When it is said that the salaries of Hong Kong performing arts staff are abnormally high, it mainly refers to those blockbuster directors and popular movie stars.±,
For example, the films directed by Wang Jing are often hot-sellers. Not only does he get a high director's salary, but he also often gets a share of the box office; another example is that although Andy Lau is not the most famous in Hong Kong, he is very popular in Taiwan, so he now gets a huge salary
8 million, directly catching up with Zhou Runfa, Zhou Xingchi and others, and even surpassing brothers Xu Guanwen and Xu Guanjie.
As for those second- and third-rate directors and actors, although their incomes are significantly higher than before, that is because of the prosperity of Hong Kong films, and the remuneration these people receive is still relatively reasonable.
Taiwanese film producers complain that the remuneration of Hong Kong entertainers is too high and drives up studio costs, but they are actually also responsible, because the remuneration of Hong Kong stars was jacked up by these guys, and now they want to but cannot.
In another time and space, the result of the second round of negotiations between the two parties on the issue of remuneration was to let Xiang Huaqiang serve as the convener to coordinate the reasonable remuneration of Hong Kong performing arts staff. But even with Xiang Huaqiang's gang boss background, the coordination was still the same
If you don’t care about heaven and earth, how can you care about how much money people make?
There was a heated argument between the two sides. None of the Hong Kong producers said much, and the focus was on Xu Guanwen, the president of the Hong Kong Performing Arts Association.
Xu Guanwen said: "I can't do this kind of thing. When the association was first established, everyone elected me as the president because of their trust in me. My responsibility is to fight for the rights of Hong Kong entertainers, not to help third parties to pressure their remuneration.
.”
"This matter...it's up to Mr. Kang to make the decision." He Guanchang suddenly said.
Everyone looked at Kang Jianfei, waiting for his final statement.
If Kang Jianfei has an advantage in resolving contract disputes because he has a large amount of artist resources, then when it comes to coordinating the remuneration of entertainers, Kang Jianfei faces a troublesome matter.
There are so many directors and actors signed up by your company and following you. Do you have the nerve to help outsiders suppress their pay?
As long as Kang Jianfei agrees to do this, no matter whether it is successful or not, he will offend a large number of directors and movie stars. Those people may not dare to say anything on the surface, but they will definitely be unhappy in their hearts. It is certain that they will talk and curse behind their backs.
Kang Jianfei has long been an old fox. How could he do such a thing that offends the public? With a playful smile on his face, he said: "Do you think the cost of Hong Kong films is driven up by the salaries of popular movie stars and directors?"
Yang Dengkui said: "This is something that is obvious at a glance. If you invest 20 million yuan in a Hong Kong film, the salary of the leading actor and director alone will be more than 10 million yuan. If there are two or three popular supporting actors, the labor cost will already exceed 15 million yuan.
What can the remaining 5 million be used for? The director can only make shoddy movies to fool the audience."
"Wrong!" Kang Jianfei suddenly shouted loudly. Everyone in the conference room was startled. He laughed and said, "I think this is not just a problem for directors and movie stars. Investors and producers need to bear more responsibilities.
responsibility!"
Wu Dun asked confusedly: "What is this statement?"
Kang Jianfei continued: "Why is it that labor costs account for more than half of the total movie budget? The most fundamental problem lies with you. If you want big stars, big casts, and big directors, and you don't read the script and just recognize the face, who will be popular?
Just hire whoever you want, it’s understandable for the sake of box office, but this is essentially inflating the stars’ salaries.”
Wang Yingxiang said: "If you are not a celebrity, why should I invite you here?"
Kang Jianfei said: "If you regard filmmaking as an ordinary commercial investment, then your behavior is to only look at the raw materials of the product without paying attention to the production process and process of the product. You don't even know the final outcome of the product when you invest money.
Looks like this. Then consumers buy products with substandard quality, and they don’t buy it anymore. The products are backlogged and cannot be sold, and then you complain that the raw materials are too expensive. This is putting the cart before the horse! What is a movie? Movies sell content, not
It’s just a celebrity. Can’t you be more cautious when investing?”
Cai Songlin argued: "You can't say that..."
"Take Boss Cai's Scholar Company as an example." Kang Jianfei directly interrupted Cai Songlin's speech, "Wong Kar-wai can get tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars in investment from you with several movie contracts from stars and a plan to adapt Jin Yong.
.Did you really think carefully before investing? You didn’t even know what kind of movie he wanted to make. The result? The result was that Wong Kar-wai didn’t make the movie for half a year. Instead, he spent more than 10 million Hong Kong dollars
The budget has been exhausted, can you blame the movie stars for being paid too high?"
Cai Songlin blushed when he was said about it, and the matter was regarded as a joke by people in the industry. The final solution negotiated was: Wong Kar-wai brought his friend Liu Zhenwei into the crew, and used the original cast to make another comedy film, which was later
"The East Becomes the West".
In just one month, Liu Zhenwei's "The Last Day" has been completed, while Wong Kar-wai's "Ashes of Time" is still progressing slowly, and it is estimated that it will take another year and a half to complete the film.
"Ahem, this is a special case." Yang Dengkui coughed to help Cai Songlin.
Kang Jianfei sneered: "Is this a special case? Among the ten Taiwan-funded and Hong Kong films, at least six or more were launched without scripts. As long as the producer signs a star film contract, you dare to invest!"
Taiwan's eight major film businessmen could only respond silently, because what Kang Jianfei said was true.
Everyone looked at each other for a while, and then Wang Yingxiang said: "What Mr. Kang said is true. We should pay more attention to it in the future. But saying this now will not help. The most important thing is how to reduce the inflated salaries of stars.
.”
"It's not too late to remedy the situation, so how can we say it won't help?" Kang Jianfei just refused to take on the hot potato of lowering stars' pay. He said, "Look at Hollywood, how rigorous the process of making movies is, which Hollywood director
Can you just casually sign film contracts with a few stars, and dare to ask producers and investors to provide money without even having a script or even an idea? I think lowering the salaries of stars is just a trivial matter, and what is more important is to standardize the film production process in the future. At least, everyone
When investing money, you have to know what the director wants to shoot, right?"
No one said anything, everyone was thoughtful. Some people showed disdain.
Kang Jianfei continued: "Take Wong Kar-wai's "Ashes of Time" as an example. Does a movie really need to hire seven or eight first-line movie stars? One or two are enough! Don't treat the audience as if they only pay for the stars' faces.
A fool. Big casts have their own way of shooting big casts. Judging from the current production costs of Hong Kong films, if you want to shoot a big cast, you have to invest at least 30 million. If you invest 20 million to shoot a big cast, of course the stars will be paid.
That accounts for more than half. If you invest 50 million, then the 15 million star salary is nothing! If you want to gather celebrities but are not willing to pay enough, the film will of course be a bad movie. It’s not that the stars’ salaries are too high, it’s that
You have too little money to invest! You can invest only 20 million. Then just make a film with a medium cast and hire one or two big stars to be your signboards. Think carefully about the script and improve the quality of the film.
The movies produced may not necessarily have lower box office than those with big stars."
Kang Jianfei made it very clear. When Taiwanese film producers invest in Hong Kong films, they want to buy good products but don’t want to spend enough money. How can there be such a thing as cheap and beautiful things in this world?
The eight major film developers who control the entire Taiwanese market are sitting in the conference room, being scolded by Kang Jianfei like a grandson. Some people must be unhappy, but they have to admit that Kang Jianfei is right, and at the same time they are thinking about whether it will be the same in the future.
It's time to change our investment thinking - after all, Taiwanese audiences have become more sophisticated now, unlike in the past when they foolishly paid to go to the theater when they saw a Hong Kong star starring in the movie.
Kang Jianfei's words were not only addressed to Taiwanese film producers, but also to Hong Kong producers such as Chen Rongmei and Luo Jiecheng who became a monk in the process. They don't understand movies at all. They blindly invest in films with theater chains in their hands, and they also only watch movies.
The stars don't read the scripts, and the directors use big casts to fool them and pay for them, which ultimately leads to the current bad situation where bad movies are piled up.
Kang Jianfei had completely taken charge of the talks at this time. He said: "I propose that the Hong Kong Film Practitioners Association should standardize a Hong Kong film production charter. This charter is not mandatory, but serves as a reference for producers and investors. Firmly.
Resist the kind of directors who defraud investment by recruiting celebrities to film. Most of you here have families and businesses. Those directors can take advantage of the boom in Hong Kong films and leave. But you and I have production companies and theater companies.
After ruining the entire market, who will lose the most in the end? It’s you, me, all of us!”
Now it was the turn of Hong Kong producers to think deeply. Kang Jianfei's words were indeed thought-provoking. They had even considered this issue themselves before.
Even if Kang Jianfei did not appear, the poor box office situation of Hong Kong films in 1993 alerted a large number of Hong Kong practitioners. They wrote to the British Hong Kong government and asked the Hong Kong government to set up a film bureau to use official power to regulate the chaotic Hong Kong film industry. However,
Until the handover in 1997, the British Hong Kong government did not respond directly to this matter. They did not care about the life or death of Hong Kong movies.
Kang Jianfei continued: "The remuneration of stars cannot be suppressed. We set a salary of 5 million for a certain star. Will he really be obedient? You really followed the standard of 5 million, but another company offered 6 million."
For a price of 10,000 yuan, who do you think he would agree to act for?"
At this point, Kang Jianfei changed his tone again, "Of course, everyone has seen the local box office and overseas box office of Hong Kong films this year. Three words, that is 'downturn'. The low box office has suppressed the actors' remuneration, which is also very important."
It is reasonable. This is the same as increasing actors' remuneration when the box office is booming. Our Oriental Entertainment Agency will negotiate with the Hong Kong Performing Artists Association as soon as possible to formulate a reference price list for actors' remuneration. However, this is only for reference and will not be mandatory.
In terms of execution, no one can force a star to accept a film at a certain price."
Hearing that Kang Jianfei finally relented, Taiwan's eight major film producers also felt a lot more relaxed. They all knew that this kind of thing couldn't be done overnight. It would be very difficult to come up with a reference price list for Hong Kong stars' salaries. In the future, there would be at least one salary for actors.
in accordance with.
In the end, the issue of commission distribution could not be negotiated to a satisfactory result for both parties. In the end, they could only cooperate according to their own will. Since some Hong Kong producers are unwilling to take commission for distribution, then OK, DreamWorks and Golden Harvest are willing.
, we will not buy your movies in the future, but only those from these two companies. The film source is not big enough so we can show old movies to support the scene.
Don't think that Taiwanese film producers can't do this kind of thing. In another time and space, after the second round of negotiations between the two parties collapsed, they didn't buy any Hong Kong films for half a year. Many Taiwanese cinemas had to show old films repeatedly to cope. In the end
Hong Kong's production companies really couldn't hold on any longer, and a large number of them went bankrupt within half a year. Taiwan's film companies and theater companies also suffered heavy losses, and the two sides had no choice but to sit down together for the third round of negotiations.
However, after the six-month boycott of Hong Kong films, the Hong Kong film industry suffered heavy losses, with nearly half of the production companies and cinemas closed down. Later, although Hong Kong and Taiwan negotiated a settlement, Hong Kong films began to decline.
Fortunately, with Kang Jianfei's intervention, everyone did not break up the talks directly this time. Although there were still problems that needed to be solved, due compromises were made on the main issues.
At the end of the negotiation, Taiwanese film producers and Hong Kong producers reached a settlement and decided to establish a long-term mechanism for this negotiation, stipulating: "Relevant organizations in Hong Kong and Taiwan will hold a meeting every month to discuss film investment, production, distribution and other issues.
"Exchange of opinions" and reached a number of agreements such as "data must be available for commercial evaluation of films, and appropriate adjustments must be made if unreasonable".
A total of three related organizations were born at this meeting, namely:
The [Hong Kong and Taiwan Film Contract Coordination Group] is responsible for cleaning up and coordinating old film investment contracts between Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is only a temporary organization;
[Hong Kong Performing Arts Staff’s Reasonable Remuneration Assessment Group] is responsible for formulating reference prices for Hong Kong directors and actors’ remuneration;
[Hong Kong-Taiwan Film Cooperation, Exchange and Coordination Development Committee] is responsible for holding regular meetings to coordinate conflicts between the two parties and discuss development plans. At the same time, production companies that must join this committee are eligible to sell films to Taiwan. Members must pay a fee every year
The pen membership fee is used to maintain the normal operation of the committee, and the committee is obliged to allocate funds to the "Hong Kong Performing Arts Staff Reasonable Remuneration Assessment Group" and establish this group as a long-term effective organization.
This meeting was destined to be written into the history of Hong Kong films, and even the history of Chinese films. It was later called the "Tseung Kwan O Agreement" because of the place where it was held, and the "April 21 Agreement" because of the time when the meeting was held.
Kang Jianfei does not want to be the savior of Hong Kong movies, but his appearance did save the decline of Hong Kong movies to a certain extent. At least Hong Kong movies did not die as tragically as in another time and space.
At the same time, regardless of whether they admit it or not, all major production companies in Hong Kong have strengthened the standardization of the film production process under the influence of Kang Jianfei. At least few of them dare to throw money at the stars without reading the script. (Unfinished)
