Showbiz: An 80,000 Budget from the Start, and I Made the Whole Internet Cry

[Urban] [Showbiz] [Director] [System] [No Romance] [Career-Focused] [Ads Go Viral] [Rise of Domestic Brands] [Behind the Scenes] [Industry Face-Slapping] [Positive Energy] [Let the Work Speak for Itself]

Fresh out of college, editing assistant Lin Jiming transmigrates into a parallel world and becomes the lowest-ranking project assistant at Chengguang Pictures. From the start, the company assigns him a project no one else wants to touch: make an ad that young people will love for a time-honored soda brand on the brink of a disastrous relaunch. The budget is tiny, the deadline is tight, the client keeps changing their mind, and his colleagues are waiting to laugh at him. Online, people are already mocking domestic brands for knowing nothing but how to sell nostalgia. Just as Lin Jiming is about to flee in the middle of the night, the [Myriad Images System] awakens. As long as his work evokes genuine emotion, he can exchange it for classic visual concepts and directorial skills missing from this parallel world.

The problem is that the System requires him to make a “film or television work,” while the client just wants a “thirty-second ad.” Lin Jiming falls silent for three seconds. Thirty seconds is too short, so how about a thirty-minute short film? And so, he turns a soda ad into a rousing short film woven from youth, summer, parents’ generation, and memories of an era. The day it’s released, the whole internet is in tears, the brand sells out, the client changes their tune on the spot, and the industry is left speechless. “You call that thing an ad?”

From ads for domestic brands, city tourism campaigns, and documentaries on intangible cultural heritage to public service shorts, animated films, variety show concepts, and theatrical blockbusters, Lin Jiming is repeatedly misunderstood, doubted, and attacked, but time and again he moves audiences with his work. Other people make ads to drive conversions. He makes ads to bring an era to life.