This is the second part of a three-part essay by Zhang Xianmin on the state of contemporary Chinese cinema. Read Part One. Part Three will be posted tomorrow.
Translation by Yuqian Yan
II. Long Live Capital: Non-stop Financing
Red Cliff (dir. John Woo)
The highest level of capital operations, where form and power converge, is to stack stars. The strategy is to stretch the shooting period so that new capital can be accumulated throughout the entire shooting and post-production period, new stars can keep on joining the film during the entire shooting period, the film can be revised over and over again to satisfy new investors, and new plotlines can be added to accommodate newly joined starts. Red Cliff is the first film that is close to this strategy. Its shooting period was so long that they had to make the film into two parts otherwise there would be no chance to make any money. But the version released in the States only has one part.
In 2009, apart from Founding of the Republic, another prominent example of commercial blockbusters using such open strategy during production is Bodyguards and Assassins. Even after the shooting was started, it continued to attract huge capital and film starts from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is the third stage of financing.
The first stage is that traditionally one film only has one definite copyright owner. The second stage is comprehensive financing, but the ownership has already been divided before the shooting starts. We are now on the third stage, where ownership division and profit share probably will not be determined until distribution.
