1990: Starting from Baojia Street

Although Matthew Knowles is thick-skinned, he knows how to read people's faces.

He knew that Zhou Yan didn't want to talk to them any more at the moment.

So after chatting with Zhou Yan for a while, he took the initiative to say goodbye and left the backstage with Beyonce.

After the father and daughter left, Zhou Yan ran to help the orchestra prepare for the performance.

……

The atmosphere in Houston is really good, and there is a lot of space in front of the theater, which can accommodate a lot of people.

The weather was very good today, so starting from around four o'clock in the afternoon, a large number of music fans slowly gathered at the door.

Felipe and Kante had already made preparations and built a temporary stage in front of the theater.

Not only did they equip the stage with valuable equipment, they also built some "stands" on the edge of the square.

These stands are not high, only two or three floors, but they cover a large area, which greatly improves the experience of the audience in the back row watching the performance.

They had calculated in advance that the theater entrance could accommodate a total of 12,000 to 16,000 people to watch the performance at the same time.

Based on this estimate, they also made several plans.

Houston is also the only city that has seriously promoted its outdoor extra performances. Although previous cities also promoted outdoor extra performances, they were just mentioned in passing. After all, outdoor performances do not charge tickets, and there is no guarantee that they will be held.

Just like those days in Taiwan, the outdoor performance was delayed because of the rain.

But Felipe and his friends were not worried about this at all. After all the tickets were sold out, they started promoting today's outdoor performance frantically.

There were even many people who didn't even know about the concert, they only knew there was a free outdoor performance in front of the theater today.

In this situation, naturally there are a lot of people coming to join in the fun.

At 6:30, when the concert hall began to check tickets, four to five thousand people had already gathered at the theater entrance, not including the audience who had already bought tickets.

At 6:30, Matthew Knowles appeared at the entrance of the concert hall with several members of Destiny's Child.

The reason why they chose to come at this time is naturally because there are many people here, and it is a good time for several girls to show their faces.

In order to ensure that there would be reporters to take pictures of them, Matthew Knowles even hired two people. When they got out of the car, the two people pointed cameras at them and took pictures.

There were many other reporters at the scene. When they saw two people taking pictures of four girls with cameras, they were of course very interested. Even though they didn't know who these girls were, they still came over.

There were constant flashes of light at the scene. After one reporter took a few photos, he asked another reporter next to him.

"Who are these girls?"

The other party shook his head, "I don't know."

Both parties were a little confused, and they followed along and took pictures without knowing what was going on.

At this time, someone suddenly shouted, "This is the Zhenming Tiannu band, and that girl is the one who sang in "We Are Young"."

Upon hearing this, the reporters immediately understood and began to speed up their shutter clicks.

They may not have heard of Destiny's Child, but "We Are Young" is very popular recently.

Especially the reporters who were able to come to the concert today must know this song.

At first they didn't recognize Beyoncé as the girl in the MV, but after someone reminded them and they took a closer look, they recognized her.

Matthew Knowles had already told several girls to take advantage of this opportunity to show their faces more, so they all walked forward slowly and let the reporters take more photos of them.

When faced with interviews from reporters, they all responded very excitedly.

Seeing this scene, Matthew Knowles was very satisfied. He still had to take advantage of it, and this time he was very successful.

……

After the two concerts in Houston, Zhou Yan rested for a day, and then went to Canada with Zhang Youan to meet James Cameron and others.

On the way, Zhou Yan was holding a local Houston newspaper, which reported the grand occasion of the two concerts.

[The two concerts held at the Houston Grand Theater had a total outdoor attendance of more than 30,000 people. Y-chou has undoubtedly become a phenomenal musician. His ten concerts in the United States this time have shown people his unparalleled box office appeal.]

[Local TV stations receive many calls every day, all asking about Y-chou's concerts. Everyone wants to know if he has other performances. No doubt, if there are other performances, the tickets will be snapped up quickly. But unfortunately, this Piano Youth Orchestra's tour in the United States has officially ended...]

After reading the report, Zhou Yan smiled and asked Zhang Youan beside him, "Are there 30,000 people outdoors in these two games?"

Zhang Youan nodded. "About the same. The first show seemed to have more than 14,000 people, and the second show had more than 16,000 people. Felipe told me this personally, so it shouldn't be false. I can tell he's very happy. In a few days it will be the opening day of the Houston Theater District, so they will definitely take the opportunity to do some publicity."

The report did mention the open day of the theater district, and even specifically mentioned that members of the Piano Youth Orchestra would participate.

The purpose is very clear, which is to use this event to attract more tourists to participate in the open day activities in the theater district.

"The atmosphere in Houston is indeed better than that in New York." Zhou Yan affirmed the atmosphere in Houston.

"It's a bit crowded in New York. The theater district here is well planned. At least we can do outdoor performances, which is something Radio City Music Hall can't compare to." Zhang Youan smiled and said, "But only we are willing to add outdoor performances. Other orchestras may not be willing to do so."

Zhou Yan actually felt that the business of adding outdoor venues was getting bigger and bigger, and the development was a little different from what they had imagined before.

At the beginning, the outdoor performance was very small, and there were not so many outdoor audiences. Zhou Yan only needed to lead a few people out to play a few simple songs.

However, as more and more concerts are held, the scale of outdoor venues is getting larger and larger. Now it seems not uncommon for the number of people in a single outdoor concert to exceed 10,000.

With so many people, it naturally can't be as simple as before.

In these two concerts in Houston, nearly twenty pieces of music were performed outdoors in total, and each performance lasted more than forty minutes.

Adding the preparation time, Zhou Yan and his colleagues have to spend an extra hour or two every night, which is actually very tiring.

And since all outdoor performances are free, they don’t get a penny.

Zhou Yan sometimes wondered whether he should remove the outdoor segments and spend more time on the formal performances.

But for the time being, at least the popularity of outdoor performances is still beneficial to the orchestra.

If there were no outdoor performances, there would certainly be fewer related news reports, and word of mouth among music fans would be greatly reduced.

"When we have time next year, we will do some pop concerts and stop performing songs like Flow·Wind and Eternal Night. Then we can consider performing in open-air venues."

“This is also good. We can also take out folk music and do separate performances, and divide it into several series.”

"Let's plan it later."

……

Nova Scotia is located in the southeast corner of Canada, which is in the northeast corner of the United States.

Zhou Yan and his team went from Houston and basically walked along half of the U.S. coastline, a very long distance.

If Zhou Yan had known that he was going to Nova Scotia instead of Mexico, he would definitely have reversed the order of the concerts.

If they depart from New York, it is much closer to Nova Scotia. The Titanic crew is now in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which is next to the provincial capital Halifax, and the two cities are separated by a bay.

When Zhou Yan and his friends arrived in Dartmouth, it was already past eight o'clock in the evening.

Sebadisian was very happy to see Zhou Yan, "Y, you are finally here."

Seeing him so happy, Zhou Yan was a little surprised. After all, they were not very familiar with each other, and the current work of the crew had little to do with him as a composer.

"How's the recent shoot going?"

"It's not bad. You know, there aren't many scenes here."

Although Sebatisian said that he was fine, his expression was not very good. It was obvious that he had not had an easy time during this period.

But he didn't say anything, and Zhou Yan didn't ask.

"As long as everything goes well." Zhou Yan just smiled.

Sebadisian also laughed, "Have you eaten? Do you want me to take you to eat something?"

“I ate it on the plane.”

"That's good. In fact, at this time, I really can't find anything to give you to eat."

The crew of "Titanic" had packaged meals, which were served at fixed times, locations and quantities. It was not easy to eat if you missed the time.

The area around here is rather desolate, with few shops to be found. It would be wishful thinking to expect to have a meal at this time.

Zhou Yan and Zhang Youan knew this, so they chose to have dinner on the way.

"Has the protagonist arrived?" Zhou Yan asked.

"You mean Kate and Leonardo?"

"Ah."

"Of course not. We are filming a modern drama here, so there are no scenes with them. If you want to see them, you can wait until the filming is finished here and come with us to Mexico."

Zhou Yan smiled and shook his head. "After we finish filming here, I should go back to China. When will we finish filming here?"

"It's going to be the end of August."

"I definitely won't be able to make it this time, but I will be going to the United States in a while, and I should be able to go there then."

"Then you better hurry up."

"How many people are there in the crew now?" Zhou Yan asked again.

"Including you, that's eighty-six people."

"so much."

What they are shooting here is a modern drama, and there are actually not many scenes. Many of them were shot on location at the site of the Titanic wreck by Cameron and his team.

The scene for this part of the movie was not very large, so Zhou Yan didn't expect there would be so many people on the crew.

"That's nothing. When we went to Mexico to shoot later, there were more than a hundred stuntmen alone." Sebatisian laughed.

Zhou Yan couldn't help but sigh, it was indeed a grand scene.

From this perspective, it is not impossible that there were thousands of crew members on site when filming in Mexico.

Zhou Yan has also been to large film crews. There were a lot of people when filming Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

But in fact, when "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was being filmed, there were not many crew members, mainly because there were a lot of extras, and other conditions were relatively limited.

Sebatisian chatted with Zhou Yan for a while and then left.

Zhou Yan had no work that night and went to bed at half past ten.

If you go to bed early, you will naturally get up early.

The next morning, he got up at half past six, washed up, and went out at exactly seven o'clock.

He originally thought that there wouldn't be many people at this time, but when he opened the door, he found that there were quite a few people in the corridor, and most of them were holding equipment, and it seemed that they were about to start working.

A young man recognized Zhou Yan and took the initiative to greet him, "Hi, Y, you're here."

"Hello." Zhou Yan responded with a smile, and then asked, "Are you going to start work?"

"Yes, we're about to shoot the scene where the elderly female lead sees the news about the survey team."

“Where was it filmed?”

"It's nearby, about a mile."

The young man tried to point out the direction of the filming location to Zhou Yan, but he couldn't tell east, south, west or north in the corridor, so he pointed around and finally gave up.

"If you want to go, you can come with us."

Zhou Yan originally wanted to have breakfast before going, but facing the current situation, he decisively gave up breakfast and nodded, "Then please give me a ride."

"It's my honor." The young man smiled, "Actually, I like your music too."

Another young man nearby laughed and said, “I can prove it for Lori.”

On the way to the filming location, Zhou Yan chatted with the three young men for a while and learned that they were in charge of the props. Before today's filming began, they had to deliver the props to the scene.

They were accompanied by another car with members of the camera crew.

The filming location is indeed not far from the hotel, it is a stand-alone residential building.

"If you are interested, feel free to take a look around. We need to start working." Lori said to Zhou Yan.

Zhou Yan nodded, "Just keep busy, don't worry about me."

Then he walked around the house by himself. It was a simple house. The reason why it was chosen as the residence of the elderly heroine was probably because it was close to the hotel and convenient for filming.

Because it is a modern plot, there is not much to pay attention to in the layout, but Zhou Yan can still see that the layout of the house has been carefully thought out.

The paintings on the wall and the pottery products everywhere in the house were obviously not originally part of the house. All these furnishings reflect the aesthetic taste of the owner of the house.

This aesthetic may not have a standard, but it must be unified.

Just by looking at these exhibits, a character image has emerged in Zhou Yan's mind. He knows that this is the effect James Cameron wanted.

To shape a character, it is not only the character's own performance that is important, the character's environment is also an important part.

Especially in this modern drama in Titanic, the elderly heroine appears for so little time, and what she can show is very limited. The audience wants to know how she has lived through all these years, and they have to look at the environment she lives in. (End of this chapter)