The Best Director

Chapter 126: “District 9

See you tonight then,” Wang Yang gave Jessica a light farewell kiss, and she headed toward the garage, looking back and waving with a smile, “Bye, Yang, good luck!” Wang Yang nodded, “You too.” After saying this, he walked back into the house, speaking to Danny who followed at his feet, “Buddy, Jessica’s gone to learn street dance, and I have to start working, so you play by yourself.

Wang Yang entered the spacious and elegant study, sat down at the desk, and began writing the screenplay for “District 9.” However, after a while, he stopped, feeling something was off. He looked around at the bookshelves and potted plants, the morning sun streaming in through the open patio doors; outside on the lawn, Danny was running around joyfully.

He immediately frowned. No wonder he felt so unpressured—his work environment was too comfortable, too filled with sunlight! He pondered over which parts of the house could convey a sense of “oppression” — the restroom? The garage? Under the bed in the bedroom? He chuckled, then grabbed a laptop, paper, pens, “The Kafka Collection,” and some other books, and left the study for the storeroom.

Although they had only been living together for just over half a year, the small storeroom was already neatly filled with various items, many of which were gifts from movie fans, such as the most common stuffed toys, with characters from Disney like Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and superheroes like Batman. Heaven knows why fans always assumed they adored plush toys. If all those were displayed in the bedroom, it would turn into a baby’s room, so many unusable ones ended up here.

Wang Yang pulled up a chair and sat down in the dimly lit room, surrounded by the cluttered belongings and dolls, muttering to himself, “Hmm, this is not too bad. It’d be even better if it were messier.” He got up to make the storeroom even messier, but then sat back down, shaking his head, “Never mind, Jessica would go crazy.” Closing his eyes, he immersed himself in that lonely, oppressive feeling of being incarcerated, then stared at the laptop screen and began to type on the keyboard.

Writing a screenplay isn’t just a simple copy of the big screen—that’s not possible. First of all, a screenplay is for the entire crew to understand: actors need to understand it, art directors need to understand it, visual effects artists need to understand it… It’s not finished just because he understands it.

Furthermore, a movie screenplay, in terms of length and content, is definitely not just the 90 or 120 minutes you see on the big screen. In fact, what a movie’s story will ultimately become is decided and born in the post-production editing room, not the initial screenplay. That’s why every film company has piles of good and bad screenplays, and screenwriters continue to be undervalued and suffer from unfair treatment in wages.

Oftentimes, a screenplay will have many details and several endings, and even conflicting content. Perhaps a thick screenplay ends up using only about 40 pages in the final cut, even though it’s 80 pages, or 100 pages thick.

Because film editing requires ample material—the more material there is, the greater the flexibility. With no visual footage but only text to look at, no one knows what the combination will look like, whether it will be good or bad. With sufficient material, however, the editor and director can explore different combinations freely, seeking the best way to tell the story with the footage.

However, the more material there is, the higher the cost of the film becomes. Thus, a blockbuster can burn through 200 hours of film to make a 2-hour movie, and often there are 3-hour or 4-hour director’s cuts; whereas low- budget independent films must conserve film and meticulously control the shot list. But his “District 9” had no financial constraints.

He had a strong desire to shoot a movie about human transformation, along with many of his own ideas. But when his thoughts collided with future movie ideas, with parts of his brain firmly occupied by them and unable to shake them off, what could he do? Just sit there and do nothing? That would be too silly—it was his brain. He wouldn’t try to evade deliberately. Instead, he would absorb successful elements from future films and tell a story he wanted to tell. That was his way of doing things.

With the sound of “click, click, click,” Wang Yang continuously typed on the keyboard, occasionally stopping to draw a shot on an A4 paper. The story of his “District 9” briefly went like this: In 1980, a huge alien ship suddenly flew to Earth and hovered above Los Angeles. At first, no one dared to touch it, fearing it would bring unimaginable disaster to Los Angeles and Earth. But after a period of waiting, humans still approached the spaceship and forcibly entered it.

What they found were millions of aliens inside the ship, looking very ugly and all very weak. It turned out they were alien refugees. Humans rescued them from the ship and temporarily settled them in an area called “District One.”

This would be the first part of “District 9,” where the audience’s mindset would be like that of the people in that world, which is “from welcoming aliens to hating them.” At the beginning, the arrival of the aliens had everyone in Los Angeles, America, and all over the world excited; they felt very welcoming and thought they had finally found friends in the universe! Even though the aliens were ugly, people were eager to help them. Volunteers could be seen bustling about in District 1, brimming with enthusiasm, wanting to make friends with these different beings.

Wang Yang was rapidly sketching on an A4 sheet with a pencil, depicting a human with a smiling face feeding an alien.

But these aliens were not so friendly; their social organization was like a beehive, controlled by a minority of elites managing a vast workforce, and the queen of this mining ship had died. The remaining aliens were mostly workers, low in intelligence, irritable, and finding joy in destruction and murder. So when their health was restored, they immediately turned Los Angeles upside down, killing, arson, and robbery everywhere…

Humans naturally took a sharp turn in their attitude, immediately losing all fondness for these aliens. From initially being banned from entering parks and subways, it quickly escalated to the aliens being confined to District 1, where they were officially segregated. The enormous cost of resettlement, the frequent surrounding conflicts, had humans fed up with the aliens; they demanded the expulsion of aliens from Los Angeles, even to the point of eliminating them all at once, although this proposal was opposed by human rights activists and other organizations.

Nevertheless, the aid money for the aliens became less and less, their living conditions worsened, but their population kept increasing. 20 years passed, and District 1 became District 9, a slum surrounded by high walls and unmanaged.

Over the 20 years, the government’s research on aliens had been carried out in secret; but due to budgetary issues, the government subcontracted the task of managing the aliens to a “Multi-National United (MNU)” corporation, also one of the top arms manufacturers in the world. Their aim was to crack the secrets of those DNA-coded alien weapons.

Today, public grumbling is growing louder, and to save management costs and public opinion, the government and MNU decide to collectively relocate the aliens to the even more distant and impoverished District 10. The male protagonist, Wikus, is a senior administrator for MNU in District 9, and his father-in-law is the president of MNU, so the “cushy job” of notifying the aliens of their relocation falls onto him.

This then leads into the second part of “District 9,” where the audience will find that “humans aren’t such good creatures, either.” Wang Yang’s goal was to excavate the ugly and cruel side of humanity to the fullest, on the one hand, the whole society’s attitude towards aliens, exploiting them, making fun of them, keeping them in cages in zoos for exhibition to make money, because District 9 was too dangerous and there were too many people in the world who wanted to see aliens in person.

All this could be conveyed through brisk pseudo-documentary shots… With this thought, he used his pencil to sketch on the paper again, an alien clutching the bars of a cage while surrounded by a circle of humans taking photos with cameras.

On the other hand, it is the story of Wikus entering District 9, a humorous and family-loving good man who did all the bad things humans considered justified in District 9 with his colleagues, deceitful, abusive, and cruelly killing alien fetuses, all without any scruples.

When Wikus was searching a suspicious house, he was sprayed with a bottle of energy liquid collected over 20 years by the alien Christopher Johnson and his friend. This liquid also had assimilative effects, and Wikus began his transformation.

District 9″ then moved into its third part, where the audience’s stance would subtly shift, realizing “it turns out there are good aliens too; they also have kinship, friendship… and humanity! Humans, on the other hand, became the inhumane ones, greedy, selfish, ruthless, and disgusting.”

For the sake of researching alien weapons, humans could abuse and kill aliens, dissect them, performing various inhumane experiments; for research, they captured Wikus, who was in the early stages of transformation, and at MNU headquarters they wanted to dissect him alive. His father-in-law, indifferent to his son-in-law’s pleas for help, even agreed to the dissection; Wikus’s beloved wife did not trust him, and even betrayed him…

But Wikus was not a good man either. When he escaped from the MNU headquarters and found himself cornered in District 9, he was rescued by Christopher Johnson and his son, he also learned that there was a chance for him to become human again—to steal back the energy fluid, to help Christopher and his son return to the spaceship above, which had a healing device. So all he could think about was turning back into a human, regardless of whether Christopher and his son could get home, their fate or even the survival of the entire alien race.

Wang Yang thought that this part of the movie would be the most oppressive, where the loneliness and pain of Wikus’s transformation, along with humanity’s disgust, would be so suffocating it would drive one insane! His goal was to transform the viewers into aliens, who would empathize with the plight of Wikus and the aliens, wishing they could exterminate all of humanity!

The next part brought the fourth section of “District 9,” where Christopher Johnson was being held hostage by MNU soldiers, about to be killed. Faced with the decision of whether or not to save Christopher, Wikus finally exploded. He was no longer refined or cowardly, no longer thinking “I am human.” He piloted the alien mech, joining the massive battle with a fierce army, killing all those soldiers!

Seeing humans smashed to pieces, the audience would be thrilled and applaud; they would also cheer for Christopher Johnson and his son’s return to the mothership, rejoicing that the aliens could finally go home!

But this was not the goal—the purpose of bringing the movie to this point was to instill an even greater sense of suffocation and a piercing sense of sorrow after the excitement because… they were human.

Why was there such a story? Were humans really better than aliens? What was human nature really like? Hideous and merciless? Selfish and disgusting? But still, the movie would reveal a beautiful side at the end, Wikus’s wife had not given up on him, still missing him every day. And finally, Wikus had completely transformed into an alien, living alone in District 10, missing his wife, waiting for Christopher Johnson, who had made a promise, to come back three years later.

Would it be an apocalyptic disaster for humanity three years later? Would the Battle Los Angeles erupt? And all those questions about human nature? They were left for the audience to ponder.

On the blank A4 paper, as the pencil moved, a scene slowly emerged—Wikus, piloting a mech, firing several missiles, blowing up a number of armored vehicles coming for reinforcement. Wang Yang looked at this casually drawn storyboard, stretched lazily, and continued drawing.

The future “District 9” had many aspects worth studying, like the use of mockumentary techniques, news interviews, television reports, security camera footage, and so on.

One of the purposes of using a mockumentary was to add to the movie’s realism and the viewer’s sense of immersion. As early as when Wang Yang worked on “Paranormal Activity,” he had already thoroughly studied the filming techniques of mockumentaries, but that was a DV film, whereas “District 9” was a celluloid film. Naturally, there were many differences in techniques, so he had recently picked up the study again, including films like “Cloverfield.”

However, the shots in “District 9” weren’t flawless, of course, relative to its $30 million budget, it was quite remarkable. The issues stemmed from the level of investment; a lack of funds led to somewhat rough and childish scenes and props, such as the weapons of humans and aliens, the scale and defenses of MNU headquarters, the number and combat capability of the army chasing Wikus, and so forth.

If one were to evaluate a movie’s plausibility, then it would be full of errors— like how Wikus wasn’t locked up when being disassembled, how he easily escaped the MNU headquarters, how he and Christopher Johnson effortlessly stormed MNU… Of course, you can’t watch a movie that way, otherwise, there would be no fun or room for thought. And there’s the reality that, with sufficient investment, issues like scenes, props, scale, and process… would not be issues at all.

Luckily, Wang Yang did not have the concern of capital costs; he could freely design the scenes and images he wanted, everything based on the standard of the best movie effects, meticulously crafting his first science fiction movie.

As for how much money to spend? Lacking experience in budgeting for such a film, Wang Yang also didn’t know how to set the budget. However, he had asked Robert Zemeckis and Will Smith, who was preparing to star in “Men in Black 2,” a few days ago, and received an estimated cost of about $80 million to $100 million, but that budget included his own salary.

Since Flame Film wasn’t 100% his, the profits from the movie would be shared. Even though this was essentially money moving from one hand to the other, accounts had to be clear, so he would take a lower than market salary, totaling $15 million for directing, writing, and producing “District 9”- Compared to the reputation of “Magic Yang,” this was quite a bargain already.

Before his incarceration, Paramount Pictures had once offered him $25 million to produce and direct a film without a specific screenplay, he could write it himself or pick one from their available options; and Paramount’s total investment wouldn’t exceed $70 million, allowing Flame Film to join in with no more than $30 million. This was undoubtedly an opportunity for substantial remuneration and very low risk. However, after “considering” it, Wang Yang declined.

Assuming the budget for “District 9” was $80 million and he took $15 million, with Robert Downey Jr.’s preliminary star salary set at $1 million, that would leave $64 million. Then there were salaries for other crew members, and the cost of film equipment to pay… How much would be left for shooting and special effects?

Furthermore, one of the film’s major settings was Los Angeles, and he planned to shoot on location, which would inevitably increase the costs; the other primary setting, “District 9,” could be done with scale models and partial set construction, but he didn’t plan to do it that way, as that would greatly diminish the film’s realism. In his plan, aside from the necessary built interiors, all outdoor scenes of “District 9″ were to be genuinely shot in the slums of Africa.

By the time the filming in Los Angeles was finished, his 150-day sentence would have been served, and he could lead the team to Africa.

Yang, I’m back, where are you?” Jessica looked around the study and found no one, then searched the house without seeing that figure, and couldn’t help murmuring puzzled, “Not at home?” At that moment, Danny ran ahead wagging his tail frantically, as if to say, “Follow me.” Curious, she followed him to the storeroom. Hearing murmurs inside, she opened the door and saw Wang Yang intently drawing something on paper.

She was immediately surprised and laughed, stepping inside as she asked, “Yang, what are you doing here?”

Hey! You’re back.” Wang Yang, coming back to his senses, looked up at her and explained with a laugh, “It’s nothing, just that this place feels more like a workspace than the study.” He enthusiastically picked up a few sheets of paper from the table, showing them to her, “Jessica, what do you think of these alien concept sketches?”

Although the final design of the aliens in “District 9” would be carried out by a special effects company, as the director, he certainly had the right to influence their design, not to mention putting forward the initial concepts. Smiling at the rows of creatures on the paper, he was quite pleased, and introduced them to her, “There are beetle people, lobster people, bee people… Sweetheart, which one do you like?”

Hmm…” Jessica looked seriously at the alien figures on the paper, each with antennae, two hands, two feet… She looked for a long time, then suddenly cocked her head and asked, “Which one is the lobster, which one is the beetle? Wang Yang was momentarily stunned, and Jessica quickly waved her hands, laughing, “No no, I can tell now. This one is the beetle person, right? I like the beetle person.”

Seeing her pointing at the bee person, Wang Yang shrugged his shoulders and said helplessly, “Yes, that’s the one. But I really need to find an art teacher now!”