After Li Xiaole finished the handover work, he sorted out the company's personnel to the experienced Wagner. He sat on the bench in the president's office and looked out the window and took a deep breath. The bustling streets of New York that came into view from the window. From here, you can even see the famous electronic billboards in Times Square. This is the center of world finance, the center of American traditional media, and the center of culture. Anyone who comes here will fall in love with this prosperous and beautiful city.

In fact, Li Xiaole was also very nervous when facing the people who were causing trouble... The first time he faced this kind of scene alone was in the United States. It is certainly a lie to say that he is not panicked. After all, he is just a director. There are not many employees in small companies like the Second Studio and Lianmei. He has no experience in managing large groups.

Although he knew the employees' thoughts clearly, he was actually a little confused about how to deal with them in detail. He asked Tom Cruise and Wagner to go out first, but he just wanted to calm down and think about what to do. Fortunately, he remembered a clip of a state-owned enterprise worker in a domestic drama called "Floating and Drum". He remembered clearly the lines and behavior patterns of Director Wang, who shocked the workers.

After digesting the lines of the TV series by himself, he performed it with his acting skills to achieve this effect. Finally, he passed the difficulty. Thinking of this, Li Xiaole couldn't help but smiled with a ridiculous smile. Some things he still thought too ideally. Is it true that running a group company is his strength? He is only suitable for the chairman to make decisions. He is really unable to do this kind of effort-consuming management of the company.

Fortunately, with the hard-line strong woman Wagner now, she can just throw her hands to her more than a thousand people in the future. She just needs to be responsible for the shooting.

Li Xiaole sat in front of the desk, looking at the blank documents on the computer screen, frowned and thought, what will he film in the next TV series?

Looking at the rainy sky in New York, I feel that it is completely different from California, which has a bright vision all year round. There are many huge differences between the East Coast and the West Coast. The West Coast has a pleasant climate, and people like to go out to the cinema to watch movies. More importantly, the West Coast has a large number of Latin and Asian immigrants, and they all like to join in the fun. All the states in the West Coast are important places for the box office of American movies, and almost account for 50% of the box office in the United States.

On the contrary, the East Coast is just the opposite. It is rainy and has developed industry. Most of them are white immigrants from Europe. People have strange relationships and advocate culture and art. They usually don’t like to go out. Most of the people here would rather stay at home to watch TV series. Therefore, the headquarters of several major American TV stations are set up in New York... The East Coast is a must-fight place for TV stations.

There are generally two major types of TV series that audiences on the East Coast like to watch. One is sitcoms that mainly use language humor, such as classic indoor dramas like "Friends", and the second is a drama with unique style and unique stories.

There are only these two paths in front of Li Xiaole. Of course, comedy is what he is good at. The scripts in his mind include future stories such as "The Big Bang Them" and "The Broken Sisters"...

The advantages of these TV series are that they are small costs, low shooting difficulty, and easy to find actors. But the problem is that he is good at "action comedy", which is a variety of funny plots like "Life Remote Control", while comedy TV series such as "Big Bang" and "Bankrupt Sisters" are "language comedy". He is somewhat unable to master the humorous atmosphere unique to American spoken language. After all, he is not a native American, let alone Sheldon's many interesting lines, and he doesn't remember too much...

If you want to shoot a shot that beats the original version, Li Xiaole himself thinks it is unlikely... and rule out this option.

Then the rest is the drama film, and there are many choices. He has a lot of youth themes to shoot, "Gossip Girl", "Vampire Diary", "Nikita", "Home of Homeland", etc.... He has studied these dramas carefully as textbooks, and has also written a script outline registration on the screenwriter's Republic, which can be reproduced on his own TV station...

These dramas are all good. What he has to do now is to choose a drama that can make a "shocking" one. This drama is impressive and the audience can't press the remote control in their hands at a glance. If this condition is met... When Li Xiaole thought of this, a picture popped up in his mind.

A police officer with a hat, walking alone in a desolate big city...

Yes, The Walking Dead, the world's first orthodox zombie drama...

The zombie theme is the same as the Chinese Kung Fu theme, and is a unique cultural theme in Europe and the United States. This kind of horror nature was once popular during the 1950s in the United States, but after the 1970s, it entered a period of shrinkage.

However, in the past 10 years, there has been a trend of recovery. Excellent films such as "Zombie Sean", "Dawn of the Living Dead", "Shock Change (Sky" and other movies have been released frequently, with good reputation and box office.

However, on the contrary, this theme is not popular in TV series. In 2000, CBS and the American TV Network launched two zombie-type films, "The Trekking Point Plan" and "The Horror Master", with poor ratings.

Why are zombie films not popular when they are moved to TV? There are two main reasons.

First of all, horror movies are a fixed pattern, from the beginning to the scary, relying on the logical description of the story, the most terrifying point is only the few routines. TV series can also scare people and attract people to watch, but over time, no matter how terrifying the zombies are, everyone will be "fearing fatigue" and will not be interested and continue watching.

Secondly, and most importantly, the scale of American TV series is far more open than that of movies, so various themes are very rich, with various superhumans, monsters, and special abilities filling the TV screen, resulting in the dullness of zombies that seem too old-fashioned.

The general view now is that only the zombie monsters that act quickly and have huge power in "Resident Evil" are attractive and will bring a sense of horror...

However, in Li Xiaole's opinion, the fundamental reason for these two problems is that these TV people have completely misdirected. They just want to gain high ratings and try to make the TV series more terrifying.

In fact, this is normal, because TV stations are different from production companies. The report they read is not box office, but ratings. The ratings are indeed a data of current events. The audience can turn on the station at any time. This also led to a very large ratings of 40 minutes of TV series. The management of those TV stations took the ratings report and saw that all the scary shots had the highest ratings, and the story preparations of other times were mediocre. The management naturally asked the director and producer to increase the proportion of horrifying and intimidating shots.

Over time, due to the deliberately stacking of horror shots, the overall plot and rhythm gradually become chaotic, and the quality of the series will plummet. Without the story as a skeleton, no matter how horrible the scene in the camera is, no one will watch it again.

This is the result of deliberately emphasizing viewership, which is also a common problem in the TV system, mainly because the management of the TV station rarely understands story logic. They look at data in their eyes. In their words: "All artistic analysis is subjective, and only data will not deceive people."

This is even more serious in the mainland now. For example, in family TV series, the scenes of quarrels are the highest ratings. You can see a strange phenomenon. A TV series with 50 episodes, and the family is in conflicts and even trivial matters in 40 episodes. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law want to slap each other in the face...

Let’s take a look at how a truly good zombie movie was revived. In 2002, it was hailed as the classic "Shock Change (Sky), "Zombie Sean", which won three nominations for the Academy of Art Award in 2004, and the well-received "Dawn of the Living Dead" that Li Xiaole saw at the Cannes Film Festival.

These zombie films have one common feature: they are not just horror movies. Their attractiveness lies in the plot itself and the content conveyed by the story itself.

Whether it is "Dawn of the Living Dead" or "Shock Change (Sky", zombies are just a carrier. Putting aside this carrier, it discusses the human nature in the end of the world, and the opposite is always between people, not between people and zombies.

"The Walking Dead" is such a drama. What attracts people is the expression of human nature in the plot, rather than the horror brought by simple zombies.

Is this profound? Do other TV producers understand? Of course they understand, but they dare not shoot like this...

The biggest reason is that this seemingly horror movie is actually not related to horror, but rather a zombie movie that focuses on the plot not only tests the director's skills, but also has a great investment, because all of this has one of the most critical premises - the end of the world.

The End of the World... This is a word that everyone TV producers will retreat when they see it... The stories of horror movies for more than an hour almost always happen in a closed small environment, which is just a corner of the End of the World... But TV series are different, at least ten episodes, so the story will be in different places. How much does it cost to shape such a grand environment in the End of the World?

Hundreds of extras play zombies, dozens of makeup artists, and hundreds of costumes, props, and setters... Just calculating these various fees, making a TV series is no less than a movie...

Why bother? Just shoot a small horror movie where teenagers go to a haunted house in the countryside.
Chapter completed!