Chapter 7 Meeting

The feeling of a hangover is really uncomfortable. When Gu Wei opened his eyes in the morning, he felt a headache and sore throat. He got up, poured a glass of water, and drank a few big gulps before he felt better.

He was thinking about what happened yesterday intermittently in his mind. He had a drink with Feng Xiaogang at noon yesterday. He drank too much and slept at his house for the whole afternoon. When he woke up in the evening and was about to come back, Feng Xiaogang called Zhang Guoli over. They drank a lot in the evening, and Gu Wei didn't know how he came back in the end.

"Drinking will cause trouble. I'll try not to get drunk in the future. It will be troublesome if I drink too much and say something I shouldn't say," muttered Gu Wei as he picked up the phone and called Feng Xiaogang.

A voice called “Hey!” came from the other end of the hand.

"It's a woman's voice, isn't it?"

Then I heard, "Director Gu? I'm Xu Fan."

Fortunately, it wasn't someone else, Gu Wei thought to himself, and said, "Sister Fan, how did I get back last night? Is Director Feng okay?"

"You drank a lot last night. I told you to rest at home but you insisted on going back. I drove you back home late at night," Xu Fan said with a smile.

"Sorry to bother you, Sister Fan. I'll treat you to dinner some other day," said Gu Wei on the other end of the phone.

"No need for you to treat, Director Gu. I will treat you when you are free. Then I will introduce some girls to you. Haha," said Xu Fan with a smile on the other end of the phone.

"Um, Sister Fan, you go ahead and do your work. I'm hanging up now."

After hearing what Xu Fan said, Gu Wei quickly hung up the phone. He didn't want to get too deeply involved with this circle.

Gu Wei did not go to school that day. Except for having a meal downstairs, he rested at home all day and wrote the script.

The next morning, Gu Wei went directly to the company.

"Boss, you're here," said a spectacled girl in her twenties at the front desk.

"Zhao Li, go call everyone else over. I have something to tell everyone."

"Okay," Zhao Li said as she went to call for help.

In the office, Gu Wei gathered everyone together.

"The company has just been established, and you are the first batch of employees. As the company expands, you will be the veterans, so you must set an example. I will explain the company's regulations to you later, and then you will sign a confidentiality agreement. The bottom line is that no information about the company is allowed to be leaked. No matter who violates the rules, the company reserves the right to prosecute, and if the consequences are serious, the police will be called directly. I hope everyone understands," Gu Wei said seriously, looking at the people in front of him.

"Understood, Boss," the people below understood what Gu Wei meant and responded.

"Wang Chen is in charge of the daily operations of the company. He is the general manager of the company. You can talk to him if you have any questions," Gu Wei continued.

After the meeting with the company employees, Gu Wei kept Wang Chen back again because there were a few things he needed to explain to him.

"At this stage, the company has just been established and there is not much going on. If someone submits a script to the company or asks about film investment and actor selection, you should make a summary first and then report to me," Gu Wei looked at him and said.

"You can set up a special department to collect famous novels, poems, and articles. As long as they can be adapted into movies or TV series, collect them first and show them to me. After I have selected them, you can contact the authors and purchase the copyrights. If you need a large amount of funds, please apply to me separately."

"The company is not considering signing artists or agents at this stage. If someone comes to ask, just refuse directly." Gu Wei does not plan to sign anyone into the company now, at least not this year.

After explaining everything, he invited the employees to lunch at noon and promised that if everyone worked hard, the company would give everyone an extra year-end bonus at the end of the year. The employees were so excited that they felt like they had been injected with chicken blood.

In late April, "Tuya's Wedding" was withdrawn from theaters with a total box office of less than six million yuan. However, the film received very good reviews and word of mouth online. After the film was withdrawn, Gu Wei went to Guangguang to deal with the subsequent box office sharing issues. However, Guangguang did not care about the loss in the domestic box office and promised on the spot that as long as his next film needed funds, Guangguang would be the first to invest.

After dealing with the film, Gu Wei went to the school. When he arrived at the school gate, he saw that the scene was very lively, with parents coming in and out, various notices posted, and various temporary passages, giving people a tense atmosphere. People kept greeting him along the way, most of them were students from the acting department, and a few brave ones came up to chat with him directly. He is now a celebrity in the school, the only big director in Beijing Film Academy. I don’t know how many seniors from the acting department are watching him, but he has been busy during this period, and others don’t have many opportunities to see him.

Passing by the admission notice board, Gu Wei saw that the list of students who passed the literary examination this year had been released. Then he remembered that the Beijing Film Academy's art examination in 01 had ended. He had not paid attention to this matter from December until now.

As far as I can remember, there were 01 students in the 29 undergraduate class of the Performance Department of Beijing Film Academy. Only Huang Shengyi, Wang Luodan and Jia Nailiang made it to the top. Jia Nailiang originally applied for the vocational class of Beijing Film Academy, but after failing the entrance exam, he was admitted to the undergraduate class.

Among the entire Class of 01, the one who had the best development at the beginning was Huang Shengyi. While in school, she was selected by the crew of Stephen Chow's movie "Kung Fu" and became the new generation of "Star Girl". Unfortunately, she didn't have a good agent and ruined herself. As for the others, Gu Wei didn't remember them. With so many people applying to the three major universities every year, how many of them can become famous?

Beijing Film Academy's enrollment brochures are mostly released in mid-December each year. From December to January, the school's official registration system will be open to start formal enrollment registration. Beijing Film Academy is an independent art school, and its enrollment and admission channel is the formal college entrance examination.

The list of qualified candidates will be announced at the end of March or the beginning of April, and professional qualification certificates, also known as liberal arts certificates, will be issued. Only after passing the professional examination and obtaining the liberal arts certificate can you apply for this school and this major. After the college entrance examination in July, you can be admitted only if your liberal arts scores are above the passing line. This year's college entrance examination is still scheduled for early July, but it was changed to June in 3.

After arriving at the directing department office, he found a teacher to cancel his leave, chatted with a few teachers for a while, and then headed towards the classroom half an hour later. Gu Wei had hardly attended any classes this semester, and had no plans to continue filming a new movie in the future, so he planned to stay in school, at least to finish this semester's classes.

"Oh, our great director is back to teach," the substitute teacher said jokingly.

When he arrived at the classroom, Gu Wei planned to sneak in through the back door. However, his classmates found out that he was in class and made noises in surprise. He was discovered by the teacher, who then teased him.

After class, apart from chatting with a few roommates, he just said hello to other classmates. Unlike other time travelers who went back to the past and got along well with their classmates and roommates, Gu Wei had only been in the class for less than two months since he enrolled last year. He had basically not had any in-depth contact with his classmates, and naturally did not have that sense of familiarity.

.........

"Is it appropriate for me, a student, to attend such a big meeting?" Gu Wei said to the director of the directing department in the directing department office.

"What's inappropriate about it? There are not many people in China who can win the Golden Bear Award. Not only you, but all the famous people in the industry have to go there," said the director of the directing department.

Walking out of the office, Gu Wei was still thinking about what the director of the directing department had just said. As the country is getting closer to joining the WTO, various industries are worried that market opening may harm local industries, and the anxiety of "the wolf is coming" is spreading. This is especially true in the film industry, which involves cultural and ideological reasons and is even more worried about the arrival of "Hollywood". The gap between the local film industry and the West is huge.

Just like the "Titanic" released in China in 98, it swept the world and the box office reached 21 billion US dollars. The partnership between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet directly made this movie a pearl in the history of human film! It also had a huge impact on the domestic film and television industry. In the following ten years or so, domestic directors and the film and television industry were proud of impacting Hollywood and the Oscars.

With the arrival of the May Day holiday, students from other schools generally choose to go home or travel around on holiday. For students of Beijing Film Academy, there is basically no concept of holiday. During normal school hours, most students choose to join the crew, and some will go out to participate in commercial performances or other part-time jobs.

During the May Day holiday, Gu Wei stayed in school and was invited to participate in several social activities of the Performance Department of Beijing Film Academy. During the period, he met Yao Chen, Du Chun, Ling Xiaosu from Class of 99, and Dong Xuan from Class of 00, who entered the Beijing Film Academy in the same year as Gu Wei. The goddess Dragon is very classic, and Gu Wei left her contact information, thinking of getting in touch with her later.

On the 8th, Gu Wei followed the school leaders to a department meeting at the General Administration of Film. This was his first time here, and he was the youngest in the group, so he seemed a little out of place.

In the conference room, Gu Wei sat in the back rows and looked at the people above him, all of whom were leaders of the film department and other cultural and tourism departments.

In the front are the leaders of the Film and Television Association, followed by major directors and well-known actors with regular positions.

The leaders' meetings always have long speeches and a meeting would not be over for several hours. During the break, Gu Wei found some free time and chatted with Feng Xiaogang for a while. His new movie "Big Shot" was currently being filmed, and he was also pulled to the meeting. Gu Wei made an appointment with him to visit the crew in two days.

"The impact on the film and television culture industry is the most direct, and I hope you will pay attention to this. Everyone here is a representative figure in the industry, including directors, screenwriters, and well-known actors. I hope you will come up with good works, drive the market, and meet the challenge!"

First, the department leaders spoke, and then the directors took turns speaking. Although Gu Wei was young, he was also called upon. Following the ideas of several directors, Gu Wei also said a few words.

The speeches of various directors were similar, and it all came down to preparing works, targeting market audiences, and making more commercial films.

After the meeting, Gu Wei said hello to a few directors and then went back with the school leaders. They had a meal together near the school. At the dinner table, the school director asked Gu Wei about his next plans.

"I haven't decided on the next new movie yet. The earliest I'll have to wait is the second half of the year," said Gu Wei.

(End of this chapter)