The Magician’s Memorial - Chapter 239



Only Krnovel

239. The process of becoming a butterfly (3)

A contract with director Bong Ho-jun has been concluded.

In addition to a contract for a production cost of 20 billion won, which is twice the existing production cost of 10 billion won, a separate deposit of 200 million won was paid to director Bong Ho-jun.

In addition, the rate of running guarantee paid based on box office performance was greatly increased.

I signed a contract with the best director.

Now it was time to sign contracts with the best writers.

If you are a writer whose talent has not yet fully blossomed, you can sign an exclusive contract, so you can move quickly.

“Hello, this is Minjae Kim from Taewo Group.”

“Hello, Vice Chairman. It’s an honor to meet you like this. Such a precious person has come to visit such a shabby workroom, and I don’t know what to do.”

The person who greeted me was director Kang Ho-jun.

He was also a good director, but he wasn’t the person I wanted to meet.

She was director Kang Ho-jun’s wife and writer Lim Hee-young, who would leave a mark in the Korean drama industry in the future.

“Can’t we go anywhere to recruit good directors and writers?”

“Are you interested in my work? A person like Vice President Kim is interested in my film, and I have one more thing to brag about!”

Director Kang Ho-jun was a very light-hearted person.

However, he was by no means a funny person, but rather had a strange knack for making people feel good.

“No matter what project you work on, Taewoo Entertainment will definitely support your next project. We promise to support you with everything you need, not just the full production cost.”

“Oh, thank you! I should have made an investment proposal and brought it to you, but I am truly grateful that you proposed it first. Can I stamp it now? Ah! I left my stamp at home. Is it possible for me to stamp it?”

It makes me smile.

Director Kang Ho-jun was someone you would never get bored with if you had him by your side.

“It’s possible. Also, I’d like to sign a contract with the writer. Can we talk for a moment?”

“Who are you talking about, the author?”

“I know that artist Lim Hee-young is in the studio.”

“Are you talking about our Heeyoung? I’ve been writing a bit lately, but I haven’t debuted yet.”

Did it come too quickly?

You haven’t even debuted yet.

Even though I came this far, I couldn’t just leave.

Signing a contract with director Kang Ho-jun was also preliminary work to recruit writer Lim Hee-young.

“Isn’t it true that you can recognize a mature tree first from its cotyledons? Taew Entertainment officials had a high opinion of writer Lim Hee-young.”

“Baby! Did you hear? Come quickly! If you do well, you can work on your debut project!”

“Hmm, thank you for the offer, but… I’m still in the learning stage. I’m not at the level to sign a contract with anyone…”

Writer Lim Hee-young, who was working on Word in a corner, approached me and said.

Wearing large glasses on a face without makeup, she looked very lacking in confidence.

“Taewoo Entertainment is also focusing on nurturing new talent. We promise to provide full support so that you can write whatever you want to write.”

“It’s such a good offer, but… how can I accept it when you don’t even know what I’m writing about?”

“Then can I take a moment to look at the work you are currently writing?”

“Please wait a moment. I will print the synopsis and show you in a moment.”

A synopsis can be considered a summary of the work.

Writer Lim Hee-young printed out a five-page synopsis and showed it to me.

I adjusted my posture and slowly read the synopsis of her debut work, without missing a single word.

however! What is this?

It was a completely different work from the works of artist Lim Hee-young that I know.

She is a genre writer and almost dominates the Korean drama market.

But the work she was writing now was a romance.

“Hmm, you’re writing a romance.”

“I was writing a beautiful but tragic love story.”

“Looking at the writing style, it seems like a thrilling story would be better suited than a romance. Ah! Of course, that doesn’t mean the current writing is bad.”

“Is that so? As I was writing, I felt like romance wasn’t for me.”

“What is certain is that writer Lim Hee-young has infinite potential. Why don’t you sign a long-term contract with Taewo Entertainment? We will pay you 300 million won in advance as a down payment, and offer you an exclusive writer contract for 10 years.”

An advance payment of 300 million won was paid to a writer who did not even write his debut work.

Her husband, director Kang Ho-jun, was more surprised than writer Lim Hee-young and raised his voice.

“Will you pay me a down payment of 300 million won? Is there a condition that requires me to write more than a few works within 10 years? If I don’t meet the condition, I won’t have to sign a lifelong slave contract, right?”

“Even if you don’t write a single work for 10 years, you don’t have to return the down payment. And I can promise that we will unconditionally produce any work that writer Heeyoung Lim wants into a drama.”

What better conditions could there be than this?

Writer Lim Hee-young felt burdened because the conditions were so good.

However, director Kang Ho-jun was playing the role of wind catcher right next to him.

“What are you worrying about? Hurry up and get your stamp. They said that even if you live as a slave, you can only get meat side dishes at the Dae-gam’s house. There is nothing bad for us by signing a contract with the Taewoo Group.”

“Is there a reason you are offering me this when I have not shown you anything?”

“I invest by looking at the future rather than the past or present. Writer Lim Hee-young is fully qualified to receive this kind of offer.”

Writer Lim Hee-young still maintained an expressionless expression.

It is natural for humans to have a desire to be recognized, and I encouraged that desire.

Nevertheless, writer Lim Hee-young remained steadfast, and I just sat quietly and waited for her choice.

“I will accept the offer. But my skills are still lacking. So, I will receive the down payment in one year. I will grow into a writer worthy of receiving the down payment within a year.”

“Even if you don’t receive a down payment, we will provide you with a space to work.”

“……thank you.”

I quickly handed out the contract.

We were able to sign a contract with director Kang Ho-jun and writer Lim Hee-young.

* * *

I went around meeting a lot of directors and writers for a few days.

If writer Lim Hee-young is the representative of genre dramas, a contract was also signed with writer Lee Seo-hee, who is representative of romance dramas.

“We signed contracts with 10 directors and 15 writers. With this number of people, can the content department do its job now?”

“It’s more than enough. It’s to the point where we have to hire outsourcing staff to carry out the project.”

“Isn’t there still some idle manpower? I heard that the record production department has less work to do than other departments.”

“As this is a newly formed department, we are going through some trial and error. However, we are in contact with famous A-list singers to sign a contract.”

In some ways, the flower of the cultural industry was music.

The future of the Korean music industry is so bright that a new genre called K-POP will be created in the future.

“It seems like it’s not easy to recruit A-list singers.”

“Because Taewoo Entertainment is a new company, people tend to shy away from it. However, since we have Berry Music, the best music site in Korea, if we put in a little more effort, we can recruit A-level singers or higher.”

“If you want to recruit an A-list singer, the down payment must be quite a bit.”

“We are offering 1 billion won for a 3-year exclusive contract. Since it is a new company, the down payment is higher than other companies.”

Although they say trillions of dollars are being used.

One billion units of money was by no means a small amount.

It felt a bit excessive to have to spend 1 billion won to recruit one singer.

“Hmm, it would be better to train new talent. Isn’t the cost of training one idol group less than 1 billion won?”

“That said, when it comes to nurturing new idols, it’s like a lottery. Especially when a new company like Taewo Entertainment launches an idol group, the fandom tends to catch on late, so the chances of success are not high.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s better to recruit a proven A-list singer.”

“If you sign a contract with an A-list singer, you will not suffer the least loss even if you pay a large down payment.”

What the planning director said was not wrong.

In order to raise the name value of a new company, a star was needed.

However, this did not mean that I gave up on training as a singer.

“Then we should go two-track. Recruit A-list singers and train new talent at the same time. Also, prepare a list of A-list singers and trainees from famous agencies, and prepare large-scale auditions as well.”

“Are you planning on bringing in trainees from other agencies as well?”

“It won’t cost a lot of money to transfer a trainee who hasn’t debuted as a singer yet. If you do it well and don’t go against the rules, there is less chance of problems arising.”

Before returning, I didn’t have much interest in the entertainment industry.

That’s why I didn’t know many singers, and the few that remained in my memory were singers with the best sound of all time.

So if we just brought them along, success was half guaranteed.

Whether it was through an audition or brought in from another agency, they had to be made into Taewoo Entertainment.

* * *

next day,

There was a mountain of lists of A-list singers and trainees from entertainment companies on the desk.

First, I checked the list of A-list singers, but there weren’t many that I liked.

To be precise, the singer I liked couldn’t be brought in because he was the star of another agency, and the singer I didn’t like was more of a shining star who couldn’t have a long run.

The situation is that bringing in an A-list singer does not bring much benefit.

In that case, it would have been better to use the money elsewhere to focus on the issue.

“Director, you said you acquired three cable channels while creating Taewo Entertainment, right?”

“That’s right. It’s a music, gaming, and drama channel.”

“That’s great. Let’s create an audition program on a music channel. We’ll hold a large-scale audition where everyone, from unknown singers to trainees to middle and high school students, can participate.”

There was a craze for audition programs in the 2010s.

There were more than one singer who instantly became stars through an audition program.

If we had opened the audition program about five years early and made the winners affiliated with Taewo Entertainment, we could have instantly raised Taewo Entertainment’s brand image.

“When you say large-scale audition, do you mean a format similar to the Riverside Song Festival or the University Song Festival?”

“It will be similar, but we will add a drama element. We will broadcast every week for about 3 months and add an element of fun by releasing people who did not make it to the rankings.”

“The production cost will be considerable.”

“The bigger the scale, the more talented people will participate. It would be enough to spend around 5 to 7 billion won for production costs. If the winner’s prize is 1 billion won and even a Taewoo car, wouldn’t it attract a lot of attention?”

The winning prize is 1 billion won.

It was an amount not much different from the lottery first prize.

It’s impossible to turn your life around with a lottery prize of 1 billion won, but if you win first place in an audition program, you can get the prize money and the opportunity to become a superstar right away.