I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 285 - 285 284. Philanthropist Lu Ban_1

Chapter 285: 284. Philanthropist Lu Ban_1 Chapter 285: 284. Philanthropist Lu Ban_1 “Raw footage?”

Several people had question marks popping up over their heads.

The raw footage that Lu Ban mentioned, could it be from the new movie?

Had he already finished filming it?

“The Madman’s Mouth” had just finished screening, and now he had already solved the most difficult part of shooting for the new film?

Was this even a speed attainable by humans?

Rather than their previous doubts about work and the anticipation to see snippets of Lu Ban’s new movie, this group of film and television professionals was more shocked.

Many of them had assumed that Lu Ban was just recruiting some people for his team, and by joining Lu Ban, they could learn the most advanced post-production experience, make connections with some big names, and build a network to assist with future work.

Seeing the brand-new office, they merely thought Lu Ban might be expanding his business by opening a new studio here.

But now it seemed like they were really just here to do post-production?

Why had Lu Ban spent so much money and conducted that bizarre interview process?

A few people followed Lu Ban into the screening room.

Without explaining too much, Lu Ban played the sample reel that he had shown Qin Tiantian the night before and selected some unprocessed clips for them to see.

“…The current progress is like this, what you need to do is to process the raw footage into something like the sample reel, I will provide certain instructions for the details, of course, I also hope everyone has ideas to contribute, everyone here is an outstanding professional in the industry, and I believe you’ll have unique insights,” Lu Ban said as he turned on the lights in the screening room.

“…”

The people sitting in the screening room looked at each other, momentarily at a loss for words.

“Is this really the raw footage?” Bai Qiquan muttered.

Initially, he thought that the raw footage mentioned by Lu Ban would be something like actors filming against a green screen, or using rough props and sets, a type of video that not only requires special effects but also post-production, and the quality of the raw footage would be extremely rough.

However, the “raw footage” that Lu Ban showed them needed little more than some filters, post-production color grading, depth of field, and other minor finishing touches—everything else was already done.

No, it was not just done, but it was done to what could be called perfection.

The monster’s movements, the motion of the fur, the snow effects, the particles of the bows and spells, as well as the processing of the large scenes and buildings, it could be said that there would be no problem using this raw footage as the final film.

Even a few specialists in the field felt that, given one or two years’ time and unlimited funds to create these images, they might not be able to do any better.

And these special effects were the biggest workload during post-production.

Impressive.

At first, they thought Lu Ban had hired them to work on the entire film, then they realized they were only responsible for post-production, and now, those sitting in the screening room discovered that they were called by Lu Ban to be the finishers, to do the final tidy-up work.

It was as if there was a jigsaw puzzle of thousands of pieces, and Lu Ban had assembled it all but the last two or three pieces, then paid several people to finish it, or as if Lu Ban had proven the Goldbach conjecture, but was too lazy to transcribe it and had them come over to help copy and print it.

Their work didn’t really require much technical skill; anyone who worked normally for a few years could complete it smoothly.

And the salaries Lu Ban offered were more than double what most of them made before switching jobs.

Could Lu Ban be doing charity?

Everyone looked at each other until Bai Qiquan raised his hand.

“Uh, Director Lu, the completion of your original film is already high enough, do we just need to undertake those miscellaneous post-production tasks?”

“You can understand it that way.”

Lu Ban agreed without hesitation.

Click—

Several people’s worldview shattered.

Is this the willfulness of the rich?

Or is Lu Ban using his money to humiliate us?

No, no, no, if he’s paying this much, I wish he’d humiliate us even more.

Wait a minute, thinking about it the other way around, if Lu Ban were to do these low-skill miscellaneous tasks himself, wouldn’t it waste his precious creative time?

So, it’s because Director Lu Ban has too many inspirations and wants to spend more time creating that he has handed over these simple repetitive tasks to us.

Some people have already started to rationalize it in their minds.

Since it was the first day on the job, Lu Ban did not arrange any formal work but let everyone get to know each other and the working environment. He also arranged housing for the employees without accommodation.

After getting the company’s affairs in order, Lu Ban went to the office building of Jiangcheng Industries.

Here, he had made an appointment with an AMC chain manager, a Chinese-American named Thomas Lee.

AMC is one of the world’s largest cinema chains, whereas Jiangcheng Cinema of Jiangcheng Industries has a significant influence only in the southeast region. In contrast, AMC firmly dominates the Europe and America markets. In addition to that, there’s Empire Entertainment Group and Fully Seated Cineplex, which are slightly smaller chains. These are the main forces of the overseas film market, and if Lu Ban wants his movies to premiere simultaneously abroad, he needs to communicate with these cinema chains to persuade them to allocate screening slots and schedules.

In the domestic market, Lu Ban’s box office appeal was already very strong. After all, directors who could continuously produce movies with box office revenues over two billion were few and far between, especially within niche genres like horror thrillers.

But in the international market, Lu Ban was not as well-known.

A domestic box office of two billion, in the international arena, equates to just over three hundred million USD. Many films far exceed this number; to those unfamiliar with Lu Ban, he is seen as a fairly decent director of commercial films.

Furthermore, due to different market preferences between domestic and international audiences, many domestically successful films are not popular overseas.

Take The Island country for example, aside from blockbuster superhero movies, the next best-selling films are animated features. Many domestic crime and comedy films popular in China do not perform well overseas, and military movies with nationalistic colors are even quieter internationally.

Before this, the highest-grossing Chinese film overseas was a martial arts movie with a 210 million USD box office, followed by a historical war film with a 140 million revenue, and the third one only garnered eighty million USD.

Foreign audiences generally favor kung fu and historical martial arts war films. Even horror movies popular in The Island country find it hard to resonate in the largest markets of Europe and America, where traditional styles of horror are less appealing to those straightforward foreigners compared to chainsaws and flying blood and plasma.

And Lu Ban, he needed to convince the cinema chains to acknowledge his films.

In the guest room of Jiangcheng Industries’ office building, Lu Ban met the foreign-raised Thomas Lee.

“Mr. Lee, I’ve brought you some small gifts.”

Lu Ban placed the bag he was holding onto the coffee table and took out the contents.

“These are DVDs of my previous two films. I think, regardless of the outcome of our cooperation today, you could watch my films for entertainment.”

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