If You're Tired of Reading, You Can Just Go to Sleep

A few days ago, overseas, in Massachusetts.

Alfred Leike is one of the senior executives in AMC responsible for importing movies.

He was Thomas Lee's superior.

"The Christmas season? What is Li thinking?"

Looking at the report on his desk, Leike realized that his subordinates were becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

Here, the Christmas season is equivalent to the Spring Festival. The combined holiday of Christmas and New Year's Day is also a great time for major shopping malls to launch promotional activities. The streets are crowded with people, the malls are packed with people, and the box office of movies is soaring. It is second only to the Summer Slot and the May Golden Week.

Generally speaking, just like the Spring Festival slot films in China, which are mostly family-friendly and festive movies, the films shown around Christmas are also mainly light comedies, romance dramas, and animated films.

But Thomas Lee handed him a war movie instead.

It's still a foreign language film.

In Chinese parlance, why watch fighting and killing during the Lunar New Year? It's bad luck.

Although there are no similar customs overseas, people still like to take their families to the movies at Christmas. War movies are rated so that children are not allowed to go out, so people will not choose these kinds of movies first, which will drag down the box office.

Moreover, it was filmed "overseas," which was emotionally difficult for Leike to accept.

Fortunately, the contract only guarantees 5% of the screenings, and the specifics will depend on the situation.

Next to the report was a box of DVDs containing the film "Demon Tide," which Thomas Lee had sent for evaluation and local censorship.

Overseas, all movies, games, and other audiovisual entertainment products are required to be rated to distinguish some of the content that is not suitable for children, and to make the films that are not available to children more exciting.

"Li's judgments have always been accurate. There might be a reason why he did this this time. Perhaps we should watch this movie first."

Leike wanted to start the investigation immediately, but then he remembered the party that evening.

He graduated from Miskatonic University in Massachusetts, home to the renowned Miskatonic University Film Festival, which is also the largest youth film festival in the United States. Leike majored in cinematography and worked in the film and television industry for a period of time after graduation before joining AMC and working his way up to where he is today.

Tonight's gathering is his 20th anniversary reunion with several close classmates. It's being held at his own house, which is quite large, so the friends can go straight to bed when they're tired.

Some of these classmates are now famous directors, while others have stayed on at the university to teach and become professors; they are all successful people.

Besides the classic barbecue party, their gatherings consisted mainly of watching movies together. Since they were all industry professionals, they had a lot to talk about while watching a movie, and thus spent a relaxing and enjoyable evening.

"It might be better to let them taste it together."

Leike realized that while his own opinion might be somewhat biased, the combined opinions of so many classmates would be enough to produce a comprehensive evaluation.

After all, according to Thomas Lee, this is an epic blockbuster.

When Leike heard this, he almost wanted to ask his Chinese-American subordinate to translate what "epic blockbuster" meant.

As we all know, such high-budget films have disappeared in recent years. Even Hollywood, the world's strongest film industry, has stopped trying such high-budget productions. In recent years, the most popular films are superhero movies that are connected by a worldview. No one is making classic epic blockbusters anymore.

Leike doesn't believe other countries can produce epic blockbusters. First, their industrial equipment is insufficient; second, there's the quality of the actors; and finally, there are factors like the script and the director. And then there's the financial investment.

At the beginning of the century, there were some epic fantasy films. At that time, computer special effects technology was not very mature, so many of them were filmed on location. For example, hundreds of riders were hired to charge on horseback, or realistic props were made to replace special effects.

This is done to save costs, which may sound absurd, but sometimes special effects are really expensive.

Even today, Hollywood is still proud of its mature film industry system, and the various superhero movies are a testament to its advanced special effects.

In Hollywood, these special effects can be completed at a relatively low price, but abroad, you either have to spend a lot of money to have Hollywood do it for you, or you have to figure it out yourself.

For example, when it comes to a burning flame, a foreign team might have to study the particle effects for several months, but in Hollywood, there are hundreds of similar flame effects to choose from. This is all about accumulation and reserves; it's not so easy to overtake others by taking a shortcut.

Many special effects can only be completed by specific studios, and most of these studios are concentrated here. Some people say that Hollywood has a monopoly on special effects movies, and that is absolutely true.

If you want to shoot a movie with big scenes and lots of special effects, you will almost always have to hire a special effects team from Hollywood.

Leike had not heard of any Hollywood studios undertaking special effects production projects.

In other words, the special effects for "Demon Tide" were most likely done by a studio elsewhere, or by the studio itself.

Those cheap special effects aren't worth expecting at all.

Leike glanced at the director's previous filmography, which consisted entirely of horror and thriller films. These low-budget movies, which would be classified as B-movie here, made Leike think that the so-called "epic blockbuster" might just be a joke.

As for why those movies could achieve such high box office returns, Leike believes it's probably due to outdated aesthetic tastes.

There have been big-budget films co-produced by the two countries in the past, featuring famous foreign movie stars, but the quality was only so-so, and the special effects were not up to par, leaving the audience very disappointed.

Therefore, with the mindset of watching a joke and criticizing a bad movie, Leike picked up the DVD of "Demon Tide" and drove home.

At night, after enjoying a perfect barbecue, Leike and his friends went to the screening room in his house, which was converted from part of the garage and has perfect audio-visual effects, making it Leike's happy room.

"What did you bring?"

Justin, a friend of Leike's, asked him about his current status as a somewhat well-known director who has made two decent films and is considered one of the best in the industry.

"A movie, scheduled for release at Christmas, is being imported from overseas."

Leike took out the CD.

"The name ' Demon Tide ' reminds me of a game I played when I was a kid."

Another friend, Professor Armitage, joked that he is a professor at the School of Media Studies at Miskatonic University.

"They say this is an epic blockbuster, huh."

Leike put the disc into the player.

"An epic blockbuster? I haven't heard of any director making such a big-budget film recently."

The last friend, Rice, was a film company producer. He didn't quite understand what Leike meant, so he asked...

"Just watch it. I've prepared some beer, so we can chat while we watch."

Leike brought over a few bottles of beer, pressed play, turned off the lights, and sat down on the soft sofa.

The entire room dimmed, and before the production list appeared, a pitch-black forest came into view.

*

Bonus chapter for the second monthly pass in October (1/3)