Editor's note:
On May 9th, we released "The hardest and most tiring screenwriter in the film and television industry? No, it's the editor-in-charge...", which has aroused extensive discussion among practitioners. On May 10, we published "Yu Fei: The Most Tired Job? No one should fight with the screenwriter! In the article, screenwriter Yu Fei put forward different views on the previous article based on his own practice. Today, another senior editor-in-charge who has been in the industry for 20 years contributed to deepen the discussion. In fact, "who is the most tired" is just the introduction of the topic, and the benign mechanism and cooperation in place are what we hope to achieve through discussion.
Yesterday, I suddenly saw an article by screenwriter Yu Fei commenting on the "responsible editor". As a grassroots veteran editor who has been working hard in this position for nearly 20 years, my first feeling is emotion.
Who is the most tired in our industry? I'm afraid that the two ends of the balance are not just screenwriters and editors.
Isn't the producer tired? Isn't the director tired? Isn't photography tiring? Aren't you tired of field work? Don't you have to suffer from the "triple stinky volume" of on-site producers, executive directors, and onlookers in the group?
I don't think the editor in charge is necessarily the most tired, but "tired" and "tired" are different, some are physically tired, some are mentally tired, some are physically and mentally exhausted, and some are "fine" collapse.
From this point of view, screenwriters have the "tiredness" of screenwriters, and the "tiredness" of responsible editors.
In "Galaxy Writer", the screenwriter is facing off against the producer and the editor-in-charge
From my personal experience, the screenwriter is "tired for a while", and the editor in charge is "tired for a thousand years". As long as the project is not dead, the editor in charge has been tired.
In the opinion of the editor-in-charge, the screenwriter said, "Uncle is no longer serving!" You can pack up your mood and move on to the next project.
And the editor in charge had to go to help the boss find the next screenwriter, and when the new screenwriter was determined, he would "suffer" the previous round of "abuse" again.
Compared with screenwriters, the editor-in-charge is burdened and has no project contract to protect it. The rights and interests of screenwriters will be supported by the law, but the editor-in-charge will not. In terms of earnings, of course, it can't be compared.
Therefore, it is difficult to say that the responsible editor is more tired than the screenwriter, but it is simply "incomparable" and incomparable.
The "fateful" friendship between the editor and the screenwriter
In fact, more important than "more miserable" is the need to understand how the position of responsible editor came about.
Mr. Yu Fei has a conclusion in the article, "A good editor in charge is a screenwriter who can entrust his life to the past, and an unqualified editor in charge will want the screenwriter's life." "I empathize with Mr. Yu Fei's description.
However, from my point of view, if the subject-object tone of this sentence is reversed, this sentence is also true. In other words, it is a relationship between two sides of the same coin.
Since I entered the industry 20 years ago, I have cooperated with many companies, projects and screenwriters, whether in the rapid development of the film and television industry in the first 15 years or in the adjustment period in recent years, in the operation of film and television projects, unreliable investors and unreliable screenwriters have never appeared one-sidedly.
Even I don't dare to claim to be a qualified editor-in-charge. But a large number of the screenwriters I saw in the project were unqualified, and even many big writers were not very serious and responsible for all the projects they took on.
I once experienced a project where the screenwriter invited was a big name in the industry, and the screenwriter and assistant screenwriter team members led by this big name were as many as dozens of people. He didn't pay much attention to our company's project at first, and after one or two meetings, he went back and handed over the task of writing the outline to the screenwriter below, and the things he wrote were very poor, and he didn't agree with the opinions put forward by our company.
As soon as the boss saw the attitude of this famous screenwriter, he invited a planner who was not lower than him and had a more influential position to come out and have a meeting with him, perhaps because the two were originally friends, or the big screenwriter showed real skills. The second draft of the outline that came out after the meeting has significantly improved the effect.
What I want to explain here is that even big names will have uneven scripts for various reasons.
The editor-in-charge, first of all, is the boss's "firewall"
In this industry, there are many things in this industry that cause project delays and stillbirths due to the difficult birth of screenwriters and the poor quality of scripts. It is not uncommon for a small company to drag on a project for three or five years without results, and eventually go out of business.
We can't ignore the rights and interests of those "mercenary" film and television companies just because screenwriters are artistic creators.
Many film and television company bosses lack the initiative in project cooperation because they don't know how to create, so when cooperating with screenwriters who are "clever and eloquent", in order to protect their rights and interests as much as possible, they set up a position as a responsible editor, so that they can have a "scientific control" process for the payment of remuneration, which is understandable.
The position of editor-in-charge was not originally for screenwriters, it continued from the era of print media, and was a position in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals to organize manuscripts and control the quality of works.
If the content produced by a platform or a company is regarded as a commodity, it is the "quality control department" of the company or platform.
Because not all the bosses and producers of film and television companies have practical creative experience, they need to find some people who understand the rules of creation and can assist him in controlling the creative process to supervise and ensure the production of scripts.
The editor-in-charge must be responsible to the management side first, at least the first priority is not born to serve the screenwriter. From the perspective of personal needs, whoever pays the salary must be responsible for who is responsible first, which is the basic professional ethics of the editor-in-charge.
The earliest relationship between the editor and the author can be traced back to the era of cooperation between Mr. Ma Weidu and Mr. Wang Shuo. Mr. Ma Weidu's writing skills may not be stronger than Mr. Wang Shuo's, and the quality and influence of his works are not the same, but this does not prevent Mr. Ma Weidu from making suggestions to Mr. Wang Shuo's works as the editor-in-charge.
Ma Weidu (left) and Wang Shuo
The editor-in-charge has "responsibility and authority" for the screenwriter, and its function is first "screening", and the second is "suggestions".
"Screening" is the basic evaluation and judgment of the screenwriter in charge of the invited screenwriter's level, which tests the "qualified" of a script or a screenwriter's creative level and the "online" of the basic level of the work.
From this perspective, it evaluates the lower bound, not the upper bound. In other words, it can't guarantee how high-level the screenwriter can come up with a work, it only guarantees that the other party must not be a too low-level author.
It's like a community doctor, you can't expect him to treat a serious illness, but at least make sure that he can check if you have an underlying disease, so that the producer can use it as a reference.
Therefore, this function does not require the editor-in-charge to have too high a screenwriting level, it does not require the screenwriter's creative ability, but the basic identification ability.
For this function, I think there may not be a need for the level of the editor in charge to be much higher than that of the screenwriter, just need to be able to identify those charlatans and meeting trolls.
At the same time, the editor-in-charge is not the role of "life and death" for the screenwriter, but as long as he has this power, the actual function of the editor-in-charge is already that of a producer, executive producer or producer.
At the end of the day, the editor in charge is simply the person who evaluates the quality of the script and gives opinions and suggestions on the creative process.
The bosses of film and television companies are not stupid, do they believe that a young editor who has just graduated from school and has no experience will be at a higher level than an old swordsman? No. They are just trying to leave themselves a basic "firewall" that guarantees at least a minimum in the system that they will not be pitted too badly.
On the whole, whether the screenwriter can entrust his life and be asked to die may not be the editor-in-charge, but a more authoritative producer or literary director.
The relationship between the editor, the screenwriter and the management is a triangle
As an editor-in-charge, I would like to say that I am like a coolie who carries a flat burden, carrying the boss on one end and the screenwriter on the other.
To be honest, in my past experience, there are very few bosses who know how to create, and even fewer who know how to create will be bosses. The boss who knows how to create, can be the boss, and does not let the editor take the blame is on the verge of extinction.
As the editor-in-charge, I sometimes hate them, but I have to hope that their business will prosper every day. Because there is no need for their interests, the position of editor-in-charge basically does not exist.
At the level of knowledge, the editor-in-charge and the screenwriter are the same, and like the screenwriter, they all rely on the play to eat. If it is said that the screenwriter relies on the aesthetic creative ability to eat, then the editor-in-charge relies on the aesthetic identification ability, and the two are consistent in aesthetic standards.
The editor-in-charge is neither a service nor a management for the screenwriter, and I think it may be a symbiotic relationship.
Except for screenwriters like Mr. Yu Fei, my personal resources and social circle, the proportion of screenwriter friends is the highest, I not only need to contribute my screenwriter resources in a timely manner for the bosses to choose when they are angry and ambitious, but also hope that screenwriter friends will introduce resources to them during the trough period and when they are short of money.
The relationship between the editor in charge and the screenwriter is both reasonable.
When the boss encounters the kind of screenwriter who has a high deposit and high remuneration, but is fooled by the work, of course, I will openly and honestly point out the disadvantages, give a fair evaluation of the work objectively and rationally, give the boss a convincing opinion and suggestion, and take other people's money to solve people's worries;
Similarly, when encountering bosses and producers who don't know how to pretend to understand, blindly command and give random instructions, mislead screenwriters, and deviate from the creative track, you must objectively and bravely express your objections, and issue an evaluation report or script opinion that only represents yourself and your position.
Of course, it's all based on the content being created. Mr. Yu Fei mentioned that helping screenwriters urge the remuneration is not the business of the editor, but the matter of the producer. The editor-in-charge is only responsible for providing the producer with his own advice on the process of the script stage, and the power to execute it is not with us.
[Text/A Bing]