1990: Starting from Baojia Street

Zhou Yan brought back two bottles of Arctic Ocean and gave one to each of the two girls. He then sat opposite them holding a cup of tea.

Seeing him holding the teacup, Chen Derong joked, "Brother-in-law, you are so young, but you are living the life of an old man."

Zhou Yan smiled and said, "Your definition of young people is to drink Arctic Ocean."

"almost."

"Bei Bing Yang really needs you to be their spokesperson." Zhou Yan took a sip of tea and asked, "Do you have any other dramas recently?"

Chen Derong shook her head, "No, I have finished filming "Young Master" and "Lily in the Wind" consecutively, and the next "Tomorrow With You" will not start filming until next year."

Zhou Yan was not very familiar with the two TV series she mentioned. He had only heard of the name of "Jianghu Xiaozi".

Zhou Yan has rarely watched TV series of this type. He has mostly only watched a little bit, and he would just glance at it when others were watching it.

The reason why Zhou Yan asked Chen Derong this was to make sure that her schedule was ok, and not to wait until the role was confirmed before schedule conflicts arose. For the role of the male lead's sister, Zhou Yan only asked Chen Derong to audition for the time being.

If nothing unexpected happens, this role should be given to Chen Derong in the end. He had communicated with Chen Derong before, telling her that this role is not the protagonist and the image is not very beautiful, and asked her if she minded.

Chen Derong didn't mind at all. It can be seen that she is really obsessed with acting in movies, so she doesn't want to miss this opportunity.

Especially after knowing that the female lead was Joey Wong and the male lead was Zhou Yan, she had even less concerns.

No matter how popular her TV series are, she has never achieved much success on the big screen. Although she has roles like Xiao Shuang'er, they obviously don't help her film career much.

"After the audition tomorrow, if everything is OK, you will start preparing for your final makeup. The shooting schedule this time is relatively tight, so everything will go faster."

Chen Derong smiled and said, "It's okay, I'm used to it. When I was filming a TV series, the time was even tighter."

Generally speaking, it takes longer to shoot a TV series than a movie, but in terms of workload, a TV series is definitely more labor intensive. After all, a TV series has more scenes, and two or three episodes of a TV series can equal the number of scenes in a movie.

When shooting a movie, it often takes several days to shoot a scene, but this cannot be done for TV series. On average, there are more than a dozen scenes a day. If the producer only polishes one scene, he will probably go crazy.

This is also why many film directors look down on TV dramas. After all, it is impossible to guarantee the quality comparable to that of movies when shooting more than a dozen scenes a day. Even if a TV drama director wants to pay attention to details, he cannot do it.

If you choose to make a TV series, you must lower your requirements.

Sometimes directors know how to shoot better, but they can't do it because time and money don't allow it.

"The Chorus" has just over a hundred scenes. If it were shot at the speed of a TV series, it could be finished in a week, and the resulting film would be completely unwatchable.

Zhou Yan saw that Chen Derong was quite confident and just smiled without saying anything. It seemed that although she had acted in movies, she had never been abused by the director. If she had been abused by the director, she would not be so relaxed.

Seeing Zhou Yan didn't say anything, Joey Wong gave Chen Derong a warning, "Although you are not the protagonist this time, you can't take it lightly. The pressure on the set is very high, you have to be mentally prepared."

"Yes, I know, don't worry." Chen Derong nodded.

But looking at her expression, you can tell that she definitely didn't take Wang Zuxian's words seriously.

In her opinion, after all, she has acted in many movies and worked with many big names, so she is quite familiar with the filming of movies. And Zhou Yan looks quite gentle, so he must have an easier time on the set than those Hong Kong directors.

Joey Wong also knew that Chen Derong would not be able to understand it just by words. She had to wait until she actually arrived at the set to understand how much pressure the actors were under on Zhou Yan's filming set.

Although Chen Derong has made several movies, including some well-known works such as "The Deer and the Cauldron" series and "Casino Tycoon", and has collaborated with big directors such as Wong Jing.

Many people say that Wong Jing has strict requirements on the set, but to be honest, in Wang Zuxian's opinion, compared with Zhou Yan, Wong Jing's requirements cannot be considered strict at all.

Joey Wong still remembers that when filming "The Sixth Sense", the young actor Hu Ke did not perform well on the set. Zhou Yan would rather spend a lot of time and bring the entire crew to accompany Hu Ke to polish the performance over and over again, rather than lower his requirements.

At that time, Zhou Yan even thought about temporarily replacing the actors.

In that situation, Hu Ke faced tremendous pressure, but his father couldn't bear to stay at the scene and watch his son being abused.

Fortunately, Hu Ke has a good psychological endurance. If it were a kid with a weaker psychological endurance, his mentality would probably have collapsed in those days.

Zhou Yan never scolds people on the set, but he will dwell on every detail over and over again, to the point that many actors, when filming Zhou Yan's movies, will feel self-doubt because they cannot meet Zhou Yan's requirements.

The two girls didn't stay in Zhou Yan's office for long. After finishing a bottle of Arctic Ocean, they got up and left.

After standing up, Chen Derong pushed Wang Zuxian towards Zhou Yan with a strange smile, "Xiaoxian sister, you should stay here, don't be embarrassed."

If she hadn't done this, Joey Wong might have really stayed. But the more she urged her to do so, the more embarrassed Joey Wong became.

"What nonsense are you talking about? Let's go back to the hotel."

"Are you really going back to the hotel with me? Don't regret it later tonight." Chen Derong said to Zhou Yan with a smile, "Brother-in-law, I didn't ask her to go with me, so don't blame me."

Before Zhou Yan could respond, Joey Wong pulled Chen Derong away.

Watching the two of them leave, Zhou Yan smiled and shook his head, then continued looking at the audition list.

……

The next morning, a lot of people gathered in the studio.

Today's auditions are very broad, not just the main roles, but also many supporting roles.

There are three venues in total, one for auditions for the main roles, and the other two for auditions for supporting roles.

Many actors came today, most of them were recommended by various units, and some of them volunteered and signed up.

In addition, there are actors invited by Zhou Yan and his team.

The audition officially started at nine o'clock. Zhou Yan arrived at the studio at eight o'clock. He sat in the office until eight fifty, then got up and walked towards the film studio.

The three audition rooms were arranged on the first, second and third floors respectively. The audition for the main roles was on the third floor. When Zhou Yan arrived at the third floor, he saw three people standing in the corridor. The studio arranged a special room for the actors who came to audition to rest and wait, so most of them were waiting in the lounge for their numbers to be called.

"Fourth brother!"

Hearing the shout, Zhou Yan laughed.

The one who called him was none other than Li Jingfei, who played Zhang Fei.

Perhaps Li Jingfei is the only one in the world who can call Zhou Yan "fourth brother".

Because Zhou Yan used to get along well with the three brothers, Li Jingfei sometimes jokingly called Zhou Yan the fourth brother in private.

However, this title has not been made public, and Lu Shuming and the others would not call him that, because logically, they have a fourth brother, Zhao Yun. If they publicly call Zhou Yan the fourth brother, it would not be very nice. If they call him the fifth brother, it would seem a bit weird.

There were two people standing next to Li Jingfei, one was Jiao Huang and the other was the young actor Li Naiwen.

Li Naiwen has not graduated yet, and is the only student who auditioned for the main role. He was recommended by Gao Jinwen, Zhou Yan's acting mentor.

Li Naiwen is now a senior student in the Performance Department of the Central Academy of Drama, and Gao Jinwen is also his teacher.

When recommending Li Naiwen, Gao Jinwen did not give any special instructions. He just told Zhou Yan not to give Li Naiwen special care just for his sake, and to not use him if he felt he was not suitable.

However, Zhou Yan knew that Gao Jinwen must be very optimistic about Li Naiwen, otherwise he would not have called to recommend Li Naiwen. They had known each other for so many years, and this was the first time Gao Jinwen took the initiative to call to recommend someone.

Zhou Yan was also very happy to see Li Jingfei. He went up to hug him, and then said hello to Jiao Huang and Li Naiwen.

Then he took out a pack of Zhonghua from his pocket and offered cigarettes to them one by one. Li Naiwen didn't smoke, but Jiao Huang and Li Jingfei took them.

Li Jingfei lit up a cigarette with a smile, "After a few years, your habit hasn't changed. You still put a pack of cigarettes in your pocket even when you don't smoke."

In fact, Zhou Yan basically doesn't put cigarettes in his pocket now, and he is not like before, who would offer a cigarette to everyone he meets. But today, he knew that Li Jingfei and the others were coming, so he specially took a pack of cigarettes with him.

Jiao Huang was not familiar with Zhou Yan, but he also followed Li Jingfei's words and smiled, "Director Zhou has a good habit, which is worth encouraging. If everyone can be like Director Zhou, we old smokers will not have to bring cigarettes when we go out in the future."

Li Jingfei took two puffs of his cigarette and said with a smile, "I still remember that year, my eldest brother was caught while picking corn. Fortunately, my fourth brother had a pack of Hongtashan in his pocket, so he was able to rescue my eldest brother."

Zhou Yan rolled his eyes. They were not ashamed of stealing corn. Instead, they were proud of it. They would talk about it whenever they had nothing to do, and many people knew about it.

Moreover, the story became more and more outrageous as it was passed around. Zhou Yan heard a version that said he took three brothers to steal corn. He was clearly an innocent victim, but he suddenly became the mastermind.

"I remember you and your second brother ran really fast." Zhou Yan teased, and then looked at his watch, "The audition is about to start, we'll talk after we're done."

"It's okay, go ahead and get busy."

Zhou Yan nodded to the other two and was about to leave when Li Jingfei stopped him again, "Leave two more for us. We were in a hurry to go out today and forgot to bring cigarettes."

"Here you go." Zhou Yan handed over a bag directly.

"Then why are you embarrassed..."

Li Jingfei said this, but he was not polite at all and directly took the cigarette.

After giving the cigarette to Li Jingfei, Zhou Yan walked into the room.

Li Jingfei happily put the cigarette in his pocket and said, "Even if the audition today doesn't go well, it won't be in vain."

Jiao Huang asked with a smile: "It seems that you have a very good relationship with Director Zhou."

"Of course, we have a revolutionary friendship. When we were filming Three Kingdoms, he lived in the same room with a few of us. Even though he is young, he can get along well with us. It has only been a few years, but he has changed a lot now."

Li Naiwen was quite curious about Zhou Yan and couldn't help asking, "What was Director Zhou like in the past?"

"In terms of appearance, there is actually no change, only his identity has changed. When we first met, we had no idea who he was. We only knew that he was a music director and was not from the same system as us. We originally thought that he was just staying for two days and would not interact with us too much. Who would have thought that we would become such a good relationship in the end."

"Director Zhou was already quite famous when he was filming Three Kingdoms."

"How can that compare to now?"

"That's true." Li Naiwen nodded. "I heard from our teacher Gao that Director Zhou is a very hard-working person. Sometimes in class, he would bring up Director Zhou and say that if we work as hard as Director Zhou, we won't have to worry about not doing well in our major."

"Don't listen to your teacher Gao's nonsense." Li Jingfei laughed, "Even if you work twice as hard as he does, you can't achieve his achievements. Anyway, my biggest impression of him is that he is a genius, an unparalleled genius. His brain is simply incomparable to that of ordinary people, and he can burst out with superhuman inspiration anytime and anywhere."

Li Naiwen pursed his lips. The Zhou Yan mentioned by Li Jingfei was completely different from the Zhou Yan mentioned by his teacher Gao Jinwen.

According to Gao Jinwen, Zhou Yan's level of hard work is beyond ordinary people.

Teacher Gao often likes to talk about Zhou Yan's acting experience when he was on the set of "Raise the Red Lantern". He believes that Zhou Yan's acting talent is no different from that of ordinary people, but Zhou Yan studies extremely seriously and pays special attention to methods.

At this time, Jiao Huang said, "I think that Director Zhou's current success is inseparable from his hard work and talent. He must have both talent and hard work. But in order to make you study harder, Teacher Gao emphasized Director Zhou's hard work."

Li Naiwen nodded, "That should be the case. Anyway, I came here just to learn. I am very satisfied to meet all the seniors and teachers."

Li Jingfei laughed, "You don't have to be modest. The world is dominated by young people now. Let's all perform well in this audition and strive to work together in the movie."

"Well, I will definitely try my best."

Li Jingfei and Li Naiwen knew each other before. Li Naiwen's mother was an actor at Tianjin People's Art Theater, and Li Jingfei was an actor at Hebei Drama Theater. The two theaters had a lot of exchanges before.

To be honest, Li Naiwen has to call Li Jingfei uncle.

Because of this, Li Naiwen, a college student who has not yet graduated, can now stand in the corridor and chat with Jiao Huang and Li Jingfei. (End of this chapter)