Chapter 377: Crew Vehicles and Promotion!

Chen Mo glanced at Luo Xiao. What was his purpose in choosing those amateur actors?

A lack of experience was one factor.

Another point was that these amateurs had no traffic; no traffic meant that once the movie was released, nobody would care about it.

Nobody caring meant no box office revenue.

No box office meant no income, and with no income, he would lose money.

What a wonderful closed loop this was!

Yet, this guy Luo Xiao actually wanted to break this loop with promotion. It seemed this guy was also…

"Promotion is unnecessary. You need to know that a good movie isn't created by promotion, but by the audience."

"A bad movie, no matter how well you promote it, remains a bad movie. Perhaps in the beginning, many people might choose to watch it because of the promotion, but as the word-of-mouth gets worse, the number of viewers will definitely dwindle."

"But for a good movie, even without promotion, as the word-of-mouth improves, the number of people choosing to watch it will definitely increase."

"So, don't think about promotion anymore. Putting all your energy into film production is your primary task."

Chen Mo casually found an excuse to reject the idea of promotion.

The movie release was scheduled for the period right before the settlement; if he really let Luo Xiao launch a promotional campaign, causing a surge in initial revenue, that would be troublesome.

"I understand, President Chen."

Luo Xiao nodded. He really wanted to say that promoting without affecting production wouldn't be a problem.

However, he thought about it again—how could one promote without affecting production?

The film's budget was fixed. If he took ten million to promote the movie, the production budget would be reduced by ten million.

How could that be called not affecting it? Perhaps if that ten million for promotion were invested into the film production, the final result would be even better.

"Hmm!" Chen Mo nodded with satisfaction, seeing that Luo Xiao didn't refute him.

"As for film production, just do what you see fit; in any case, promotion is not needed."

"Next, there are some tasks I need to hand over to you. Now that the movie has finished filming, only the editing stage remains. So, start preparing for the second movie. I need you to handle matters like script selection before the new movie is released."

"Also, regarding the crew vehicles, you calculate what kind of cars are needed and how many. And about the managers' company cars—the last time vehicles were assigned, you weren't in Jiangcheng, so you weren't assigned any."

"Since you are back now, the matter of company cars naturally needs to be settled."

"As for where to buy the cars… Hmm, Shen Rou will give you a contact number when the time comes; you can just look for that person."

Thinking about the car purchase, he remembered the 4S dealership salesperson who gave him a business card last time. He recalled handing that card to Shen Rou.

"Thank you, President Chen."

Luo Xiao felt somewhat moved. He had learned about the company cars in the Manager Group Chat while filming in Kyoto.

However, he didn't have much of a feeling about cars; it didn't matter to him whether he had one or not.

What moved him was that just after they returned to the company, President Chen brought this matter up.

This showed that President Chen had been keeping this in mind, giving him a feeling of being valued.

Ever since his film failed, he hadn't felt this sense of being valued for a long time, not even from his own family.

Wang Bin was also on the side, excitedly expressing his thanks.

"Alright, that's all. You can go get busy. Make sure to finalize the car purchase within the next couple of days."

After arranging matters for Lanpian Film and Television, Chen Mo waved his hand.

After Luo Xiao and Wang Bin left, he took the opportunity to call Tang Qiu and mentioned the matter of the company cars.

Sure enough, after he brought up the manager company cars, Tang Qiu replied directly that she had her own car and didn't need one.

There was no other way; he had to casually come up with a lot of excuses before he could get Tang Qiu to accept the company car.

Hanging up the phone, he picked up the water cup on the desk for a sip, then notified Shen Rou to send the contact information of the 4S dealership salesperson he had kept from last time to Luo Xiao and Tang Qiu.

After Luo Xiao and Wang Bin left the Presidents Office, they took the elevator back to Lanpian Film and Television.

After arranging some simple tasks, it was already noon.

"Let's go, let's go eat at the cafeteria." Luo Xiao glanced at the time and headed straight for the elevator.

"What about the special effects?" Wang Bin asked, following beside Luo Xiao, looking a bit worried.

Now that the movie had finished filming, only editing and special effects remained; the company's own production team definitely wasn't enough.

They still needed some outsourcing companies to share the workload of special effects production.

"That's easy to handle. We can ask Fang Chang about it. After all, they make games, so they must know more than us. It shouldn't be a problem to have them recommend a few good production teams."

Luo Xiao said calmly.

What they lacked now wasn't money, but a good special effects production team.

"That's true. It's lunchtime now; Fang Chang and his team will definitely be going to eat, so we can just discuss it with them in the cafeteria."

Wang Bin nodded slightly.

The two took the elevator to Tomorrow Cafeteria, and before long, they indeed saw Fang Chang, Wei Yan, and the others entering the cafeteria.

Seeing this, Luo Xiao and Wang Bin quickly carried their trays and sat down with them.

"Special effects teams? I do know a few. There are better ones and worse ones; it depends on how much capital you have."

Fang Chang said slowly after hearing Luo Xiao's inquiry.

When they were developing games, they would sometimes outsource some special effects or modeling work, so they had a good grasp of the capabilities of those production teams.

"We have the capital, about 60 million or so."

Luo Xiao said quickly.

President Chen had invested a total of 80 million. Among that, actors' salaries, production losses, and other living expenses had totaled about 16 million.

Actually, they could have saved more; after all, there was no need to pay those amateur actors so much.

His original plan was to pay each lead actor 200,000 as a salary, which would have been enough.

After all, they were inexperienced amateur actors; paying 200,000 was already very high.

For example, when they went to the Shanghai Theater Academy to select actors, some students said they didn't even need a salary.

But President Chen felt that a salary of 200,000 was too little and directly raised the lead actors' salaries to 500,000. Important supporting roles were given 300,000, and even actors like Wang Qiang, who didn't have many scenes, were given 100,000.

This resulted in spending several million more on salaries than the original budget.

Of course, the expenses didn't just include the actors' salaries; President Chen even defined the crew members' work as a business trip.

So, all the crew members received a 500 yuan per diem for business travel every day.

He originally thought President Chen was being a bit extravagant, but during filming, seeing the dedication of the actors and the enthusiastic way the crew worked, he gradually understood President Chen's intentions.