Evening.

Wu Yuan took a cigarette in his mouth, tightened his coat wrapped around his body, and rode his bicycle to his home.

Business is okay today.

In the morning, he skewered around the alleys of the alley, and in addition to selling one to his brother, he also sold three.

In the afternoon, because of important professional classes, Wu Yuan didn't want to skip classes anymore, so he had to honestly go to school until four o'clock, but then he also seized every opportunity he could take advantage of, and sold two more discs on the street before it was completely dark.

The sales of the six discs are 60 yuan, deducting the cost of 30 yuan, and today's net income is 30 yuan, which is a good result.

It's just that this income is a drop in the bucket for Wu Yuan.

"If you can save a little, just wait for the 02 World Cup to turn around." Wu Yuan muttered as he walked.

He is a serious film school student, and he usually doesn't take classes seriously in school, and often sneaks out to sell homemade pirated discs everywhere, of course, for a reason.

In the case that the attendance rate is not high at all, Wu Yuan can also win the love of many teachers in the department, naturally because his academic performance and practical operation are perfect, which can make the school teachers tolerate him very much.

Of course, this is not because Wu Yuan is a genius who can learn without a teacher and become a scholar by studying casually, but because these knowledge are familiar things to him and cannot be familiar with anymore.

In fact, Wu Yuan has a big secret in his heart that no one knows.

When he was 16 years old, he had a dream.

In this dream, he was admitted to the film school he had in mind, and studied hard in the school for four years, and successfully entered the film circle after graduation.

Three years as a camera assistant, three years as an assistant cameraman, five years as a camera director, three years as an executive director, and four years as a co-director.

Finally, in 2022, at the age of 40, he became the chief director and pulled up a film crew with an investment of nearly 50 million.

Then, at the banquet where the crew started filming, he pushed the cup with the investor, drank until he was drunk, and Wu Yuan, who was still thinking that the box office of this movie was going to break one billion or two billion, woke up from a big dream and returned to the morning of 16 years old.

At first, Wu Yuan thought that this was a somewhat long lucid dream, although he was a little melancholy, but he didn't care.

But in the next few days, he found that the director's knowledge and experience he had learned in his dream were clearly imprinted in his mind and lingered.

And some of the major social events that I have experienced in my dreams have actually happened in reality.

Wu Yuan realized that the 20 years in this dream were not just a dream!

Overjoyed, he immediately chose to return to his old business and chose to apply for the Beijing Film Academy again.

No way, in the 20 years he experienced in his dream, everything revolved around the profession of "director".

If he were to do it all over again, of course, he would choose to plunge into the industry again instead of trying to engage in the Internet and real estate.

At least with these experiences in his dreams, his life will definitely be extremely successful and brilliant again!

Therefore, Wu Yuan, who only went to elementary school for five years and skipped a grade in high school, woke up from his dream and was admitted to the 98-level directing department of Beijing Film Academy again at the age of 16.

Since entering the film academy, Wu Yuan's mind has not been on studying, he has already learned these things, and the reason why he has to be admitted to the film academy is that on the one hand, he is his dream alma mater, and on the other hand, he wants to make movies in this era, which is still easy to do.

After entering school, all he has been thinking about in his heart is to save a crew to make movies.

If it were 2008, Wu Yuan would believe that he could rely on the promise of "casually stuffing Xiaomi" to get investment from the coal boss.

If it were 2012, Wu Yuan would feel that with his rich experience in painting big pies, he would also be able to get investment from those real estate professionals.

If it was 2016, it would be even better to say, when the group of Internet people entered the market, there was so much money that they burned to play, Wu Yuan could make a version of the script that conformed to big data screening, and waited for the group of Internet giants who used money to open the way to rush to throw money.

It's a pity that it's 2000, and there are no coal bosses, no real estate developers, and no Internet giants in the film industry, and even the film industry has not yet been marketized.

Now it is the major state-owned studios that control the funding of film shooting!

Private production companies can't make movies independently!

Even if an individual can raise funds to produce independently, it is unrealistic to find capital to invest money, and he has to raise money on his own, and he has to hang the name of a state-owned studio.

Of course, the sixth-generation directors love to shoot themselves and get them to be screened abroad, and they don't declare them in China, but it's a dangerous behavior to do so!

And don't think about doing anything "doing big things with little money" and "low-cost counterattack at the box office".

On the one hand, the current domestic film market is indeed immature, and last year, that is, in 1999, the mainland box office champion was "See You or Leave" directed by Feng Xiaogang.

Box office: 43 million!

And under this one, the box office has dropped directly to about 10 million, and then other movies have only a few million box office.

The plate is so big, there are so many screens across the country, even if Wu Yuan moves the billions of box office movies in his dreams, it is impossible to reproduce the results, and naturally this industry will not attract any capital to enter.

On the other hand, it is really expensive to make movies now, DV movies like "Ghost Record", or those movies made for tens of thousands of dollars in the era of digital cinema, it is impossible to achieve it in this year.

Because it's still the age of film films!

All movie theaters in the country use film projectors to show movies, and you must use copied film recs to show them in movie theaters!

Only film can be selected to make a movie.

But film is expensive!

With digital shooting, you can rent a camera and shoot as many shots as you want, at almost zero cost – except for the cost of the machine.

HOWEVER, A BOX OF 400-FOOT 35MM FILM CAN ONLY SHOOT FOR LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES, AND THE PRICE IS FOUR OR FIVE HUNDRED YUAN PER BOX.

A 90-minute movie, when the photographer is a skilled master and the actors are of a high level, the ratio of film to film is 1:3, and it takes almost 270 minutes of film.

In addition, the cost of flushing and light distribution is required......

A 90-minute movie is filmed, and other expenses are not counted, just spending on film will cost 5 to 100,000 yuan, which is still the most ideal situation.

In fact, when Wu Yuan came to shoot, it was impossible to achieve a 1:3 matching ratio, and he would save 1:4.

Wang Xiaoshuai makes a literary film, and he can use 200 boxes of 400-foot film...

For Wu Yuan, as long as he wants to make a movie, no matter how small the cost of the script is, he must spend 10-150,000 yuan on the purchase and development of film, plus other expenses of the crew, without 200,000 yuan, he doesn't want to make a movie.

200,000 in 2000, which discouraged Wu Yuan, who had a deposit of less than 50,000.

Just this 50,000 yuan is all the savings left for him when his grandfather died last year, which was saved by his grandfather little by little, plus the pension left by his parents after they died in the line of duty.

Wu Yuan, who had a big dream, regretted why he didn't pay attention to the numbers of the lottery jackpots over the years in his dreams, and why he didn't do some side business of investing in stocks.

Although he knows some companies that are very powerful, very profitable, and have a high market value, even if those companies invest now, they will not be able to make huge profits in a year or two.

It's hard to get started, and this first start-up capital is always the hardest to earn.

Wu Yuan, who had been a director all his life in his previous life, thought about it and still felt that it was a good choice to press the 2002 World Cup.

Although he never watched football or basketball games, the black whistle of the stick in 2002 was so famous that he was so famous that he was impressed even if he didn't touch football.

As long as you don't have a brainless stick before the top four, it's over, not to mention more, it should be no problem to earn money to make the first movie.

"Actually, it's not like I don't have money..."

Wu Yuan, who had already returned to the door of his house, looked up at the home left by his grandfather, an old courtyard house in the east of the capital.

Although there is no heating or air conditioning in this courtyard, the decoration inside has not changed from the 50s to the present.

But this is a courtyard house covering an area of more than 200 square meters, and if you really want to sell it, you can still sell it for one or two million!

But soon this idea was dispelled by Wu Yuan, he shook his head, and sighed in his heart: "The next 20 years will be 20 years of crazy housing prices. ”

"If you sell this courtyard now and use the money to make movies, I'm afraid that the money you earn from making movies in a few years won't be able to buy back this set of courtyards..."

He clearly knows that the courtyard house is a non-renewable resource, and with the acceleration of the renovation of the old city, it will become less and less, and the price will continue to increase.

In a few years, a foreign media tycoon will buy a set of courtyard houses in Dongcheng at a price of 40,000 yuan per square meter and a total price of 10 million, and then by 2014, this set of courtyard houses is already worth 100 million, and by the time he wakes up, the price has gone to 200 million...

Wu Yuan's courtyard house is a priceless treasure to him, and the more he goes on, the more valuable it becomes.

In the dream, he just couldn't figure this out, after graduating in 01, he sold his courtyard house for 3 million, and invested the money in his own directing career, and then worked hard for 20 years, and found that the money he saved was not enough to buy back a wing of this courtyard...

The same mistake, Wu Yuan will not make it a second time!

Anyway, the domestic film industry has not yet been marketed, and the box office era has not yet come, so he doesn't need to rush to make movies in the next two years.

After the box office blockbuster "Hero" opens the world, it will be too late to enter the market again.

"It's better to accumulate more principal now, and wait until the 02 World Cup to make a fortune."

Taking out the key to open the door of the courtyard, Wu Yuan did not go directly back to the main house, but turned into the right wing.

IN THE RIGHT WING, THERE ARE A FEW FILM COPIES HE BORROWED FROM THE SCHOOL SCREENING ROOM, AND ON THE RIGHT WALL OF THE WING, THERE IS A MOVIE SCREEN AND AN OLD 35MM MOVIE PROJECTOR.

But more than these, the most important thing is a second-hand DVD burner on the table in the middle of the room, and a second-hand video recorder.

This wing room is Wu Yuan's usual studio.

The discs he had strapped to him were all born here.

The method is very simple, borrow the copy, play it in the wing, shoot it with a video recorder, and finally convert the image into data and burn it on a DVD, which is the process of making pirated discs.

As long as a movie is pirated with a video recorder, it can be copied in batches with a recorder.

Although this is not as clear and easy to mass produce as the audio and video is directly recorded, it is already good to have a gun version of the film in these years, what else do you need a bicycle!

Just this immature industrial chain can create an income of about 1,000 yuan for Wu Yuan a month!

Of course, although Wu Yuan is the "King of the Dongcheng Gun Version", he also has a bottom line!

Movies that are being released will never be burned, and no movie theaters will be stolen!

He will only burn foreign films that have been completely screened in cinemas, or if it is determined that there is no way to release them in the mainland, and there are no imported foreign films.

Moreover, the pirated discs he burned are completely incomparable with genuine discs.

The service is the ordinary people who are shy in their pockets and can't afford to buy genuine discs, and the main thing is a differentiated competition!

In these days, watching movies is a luxury, and it is completely different from 20 years later.

Compared to going to the cinema, the first movie that most young people come into contact with starts with a disc without a cover