China Entertainment: Been working as a director since 03

Chapter 678 Drama Actors' Dimensionality Reduction Attack

"You call this okay? It's obviously very explosive, okay? I wonder if you, Teacher Zhang, have failed the exam several times before.

You have to fail several times to achieve the effect you just achieved. Even if you fail once, it won’t work.”

The person who said this was Yang Yang.

He saw reluctance, regret and helplessness in being unable to change the status quo in Zhang Yi's eyes just now.

If Zhang Yi had not had similar experiences, he would never have believed it.

"You're right. I applied to Beijing Broadcasting University but failed twice. When I looked back at the scene just now, I was actually myself back then. I dare to say this. There are not many people in the entire entertainment industry who understand the feeling of failing twice better than I do." Zhang Yi was filled with emotion.

Today he finally understood what it meant to accumulate strength and then achieve success.

It turns out that my experience of failing the exam can also be used to act out a play.

Looking back now, wasn’t his failure in the exam a test from God?
Life is really amazing.

Yang Yang stayed in the crew for a week and finished filming his scenes as the emperor.

Just as Li Yu expected, Yang Yang’s performance as the young and incompetent ruler was quite effective.

To say it's very good, I wouldn't say he has that kind of acting skills.

But 70 points is still there, and that's enough.

The emperor is just a supporting role in this movie, and it is acceptable as long as he does not drag the team down.

What's more, a big part of the reason why Li Yu invited Yang Yang was because of Yang Yang's fame and popularity.

There are many veteran and powerful actors in this movie, many of whom are not well-known anymore, so it would be more appropriate to have one or two famous actors to balance the situation.

Before Yang Yang finished filming and left the crew, he had the honor of seeing two veteran artists, Li Xuejian and Wei Zongwan, perform in a show.

The acting skills displayed by these two big guys amazed him.

The two big guys hadn't even used 100% of their strength, but he had already reached a level that he would never be able to reach in his entire life.

When the two big guys are firing on all cylinders, they are even more terrifyingly powerful.

Not to mention him, even Zhang Yi, who always thought he had good acting skills, felt inferior.

In front of these two old seniors, Zhang Yi felt like a rookie. How could he dare to claim that he had good acting skills?

"After watching the performances of the two veteran seniors, I felt that I had no acting skills at all." Zhang Yi felt like a huge blow.

“Don’t compare. You are not at the same level as them. I am not talking about you alone. I am talking about all the middle-aged actors. Including those powerful actors and movie kings, they cannot compare with the older generation of drama actors in acting skills.” Li Yu said.

When Wei Zongwan and Li Xuejian debuted, the domestic TV drama and film industries were very immature and the output was very low.

They both come from a theatre background.

Acting in a play is much more difficult than acting in a TV series or a movie.

If you don't act well in a TV series, the most you can do is to cut it off and start over.

If a play is not performed well, the audience who bought tickets will really scold you.

Also, people’s pace of life was not as fast as it is now, and people were not as impetuous as they are now, so they were able to concentrate on studying art.

Nowadays, students at Beijing Film Academy and Central Academy of Drama have just entered school and haven’t even taken a few acting classes, but they are already thinking about how to become famous.

Wei Zongwan and Li Xuejian have been performing in dramas for more than ten years. Li Xuejian has won the Plum Blossom Award in the drama industry, and Wei Zongwan was the outstanding actor in the first drama award.

In the novels about cultivating immortals, Wei Zongwan and Li Xuejian were the ones who practiced hard in isolated sects for hundreds of years before coming out.

People like them really have a dimensionality reduction effect when filming a movie, and ordinary people can't compare at all.

That's why Li Yu told Zhang Yi not to compete with them.

Different times produce different people. They started out as drama actors, so it's a bit unfair to compare them with today's actors.

Comparing the actors from 20 years ago with the actors today, the acting skills are equally overwhelming.

Twenty years ago, most movies were shot with film. As soon as the camera was turned on, it would start consuming film. If one person made a mistake, hundreds or thousands of dollars would be gone.

So twenty years ago, actors would rehearse once or even several times first, and only after they were all set would the director let the cinematographer start filming.

If there were no digital cameras and we were still in the film era, the acting skills of the young actors wouldn't be so bad.

If they don't act well, they won't even make it to the day of broadcast. Before filming is finished, the crew will declare bankruptcy due to serious overspending of the film budget, and the director and investor will go to the rooftop hand in hand.

Sometimes it’s really a bit ironic that the development of technology is clearly meant to better serve people.

It stands to reason that with the emergence of better machines, people should perform better than before.

The reality is that with better machines, people are performing worse.

Because of the low cost and high tolerance, people are no longer willing to work as hard as before.

Not long after Yang Yang left, Zhang Yi also finished filming.

The role of the young Huang Chao does not account for a large proportion of the total length of the film; the real highlight is the uprising of the elderly Huang Chao.

The following parts involve a lot of war scenes, and there are thousands of extras that need to be coordinated, which makes filming quite stressful and laborious.

However, Li Yu had handled such a large scale many years ago, and with his rich experience, he could handle it easily.

When filming the later parts, Li Yu called Li Muge and Cao Qing to come and asked them to learn how to shoot a group scene with thousands of people and how to manage thousands of extras.

Don't underestimate these, they are all technical jobs.

Looking at the entire Chinese-language film industry, there are only a handful of directors who can manage a crew of tens of thousands without causing any chaos and still shoot good pictures. They can really be counted on one hand.

Chen Kaige has been performing poorly, giving people the impression that he is a loser who is just living off his past achievements.

But if you want to make a historical blockbuster with a large scale like "Hero", you need to find a director who is capable of handling this project.

If the national master is excluded, people will find that Chen Kaige is the most suitable.

This is their core competitiveness that enables them to become great directors.

Ordinary people can hardly manage a crew of tens of thousands of people, let alone make them film in an orderly manner.

If they were asked to organize thirty people to climb a mountain together, something would happen halfway.

Some of them fell behind, some of them ran away secretly because they felt tired halfway through the climb, and some of them wandered around and no one knew where they went.

As soon as we reached the top of the mountain and counted the number of people, we found that half of them were probably gone.

It's time to go down the mountain. Some people may complain privately that this stupid tour guide doesn't know how to lead the way at all. He doesn't take us to the fun places, but only takes us to the boring places.

If there are only ten people left at the foot of the mountain, they are considered qualified.

Li Yu asked Cao Qing and Li Muge to come and study, hoping that they could accumulate some experience in this area.

Maybe they will have the opportunity to handle such a dish in the future.

Cao Qing and Li Muge understood Li Yu's thoughts, so they took it very seriously.

Sometimes, Li Yu would deliberately arrange some things for them to do, but would not give them specific methods of handling. He would only give a general idea and let them figure it out on their own.

Mistakes are bound to be made in this process of trial and error.

However, with Li Yuzhen in charge, the risks can be controlled and the film can be shot smoothly.

(End of this chapter)