This director needs to apologize

Chapter 393 Testing Cadres
By mid-April, "Searching for the Heart" had been roughly a quarter completed. It coincided with a continuous heavy rain in Shenzhen, so the scheduled outdoor scenes could not be filmed at all, and the lighting for the indoor scenes was not ideal. Chen Yiming simply gave the crew a holiday and continued the shoot a week later.

The leading male role, Liu Haoran, has been subjected to high-intensity training for a month and is almost reaching his limit. He urgently needs to relax.

The day before the holiday, Chen Yiming received Shen Pengfei who came to visit him. This elder sister was still in a hurry. When she saw Chen Yiming, she informed him of the work progress without even saying hello.

When the Cannes organizing committee learned that Chen Yiming would be exhibiting his new film, they naturally welcomed him warmly. However, there was no way around it. The film festivals have not had an easy time in recent years, with both commercial sponsorship and copyright sales showing a downward trend.

A more direct impact is that heavyweight filmmakers increasingly prefer to work behind closed doors. Eye-catching names at each film festival are becoming increasingly rare, and as a result, the film festivals have also seen a significant drop in attention.

Now that Chen Yiming is willing to return to the Cannes family, they naturally welcome him wholeheartedly.

Artistic director Henry Sr. also promised that if the schedule is tight, there could be some more time, and the submission could be submitted half a month before the opening day.

You should know that the registration deadline for Cannes is June 6th. Old Henry opened a back door for Chen Yiming for more than a month. This is the potential benefit of being "one of our own".

Chen Yiming directly attributed the credit to Shen Pengfei in front of him, and praised Sister Shen for her reliability.

The two have been cooperating for five or six years. Although the bulk of Platinum's overseas business was signed to Warner, Shen Pengfei, as the middleman, also benefited a lot. Not to mention anything else, the big turn of "The 13th Floor" was led by Shen Pengfei alone, which not only maximized the profits, but also gave a light blow to Warner, which had ulterior motives. It was a win-win situation for all parties!
Before the filming of "The Heart" was completed, the contact person from Warner China had already visited the set three times and had already reserved the priority rights for distribution and adaptation.

They didn't have that enthusiasm last year.

Shen Pengfei also took Xiangrui and Wang Wei on a tour abroad, winning several awards from second- and third-tier film festivals. This was a training trip before officially launching their bid for the top three European films.

This time Shen Pengfei came here to learn more about "Searching for the Heart". She ran around and made arrangements for a long time, but still didn't know what the story was about.

More importantly, it was to gather information for old Henry, so as to help Cannes determine the direction of publicity.

That’s right, it’s not the movie that accommodates the film festival, but the film festival that accommodates the movie. This is Chen Yiming’s current situation.

To quote Shen Pengfei, old man Henry is eagerly hoping that Chen Yiming can once again deliver the same technical shock as in "1951".

Chen Yiming could only express regret about this. "Heart-Searching" is just a mediocre feature film with no innovation in terms of technology. The theme and concept can even be said to be outdated. The so-called spiritual redemption has long been something that European directors disdain.

Shen Pengfei was not disappointed. In her opinion, Chen Yiming has now crossed that threshold. Participating in an exhibition is just participating in an exhibition without having to worry about the preferences of the officials and judges.

The playing was so skillful that Chen Yiming could hardly suppress the smile.

After discussing the business, Chen Yiming invited Shen Pengfei to dinner, and the two of them caught a flight to the capital that evening.

This time, I was summoned by Wu Lianjing to guest-star as a script doctor and to see a girl at the same time.

As soon as I walked out of the airport exit, I saw a familiar driver. I followed him to the parking lot. Through the half-open window, I could see who was sitting in the back seat but An Xixi.

"Why did you think of picking me up? It's almost 11 o'clock. Don't you have to work tomorrow?"

An Xixi pursed her lips and shook her head, "I can't wait to see you. I don't have anything to do this week, so it's okay to sleep late."

Chen Yiming was a little dizzy after being hit by the girl's straight punch. What was going on? Was there honey on her mouth?
The two of them have always been respectful to each other in their interactions. There is very little physical contact and almost no sweet words. The most common situation is that they stay together and do their own things.

Chen Yiming picked up a small hand and clasped it lightly with his fingers crossed, but continued to talk about work.

"Don't you have a notebook?"

An Xixi seemed to feel uncomfortable with the posture. She pulled her hand out and put it back under Chen Yiming's armpit. With her other hand, she grabbed Chen Yiming's arm and leaned over. She aligned the valley with the peak in a few moves, and let out a sigh of relief. Then she answered, "Yes, there is, but I don't like any of them. I want to continue to rest."

The girl felt comfortable, but Chen Yiming felt a burning sensation in his heart. Even through several layers of clothes on his arm muscles, he could still feel the amazingly soft touch.

You are using this to test cadres? Which cadre can stand such a test?

He coughed twice and asked a stupid question to divert attention.

"Auntie can't let you stay at home and do nothing. I see. Did Auntie go abroad?"

Chen Yiming let out a wicked laugh, which prompted An Xixi to punch him like a massage, and he felt very comfortable after being punched so hard.

Mother An is a person who wants her daughter to become a successful person. When her own acting career failed halfway, she placed her hopes on her daughter. Otherwise, with her pride, how could she have gone through so many twists and turns to get to know Chen Yiming?

Chen Yiming only found out later that the "blind date" was just a wishful illusion of Ma Erye. An's mother had no such idea at all. Before An Xixi became famous and had a family, she wanted her daughter to stay away from all the bad men. Chen's self-discipline is definitely a big deal. If he had a few "confidants in the circle" like Dazhuang, An's mother would definitely break up the couple. It's not like she can get away with just giving him a bad face during the New Year's greetings.

Now the two of them have made things clear in front of their respective parents, but An's mother still made a promise in advance: no talking about marriage before establishing a career, and no messing around before getting married, which put two tight rings on Chen Yiming.

Any other virgin man in his thirties would be chasing after An Xixi and urging her to pursue her career, even using his own resources to pave the way for her. This would be exactly what An's mother wants.

Unfortunately, Chen Yiming is a weirdo. He is very satisfied with the current way of getting along with others and is content with the status quo and has no desire to make progress.

Perhaps the exhaustion from his previous life's dissolute lifestyle carried over into this one. Although he was at an age full of vigor and vitality, Chen Yiming did not have many actual physiological needs and lived like an old cadre who had gotten rid of vulgar interests.

The driver raised the tailgate when the car started, and the two of them kissed happily in the back seat without being disturbed. When the car stopped in front of An Xixi's house, the girl was already in a daze.

Chen Yiming looked around, patted her on the back and asked, "Why did you bring me to your house?"

An Xixi opened her blurry eyes and met Chen Yiming's clear and smiling eyes. She swung her fist at him in shame and anger.

Chen Yiming groaned after being punched twice by Peng Peng. The third punch turned into a massage, accompanied by a low grunt, "Mom agreed."

As Chen Yiming pulled the girl out of the car, he deliberately said loudly, "Auntie really cares about me. Unlike some people, they commit domestic violence before they get married."

The driver held back his laughter and backed away. An Xixi was too embarrassed to do it in front of others, so he went into the house first.

Naturally, they slept separately at night. An Xixi was just being stubborn. If she was really asked to disobey her mother, she would not dare to do so.

The next day, Chen Yiming slept until noon, which was a rare occasion. After having breakfast and lunch with his girlfriend, he still took the same car as last night to keep his appointment with Wu Lianjing.

The meeting place was Wu Lianjing's courtyard house in Houhai. Boss Wu's huge mansion occupied half of the alley, it was so luxurious.

The three connected large courtyards were all connected, and it took more than half an hour to walk through the row of long houses from south to north.

This is the kind of enjoyment that money cannot buy. If you don’t have enough foundation, you can’t keep it even if you buy it by taking advantage of the rebirth loophole.

After visiting the mansion, we went to the workshop for a meeting.

Wu Lianjing's screenwriter team has all arrived. This script has been worked on for nearly half a year and has been revised seven times. Everyone felt that it was relatively mature before they gave it to Chen Yiming for "inspection".

It's called an acceptance inspection, but looking at Wu Lianjing's boastful attitude, it feels more like he's asking for praise after finishing his homework.

Chen Yiming flipped through the book quickly while sipping tea. Judging from the thickness of the book, it was obvious that it was very complete, with all the scene descriptions, dialogues, and psychological annotations included.

It is still Wu Lianjing's usual concise and bright style, with a clear opposition between good and evil, smooth emotional expression, and full of positive energy.

The story is not complicated. In order to track down the mastermind behind the first part, the protagonist Qin Feng retired from the army and came to a small country in the southern continent alone, working as a security guard in a foreign-funded factory as a free mercenary.

In fact, Qin Feng was targeting the big boss behind the factory. The assistant beside him was none other than the White Paper Fan, a drug trafficking gang that escaped in the prequel.

Taking advantage of the opportunity when the big boss came to inspect the factory, Qin Feng caught Bai Zhishan and forced him to tell the truth. The big boss and the drug boss in the prequel were both branch managers and belonged to the same large transnational criminal group.

This factory is just a cover. It is actually a transit point for human traffickers and uses local employees to conduct illegal drug experiments.

As expected, Qin Feng's whereabouts were exposed. After a gun battle and chase, Qin Feng escaped from the factory.

However, when Qin Feng left the factory, he found that the situation outside was in chaos. Anti-government armed forces suddenly attacked the capital and were killing people in the city.

Qin Feng had no choice but to continue escaping, and rescued several Chinese compatriots along the way, protecting them as they fled to the Chinese Embassy.

Just before the evacuation, embassy officials received a distress telegram that a Chinese aid construction team was besieged by anti-government armed forces in a small town 165 kilometers away from the capital, and the situation was critical.

The ambassador had no choice but to ask for help from the local government. Although the latter sent troops, their military strength was limited to only more than 100 people.

At the critical moment, Qin Feng stepped forward and expressed his willingness to go with them. Under the flying national flag of the Chinese warship, Qin Feng saluted solemnly and went to the danger alone again.

(End of this chapter)