In August, Beiping was shrouded in the height of summer, and the sun released a huge amount of heat, so that the ancient city walls were still hot until midnight.

Sitting on the balcony, the electric fan behind him was whirring, still unable to relieve the heat, Zhang Ran let out a lament: "I didn't think it was so hot in Peking before, is it a physical problem? It's too hot!"

Zhang Ran wanted to buy an air conditioner, but he couldn't afford it, all his assets now add up to a little more than 3,000, more than 2,000 air conditioners, buy an air conditioner, and he can only drink the northwest wind in the next month.

In fact, compared with air conditioning, Zhang Ran needs broadband more. As a person who came in 2015, as a person who lives on the Internet, there is no broadband, which simply takes him half his life. In the afternoon, he called Telecom and didn't want to charge 1,300 yuan for the initial installation fee for installing broadband, plus almost 2,000 yuan for a year's broadband fee, so he could only give up half of his life.

Without broadband, without air conditioning, this can't survive.

No, I can't just sit there, I've got to find a way to make some money!

Zhang Ran got up and returned to the room, carried his notebook to the balcony, and when XP's desktop was displayed, he clicked on word and typed in four words - time prisoner.

During the half month in the hospital, Zhang Ran had already thought clearly about how to go in the future, and originally planned to stay at Nortel for a year and a half, and only started his plan after gaining a firm foothold, but now it seems that he has to advance it.

Zhang Ran wants to make a movie, but now it is 2001, domestic films are at the lowest ebb, and the possibility of new directors wanting to get investment is very small.

The environment is so bad, Zhang Ran doesn't expect the first movie to be released and kill all sides at the box office, he wants to make a film to practice his hands first, and make a little money by the way to improve his life. Zhang Ran's goal is on the movie channel, which shoots a large number of TV movies every year. TV movies have many weaknesses, small investment, short shooting cycle, and rough production, but it is a rare opportunity for new directors to exercise, Guan Hu and Gao Xixi are all from TV movies.

Zhang Ran plans to write a good script and cooperate with the movie channel in the name of Nortel Qingying Studio, with the signboards of Nortel and Qingying Studio, he has a great chance of success.

Zhang Ran has already thought about what to shoot, he wants to finish the short film he was making before he was reborn, which can be regarded as a farewell to the past. The short film is called "Time Prisoner" and is based on Liu Gongzi's classic science fiction novel "A Day of Prisoner".

The story is somewhat similar to the American movie "Groundhog Day", at 0:00 a.m. on August 19, 2001, a mysterious person checked into a hotel, and the front desk of the hotel found this person very strange, obviously saw him go upstairs a few seconds ago, but a few seconds later he actually walked in through the door, as if there were many different him. After 24 hours, the mysterious man died in the room. The front desk discovers a shocking secret in the room of the mysterious man, who is a future criminal and is sentenced to time imprisonment, imprisoned on August 19, and repeats the same day, a full ten years, until his death.

The story of "One Day Prisoner" is extremely exciting and full of suspense, but unfortunately the novel is only a short story, relatively thin, and cannot last 90 minutes.

Now he plans to cooperate with the movie channel, which does not accept short films, but has to be made into a 90-minute movie, so Zhang Ran has to add content to "Time Prisoner" and expand the story to 90 minutes.

These days, in the hospital, Zhang Ran has been thinking about this story, how to write the script, what content to add, and he has already thought about how to adapt it.

Because it is going to be made into a movie, the bright ending is undoubtedly more likable, so Zhang Ran hopes that the ending is that the heroine Cai Yan saves the male protagonist Cao Lin. However, there is a serious problem here, Cao Lin is a criminal and has a serious crime. If Cai Yan saves him, it is equivalent to saving a criminal, and he will definitely not pass the trial. Cai Yan can save Cao Lin, but she can't save Cao Lin who has committed a crime.

This can't help but Zhang Ran, he pushed back the time, put it in 40 years, and let Cai Yan stop Cao Lin before he committed the crime, so that the future would change, Cao Lin would not commit a crime, and he would not be imprisoned in the cage of time, and the actor would be saved.

There is another question here, what crime did Cao Lin commit that would lead to being imprisoned in the cage of time. The crime must not be murder and arson** or something, Cai Yan can't save a scumbag after 40 years, Cao Lin's crime should have been committed unintentionally, but the consequences are very serious.

Zhang Ran designed it this way, Cao Lin was drunk and drove and crashed into the school bus, causing the school bus to overturn and many children to die, so he was sentenced to a heavy sentence of time imprisonment.

In this way, Cai Yan's clue is clear. When Cao Lin died, Cai Yan saw Cao Lin's message on the wall. Forty years later, Cai Yan stopped Cao Lin, saved Cao Lin, and saved the children who died in the car accident.

Of course, the focus of the story is on Cao Lin's side, and it is necessary to add sparkle and human things to Cao Lin, so that the whole story will be attractive.

Zhang Ran added a line of redemption to Cao Lin, and in a serious accident caused by drunk driving, Cao Lin's wife and daughter died, and he was disillusioned. This is a good explanation for Cao Lin being imprisoned in time, but not having fun like the male protagonist in "Groundhog Day", because his heart is dead, and serving his sentence is a kind of self-punishment for him.

Cao Lin's redemption is to save a little girl, a little girl who looks exactly like his daughter. The little girl was hit by a car in front of Cao Lin's eyes, so Cao Lin decided to save the little girl.

Of course, his salvation was not all smooth sailing, things always went wrong, and the little girl was hit by a car again and again.

I don't know how many times I tried, Cao Lin finally saved the little girl. However, when Cao Lin woke up the next morning, he realized that everything was back to the beginning, that the little girl was not saved, and that the little girl would be in a car accident again on this day.

Cao Lin found that he couldn't change anything, no matter what he did or how hard he tried, time would be reset, and everything would return to the way it was. He was completely desperate, began to drink, began to fool around, anyway, life is like this, what else can he do but eat and wait for death.

Until one day, he was fighting with someone in a bar, and the next day he woke up with bruises on his face, and he suddenly realized that there was a way to save the little girl. If you save the little girl and then die on that day, time will smoothly enter the next day, and the little girl will be saved.

This is similar to the ending of "The Butterfly Effect", in which Ivan returns to the past again and again, only to find that his efforts will only lead to more serious consequences. In the end, he realized that only when he died could everything really change, so his consciousness descended on his mother's womb and strangled his unborn self with an umbilical cord.

Finally, the day finally came, Cao Lin successfully rescued the little girl, and also helped many people in need, and was busy until nine o'clock in the evening before returning to the hotel. He completes his redemption of himself, writes a message to the heroine on the wall, explains everything, and then drinks poison and dies peacefully.

The two main lines of the script are very clear, and the story structure is also very clear, but Zhang Ran did not immediately start writing the specific content of the script, but began to list the plot points of the script.

Jiang Wei, the director of "Latent", Nortel's script teacher, once said that half of the domestic screenwriters can't even write the standard script format. The low level of screenwriters is an important reason for the low level of Chinese film and television dramas.

Writing scripts is not a problem for Zhang Ran, in the past few years of studying in the United States, he has written several stories, most of which he wrote by himself, and some co-wrote with American screenwriters, from the basic Hollywood system of labor unions and insurance to the green light system of production companies, as well as the quantitative scoring indicators of scripts, he knows very well.

"Time Prisoner" is aimed at the movie channel, the movie channel is facing ordinary audiences, and the works that pursue art do not have much market in the movie channel, so Zhang Ran plans to follow the routine of the Hollywood script.

Hollywood movie scripts are basically three-part scripts, if the movie is 90 minutes, the first 15 minutes are the first act - the beginning, the fifteen to 70 minutes is the second act - the confrontation, and the 70 to 90 minutes is the third act - the ending.

At the end of the first act, there is a plot point. It weaves tightly into the story and turns the story in the other direction. This plot point of "Time Prisoner" is that the heroine discovers the hero's words on the wall, and then introduces the story to the male protagonist.

At the end of the second act, there must also be a plot point that brings the story to the end. In "Time Prisoner", this plot point is that the male protagonist thinks of a way to save the little girl, and the story starts from here and goes to the end.

Of course, Hollywood's script is far more than just these two plot points, but is made up of more than a dozen large plot points, which in turn can be subdivided into more small plot points.

For example, there is a plot point before the plot point at the end of the second act, which is called Soul Night. The dark night of the soul is when the protagonist is in a difficult situation and can't find a way out. And the plot point before the dark night of the soul is called nothing, in this plot point the protagonist will suffer a major blow, and there may even be important characters die, of course, the blow is temporary, and the protagonist will eventually counterattack.

In "Time Prisoner", having nothing is the male protagonist who finds that he can't save the little girl, and the dark night of the soul is when the male protagonist collapses and starts to have fun.

Hollywood movie scripts tend to follow these plot points when writing, and what should appear when is fixed. It can be said that Hollywood movies are almost taught by a master, from the character patterns to the story routines, everyone tells the same thing. Because of this, Hollywood movies are often considered assembly line products and lack artistry. However, it is this kind of assembly line operation that ensures the overall quality of Hollywood movies.

Zhang Ran quickly listed the plot points of "Time Prisoner" one by one, and sorted them out according to the routine of the Hollywood script, so that the skeleton of the script was built. All that's left is to add flesh and blood to the skeleton, add details, enrich the content, and bring the whole script to life.

It's going to be a long process, maybe a few days, maybe a dozen days, maybe a few months. This is not a problem for Zhang Ran, the university teacher has a lot of free time, and he has enough time to create.