no such thing as a mistake.

The viewers didn’t mind at all.

But there was a problem.

It was 2016 now and if some improvement and change wasn’t made to ‘Princess Returning Pearl’, it made to be able to meet Chen Huan’s standard.

It was the same for ‘Love Through Different Times’ as it was originally made in 2003 so if it hadn’t been improved and just blindly followed Chen Huan’s script, then it could only be counted as a great series but it couldn’t reach the step of being an extremely popular show.

So Teacher Chu emphatically explained this point to Xin Changkong.

In the script discussing, he urged to get rid of that sense of vintage and cheapness of it and hoped Xin Changkong could improve it.

Chen Huan was very happy when he saw the first cut of the first episode because Xin Changkong succeeded.

He not only made a great series without giving the feeling of the absence of a background but also grasped the essence and characteristic of the landscape when filming outside.

In term of visual effect, perhaps ‘Princess Returning Pearl’ wasn’t as good as the big budget ‘Young Di Renjie’ but it wasn’t that much inferior.

After all, Boss Yang sponsored all the costumes for them and Xin Changkong didn’t save money on that as he used the best ones and certainly wouldn’t use one that didn’t suit.

For the budget, Chen Huan gave it to Xin Changkong in two parts, the first part was 30 million and the second was 10 million.

Although Xin Changkong called and told him that 30 million was enough, there should be extra budget as scenes that should be retaken but weren’t retaken, would definitely retaken now and those would be adjusted but not retaken, would be redid from the start.

The price of excellence was done with more money.

Not much money could be saved when you relied on a director to do so.

Which meant that those that weren’t filming on the scene would have to be done by CGI, which would cost even more.

So when Xin Changkong returned to Lin’an, he still had 5 million with him.

This money could be used for the post production team to edit the final version.

The three episodes that Chen Huan had in his hands were already the version edited by Xin Changkong the second time.

What Chen Huan had to do was to use them to sell ‘Princess Returning Pearl’ to the various TV stations.