yournovel Chapter 58 MV Shooting, Zhou Xun's Acting Skills
Chapter 58 MV Shooting, Zhou Xun's Acting Skills
After finishing their meal at Lao Mo's, Li Si'an saw Zhang Ziyi into her car and then strolled back to the restaurant with Tang Yun.
Tang Yun changed into slippers and went upstairs to take a shower, the sound of running water filling the air.
Li Si'an leaned against the counter and sorted through the cassette tapes on the shelf.
the phone is ringing.
He put down the cassette tape in his hand and picked up the microphone.
"Feed?"
"Li Si'an, I am Zhang Yibai."
Li Si'an leaned against the counter. "Director Zhang."
"Filming starts tomorrow. Meet at the entrance of Beijing Film Studio at 7:00 AM. The entire crew will go together. I'll tell you the filming schedule when you arrive."
Zhang Yibai spoke with his usual briskness, without uttering a single wasted word. "The location is set at Shahe Hospital in Changping. We'll be filming the ward scenes this morning."
"Okay, seven o'clock, at the entrance of Beijing Film Studio."
After hanging up the phone, Tang Yun poked her head down the stairs, her hair still wet, and wiped it with a towel.
"Will it start filming tomorrow?"
"Okay, we'll meet at seven."
"Then you should go to sleep." Tang Yun draped a towel over her shoulder. "Shall I go with you tomorrow?"
Li Si'an thought for a moment. "No, that's not possible. Changping is a long way away, we'd just be waiting there. You stay at the shop, I'll explain everything to you when I get back tonight."
Tang Yun nodded and shrank back.
The next morning, before dawn, Li Si'an got up. Tang Yun was still asleep. He quietly washed up, then took a clean white T-shirt from the closet and put it on.
I bought two steamed buns on the roadside before leaving home, and ate them while hailing a minibus.
Beijing Film Studio.
By the time we arrived at the entrance of the Beijing Film Studio, it was already broad daylight.
A white van was parked on the side of the road with a handwritten note on it that read "Fairy Tale MV Crew" written crookedly.
Zhang Yibai was leaning against the car door smoking when he saw him coming over, so he put out his cigarette.
"Get in the car."
Several people were already seated in the car. The cameraman, a chubby man with glasses, was dozing off while holding his equipment. The lighting technician, tall and thin, sat by the window with earphones in his ears.
The stagehand was a middle-aged man with a tanned complexion, leaning against the last row with a straw hat covering his face.
Zhou Xun sat by the window, wearing a white T-shirt, her hair casually tied up, and was flipping through a magazine.
Hearing the noise, she looked up and waved the magazine in her hand at Li Si'an.
"You're here?"
Li Si'an sat down next to her. The car started and headed towards Changping.
In late July in Beijing, the sun was scorching early in the morning. The street scene outside the car window gradually changed from buildings to bungalows, and then from bungalows to vast cornfields.
The cicadas were chirping loudly in the poplar trees by the roadside, and hot air was blowing in through the cracks in the car windows, carrying the smell of grass and soil.
Upon arriving at Shahe Hospital, the film crew moved their equipment inside. The hospital wasn't large, just a dusty four-story building with several patches of peeling paint on the exterior walls, which had been patched up with cement, looking like rows of patches.
Several bicycles were parked in the yard, and the roses in the flower bed were drooping under the sun.
Zhang Yibai contacted the hospital in advance and borrowed an empty ward at the very back of the second floor.
In the morning, we filmed Zhou Xun's solo scene first. The ward wasn't big, only about ten square meters. White walls, light green curtains, a metal-framed hospital bed, and an enamel mug on the bedside table.
Zhou Xun changed into a blue and white striped hospital gown, which looked empty and made her appear even thinner.
She lay down on the hospital bed, and the stylist put an oxygen mask on her. The makeup artist added some shadow under her eyes and lightened the color of her lips.
Zhang Yibai squatted behind the monitor, holding a walkie-talkie in his hand.
"Clear the area. Everyone else, leave except for the cameraman and lights."
Li Si'an followed the stagehand into the corridor and leaned against the door frame to look inside.
Zhou Xun lay on the hospital bed, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. A thin layer of white mist rose on the oxygen mask, then slowly dissipated.
"start."
She opened her eyes.
In the footage, the emotions in her eyes gradually progressed, from vivid to serene.
It's as if they've been crying for a long time, and are now exhausted from crying, and all that's left is to wait.
She stared at the ceiling, her eyelashes trembling slightly, her lips moving as if she were talking to someone, or perhaps talking to herself.
Then she slowly closed her eyes, gently holding the prop phone to her ear.
My breathing grew shallower and slower. My hand suddenly loosened, and the phone slipped from my fingers, fell onto the blanket, bounced once, and then remained still.
"Card."
Zhang Yibai's voice came from behind the monitor, softly, as if afraid of startling something.
"Passed. Passed in one take."
Several stagehands in the corridor looked at each other in bewilderment. The cameraman poked his head out from behind the camera and gave Zhou Xun a thumbs-up.
Zhou Xun sat up in bed, took off her oxygen mask, and wiped her eyes with a tissue. Her eyes were still red, but her expression had returned to normal.
"This oxygen mask is making my nose hurt." She rubbed her nose, reached for a cigarette case on the bedside table, took one out, and lit it. "Are you done yet?"
"Passed," Zhang Yibai said.
Zhou Xun exhaled a puff of smoke, leaned against the headboard, and gave Li Si'an, who was standing at the door, an "OK" sign.
The next scene is a corridor scene. Li Si'an carries Zhou Xun into the hospital and talks to the doctor.
Zhou Xun changed back into her white T-shirt—the one she was wearing when she fainted. Li Si'an stood at the end of the corridor, and Zhou Xun leaned against him, her eyes closed, her head resting on his shoulder.
She was lighter than he had imagined; holding her felt like holding a bundle of straw.
"start."
Li Si'an carried her and ran forward. The fluorescent lights in the corridor hummed, and his sneakers made a dull sound as they stepped on the terrazzo floor.
As I ran to the clinic door, the doctor came out to greet me—he was a local extra hired by the film crew, an old man in his fifties, wearing a white coat and reading glasses.
"What's wrong with her?" the doctor asked.
"I don't know... She was fine just now, and then she suddenly fainted," Li Si'an said. He made up the lines on the spot. Zhang Yibai said there were no lines for this scene, so he could just say whatever he wanted, and the background sound would be added later.
"Card."
Zhang Yibai peeked his head out from behind the monitor.
"Li Si'an, something's wrong with your expression. What's your mood right now? Your girlfriend just fainted, don't you know what's wrong with her? Aren't you panicking?"
Li Si'an thought for a moment. "Panic."
"Your face must be sore. You look like you've come to the hospital to visit your neighbor."
The stagehands were trying not to laugh. Zhou Xun opened one eye from his embrace and chuckled.
"Let's start over."
Li Si'an stood at the end of the corridor again. He tried several times—frowning, glaring, and slightly opening his mouth—but Zhang Yibai rejected them all.
"You're not panicking, you're seeing a ghost."
Li Si'an put Zhou Xun down and shook his sore arms. Zhou Xun leaned against the wall and rubbed her neck.
Have you ever had that feeling—that you're really afraid something will happen, but it hasn't happened yet, and you're constantly worried about it?
She said, "True panic isn't about forcefully letting it out; it's about pulling it back in. The more panicked you are, the less you show on your face. Because you become completely numb."
Li Si'an looked at her.
"Try again."
"start."
Li Si'an carried her and ran forward. This time, he didn't care whether she frowned or opened her mouth. He was only thinking about how, when Zhou Xun was lying on the hospital bed, his hand slipped and his phone fell onto the blanket.
The image flashed through his mind, and his face went blank. He ran to the examination room door, where the doctor came out to greet him. "What's wrong with her?"
Li Si'an opened her mouth, but couldn't say anything.
"Cut." Zhang Yibai stood up. "This one's passed. Use this one."
Li Si'an put Zhou Xun down. Once she was steady, she patted him on the shoulder.
"That's right. That's the spirit."
Filming continued until 11 a.m., and all the scenes in the ward and corridor were completed. Zhou Xun's solo scene was filmed in one take, while Li Si'an's corridor scene required five takes.
The crew had lunch at the hospital cafeteria—scrambled eggs with tomatoes, braised pork with potatoes, and unlimited rice.
Zhou Xun sat next to Li Si'an with a lunchbox in her hand, and used chopsticks to pick out the tomatoes one by one and pile them on the lid of the lunchbox.
"You don't eat tomatoes?"
"It's sour. Extremely sour." Zhou Xun mixed the cleaned egg into her rice. "When I was little, my mom always forced me to eat it, saying it would supplement my vitamins. Now I get annoyed just looking at tomatoes."
Li Si'an picked an egg from his lunchbox and gave it to her. Zhou Xun glanced at him, didn't stand on ceremony, and shoveled it into her mouth.
The afternoon's filming took place on a highway outside Changping. On both sides of the road were vast cornfields, lush and green, stretching as far as the eye could see.
The cicadas were chirping their hearts out in the poplar trees, and waves of heat rose from the asphalt road, making the air in the distance seem to sway.
The props team brought in an old Jiefang truck, an open-top one, with an old sofa in the back. It was made of brown faux leather, the armrests were worn white, and there were two cigarette burn holes in the seat cushion.
There was a pedestrian overpass in the middle of the highway. Zhang Yibai asked the cameraman to carry the equipment onto the overpass and film from above.
The camera pans down, capturing the old sofa in the back of the truck and the person lying on it.
Zhou Xun changed into her costume—a pale yellow tank top, denim shorts, and her hair down. Li Si'an was still wearing that white T-shirt. The two climbed into the back of the truck and sat on the sofa.
Zhang Yibai stood on the overpass, a walkie-talkie in his hand. "Let's go through it once. You two, put your arms around each other, lean back on the sofa, look up at the sky, and smile naturally."
Li Si'an draped his arm over the back of the sofa. Zhou Xun leaned closer, resting her head on his shoulder, her hair brushing against his neck.
"Your shoulders are stiff again," she said in a muffled voice.
Li Si'an relaxed her shoulders.
"Feeling better."
They filmed three takes, and it was good. Zhang Yibai told the cameraman to change the focal length and take another one. The truck drove back and forth on the highway several times, passing under the overpass, then backing up, and then passing under it again.
Hot air rushed into the back compartment, blowing Zhou Xun's hair up and brushing against Li Si'an's face, making it itchy. He endured it without moving.
"Cut. This one's done. Ten-minute break."
Li Si'an jumped off the truck. The stuntman somehow got hold of a case of Arctic Ocean soda, placed it under a poplar tree by the roadside, surrounded it with a few bricks, and kept crushed ice inside.
He grabbed two bottles and handed one to Zhou Xun. Zhou Xun took it, pried open the cap, and tilted her head back to take a big gulp.
She sat down against the truck tire, placed the soda bottle on her knees, took out a cigarette case from her pocket, and pulled one out between her fingers.
"How old are you again?" she asked.
"eighteen."
"Eighteen." Zhou Xun put a cigarette in her mouth, squinted at him, and said, "I'm four years older than you. You have to call me 'older sister'."
Li Si'an took a sip of soda. "Then I might as well just call you Brother Xun."
Zhou Xun paused for a moment. She had a cigarette in her mouth, but hadn't lit it. She took the cigarette out of her mouth, tilted her head, and thought for a moment.
"Brother Xun." She read it aloud, then suddenly smiled, revealing a row of fine, white teeth. "That's good. From now on, you'll call me Brother Xun."
She put the cigarette back in her mouth, struck a match, and lit it. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
"have."
"Ouch." Zhou Xun exhaled a puff of smoke, glancing at him sideways. "You kids these days, you start dating way too early."
She flicked her cigarette ash. "But with your looks, it's normal for you to have a girlfriend."
Li Si'an leaned against the truck tire and took a sip of her soda. "What about you? Where's your boyfriend?"
"Me?" Zhou Xun put a cigarette in her mouth, looked up at the sky, and said, "My boyfriend is also a musician, he plays rock."
Li Si'an simply said "oh" and didn't ask any further questions.
Zhou Xun didn't continue. She stubbed out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe and threw the butt into an empty soda bottle next to her.
The two of them sat there leaning against the tire, neither of them saying a word.
The July sun made the asphalt road gleam white, and the distant cornfields swayed in the heat. Cicadas chirped hoarsely in the poplar trees, in bursts of sound.
A stagehand shouted from the overpass, "Sister Xun, get ready for the next scene!"
Zhou Xun stood up, brushed the dirt off her pants, and placed the soda bottle next to the tire. After taking two steps, she turned back.
"Li Si'an".
"Um?"
"When you're hugging a girl, don't keep thinking about the camera. Just think about the girl."
She turned and walked away. Her pale yellow tank top swayed in the July sun as she climbed into the back of the truck.
Li Si'an finished the last sip of soda, placed the bottle beside the tire, stood up, dusted off his pants, and climbed up as well.