When filming "Terminator 2", John Woo gained a lot of experience as an assistant director.
When "Terminator 3" was promoted to director, Yang Ye saved a lot of things.
Yang Ye would leave after filming his scenes every day, and use the time saved to work on the fund.
Due to the start-up of the fund, Paulson had little reputation, and he was often asked to come forward in person.
In the past twenty years, Yang Ye's performance in the film industry is obvious to all, and no one doubts his dominance in this field.
When Yang's private equity fund appeared, it immediately attracted a lot of attention in the North American capital community.
During this period, Yang Ye began to wear his knighthood and constantly visit the upper class society in North America.
There is a kind of "socialite culture" popular in the upper class society in Europe and America.
In some salons held by wealthy people, many celebrities will be invited to participate.
These ladies are mainly divided into four categories. People with European royal or aristocratic ancestry are usually considered to be real ladies.
Next are the heirs of wealthy families, outstanding female representatives in various fields, and popular reality show stars.
Of course, there are many fake socialites who try their best to package themselves and go to these occasions in the hope of catching a golden husband.
In later generations of China, there were special training classes for celebrities to learn how to seduce and serve the rich, and some successfully landed.
For example, Aaron Kwok’s wife is said to have come from a celebrity training class.
After the rise of China, the daughters of many celebrities were also invited to Europe and the United States to attend these ladies’ balls.
For example, the daughter of kung fu superstar Jet Li, the second princess of Juhua, and the daughter of the gambling king were all invited to attend the ladies' ball in Paris.
Wearing custom-made dresses and high-end jewelry, they danced with the "Knights", which became an opportunity for them to get in touch with the fashion industry and the media.
Yang Ye frequently attended various salons during this period and got to know many famous ladies. He even transformed into a "knight" and danced with famous ladies.
Yang Ye is not only one of the world's top richest men, but his profound knowledge and humorous conversation have attracted the favor of these ladies.
These socialites are very interested in this big movie star, especially since they heard from Madonna that Yang Ye is very fierce.
So, they expressed their affection for Yang Ye one after another and went on dates with Yang Ye. Yang Ye was not polite and had fun with these ladies.
Of course, having a good time is just for fun, the main thing is to make money and make connections.
Yang Ye openly announced that in addition to traditional stocks, property markets and other industries, a large part of the funds he raised would go to the film industry.
This means Wall Street’s money has a new place to go.
How attractive is investment in the film industry?
After entering the 1990s, the film industry was extremely prosperous. Excellent films were frequently released from all over the world, and the box office of films was continuously pushed up.
Between 1990 and 2000, the North American movie box office increased by 52%, and foreign markets were also growing explosively.
With the development of technology, the sources of income for movies have become very wide.
In addition to movie box office, movie companies can also make huge profits in areas such as advertising sponsorship, video revenue, TV copyright, TV on demand, movie peripherals, game adaptation, novel publishing and other fields.
This made movies one of the most profitable industries at the time.
However, the film industry is still an extremely risky industry.
Because as the market gets better and better, the cost of film production also rises.
When Yang Ye first traveled through time, the average production cost of a Hollywood movie was less than US$5 million.
In the 1990s, it had increased fivefold to US$25 million.
"High-concept" movies characterized by large investment, large production, large marketing, and large market have become the mainstream in Hollywood.
Movies costing more than $100 million to make began to appear.
High investment means high returns, but it also means high risks. If you are not careful, you will lose everything.
Even a great commercial director like Spielberg has a Waterloo moment like "Empire of the Sun".
Therefore, film companies around the world will not invest too much of their own funds in making movies.
They like to use investors’ money to burn, so that they can ensure income despite droughts and floods.
If the movie sells well, everyone is happy.
Even if the movie fails, you can still make a lot of money by doing accounting.
On the other hand, due to the sluggish stock market and low bank interest rates, Wall Street is very rich in funds, and there are even some super private equity funds that have raised more than 10 billion US dollars.
Wall Street's financial capital is in urgent need of finding new profit points, and Hollywood's good market performance naturally comes into their sight.
Take Paramount as an example. Even in a bad year, Paramount's internal rate of return can reach 15%. If it is the year when "Top Gun" is produced, the rate of return is even higher. .
The average hedge fund seeks a rate of return between 12% and 18%. It can be seen that investing in movies is an extremely cost-effective business.
It’s just that nowadays, the popular financing targets of film companies around the world are mainly film studios around the world.
Normally, a Hollywood movie can recoup 80% of its investment by selling the copyright without having to release it.
Hong Kong is even more exaggerated. It doesn’t even need a script. It only needs film contracts with a few first-line actors to raise tens of millions of investments.
So, although Wall Street is willing to cooperate with Hollywood, it has no way out, and Hollywood does not need their money.
Historically, due to the rising cost of film production, less and less investment was recovered through pre-sales. Finally, at the turn of the millennium, Paramount took the lead and reached a cooperation with Merrill Lynch to establish a team called Melrose. of private equity funds.
This fund has a scale of US$230 million and has invested in 25 Paramount movies in three years.
Why 25 movies?
Because investment institutions at that time believed in a kind of investment portfolio theory called "Monte Carlo". Based on calculations based on this theory, when the number of film projects invested reached 20-25, the volatility of investment returns It's relatively small.
In short, there are always profits and losses when investing in movies. When the number of movies invested reaches a certain number, the probability of losing money will become smaller.
Therefore, during that time, funds and investment banks such as Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers on Wall Street began to invest wildly in Hollywood.
Billions of dollars of funds are mobilized every year, and even a number of powerful independent production companies have been spawned.
Then...they were tricked into fools by Hollywood!
When the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis broke out in 2008, Wall Street investment banks and funds fell into crisis one after another. In order to save themselves, they were forced to sell their movie shares at a 30-30% discount. Hollywood took the opportunity to buy up stocks, causing Wall Street to explode with a wave of gold coins.
...
As the controller of the fund, Yang Ye did not just rely on his face to ask for money everywhere.
He designed a theoretical model and began to sell it everywhere, claiming that it could predict the success probability of a movie.
At a gathering, Yang Ye gave a grand speech and roughly explained his theoretical model.
“Based on a film’s director, starring role, genre, release date and other factors, with my many years of experience in the film industry, I can roughly predict the success rate of a film after it is put into the market...”
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In order to enhance his persuasiveness, Yang Ye took out Xiang Huasheng's eight winning keys and added more fuel and jealousy, which made the investors stunned.
Due to Yang Ye’s invincible experience in the film industry, many people began to believe that the success of a movie can be calculated in advance.
Actually, this thing can only provide a rough prediction. How can it be accurate?
If the calculation was accurate, there wouldn’t be those dark horses.
The script of "First Blood" has been circulating in Hollywood for more than ten years without anyone taking it. When it was made into a movie, Stallone himself felt that it would be a big bad movie.
Stallone planned to spend a sum of money to buy the movie and destroy it because he couldn't afford to lose this man.
After being rejected by the film company, he suggested cutting out as many of his scenes as possible. However, as soon as the film was released, it was a huge hit and became a masterpiece of his career.
The same goes for "A Better Tomorrow". After the film was finished, Maijia said forget it and don't release it. The audience won't like it. If it was released, there would be a distribution fee. As a result, it became popular in Asia and the director starred in it. All took off in one wave.
Movie box office is a very mysterious thing, how can it be predicted?
Only a time traveler like Yang Ye can know which movie will be successful.
But he couldn't say it outright, so he had to come up with a so-called theory to cover it up, which was actually just pretending!
Someone at the scene asked Yang Ye: "Which of the upcoming movies this year do you like the most?"
In 1992, there were many wonderful sequel movies about to be released, such as "Batman Returns" ”, “Home Alone 2”, “Lethal Weapon 3” and so on.
The previous films of these movies all achieved very high box office. However, Yang Ye did not predict these movies, which would not show his ability.
Yang Ye replied: "Some time ago I went to visit my friend Whitney Houston. She was filming a movie called "The Bodyguard".
This movie tells the story of a bodyguard who has protected the president and is hired to protect a popular singer.
This bodyguard has a strong sense of responsibility, distinguishes between public and private affairs, and will never have a relationship with his employer. However, he was conquered by the charm of the singer, and the two fell in love.
This is a very touching movie. I watched the pornographic film and thought it was very well done. I even had the idea of making a Chinese version.
According to my analysis, I think this movie will become a dark horse this year. I predict that its box office will be at least more than 300 million US dollars, and it may even become the box office champion.
As far as I know, this movie will be released on Christmas Eve, everyone will wait and see! ”
Yang Ye ignored those oncoming sequels and blatantly predicted that a movie to be released in half a year would become the box office champion, which aroused the interest of many people.
Someone asked on the spot: "Sir, are you sure that the "Bodyguard" you mentioned will become this year's box office champion?"
Of course Yang Ye will not stick to his words. Correction: "I mean this movie will become a dark horse. I predict that its box office will be more than 300 million US dollars, and it may become the box office champion. This kind of thing is of course impossible to be certain."
The man forced himself to say: "So, can you predict a more accurate number?"
Yang Ye was provoked and immediately asked: "Who is your Excellency?"
The man said: "I am an investor on Wall Street, my name is Ryan Kawaraug."
Yang Ye shook his head and said: "Mr. Kawaraug, I am not a god, this is just The result is based on my knowledge of the movie and my analysis of the market.
But I can make a bet with you. I bet that the box office of this movie will be more than 300 million US dollars. , If you can’t reach it, I can lose you a million dollars.”
Ryan Kawaraug didn’t believe that Yang Ye could accurately predict the box office just by watching a pornographic film, and immediately said: “Then. Well, if the box office exceeds 300 million US dollars, I can also lose you 1 million US dollars.”
Yang Ye and Ryan Kawaraug high-fived each other, and many people at the scene witnessed it. Everyone is waiting for the results with great interest.
If Yang Ye wins, his ability to accurately predict the film market will make the funds he controls hot.
In this highly developed capitalist society, if you can make money and bring income to them, you are the grandfather.
......
For Yang Ye, filming a movie like "Terminator 3" is actually very easy.
For many seemingly dangerous scenes, he didn't even have to be present.
And with John Woo controlling the overall situation, he only needs to keep an eye on it from time to time to make sure the movie doesn't go off track.
This ensures that he has a lot of time to wander around. In addition to lobbying wealthy Americans to invest in his fund, he can also take time to spend with his daughter and Akina Nakamori.
For example, shortly after the movie started, the scene where TX drove a large speeding crane and threw the T850, which was firmly holding the hook at the end of the boom, into a roadside store. It was very thrilling and was the scene in "The End" One of the famous scenes of "The Killer 3".
During the filming, it was naturally impossible to really hang Yang Ye on a crane and hit the house. Although Yang Ye can also be called "Superman", he does not have a body of steel.
How to shoot this scene?
The set team spent two weeks building a two-story shopping mall on location.
This shopping mall is specially designed to ensure that the boom can pass through the building when it hits.
During the filming, the stuntman drove a 140-ton crane and sped along the shopping mall. Yang Ye's stuntman props were hung on the hooks of the crane, and the house was smashed into pieces.
In order to make the house collapse, explosives had to be used to blow it up. In order to create a more spectacular visual effect, the special effects department also placed some fireworks inside the mall.
Finally, Ziqi Company replaced the stand-in props with Yang Ye’s electronic model. The electronic models were all scanned against Yang Ye in the early stage.
When editing, by combining the close-ups of Yang Ye's face taken in the early stage, the effect can be achieved so that almost no one can tell which pictures are CG.
After years of hard work, Yang Ye’s team has become very mature and efficient in doing these things.
Yang Ye only needs to tell the team what effect he needs to achieve, and everyone will take care of the rest by themselves.
Of course, if there are technical difficulties, Yang Ye will personally take action.
As a director, John Woo is very envious of this. Such an awesome team is exactly what he dreams of.
It's a pity that this team was created by Yang Ye and only took orders from Yang Ye. He, John Woo, only used the experience card once.
While John Woo was using the experience card, Yang Ye was invited by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA)... (End of Chapter)