Whether it is a good film industry or a TV series, it is not an easy task, Li Yixuan knows very well that he must be well prepared, especially in terms of funds.

Although several leading actors are not famous actors, each actor is paid more than $10,000 per episode, one of which is $30,000 per episode, plus the salary of the director and crew, all kinds of expenses add up, the production cost of each episode of the first season of "Friends" is also as high as $600,000, and the first season of "Friends" has 24 episodes, which is $14.4 million in total.

This money was placed in Hollywood in the early eighties, and it was possible to make a super big movie, you must know that the "Star Wars" that has just been released, the total production cost is only more than 11 million US dollars.

Li Yixuan has long instructed the company's finance to prepare the funds in advance, but fortunately, this money does not need to be invested at one time, you can shoot 5 episodes to test the water first, continue filming if it is feasible, and cut it immediately if the ratings are not good.

Unlike domestic TV dramas, Hollywood never finishes filming TV dramas at one time, but adopts the method of broadcasting and shooting, broadcasting one episode a week, the crew works from Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday two days off on weekends, and if you want to work overtime, you have to apply to the guild a month in advance, not to mention the expensive overtime pay, all kinds of approval procedures are troublesome to death, so in the United States, employees are almost never required to work overtime, even if the employees agree to work overtime, the crew will refuse.

Without the consent of the guild, let the employees work overtime, not to mention the lawsuit, it can also bring endless trouble, and in serious cases, it will also prohibit the broadcast of the TV series you filmed.

On Monday, the crew began filming officially, and the first episode will be broadcast in prime time on Friday night, and in order to reflect the importance of the film, Wen Bingxi himself served as the chief producer.

American TV dramas, like Hollywood films, are producer systems, different from Hong Kong's producer system and mainland China's director system. But Wen Bingxi has so many things to do every day, and he definitely doesn't come to sit in person every day, and a blonde white woman named Carla Fez, in her thirties, became an executive producer as Wen Bingxi's assistant.

Listen to those employees say that if "Friends" is successful, Carla Firth will officially be promoted to "Friends" producer.

Li Yixuan hadn't seen how the TV series was made, and when filming officially started, he came to watch it. After watching it for two days, he was not interested, and the whole shooting process was boring, all of which were broken down into clips and then edited together.

Even if he is the screenwriter of the film, he can't understand what this scene and the next scene are filming, and he will only know what is going on after the film is completed, and maybe he will never know, because some scenes will be deleted.

The only thing that caught his eye was that they were filming a 120 film camera instead of a Sony videotape camera.

With this question, Li Yixuan, in order not to disturb everyone's shooting, did not ask director Winniston, and asked the executive producer Carla Fez, who was standing next to him, and asked in a low voice: "Why don't you use Sony's videotape camera? ”

Carla Fez looked at the filming crew, took Li Yixuan away from the shooting scene, pointed to the cameraman who was shooting seriously from a distance, and said: "We thought about it, but in the end we gave up, the first problem with Sony's video camera is that the image quality is not high, and the second problem is that the image picture distortion is a bit serious, and it can be used for on-site news interviews, so forget about filming film and television dramas." He looked at Li Yixuan again and said: "Using a videotape camera to shoot TV dramas is only used by Asian TV stations, which can save a lot of film costs." ”

Li Yixuan understood, it seems that this money can't be saved, and in order to shoot a high-quality TV series, an excellent camera is indispensable. Before entering the digital age, film cameras are used in the production of TV dramas in the United States, of which 120 film cameras are the most common, and movies are generally made with 35mm film cameras.

Not only that, but the selection of different quality films has different imaging effects and even more different prices. Half of the $600,000 production cost was spent on film, which could have been completely saved if it had been a digital camera.

Why don't you start working on digital cameras now? Li Yixuan quickly gave up on this unrealistic idea.

Digital cameras must have an image resolution of more than 10 million pixels, which is simply not possible with current semiconductor manufacturing technology.

In addition, digital cameras also have very high requirements for lenses, and they must use medium-format lenses, such as full-frame lenses used in digital cameras.

So what is full-frame? Full-frame is for the size of traditional 35mm film. In the past, DSLR CCDs were smaller than 35mm film, and full-frame DSLR CCDs (or CMOS photosensitive imaging elements) were the same size as 35mm film. The larger the CCD size, the higher the image quality.

RB camera lenses are generally full-frame, and these lenses are generally referred to as consumer lenses. What does it mean, that is, ordinary people can take commemorative photos, or photo studios can be used to take wedding photos, commemorative photos and so-called art photos for ordinary consumers. To shoot commercial photo albums and huge commercials, you must use a medium-format camera.

The same is true for film and television dramas, which must use a camera with a medium format lens.

Compared with full-frame, the medium-format imaging original has a larger area, higher performance requirements, lower yield, and higher natural ex-factory price. This is contrary to the demand for cameras and camcorders from the average consumer, so there are very few manufacturers developing and using medium format cameras and camcorders, and the scarcity of production further limits the room for price reduction.

The medium format is larger than the full-frame imaging circle, and the lens has to be enlarged in proportion to the volume in order to cover the entire imaging circle, which causes the volume to be "large" and "heavy". In order to feed the high quality of medium format imaging, lenses have to be more complex and sophisticated in terms of lens materials and optical design. At the same time, the production of lenses is as limited as the body, and the price is naturally high.

Speaking of which, many people may still not understand the difference between full-frame and medium-format, so take the simplest example, put a photo as large as possible, and then find a random place to take a screenshot, and then enlarge it, if the screenshot is not distorted after enlargement, then the photo was taken with a medium-format camera, and vice versa.

Medium format is not the top of the line, medium format is a general term for several specifications that are larger than full frame and smaller than large format imaging circles. However, medium format is used for general photography, and large format is generally used in 3D or IMAX movies, and there are very few companies in the world that can make large-format cameras compared to medium format. Of course, the price is even more intimidating.

In the era of computer-aided design, the design and manufacture of optical lenses were very complex. Think about it, there are not many companies in the world that do this job (low-end products such as Seagull, Phoenix and other things will not be discussed). It's very, very impressive to be able to design and build a lens system that covers a 24x36mm image circle (the size of a 135 film, if you've ever seen it) in this ultra-complex technical field.

Believe me, it's really awesome, (so if there's someone around you with an old Leica camera pretending to be a coerc, there's a reason), and it's so awesome that even the RB devils can't do it. Even if they later made a technological breakthrough, it was a concentration of technology from all over the country (RB's camera companies are basically cooperative and share technology with each other), well, having said all this, I really want to say the second point......

So, to be able to design and build a lens system that covers a 60x70mm image circle (the size of two and a half 135 films) and covers all focal lengths from wide-angle to telephoto is incomparable.

Enterprises that can have the ability to do this, and can survive to this day, can be counted on one hand. Making the image circle bigger is almost an "anti-human" thing. If you have ever bought a DSLR lens for more than 5,000 yuan, you must have considered the so-called lens distortion, edge sharpness, and vignetting when you choose... Some salespeople will also tell you that some cheaper lenses, you can stop down a few stops without opening the aperture wide, and those expensive lenses are not much different. In the same way, a 24x36mm camera (the so-called 135 system) lens with an aperture of 1.0 (in fact, there are few lenses in the world that can only do this), it is just the equivalent of a medium format lens. That's such a big difference!

The most familiar medium-format camera in China is the Hasselblad camera, although it is a camera, in my opinion, this is a matter of a moment. Well, without talking so much, many people must have seen that Hasselblad itself does not sell lenses. Hasselblad's broken box doesn't have the complexity mentioned above.

Yes. That broken box really wasn't worth that much money, and it never was. But all the people who buy Hasselblad don't just buy a broken box and an 80mm lens and it's all over. Hasselblad is for work. Anyone who buys a Hasselblad will buy a bunch of the awesome (design and manufacturing complexities alone) lens systems mentioned above, as well as a whole host of other ancillary equipment (not kidding you, many professional photographers have a lamp that costs more than a full 135 system), not including renting a space and hiring models for each shoot. There's also the cost of raising a team and so on and so forth.

said 1,000 to 10,000, due to the extremely high technical threshold of professional imaging equipment, even if Li Yixuan wants to cheat through the time and space gate, he may not be able to get a medium-format camera that meets the needs of film and television shooting, and just one lens can make him collapse.

He can only hope that because the TV screen is not large, the requirements for lens distortion, edge sharpness, and vignetting are not very high, as long as the resolution can meet the requirements, it can meet the requirements of shooting TV.

But how to do it, we need to consult more information.