I entered Huayu Entertainment in 2016.

Chapter 123 Zhang Ruonan reviews the budget

After listening, Zhang Ruonan remained silent for a while, then let out a long sigh.

She lowered her hand from her chin and lay flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

She ran to a boy's door in the middle of the night, snuggled into his arms, and gave him all the New Year's money she had saved up over the years. He accepted it, and then she happily ran back home.

She had already laid all her cards on the table, and was just one card away from being revealed, but she took a detour at the very last moment.

"Zhou Ye, you're good at everything, except you're terrible at grasping the essentials."

"You've put in so much effort, why don't you just say so! If you keep hesitating, you might end up losing everything!"

Upon hearing this, Zhou Ye felt more confident.

"How could that be? I own a share of this company, I'm not afraid!"

"Hehehe~!" Zhang Ruonan let out a series of meaningful laughs.

That bastard is hiding a lot of things!

Zhou Ye felt uncomfortable from her laughter, so he simply rolled over and pounced into Sister Nan's arms, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist and burying his face in her shoulder, rubbing against her.

"Sister Nan, there's no rush. Wang Zi'an is busy with his career right now, and I want to help him."

Her voice was muffled in Zhang Ruonan's shoulder, but her tone was firm.

Zhang Ruonan reached out and gently tapped her forehead with her finger.

"These two things don't conflict. Stop dawdling."

Zhou Ye rubbed against her shoulder for a while, then looked up. His face was still flushed, but his eyes were bright and steady.

"It's okay. It's mine, it must be mine."

"That's how my mom won over my dad!"

She told me that when my dad first started his business, she slapped her salary card in front of him and said, "Take this and use it. If it's not enough, I'll borrow it from my dad."

"Later, my dad said that he was convinced of my mom's love from that moment on."

When she said this, the corners of her mouth were curved, but there was no hint of joking in her tone.

"Alright then!" Zhang Ruonan knew that continuing this topic would lead nowhere.

Zhou Ye may seem gentle on the surface, but she is incredibly stubborn at heart. Once she has made up her mind about a path, she will stubbornly stick to it to the end.

She relaxed her body, put her arms behind her head, and switched her tone from teasing to serious, "Then you'll be busy from now on."

"When I saw Wang Zian talking to Lao Li about the filming plan, he was really serious about it."

With three short dramas running simultaneously, dealing with sets, props, costumes, and post-production, you'll be too busy for the next few months to think about any of that.

What she didn't say was something else: she knew about Wang Zi'an's massive reorganization plan.

"Don't worry, I can handle it!" Zhou Ye lay back on his pillow, placed his hands on his lower abdomen, and stared at the ceiling, as if he was cheering himself up or making a promise to himself.

···

The summer night breeze blew all night long, and everyone was having different dreams.

As dawn broke, the aroma wafting from the kitchen shattered these dreams.

Sister Nan got up very early and spread out a whole table of local specialties she brought back from her hometown of Wenzhou.

Double-cooked rice cake, lamp-shaped rice cake, fish balls, and duck tongue.

I also made the long-distance wontons that I had gone to great lengths to order for everyone.

Putting everything else aside, the filling for this wonton is exceptionally well-made.

The skin is as thin as paper, and the filling is made by hand with pork leg meat (30% fat, 70% lean) along with shrimp and water chestnuts.

After cooking, they float on the soup, and you can see the pink meat filling inside through the translucent dough.

Several people sat around the dining table, enjoying their meal immensely. Even Liu Haochun, who usually only ate half a bowl to control his weight, quietly added another bowl.

Just before leaving the house, Wang Zian leaned against the shoe cabinet in the entryway and suddenly made a phone call.

Several girls were changing their shoes at the door when they heard him speak to the person on the other end of the microphone in a rare, somewhat ingratiating tone, while slowing down their movements.

"Teacher Wang~!"

···

"You saw it!"

"We were just filming for fun!"

"I'm not kidding you~! I was just filming for fun."

"What? You want to come and see?"

"No problem, no problem, I'll send you the address."

Amidst the surprised gazes of the crowd, Wang Zian readily agreed.

"Look at the way he's smiling, is he thinking of something naughty again?" Zhang Ruonan said to the three people next to her, her eyes narrowing.

Upon arriving at the film set, Zhang Ruonan magically pulled things out of that large box.

The suitcase she dragged when she came back yesterday was full of food.

They distributed the portions one by one to Lao Li and his team behind the scenes.

It has to be said that Sister Nan has a real talent for winning people over in business.

···

There are no shooting plans today, only two things: costume fitting and casting.

Wang Zian handed the scripts for "Red-Haired Girl," "Escape from the British Museum," and "Warm a Cup of Tea" to Zhou Ye, Tian Xiwei, and Liu Haochun, respectively, so they could read them first.

His original intention was to go through a democratic process and let them choose for themselves, so that everyone would feel amicable and no one would feel favored.

But what he didn't expect was that the election would cause problems.

In the makeshift meeting room, Wang Zian leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and ate the snacks Tian Xiwei had brought while flipping through the storyboard script drawn by the art team behind the scenes.

The storyboard was drawn by an artist that Lao Li found at the Beijing Film Academy. He had been working in the industry for five years and had a solid foundation.

Wang Zian looked at the storyboards and felt that they were somewhat different from the images in his mind.

But to be fair, the quality of these hand-drawn sketches is much better than those short drama shots from my previous life; every frame looks like a meticulously composed movie scene.

Zhang Ruonan sat next to him, with the filming plan and budget sheet that Lao Li had submitted spread out in front of her.

She has a new identity today: producer.

Since it was her first time doing this, Wang Zian called Hong Jie over to help her.

Sister Nan meticulously reviewed the densely packed budget sheet, line by line, occasionally glancing up to ask Old Li a few questions. Her tone was polite, but her questions were always to the point.

Wang Zian didn't care about any of this; since he had entrusted it to her, he completely let go of the responsibility.

Anyway, the budget for a short drama is usually no more than 500,000 yuan, which is all small change.

Looking at his leisurely manner of eating snacks with his legs crossed, Zhang Ruonan gritted her teeth and really wanted to quit.

Is this person too trusting of her? He didn't even glance at the budget of hundreds of thousands.

After Nan finished the calculations, she slammed the financial statement onto the table.

"That's about right. The price for filming a TV series is between 400,000 and 450,000. I still feel it's a bit expensive."

She opened the report and pointed to several lines, saying, "Especially the clothing section, the prices are a bit inflated."

The three people opposite, who were engrossed in reading the script, simultaneously looked up.

Zhou Ye frowned slightly and glanced at Old Li subconsciously.

Old Li looked a little embarrassed; he knew that Zhang Ruonan's family ran a clothing store on Taobao.

He cleared his throat, leaned forward slightly, and tried to make his tone sound like he was simply stating facts, not making excuses:

"Mr. Zhang, that's true. We mostly borrowed these clothes from established companies in the industry, and the prices are already quite low."

"Of course, it is a bit higher than the market price. But there is an unspoken benefit to this kind of cooperation: when we are recruiting extras, they will help us contact some people to come and fill in the scenes. This is a common practice in the industry."

He tried his best to explain, glancing at Wang Zian every now and then, feeling uneasy, afraid that the boss might mistakenly think he was taking kickbacks.