Hollywood Road

There are some things that people in the game may not see more clearly than people outside.

Back home, Murphy carefully considered Kara-Fis’s words. This is indeed very reasonable. If he throws all his money on the production of a movie like a bet, he will inevitably face a lot of failure if he fails. A painful situation.

The hard life after being released from prison has left Murphy with lingering fears. Now that he has just escaped the poverty line, he doesn't want to return to that state.

Murphy does have some confidence in himself, but he also knows that it is not impossible to fail.

He has analyzed many films and it is correct. He has also been a student of film school. He is also very serious about self-pay study. He has just participated in the production of a documentary. It is somewhat of some experience, but filming and these are two different things. After analyzing the future success of the film, this film will be successfully produced?

As long as people with a slightly normal head know that there is no equal sign between the two.

As a sane person, Murphy understands that in order to leave a way for himself, the investment must be limited to 300,000 US dollars.

No one can guarantee that there will be luck like the Bill Road incident in the future, and the remaining tens of thousands of dollars will give him a chance to turn over after failure.

From the beginning to the end, Murphy's mind is very clear. He has more knowledge than others, which is a favorable condition, but he cannot guarantee that he will succeed.

Everyone wants to succeed, especially in a highly competitive place like Hollywood.

But Hollywood’s ambition and vanity caused not too many film Waterloo cases, some made the company lose money and went bankrupt; some made directors, producers or CEOs of major studios retreat to the second line or even lost their jobs; some made a generation of superstars go. Those who have been on the gas path and are going further and further...

In the film industry of all countries and regions in the world, the number of street-smashing films far exceeds the winners. It is almost countless. How many of them are the dreams of geniuses? Where did these geniuses get buried afterwards?

Compared with the nearly zero-cost investment in other art forms, the latecomer of film has never shown sympathy for its followers, and the film industry is also recognized as a high-risk industry.

The entire film industry is swayed by some irrational rules. No one can be sure of the secret to making a successful film. Many times some directors declare that they want to make a big-selling work, but the result is dismal.

In addition, Murphy once saw countless analyses of successful or failed films on the Internet. Many people think that by summarizing these, they can do better and even avoid failure, but there is a fact that they have overlooked. The summary is a typical post-mortem analysis. Whether it is correct or not can never be verified.

The competition in Hollywood is fierce. In Murphy's current situation, once the plan is on the street, the consequences will be very cruel.

Throwing on the street is naturally something that no one wants, but when the stalls arrive, they can only admit it.

Murphy certainly didn't want to be one of them.

From the second day after meeting with Carla Firth, he completely gave up his previous job and concentrated on preparing his film plan.

Shooting a movie must be treated as a rigorous project. Even street stalls will not be successful casually, not to mention the unpredictable industry like movies.

The original studio, after Murphy replaced a desk conducive to typing and writing, has become his project planning office.

To plan a project, you must determine the content of the project.

Coming into this world, Murphy spent a year in prison, and injured a director, no one in Hollywood wanted to use him. The previous two months had to be busy with livelihoods and start-up funds, and it has passed in a blink of an eye. It's been more than a year, and now it's August 2000, but he didn't accomplish anything except to cause a lot of trouble.

After experiencing so many things and encountering so many difficulties, Murphy also knew that the scripts that were delivered to Hollywood before were likely to be launched are very small, and basically gave up the idea in this regard, and turned all of their energy to the new project that is about to start. .

He has only invested about 300,000 US dollars, which limits the scale and content of the film. Films that require frequent scene changes, use a large number of actors, use a lot of equipment, and cumbersome work behind the scenes do not meet the requirements.

Those relatively successful small productions are Murphy's first choice.

In an instant, the names of countless movies appeared in Murphy's mind. In the past few years, there was the atypical success of "Blair the Witch", and in the future, there will be "Chain Saw" with a small popularity.

Movies like "Blair the Witch" are not in Murphy's consideration at all. It is only a few years since the release of "Blair Witch"? Even if this kind of film is made, he may not be able to sell it. As for another viral marketing, let's not say whether the experienced audience will buy it. Where does the large amount of money come from?

Many people always think that "Blair the Witch" easily won hundreds of millions of dollars in the North American box office, but they have never paid attention to it. Its North American promotional and marketing expenses alone exceed 20 million US dollars!

If there are twenty million dollars, would Murphy still consider films like "Blair the Witch"?

Another method is to hand over the film to a large company for distribution, and let the large company pay for the distribution and promotion expenses, and then participate in the share as a director...

If all the executives of Hollywood's major distribution companies are in kindergarten, this is indeed possible.

One of the prerequisites for the implementation of "Blair the Witch" and several other typical low-cost film viral marketing plans is that the producer of the film completely sold the copyright to the distribution company!

Shaking his head, Murphy threw these low-level and boring thoughts out the window, thinking about "Chain Saw".

This is also a typical example of winning high box office at a small cost. In the future, it will be a classic masterpiece of plasma horror films. Relatively speaking, it does not require too many scenes and actors.

But after thinking about it for a few minutes, Murphy gave up on "Chain Saw". He would not overestimate himself, knowing that he did not have the ability to produce such a film with 300,000 US dollars.

After vetoing a number of films, Murphy still found out that what he thought before might be the most appropriate.

In terms of actors, there are only two main actors. Although the requirements for underage female roles are relatively high, Murphy has come up with an alternative plan to relax the requirements on acting skills and make a fuss about the appearance and **** scale of the characters.

Actors are better. It shouldn’t be difficult to find an adult actor who has some acting skills and is cheap. After all, this is Los Angeles, where Hollywood is located.

The scene is better to say. More than 90% of the plots happen in a house, which can be solved by renting. The few other small scenes are all ordinary and take very little time and Funds can be found.

There are also behind-the-scenes productions, which are far more cumbersome than finding actors and scenes.

This is an ordinary modern drama. Can the actors bring their own costumes? If it doesn't work, you can also buy some bargains.

The photographer can be held concurrently by himself, as well as the assistant director, art director, and scene recorder. This can save enough salary, but the props, lighting, makeup artist and other positions are still necessary, and they are missing. If it does, the difficulty of shooting will be greatly increased.

Especially for lighting engineers, this is directly related to the quality of the shots.

Makeup artist and prop artist are also very important. The former is responsible for the makeup of the actors. In principle, actors without makeup cannot be shot on the camera. High-resolution photography opportunities infinitely magnify a trivial flaw; the latter also has a lot of work. , In particular, there will be a lot of **** scenes in the imagination, which require the assistance of props.

Murphy has no money to use CG to decorate.

With this in mind, Murphy found that the $300,000 that he felt was a bit ample before was really nervous, and he must consider saving money when making preliminary plans.

Indeed, there are many professionals in this area in Hollywood, and there must be some unsatisfactory ones, but the poor ones are also the ones who need money the most. If they can’t even pay for the basic expenses, Murphy doesn’t need to expect others to do it. He works.

This is a very realistic society. When others have paid for their work, he, the employer, must be paid a certain amount, rather than illusory ideals and promises.

"Ideal and commitment?"

He repeated a sentence, and Murphy couldn't help but patted his forehead, wondering where he could hire enough professional and cheap staff.

There are many colleges in the greater Los Angeles area that have set up majors related to film and television production. After graduation, most of the students start from the most basic work, and even many can only work as interns in the advertising crew and can enter the film. The people on the crew are often lucky.

Taking out his notebook, Murphy wrote "Interns" on it, which should reduce some of the professional expenses behind the scenes.

In addition, he also needs to recruit a person who will coordinate the chores of the crew. No matter how small the crew is, there will be a lot of chores and trivial matters, and someone needs to be responsible for it.

In this position, you can also find an intern or someone with low salary requirements.

Murphy was thinking about these all day long. No one can guarantee the success of a film, but adequate preparations can undoubtedly reduce the possibility of failure.

Shooting a movie doesn't mean you want to shoot, you can shoot immediately, even if it is an investment of such a small project, a lot of work is required.

In the next two days, Murphy not only recorded all the items in his mind, but also wrote a planning book that was more than ten pages long. Although there were still many places to be revised, there was no time.

After getting all this done initially, and making a backup on the computer, Murphy began to prepare the script. Among the many elements of a Hollywood film, the script is relatively unimportant, but it is also the basis for the production of a film.

And with the script, we can better work on the development of shots and shooting plans.

Murphy first wrote the outline of the script. All the content of this film can be briefly summarized in one sentence-how the precocious little loli drowns the strange uncle who has a pedophile!