Even if Director Xu called “cut” in person, the whole studio was still silent. Tao Mu also stood silently on the spot, his chest heaving fiercely, his expression still dark, obviously still too immersed in the scene and couldn’t pull out for a while.
Li Xiaoheng, who was standing on the edge of the set, looked at Tao Mu with extreme concern. Liu Yao looked relieved and proud. He felt that Tao Mu was indeed their little brat. Normally he was always smiling and easy to talk to, but when he exploded, he really had a bit of a frightening aura.
Everyone was silently preoccupied with their own emotions. After a long while, a small sob broke the silence of the studio. Everyone looked towards the sound, only to see Shen Yu standing there with tears in his eyes, which had turned red from the crying. He didn’t dare to cry loudly, and instead bit his lip and choked aggrievedly, obviously having been frightened.
Yan Sheng was the first to react. He stepped forward and gently embraced Shen Yu’s shoulders, soothing his back. Shen Yu hugged Yan Sheng’s waist fiercely and burst into tears.
This cry was like the breaking of a spell, and the others responded one after another. Shen Yan rushed in front of Tao Mu in anger, once again acting like a shrew regardless of the situation: “What are you doing? Acting is just acting, why are you frightening others. Can you take responsibility for frightening our Xiao Yu so badly? Speak, did you do that on purpose——”
“Piss off!” Tao Mu’s eyes were red, and his anger still hadn’t dissipated. When looking at Shen Yan, it seemed as if two sharp swords were being stabbed straight into Shen Yan’s chest.
Shen Yan only felt that her whole person had gone into shock, all the accusations and verbal abuses became stuck in her throat, and she couldn’t say a word. Even her body couldn’t stop shaking.
Li Xiaoheng stepped forward with a solemn face, bypassed Shen Yan, and led Tao Mu directly back to the lounge chair to sit down. Unscrewing the thermos cup for him, which held cold mung bean soup: “Relieve the heat.”
Tao Mu silently raised his head and poured it down his throat. Negative emotions accumulated for a lifetime had hit him the moment he exploded. Like the continuous tide, wave upon wave, endlessly beating against the heart that he had thought had already long become cold as a rock.
Bloody white bone claws stretched out from the tumbling sea of ​​blood, grabbing Tao Mu’s body and dragging it down fiercely. Tao Mu didn’t want to struggle either, and instead allowed the negative emotions to sweep through his body.
Xu Musen sat in front of the monitor and replayed Tao Mu’s scene over and over again. Tao Mu’s acting skills were very good, which was the consensus of the entire crew. Being able to pit his acting skills against film kings and bring film queens into the scene, all the scenes he was in could be done with ease. It was no exaggeration to say that such an actor came with his own screen presence.
When he was acting against Shen Yu before, Tao Mu deliberately suppressed his performance in order to ensure the filming went smoothly. While trying to bring Shen Yu into the scene, he also tried his best not to cause too much pressure on Shen Yu. However, even so, Shen Yu was still affected. When speaking the lines, he stuttered and was out of breath, and his expressions and movements were even more mediocre.
Now that Tao Mu exploded on the spot, the momentary soaring momentum that resulted, even veteran actors like Yan Sheng and Wang Jinsheng could not guarantee that they would be able to hold their own, let alone a newcomer like Shen Yu. The overarching impact was also clear. The original scene, which was fairly well-matched, instantly turned into a blatant steamroll. Yan Yu, who was supposed to be a righteous character, couldn’t even utter a word under the pressure of Tao Mu’s acting skills. The lines used to expound justice before became pale and powerless under Shen Yu’s interpretation. The scene in the script where the black and white, evil and good, parties expound their ideas, was acted by Shen Yu as if he was the mistress who was caught in the act of cheating and could not hide his guilty conscience when facing the wife.
The motive behind ​​Yan Yu’s character could no longer stand anymore.
Xu Musen looked at the monitor with some regret. In fact, in the whole script, Yan Yu and Zhou Yuanting, Yan Qi and the mob boss Zhou Yanqing played, these four roles could also be said to be two pairs of foils, representing black and white respectively. Especially Yan Yu and Zhou Yuanting, although these two characters don’t make many appearances, their roles were very important. Because the role of the two male protagonists was to promote the development of the plot and maintain the conflict of the plot. Therefore, under the setting of the script, all kinds of falsehoods and subtle machinations were required. Black mixed with white, white mixed with black, it could no longer be differentiated.
But Yan Yu and Zhou Yuanting were different. Although the ages and roles of the two characters limit their development, they also perfectly guaranteed the purity of the two characters. One was pure white and one was pure black. Black and white were clearly incompatible. They were not allowed to mix into the slightest gray area, this was the difference of beliefs.
In the script setting, the role of Zhou Yuanting represented greed. Greed was the driving force of human progress. So Zhou Yuanting had performed very well since he was in the police academy. He trained hard and won first place in every assessment. He was the most admired student by the police officers in training. But at the same time, Zhou Yuanting was also eager to enjoy daring behavior, so he never took the school rules and disciplines to heart. On the eve of graduation, he even dared to skip classes to go clubbing, and even got into a fight with people. He was eventually expelled from the police academy.
Zhou Yuanting was not reconciled with the fact that his hard work would go down the drain. He was seduced by the high-ranking official position promised by the police and agreed to go undercover. However, in the process of being an undercover agent, Zhou Yuanting found that his efforts and gains were completely unequal. So he regretted it once again. Finding out the relationship between Yan Qi and Yan Yu was just a fuse that pushed him to go dark completely. The essential reason why Zhou Yuanting became corrupted was his greed. He held no ideals or beliefs in his heart. He only cared about whether his efforts could achieve higher rewards. As for whether the direction of effort was morally black or white, Zhou Yuanting didn’t care at all.
Compared with Zhou Yuanting, the role of Yan Yu represented absolute whiteness. He was inflexible, stubborn, and regarded the police as his only belief. He had been upright and honest all his life, attached great importance to love and righteousness, knew kindness and gratitude, was filial to his parents, and cared for his wife. So he refused to forgive his mafia brother. At the end of the script, Yan Yu resolutely decided to arrest Zhou Yuanting even after he knew that his brother was actually an undercover agent, and Zhou Yuanting replaced him as an undercover agent because of his brother’s doing. However, in the process of arresting, the police officer who was in the pockets of the mafia saw that Zhou Yuanting was about to be arrested and feared that Zhou Yuanting would reveal him so he tried to kill Zhou Yuanting first. As a result, Yan Yu blocked the bullet for Zhou Yuanting. Before dying, he only had time to utter a single apology to Zhou Yuanting.
Zhou Yuanting complained that Yan Yu took away his future and woman, and in the end Yan Yu gave Zhou Yuanting his life. He had always regarded Zhou Yuanting as his best brother. It was just that the two had different positions and different ideas, and they couldn’t convince each other at all.
It was a pity that as Yan Yu, Shen Yu’s acting skills were not good enough. He didn’t bring out the charm of the character at all. Therefore, it was always said that actors did not try roles that they could not fully control without some deep consideration. If the role was not convincing because of poor performance, not only would he be scolded, but the entire script might collapse.
Xu Musen scratched his head very irritably. Tao Mu’s on-the-spot explosive performance was so good that Xu Musen was reluctant to delete it and decided to keep it. Therefore, the focus of the next scenes was to polish the role of Yan Yu.
Director Xu asked Shen Yu to prepare, as the following scenes must be filmed well. He didn’t imagine that Shen Yu’s performance could be on par with Tao Mu’s, but it should at least be convincing. Even mediocre was fine!
However, Shen Yu was just frightened by Tao Mu’s explosion. During the scene, as soon as he saw Zhou Yuanting’s face, he thought of Tao Mu’s tyrannical performance earlier, and he was so frightened that he couldn’t even hold up to his previous performance.
After several NGs, not mentioning that Shen Yu’s brain was already tied up into knots, even the rest of the crew had headaches.
Director Xu glared at the monitor with a gloomy expression, wishing that he could glare Shen Yu’s acting skills into existence. Shen Yu knew that he was wrong, and curled up beside Yan Sheng and didn’t dare to look up. In his heart, he also secretly blamed himself for not being good enough.
However, this was actually not his fault. Even a talented actor needed a process to hone his acting skills. In the previous life, Shen Yu and Tao Mu joined the crew at the same time, and both of them were newcomers. In contrast, Shen Yu had a little more experience in filming than Tao Mu. He was also an actor appointed personally by Director Xu, who claimed that he could perfectly interpret the role by just being himself. In contrast, Tao Mu, a flower vase who forced himself into the crew through his family background and had little experience in filming, would naturally be rejected by the entire crew. Not to mention that during the filming, Yan Sheng was also deliberately suppressing Tao Mu both in and out of his scenes.
At that time, Shen Yu had the encouragement of the director, the tolerance of the entire crew, and the foiling of a colleague like Tao Mu. He was actively honing his acting skills every day, so his performance was naturally wonderful.
But in this life, Tao Mu’s acting skills were on cheat mode. He had professional training at a prestigious academy, and the director had hand-picked him for the role. He could pit his acting skills directly with the other veteran actors. The superposition of various halos directly crushed Shen Yu, a young rookie who only brought money into the crew, to nothing. Overwhelming Shen Yu to the point he couldn’t even raise the energy to put in more effort. Just knowing to be uselessly anxious. And the more anxious he was, the worse his performance would be. The worse the performance, the more dissatisfied the director and crew were. As the vicious circle descended, how could Shen Yu, who was born in a greenhouse, have the tenacity of Tao Mu, so he was suddenly depressed to the point that he already gave up on himself.
Director Xu watched from the sidelines, and seeing that Shen Yu really had no heart in filming, could only scratch his head and scream ‘cut’.
It was already two o’clock in the afternoon, not even one scene was finished, and the crew missed lunch as well. The director had a breath in his chest that he couldn’t exhale and wanted to at least make some progress. So he could only discuss with Tao Mu if they could start the scene of Tao Mu and Du Ze ahead of schedule? It would be great if they could finish it in one shot, and then everyone would eat after filming.
Tao Mu ate half a boxed lunch when he improvised on the spot, and could manage to hold on. Not to mention Du Ze. He had finished his lunch while he was waiting for his scene. Only the director, the lighting and camera, and Shen Yu were the only ones in the entire crew who had gone hungry.
Director Xu moved the shooting location with a sullen face.
Actually the filming location was just moved from the interrogation room to the entrance of the police station. The scene to be filmed was when Zhou Yuanting and the group of hoodlums were released. Zhou Yuanting was in a bad mood and had a dark expression on his face. But it didn’t matter to Du Ze and the group of hoodlums who often entered a holding cell. When they came out of the police station, they were talking and laughing, and were even discussing where to have a late night snack and a massage.
Ah Ze smiled and threw an arm over Zhou Yuanting’s shoulder: “Today you have done the most, so we’ll let you choose the place. The gang will pay, and we can be considered to eat and drink with public funds.”
Zhou Yuanting brushed Ah Ze’s arm away with an irritated expression.
Ah Ze didn’t mind, he threw it over his shoulders again, and even hooked it around Zhou Yuanting’s neck as he asked him: “Why, the most important thing in being a person is to be happy. It’s all good once you get used to this kind of thing. Us out in the streets, who haven’t been invited by the police for tea. It’s not like this is your first time——”
Don’t know what part of those words hit Zhou Yuanting’s sore spot but Zhou Yuanting pushed Ah Ze away with a livid face, and even gave a kick: “Piss off.”
Ah Ze was caught off guard, clutching his kicked chest and taking two steps back. He was also angry now: “What the hell is wrong with you! Did I f**k your woman or what? Was it me who handcuffed you and reprimanded you like a dog? I take you as a brother, but what do you take me for? Venting your anger out on me? Do you think you’re still a cop?”
The extras who played the hoodlums hurried over and pulled them apart. One was their leader, and the other was the up and coming king whip who was very popular in the gang and with the bosses. They didn’t want to offend either of them. (TN: king whip=technically it is tled literally as ‘red flower stick’ which basically means a top fighter, and above that is ‘double red flower stick’ which is the elite fighter, terms used by Hong Kong mafia)
Zhou Yuanting’s face was cold and solemn, he ignored Ah Ze’s words, and suddenly turned his head to look at the police station. Director Xu motioned for the camera to advance to the close-up of his face. Under the high-definition camera, Zhou Yuanting’s red eyes were clearly seen, but those eyes were extremely cold. The dark eyes seem to exude a biting chill. He glanced one last time at the police station, turned around and left, his figure decisive.
Ah Ze and the group of hoodlums stood together on the other side, watching Zhou Yuanting’s resolute back. He uttered a foul language in exasperation. But he was still worried, and while scolding himself for being a masochist, he led his subordinates to follow: “That way is the Causeway Bay, not our territory. This stinky boy running around in places you shouldn’t, you’ll be hacked to death without even knowing it!”
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