Despite its fast development, China’s film industry still faces great challenges. The four main difficulties filmmakers have to deal with are: lack of good screenplays, shortage of fund, unnecessary modification as well as high ticket price.

Screenplays: nowhere to find

Zhang Yimou, one of the most famous film directors, once complained: “Do you know what I am doing all the day? Reading. I read everything I could find: newspapers, magazines and novels hot off the press – to look for something for a good film script. Well, I just can’t find any.”

Another director, Feng Xiaoning, often writes screenplays himself. Actually it is not that he enjoys writing but that he has no choice because good screenplays are really scarce. According to an insider who declined to be identified, instead of writing plays for others, gifted writers prefer to shoot film themselves. In fact, there are not many screenwriters who really know how to write a screenplay.

Funds: inadequate

Shortage of funds troubles most Chinese directors all the time. Despite a few highlighted directors who are able to attract domestic and overseas investments, such as Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Feng Xiaogang, most directors have to face the problem of fund shortage. The average expenditure for making a film in China is only about 4-5 million yuan, a sum that always puts the filmmakers into financial difficulties. While comparing with his American counterparts who can easily find hundreds of millions of US dollars, Feng Xiaoning sighed, “We can spend only 2 percent of the money the Americans do in the making of a film.”

When a movie is shown, generally speaking, filmmakers can get one-third of the total income from the box office. This means that only when the box office makes 15 million yuan can the filmmakers balance their expenditures. But not every movie can enjoy such good fortune. As a result, many young directors, including graduates from film colleges, have to make the alternative films with low budgets as a beginning of their career.

Modification: too many mothers-in-law

Director Hu An, who shot the film Shadow Magic, has a unique understanding on the job of directing. “Shooting a movie is like writing a composition,” She said. “The course of shooting is a course of writing. From selecting a play, dividing the scenes, interpreting the story to the actors and writing director’s notes to working on the advertisement, every step is the work of composing. We are the students and we have too many examiners. Everyone in the audience is a strict examiner.”

In a graphic manner, Hu pointed out the suffering of China’s filmmakers. “Before shooting, we revised it over and over again,” she said. “After finishing it, we still face many rounds of amendments. The efforts and time we put in revising is no less than that in the making of the film.” In short, Hu holds that there should be fewer examiners, or mothers-in-low, in the process of filmmaking because the one who has written the play or made the film should be the one who takes the responsibility of the work. Hu believes that in many cases, the failure of a film did not lie in its screenplay or shooting, but in the numerous revisions.

Ticket price: too high

The expensive ticket also causes great harm to the film industry as a whole. Both filmgoers and filmmakers suffer from it. For the middle-aged people, a ticket priced at 5 fen (US$0.006) had long become a faraway dream. Some people hold that in the 21st century, going to a movie should be a pleasure of high-class consumption. Going to a five-star luxurious cinema, sitting in a comfortable chair, enjoying yourself with beverage, popcorn and a wide screen movie with mixed sound tracks… this leisure life, of course, is tailored for the white-collar employees and fashion followers. But others say that after all, movie is a kind of popular art, which caters to the taste and interest of the common people. How can a movie survive without the audience of ordinary people? Since the filmmakers give priority to the common demand of the people, why should the distributors give them the cold shoulder?

(China.org.cn by Li Xiao, August 3, 2003)