The game's visuals flashed by quickly, lasting only about three seconds. At the same time, a secretary's voice called out "Mr. Li," and Leng Zhiwen, playing the role of Li Qiang, appeared to drive the plot forward.
Therefore, no one realized that the Mahjong Connect scene was an advertisement, nor that this shot was a reshoot completed just three days prior and immediately edited into the main feature.
Following this, the television drama's plot began to unfold, and viewers were soon immersed in the story. When Fu Shan waved his hand, a dazzling teleportation array effect transported the protagonist into the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, leaving all viewers stunned. While teleportation was a common trope in fantasy dramas, the teleportation effects in those dramas were always lackluster. Initially, it was a puff of white smoke in Journey to the West, followed by a cut to a different scene for teleportation. Later, with technological advancements, it became a flash of light, and then teleportation. While from a visual perspective, these teleportation effects were not as impressive as the puff of white smoke.
Thus, these special effects looked extremely cheap and were clearly meant to deceive. Of course, at this time, the audience didn't care about these deceptive effects. It wasn't until they saw the special effects in "The Journey of the Immortals" that they were truly amazed. The lifelike magic array shimmered from beneath their feet, space was torn apart, and Fu Shan led his companions directly into the spatial array. These effects were comparable to, or even surpassed, the special effects in Doctor Strange over a decade later.
Such special effects shocked American viewers as well, let alone the domestic audience.
Just as the audience thought this was the limit of their shock, the massive, 1:1 replica of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum appeared on screen. The description spoke of mercury forming rivers and seas, with mechanical systems and celestial and geographical maps above, lit by the oil of mermaids, burning eternally.
While most viewers were unaware of Grand Historian Sima Qian's description of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum in the Records of the Grand Historian, seeing the lavish mausoleum, recreated at a cost of hundreds of millions of yuan, left everyone completely astonished.
As the audience, through Li Qiang's eyes, explored the magnificent Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum and were still immersed in the awe-inspiring sights, they saw Fu Shan sitting inside the mausoleum playing a computer. It was indeed a computer, with a dedicated battery pack powering it.
Witnessing this, Li Qiang was bewildered, as were the viewers. The camera zoomed in on Fu Shan, and the audience saw a game on the computer where one clicked on images to connect them, similar to what Li Qiang had played earlier.
"Why are you playing on the computer here? And it's Mahjong Connect! Was there a computer here originally? Did computers exist in the Qin Shi Huang era thousands of years ago?" Li Qiang bombarded him with three shocked questions.
"How could that be!" Fu Shan laughed heartily. "I just brought it in. I didn't expect that after I left for two thousand years, the cultivation level of Earth would decline, but they would invent such miraculous technology. This kind of thing doesn't exist in our cultivation world, so I have to take it with me this time!"
"Where did you put it? I didn't see any storage space," Li Qiang asked curiously.
"This is called the Na Jie Bracelet!" Fu Shan explained with a smile, then packed the entire computer set into the bracelet. The story then proceeded as normal.
In the subsequent episodes of the drama, apart from the final moments of Li Qiang's frantic activities before leaving Earth, where he played Mahjong Connect, the game was no longer shown.
Inserting advertisements into a plot is not a terrible idea; on the contrary, it's a very clever tactic, provided the timing is appropriate.
Within the entire cinematic world, the most brilliant advertisement insertion was seen in "The Truman Show."
As is well known, there is a scene in "The Truman Show" where Truman is interacting with his wife and friend, and they always find opportunities to forcefully insert various advertising slogans into their conversations with Truman.
These included kitchen companion knives, Old Friends beer, Eke brand lawnmowers, and Moco Cocoa powder.
While watching the movie, Mr. Huang initially thought this was to highlight the absurdity of Truman's life. However, after reading on Zhihu, he learned that these four brands were all real products, and they were indeed advertising through the movie in this manner!
Just as Zhihu was an advertisement I inserted in the previous sentence, only Zhihu didn't pay me any advertising fees.
You see, this kind of advertisement insertion is extremely natural, a divine form of advertisement insertion. Not only does it avoid alienating viewers, but it also sparks a wave of amazement, allowing the brands to receive a large amount of positive feedback.
Unlike advertisements inserted into movies or TV shows in later times, where modern product names are forced into historical dramas, making the audience cringe.
Of course, in a moment of urgency, something as incongruous as Mahjong Connect and cultivation clearly couldn't be perfectly inserted in a short period like "The Truman Show." However, it was still manageable to achieve an advertisement insertion that wouldn't alienate the audience.
In fact, the simplest way to insert advertisements without causing audience offense is to avoid having the actors directly mention the product names and instead subtly display the product in the scene. Although the presence of such insertions is relatively low, there's generally no need to worry about viewers mocking it.
Of course, advertisers are unwilling to accept such a situation. Most advertisers have an obsession, as if only by constantly repeating their product names can they achieve the best advertising effect. This is all Brain Platinum's fault.
However, even this simple insertion drove the entire "The Journey of the Immortals" crew nearly mad.
Because this marketing plan was decided very late, with only about a week left before the television series aired.
The director's team could only hold emergency meetings to discuss where to insert the advertisements, set up new scripts, and then immediately summon the actors the next day to reshoot the advertisement scenes across seven former filming locations nationwide within three days.
For places like the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, the situation was relatively better because the area was not yet open to tourism. It didn't require closing the site or rebuilding attractions, so the filming was quick.
However, some scenes were much more troublesome, requiring clearing the area and, in some cases, rebuilding sets. The entire prop team was at their wit's end.
The visual effects team was even more overwhelmed. The special effects personnel, far away in New Zealand, were suddenly notified to urgently produce special effects for an advertisement. Frankly, if Mr. Huang didn't directly own the special effects studio, the head of that studio would have kicked Mr. Huang in the face.
However, our Mr. Huang understood one thing: there is no such thing as being wronged in this world. If you feel wronged, it's because you haven't been paid enough.
Therefore, for these snack advertisement shots, Mr. Huang generously allocated a $1 million bonus, instantly bringing smiles to the faces of all the crew members, even though they had been working overtime for five consecutive nights without rest.
It wasn't until New Year's Eve that the revised scenes were completed and sent to the Jiangxi TV program group, with a request to replace the original broadcast tapes.
It is said that when the people at Jiangxi TV learned that the changes were to be made last minute, everyone in the station was stunned. They had never encountered such a situation.
Some might think this is not difficult, just changing a video tape.
But that was not the case. Each episode of the TV series had a set duration, and the television station would calculate the duration of that episode in advance, along with the required advertising time. They had to adjust the timing of other programs based on this duration; otherwise, there would be insufficient broadcast time or periods with no content to air.
These usually had to be planned one or two days in advance.
Now, however, several episodes had an extra 1-2 minutes of runtime. Mr. Huang only added content, not reducing anything, because that would disrupt the original integrity, which was absolutely not allowed.
This meant that the television station had to change its broadcast schedule and program content to accommodate the extra two minutes of airtime.
This is absolutely the most annoying thing for countless television stations. If it were Hunan TV or Y-M, they would have likely shown their displeasure directly.
However, Jiangxi TV was quite cautious and dared not offend the TV series that had helped the station recoup its costs before it even aired. Therefore, despite finding the situation very frustrating and difficult, they readily agreed. They then cut a segment from a news program to make up for the extra time, bringing the broadcast back to normal.
Mr. Huang was very touched by this and subtly revealed that "The Journey of the Immortals" might have a second season, which brought smiles to everyone's faces.
Indeed, this advertisement was very successful. After the first two episodes aired, discussions about Mahjong Connect were all over the internet. The trending question on Google search was: "What is the game played by the immortals?"
Clicking on the search results directly led to the download official websites for Mahjong Connect and oo Game Center, fully demonstrating the power of capital and how capital can make you like a game.