Pan Yingzi drove her Ford car and took Liang Jinling to the Shaw Brothers Clear Water Bay studio, while explaining the Shaw Brothers Film Company to Liang Jinling on the road.

The Shaw Brothers Clear Water Bay set is located on the Clear Water Bay Peninsula, the peninsula is barren mountains and wild mountains, the whole peninsula surrounds the east and rear two bays, namely Clear Water Bay (Bay) and Tai Miao Bay, and the west is Fotang Chau Island and Tseung Kwan O waters, and the Clear Water Bay Peninsula separates the Port Tail Sea in the east from the Tseung Kwan O waters in the west.

In later generations, the Tseung Kwan O landfill between the Clear Water Bay Peninsula and Fotang Chau Island has not yet been filled, and it is still a sea (Tseung Kwan O waters), which is located in the Tseung Kwan O Landfill, adjacent to the Shaw Brothers studio in Clear Water Bay, and there is no shadow yet, and TVB has not moved to the Tseung Kwan O landfill, and is still broadcasting.

To the south of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula is Fotangjiao (small peninsula), and across the Fotangjiao Gate (waterway) is Donglong Island, which is a deserted island that has been blown away by a typhoon and does not even have a tree. There are forts left over from the Ming and Qing dynasties on Fotangjiao and Donglong Island, and the forts here fought against the fleets of Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom from the 16th century to the 19th century.

Clear Water Bay Peninsula is the Kowloon Peninsula to the northwest, Victoria Harbour to the west, Hong Kong Island to the southwest, and Sai Kung and Clear Water Bay Country Park in the New Territories to the north. The barren mountains of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula shield Victoria Harbour from a Category 10 typhoon every summer, and also make the Zhì Mountain uninhabitable, and the port of the Clear Water Bay Peninsula is also unusable due to the typhoon.

In 1957, Shaw Yan-mei and Shaw Yifu, who were pioneering the film market in Singapore, returned to Hong Kong to develop their production business in Hong Kong. At that time, in order to open up the market gap, Shao Yifu tended to develop and shoot large-scale theme films, but because he did not have his own studio, he had to rent "Jiancheng Studio".

At that time, the largest film company in Hong Kong and even Southeast Asia, the "International Film Distribution Company" under the "Cathay Pacific Organization" helmed by Lu Yuntao, and Li Zuyong's "Yonghua Studio" (later Golden Harvest was rented and renamed Axe Hill Road Studio, and was sold to the Hong Kong government by the Li family in 1998 to build a commercial house) had been merged into the "Film Mao Ye Company", and the introduction of advanced color film production technology at that time to make films and learn from the Western capitalist model for studio management, the limelight was unparalleled for a while. As a result, Shaw Yifu planned to build Shaw Brothers Studios.

Subsequently, Shaw Yifu carried out the first big move of hosting the film production zuò, spending millions of dollars to buy a 650,000-square-foot piece of land in Clear Water Bay, opening up the mountain and reclaiming the sea, and building the Shaw Brothers Cinema. When Shaw Yifu first arrived in Hong Kong, he spent a lot of money on construction and spent, and his bold and bold style made Hong Kong filmmakers at that time astonished. In view of the advantages of "electric mao", Shaw Yifu, who used to work in Singapore amusement parks, took a typical amusement park mentality. He proposed that Shaw Brothers must be "big": build a big factory, make a big movie, and make a lot of money.

In 1958, Shaw announced the establishment of the Shaw Brothers Film Company, and by that time four studios had been built on the Clear Water Bay Studio. Since fashion films could not be made big, Shaw Yifu made costume films. 1959's "Beauty of the Mountains" was manufactured under such a guiding thinking.

On December 6, 1961, the first phase of the Shaw Brothers studio was completed and officially opened, with an area of 650,000 square meters (nearly 1,000 acres); In 1964, when Shaw Brothers Cinemas was fully completed, there were 6 independent studios and 2 set streets; In 1967, the number of studios was expanded to 12. The Shaw Brothers studio in Clear Water Bay occupies the entire hill, with more than a dozen houses built, and countless streets, city walls, suspension bridges, and fortresses have been built in the front and back mountains. In the sixties and seventies, when costume martial arts films were popular, every day, there were thousands of people in front of and behind the scenes who started work on the Shaw Brothers studio.

Shaw's dream is to make Shaw Brothers the "Hollywood of the East". Shaw Brothers Cinemas had the world's most advanced film equipment at the time, and Shaw, who was committed to the development of sound films, spent a lot of money on the hardware facilities of Shaw Brothers Studios. He invested heavily in advanced film equipment from the United States to comprehensively improve the picture sound of Shaw Brothers films, and used the color widescreen technology that was popular in the United States at that time, called "Shaw Brothers Variety Curved Wide Screen", which was the first of its kind in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's popularization from black-and-white films to Eastman's colorful films, from ordinary screens to "Shaw Brothers variety show curved wide screen", was completed with the introduction of Shaw Brothers.

40,000 to 48,000 feet; The equipment needed for shooting stunts such as the top has separate people and workshop arrangements; The costumes and swords needed for filming costume films are fully equipped in all dynasties. All steps of a film, from script planning to final distribution, can be completed in Shaw Brothers Studios, without the need for external forces.

In terms of the production process, Shaw Brothers Productions has a set of effective ways to ensure the output and quality of the film. The first is the introduction of a dubbing team, and the actors only pronounce "ABCD" during the filming of the film...... 1234", to speed up the filming, and after the filming, the dubbing team will unify the sound effects and dialogue, which also helps the actors in the north and south to not be hindered by dialects. In terms of dubbing, Hong Kong films from the 80s to the 21st century are not as good as Shaw Brothers movies from the 60s to 70s.

In order to meet the standards of different markets, Shaw Brothers cut the film into three versions, the most aggressive version for the European, American and Japanese markets, the mildest version for the Singapore-Malaysian market, and the moderate version for the Hong Kong market. With the production department as the core department, it has a series of departments such as screenwriting team, director team, actor distribution, drama department, factory affairs department, art team, set, publicity and so on, which are responsible for each step, and the division of labor is orderly to ensure that each step can be closely connected.

When it comes to personnel management, Shaw Brothers has a unique approach. Due to the distance between Clear Water Bay and the city, there are 4 staff dormitories in Shaw Studios to ensure the mobility of the production staff. The personnel in the cinema are mainly divided into two categories: technicians and actors: technicians usually sign contracts and live in staff dormitories, and there are more than 500 resident technicians (including carpenters, electricians, set designers, artists, sound engineers, photographers, etc.); The situation of the actor is a little more complicated. In the early days, Shaw Brothers poached big stars from major companies with high salaries, including Li Lihua, Lin Dai and others, and signed a contract for each movie.

The standard time for Shaw Brothers movies is 40 days, costume martial arts films may have 80 days of shooting cycle because of problems such as action and costume scenes, and the shooting process of martial arts films in the most golden period can be as long as 120 to 200 days.

In terms of directors and actors, Shao Yifu has successively hired Zhang Che, Li Hanxiang, Chu Yuan, Inoue Meici, Lin Dai, etc., and also cultivated stars such as Jiang Dawei, Di Long, Chen Guantai, and Liu Yong. After the monopoly was established in 1967, the "star system" began to be implemented. That is, the company has set up actor training classes, recruited young people from the society for training, and if it is found that the newcomer has development potential, he will sign a five-year contract to control the actor in terms of salary and filming, and praise the newcomer as a star, for example, Ling Bo, the most popular actress of the Shaw Brothers that year, has signed a contract twice.

It was through the establishment of a large number of studios that enabled Shaw Brothers to ensure the ability to shoot multiple films at the same time, and developed an independent operating structure of film investment, production, distribution, and release in the form of assembly operations, and the management of each business link was unified by Run Run Shaw, whose management system was modeled after the "big studio system" of the eight major Hollywood companies. The establishment of Shaw Studios successfully established the Hong Kong film production standard.

In the car, Pan Yingzi whispered to Liang Jinling: "Ah Ling, you are now running a role in the Shaw Brothers, living in the Shaw Brothers dormitory first, it is inconvenient for you to live with me for a long time, if you have the opportunity at that time, I will recommend you to join the Shaw Brothers actor training class, you are so handsome, you will definitely be praised as a big star by the Shaw Brothers Film Company in the future." ”

Liang Jinling touched the mobile phone in his trouser pocket, nodded vaguely, and blended in. He thought to himself: "What are you kidding, I have countless novels, music, movies, and TV series in my trouser pocket, and I still use it to sign a 5-year contract with Shaw Brothers, is it a waste of youth?" After I became familiar with the entertainment industry and learned traditional Chinese characters, I wrote novels, music, and filmed by myself, and I became my own boss. ”

After coming to the Clear Water Bay set, Pan Yingzi said hello to the familiar security guard, opened the door, and let Pan Da Beauty's car enter, and the car driven by Pan Yingzi drove along the hillside road to the parking lot of the Shaw Studio.

After parking the car in the parking lot of the Shaw Brothers studio, Pan Yingzi led Liang Jinling to the production department building that had just been completed this year, walking on the hillside along the way, Pan Yingzi explained the Shaw Brothers building to Liang Jinling, and the main entrance of the studio came in to see the Shaw Brothers administrative building, Shaw Yifu, Fang Yihao and other high-rise offices in the administrative building, the windows of the building are decorated with similar switch quotation marks, and the exterior wall has the Shaw Brothers logo.

Across the street from the administration building is the No. 3 dormitory, the Dunhou Building, where employees, actors, and directors live, and the Shaw Villas, which has a private cinema. Behind the dormitory is a forest and a studio, the studio has studios, dubbing, screening, radio, printing and other production equipment, and built a costume street, the entire Shaw Brothers studio alone has 23 buildings, the building covers an area of 180,000 square meters.

Then there's the production building, which was just completed this year, as a building for film processing and editing, and one of the features of the production building is the protruding pipes on the façade, because the buildings in the 70s were not equipped with air conditioning, these pipes can create air convection and help process the film.

After walking into the building, Liang Jinling followed Pan Yingzi's footsteps, walked up to the third floor of the building, and came to a middle-aged man who was working with his head down. ”

I saw this bearded man raise his head and look at it, and said in surprise: "Ah, who did I think, it turned out to be Ah Zi, sit down, sit down." The bearded man hurriedly got up and invited Pan Yingzi and the two to sit down, and asked while pouring tea: "Why are you so free to come and see me, Ah Zi, what about your husband Chen Honglie, why don't you come with you, who is this gentleman?" ”

As soon as the bearded man mentioned Chen Honglie, Pan Yingzi's mood darkened, and after she took the bearded man's teacup, she didn't answer the bearded man's question, Pan Yingzi just took Liang Jinling's hand and introduced to the bearded man: "Brother Bi, this is my cousin who just swam down from the mainland, called Liang Jinling." Ah Ling, this is my mentor director Bi Hu Bi, but now I have been upgraded to the producer of Shaw Brothers films, and my first movie with the heroine a few years ago was the black and white umbrella that Brother Bi asked me to be the heroine. ”

I saw that after the bearded man Bi Hu sat down, he laughed proudly, waved his hand, and hurriedly said, "Teacher, I don't dare to be it." Director Zhang Cheda is Ah Zi, your real mentor, but I may be a matchmaker, I remember that it was I who found Chen Honglie to be the actor of this play, Ah Zi, you only met Chen Honglie, speaking of which, I am still the matchmaker for the two of you. After Bi Hu finished speaking, he winked at Pan Damei and laughed.

Hearing the name Chen Honglie again, Pan Yingzi smiled reluctantly in front of Bi Hu, coped with it, lowered her head and didn't speak, Bi Hu saw Pan Yingzi's face, felt that the atmosphere was not right, and hurriedly suppressed the laughter, and muttered to himself: "I saw that the rumors are true, these two couples just got married, and their relationship broke down." So he quickly changed the subject.

So Bi Hu shook hands with Liang Jinling and said with a smile: "Your name is Lingzai, you can call me Brother Bi or Brother Hu." Liang Jinling shook hands with him and shouted respectfully: "Brother Hu, hello, take care of me in the future." Bi Hu gave a thumbs up and praised with a smile: "Smart, eye-catching, I like others to call Brother Tiger." ”

After Bi Hu finished speaking, Pan Yingzi raised her head and smiled flatteringly, and said coquettishly: "Brother Bi, I came this time to do you a favor." ”

When Bi Hu heard this voice, he turned his head, raised his hand and scratched his head, his expression was embarrassed, and he said to Pan Yingzi shyly: "Ah Zi, you don't want me to help you intercede with Director Fang, come back to Shaw Brothers Company to film, you don't know that Director Fang has blacklisted you, saying that he will never hire you, it is useless for anyone to intercede, I don't have such a big face, I can let Director Fang open up the net." ”

I saw Pan Yingzi smile at the bearded man Bi Humei and said: "Brother Bi, I didn't come this time to ask you to intercede for me, nor did I want to go back to Shaw Brothers Film Company, it was my cousin Ah Ling who just came to Hong Kong, and he didn't know anything, I just wanted Brother Bi to introduce some work to Ah Ling in the company, so that he could do a little work." ”

When Bi Hu heard this, he didn't want to help plead, so he hurriedly said: "Oh, it's just a little thing, okay, let Lingzai come to the company tomorrow to report, just start from running tricks and doing chores, do a good job, and slowly promote him step by step in the future." Then he asked, "Lingzai, this place is far from the city, do you want a dormitory?" ”

Liang Jinling thought secretly: "I am penniless, and it is inconvenient to live in Pan Yingzi's house all the time, after all, it is also Chen Honglie's house." And Pan Yingzi is also shy and can't support herself financially. Liang Jinling thought for a while and said, "Brother Hu, I don't have a car to travel, so it's more convenient to stay in the dormitory." ”

After hearing Liang Jinling's answer, he saw Bi Hu shouting loudly: "Ah Long, come here." "Hey, here we go." I saw a seventeen or eighteen-year-old young man with eyes walk in, smiled at Bi Hu, and asked flatteringly: "Producer Bi, hello, do you have any orders?" ”

I saw the bearded man Bi Hu pointing to Liang Jinling and said: "His name is Liang Jinling, he was introduced by me, he will come to work in the company tomorrow, you go to arrange his dormitory, and take him to familiarize himself with the environment of various departments of the company tomorrow." ”

Then he said to Liang Jinling: "His name is Ye Xiaolong, and he is an old employee (handyman) in the production department, he will arrange your dormitory first, and he will take you to work tomorrow." Liang Jinling quickly stood up and thanked him.

I saw that the eyed man Ye Xiaolong smiled at Liang Jinling, shook hands with Liang Jinling, and then said, "Brother Ling, I'll arrange for you to go to the dormitory first." Liang Jinling said thank you to Ye Xiaolong, the man in his eyes, please take care of him. Leaving Pan Yingzi chatting with the bearded man Bi Hu in the office, he followed the eyed man Ye Xiaolong, walked out of the production building, and walked towards the dormitory building.