Chapter 285 Cultural Export Plan

1. Arthur ended his visit to Europe and returned to Australasia on the battleship Australasia. new

When he went to Europe, in order to catch up with the funeral of King Edward VII, Arthur arrived in London in just over 20 days under the full escort of the battleship Australasia.

But this was a pain for the remaining supply fleet, which could only slowly catch up under the escort of the battleships Australia and New Zealand.

There was no rush when we returned, so we were able to combine the fleet into one and slowly and leisurely drive towards Australasia.

In late August, after more than a month of hurried and slow travel, Arthur finally arrived at the Sydney port.

Prime Minister Walter and Minister Andrew went to prepare for government affairs and work respectively, while Arthur, who had nothing to do for the time being, returned to the palace to amuse his children.

William and Anna are now almost one year old and can crawl and walk on their own. However, their mothers, Princess Louise and Queen Mary, love these two little guys very much. In addition to letting them crawl for a while for exercise, the two little guys are basically held in their arms at other times.

This also made it impossible for Arthur to hold the two little guys. Princess Louise loved her grandchildren very much, and Queen Mary also had a soft spot for these two little guys. Anyway, Arthur felt a little neglected.

But Arthur didn't care about this. He shook his head and devoted himself to busy government affairs.

After resting for a few days, Arthur summoned the director of the Royal Dockyard and asked about the current progress of the Royal Dockyard.

The news received is quite good. Currently, the construction progress of the two unified-class battleships has been mostly completed. It is expected to be completely completed around the end of this year and enter the sea navigation test phase.

If the test goes well, it should be able to officially enter the naval establishment in early 2012 to strengthen the naval power of Australasia.

The Russian order will also start construction around the end of this year to the beginning of next year. As of 1, the construction of four Russian warships is completely no problem.

When he learned that the two Unity-class battlecruisers had not yet installed cannons, Arthur had an idea and immediately issued an order for the shipyard to postpone the installation of main guns after completing other construction of the hull.

After all, we have obtained the 50-caliber 305mm artillery technology from the British, so why not directly replace the artillery of the two Unity-class battlecruisers with 305mm 50-caliber cannons to make the battlecruisers more powerful? .

If nothing else happens, British assistance including relevant experts should be able to arrive within a month.

Theoretically, it is possible to replace the artillery in time, and it will basically not delay the completion of the two battlecruisers by the end of this year. new

After arranging the affairs of the shipyard, a few days later, on August 24, Arthur welcomed guests from the Qing Dynasty.

For this country, the situation in recent years has not been very good, with various natural and man-made disasters happening one after another.

In early August, heavy rains caused disasters in some areas, and floods spread across several provinces. Although they were not as serious as previous disasters that affected the country, they were still a considerable loss for a country.

And they came to Australasia for two purposes. One is to purchase more grain from Australasia to quell various famines in the country caused by floods and man-made disasters.

The second is to invite Australasian envoys to visit. The reason is that under the guidance of Australasian experts, the constitution has achieved certain results, and even the Zizhengyuan, which was built at a large cost, is about to open.

The Zizhengyuan was built by the Qing Dynasty as an institution prepared for parliament. It was a central consultative body modeled on the Australasian legal system.

The reason why the Zizhengyuan was established was because the authorities considered that the Upper and Lower Houses could not be established for the time being, and the construction of the Zizhengyuan laid the foundation for the establishment of the parliament.

Among other things, the Zizhengyuan was the parliament building of the Qing Dynasty, and its construction was quite impressive.

It inherits the consistent style of the Eastern Empire, which is luxurious, high-end, high-profile and connotative. Apart from the obvious shortcoming of extravagant spending of money, it has to be said that the Qing Dynasty's Zizhengyuan has exceeded the scale and construction of the Australasian Government Affairs Council.

But this is normal. After all, one country has a population of just over 8 million, and the other has a population of 420 million (the Qing Dynasty’s own census figure a month ago). The income and economy of the two sides are completely incomparable.

Upon hearing the news, Arthur shook his head. If they can use this money to build the army and navy, then at least they can build the best navy and army in Asia, right?

In the final analysis, the country is rotten to the core, and it cannot be changed by superficial reforms.

Arthur has no idea of ​​expanding the Australasian Government Affairs Council in the short term. At present, it is barely enough to accommodate the cabinet government, various departmental governments, and other departments of the national government, and it is not very crowded.

At least before the crowding affected the office, Arthur felt that it was enough for everyone to squeeze in the current Government Office.

The country's finances should be saved as much as possible, and wouldn't it be better to use them for other construction or the expansion of the army and navy?

As for sending envoys to attend the opening ceremony of the Zizhengyuan, Arthur decisively handed it over to Foreign Minister Andrew.

Until their top leaders make up their mind to carry out thorough reforms, this is destined to be a superficial reform that has no beginning and no end.

Arthur felt there was no need to participate. Of course, if they wanted to order a battleship, Arthur would welcome it.

As for the request to buy food, Arthur decisively agreed. The current floods in New East Asia are relatively serious, with millions of refugees, which has also had a considerable impact on the price of food.

Apart from anything else, it is normal to increase the price of food by 10% based on the original price, right? Don't underestimate the fact that this event can bring a lot of income to Australasia. It can also take the opportunity to replace the old grains in the strategic grain reserves.

In addition to these news, there is another good news at the end of August, that is, Edison successfully invented the talking film, bringing movies into a new era.

Of course, the so-called invention is actually the invention of commercially available sound film technology.

In fact, as early as ten years ago, a sound film had been screened in Paris.

But after all, the technology at that time was not yet mature, and sound films were not commercially available at all, and their influence was naturally not great.

Arthur attaches great importance to talkies. After all, in just over 20 years of development, talkies have become a global phenomenon and have made Hollywood in the United States the most influential cultural and commercial center in the world.

Of course, what allowed the United States to successfully surpass European countries in sound films was actually the skeptical attitude of many European filmmakers and critics towards the new technology.

They were worried that too much dialogue would weaken the special beauty of silent films. Therefore, sound films were not as valued in Europe as in the United States. This allowed Hollywood to successfully become a symbol of world cinema.

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The birth of talkies marked the coming of an era of great development for the film industry.

Arthur naturally understands the importance of movies. It is not only an extremely important means of making money, but also an important means and method of external publicity, cultural transmission and international influence.

In terms of cultural export, nothing can compare to movies. Traditional books, music, and art can only influence a small number of people who are interested in these, and the progress is still very slow.

But movies are different. Movies can easily affect the whole world in just over an hour.

A few years ago, Australasia had a film studio and screened silent films.

But Arthur was really not interested in this kind of silent film, so he stopped paying attention after watching it for the first time.

After the birth of talkies, Arthur learned about the current development of the Australasian film industry by asking the Kent housekeeper. Generally speaking, it was good.

Unlike Arthur, Steward Kent was very interested in silent films, so the royal consortium also invested a lot of money in several film studios.

There are currently three major film studios in Australasia, namely the Royal Film Studio, the Victoria Film Studio and the Australasian National Film Studio.

It can also be heard from these names that all three film studios have the background of the royal family consortium, and their holdings are basically more than 60%.

In fact, this is easy to understand. After all, Australasia's total population of more than 8 million people can support three film studios. Without the help of the royal consortium, it is simply impossible.

The development of films in this era was not as huge as that of later generations. Before the birth of sound films, it was easy for these silent film studios to suffer losses or even go bankrupt if they did not have good works.

Now that the talkies have been born, Australasia's external cultural export can also begin.

Of course, there is another more important purpose, which is to form an inherent impression in the minds of Australasians through various movies, that is, all immigrants are Australasians, Australasians should unite.

The best way to resolve the Australasian immigration dispute is to use a new ethnic group to include all immigrants in Australasia.

The good news is that this part of Australasia was a former colony, and before that it was even a deserted land.

This also led to the fact that if Arthur wanted to tamper with the history of Australasia through various movies, it would actually be quite easy.

For example, in the Australasian nation, no one will compete with Arthur for the right to interpret. This also allows Arthur to let all immigrants join the Australasian nation and try to unite the people in the country.

Whether you are from England, Germany, France, Russia, now, there is one common name, and that is Australasian.

Don't underestimate the influence of these literary works, movies, etc. on people's subconscious mind.

With the help of the movie, Arthur is confident that within ten years, all Australasians will have no doubts about the national concept of Australasia, and at least half of the Australasian immigrants will be united Within the national framework of Australasia.

For this reason, some European writers, writers, and novelists are also among Arthur's talents.

Australasia has already attracted hundreds of literary talents from Europe before. In addition to the more than ten literary talents Arthur has attracted during this trip to Europe, as well as the talents cultivated by literature majors in all universities in Australasia, It is enough to write various national stories for Australasia, and then select the better ones and adapt them into scripts, make them into movies, and broadcast them throughout Australasia.

The people are blind. Under such a large impact, I believe that in a few years, people outside will say that some immigrants are not Australasian, and those immigrants will not be willing.

The good news is that the technology of early talkies was relatively simple, and with the current technology in Australasia, it was not difficult to develop talkies.

To put it bluntly, the simplest sound movie is to project the sound at the same time as the film, so as to achieve the effect of synchronizing the sound and the picture.

This technology is not difficult to implement. The simplest is to use a gramophone to play the sound, but it requires certain coordination of the sound and picture.

A little more complicated is to use two films with different photosensitive properties, one to record images and one to record sound tracks. Then through a series of processes, the sound track and the image can be combined on a positive film to make a film copy for screening.

During the screening, the projector is also equipped with a sound reproducing device, which can restore the life to sound while projecting the picture, achieving the effect of a talkie movie.

Objectively speaking, these two technologies are not difficult, and they are also commercially available sound film technologies.

Arthur handed over both sound film technologies to three major film studios, and then gave them each a budget of 100,000 Australian dollars.

Arthur has only one request, and that is to develop sound film technology as soon as possible, and then write a large number of historical scripts about the Australasian nation, and shoot them into sound films to be broadcast throughout Australasia.

To this end, Grant's publicity department will coordinate the actions of the three studios. The Propaganda Department is responsible for domestic and international publicity. Australasian newspapers and media are under the control of the Propaganda Department.

It is perfectly fine for those in the Propaganda Department to team up with writers, writers, and novelists who are good at fabricating things to write the history of Australasia.

In addition, three film studios are working hard on the side, striving to compile the story into a script as soon as possible, make it into a movie, and then put it on the big screen.

At present, the main export is still within Australasia. However, some films may also be considered for screening in Europe and the United States.

As for other regions like Asia and South America, they were temporarily abandoned by Arthur.

After all, even if it is just a very simple movie, you still need to spend money to buy movie tickets to watch it.

Most people in the abandoned areas do not yet have spare money to watch movies, so it is better to leave the opportunity to watch movies to Europeans and Americans.

The good news is that the current film restrictions are not that serious. As long as they are not openly satirizing the local national government, and spreading ideas and cognitions that are not recognized or banned locally, there are generally no restrictions on films.

Perhaps this is good news for some directors in the island country. Because today's movies are not strict about age classification, in theory, the movies they make can be played anywhere.

It's a pity that they can't enjoy such a prosperous age, otherwise the island country's movies can go global, but their reputation is not very good.

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