Chapter 53: Looks Like A Stand-in Of The Same Type
“Did you give Old Qi some kind of potion? After getting off work and going home, he kept praising you nonstop?”
To put it mildly without exaggeration, Qi Luo An has hardly ever heard Dad praise anyone. He is always like “none of my business, do whatever you want,” and making movies or appearing on variety shows is just going through the motions for him.
But this laid-back person who is even somewhat slacking off has recently praised Yu Wei twice, from completely different angles.
Other people’s children are indeed great.
“Fast-forward to me and him becoming sworn brothers, I call him bro, and you call him dad.”
Although they had only met once, Yu Wei had a deep impression of this Director Qi. Whether in personality or way of doing things, he exuded laziness from head to toe.
When the actor asks if acting like this is okay, he says okay okay okay. When the staff tells him to interact more, he says yes yes yes. When Yu Wei shows him the revised script, he says alright alright alright.
Yu Wei has never seen such a lazy director in this lifetime or the previous one… Good news, his set finishes shooting things quickly. Bad news, what he shoots is very bad.
Completely hands-off, it’s no wonder the stuff he shoots turns out good.
Yu Wei specifically searched, and this guy is now truly the “King of Bad Movies” in every sense—shoots one bad movie after another, then continues shooting every few years, just like an old failure.
Normally, a bad movie director like this would be shouted down by everyone, but Qi Yunming’s reputation is surprisingly okay. The comment section is full of scolding him for slacking off, but few say he’s weak.
The main reason he can hang on until now is that his representative work is indeed solid enough. When young, he shot a true film and television classic with both box office and reputation booming, and it was highly praised overseas.
But later, let alone classics, he couldn’t even shoot a single good work because the quality dropped too severely. Everyone once thought that movie was shot by someone else on his behalf.
When there are no movies to shoot, he takes on some variety shows as a mentor, and the days pass just fine.
This is exactly the life Yu Wei dreams of: having had a peak, financial freedom, then slacking off and lying flat, and finding something to do when bored.
Only those who slack off know how enjoyable slacking off is.
“If you’re willing, I can also call you Old Deng.”
The matter of Yu Wei revising the script is all over netizen discussion, but Qi Luo An chatted for half a day without asking much. After all, she had seen Yu Wei’s finished script and knew his level.
Compared to creation, secondary creation is relatively much simpler.
“By the way, when is your short film coming out? This concerns my dormitory survival rights after school starts.”
It’s been a month since “Sound Mixer” finished shooting, but Qi Luo An hasn’t heard any news. Those who don’t know might think that makeshift team directly took the money and ran.
“Soon.”
Actually, editing a fourteen-minute short film shouldn’t take this long. Mainly, Yu Wei raised quite a few opinions based on the original footage, and they revised it multiple times before dragging it out to now.
He’s not that anxious. This thing is easy to edit, but the problem is how to arrange it. A short film with pretty good quality would be a pity to just post online directly—once time passes, it’s easily forgotten.
At least win some award or something.
But Yu Wei really hasn’t heard of any short film competitions lately. Maybe with the rise of short videos, the concept of microfilm seems outdated already.
Even a two-hour movie can be told in three minutes. Microfilms now have less sense of presence than short dramas.
“This thing has indeed ebbed a bit. The threshold is relatively low, but the audience is not large either—lots of effort for little reward. I’ve only seen classmates from media and film majors shoot them… Wait.”
“I remember now, there’s a National University Student Microfilm Competition, but it’s closing soon.”
This competition is for media and film major students to practice and gild their resumes. Other majors don’t have the time and aren’t interested, but one can still submit.
The prize money isn’t important; mainly, the top three in the microfilm festival can go overseas.
“A university student competition—won’t that be a bit like abusing vegetables?”
Although Yu Wei’s team is a makeshift team, they should be a bit more professional than student groups, right… probably…
“Looking down on university students?”
Some university students nowadays are terrifyingly strong, especially in shooting videos—suspense, literary, sci-fi, all covered, with camera shots and lighting as professional as can be. Not to be underestimated.
Qi Luo An has seen quite a few, so she doesn’t dare to take it lightly at all. Who knows if a dark horse will emerge and flip them over.
The organizing committee doesn’t care if you’re a star or have a good figure…
“If submitting, tell Director Lu to hurry. The submission channel closes the evening after tomorrow.”
Qi Luo An paused, then sent another message: “But if submitting, it can only be under my name, after all, you’re all Old Deng.”
“ok.”
Mainly, it depends on whether Old Lu can make it in time. As for whose name, it doesn’t matter—the production team is clearly listed, and what Qi Luo An gets is probably just the prize money.
For a competition aimed at university students, the prize money isn’t much anyway—just consider it repaying the favor for free of charge.
……
“Forgive my rudeness, but what songs have you sung?”
On the second day of program recording, Yu Wei had gotten familiar with these guests and started asking everyone about their representative song works, planning to write them into the novel as supporting characters.
Everyone knew exactly what he wanted to do.
The live broadcast from a few days ago was still fresh—Qi Yuan’s exceptional performance wasn’t enough to beat him. What could these bottom tier ones use to compete? Being stubborn?
Actually, if the song quality were a bit better, Yu Wei’s book would be a perfect promotion channel. But the problem is, who with high-quality representative works would come here?
They knew they didn’t have that strength, so when they saw Yu Wei, they started avoiding him, afraid this kid would write them in for public execution.
“Is my book the Death Note?”
Yu Wei didn’t expect to start off unfavorably. In such a big program, not a single colleague has a representative work?
This idea of his was very Versailles. Not many stars nowadays can produce representative works. Someone like him, carrying three popular songs while still writing a novel, is the rare one.
Chi Leying wanted to help, but her songs are all cover songs, and she couldn’t take advantage of others.
Asking along the way, the two arrived at the set of “The Person Who Plants Stars.” The temporary director was the veteran actor Sister Yi invited by the program team—she had acted in many popular dramas and had great audience affinity.
“Sister Yi, aren’t you also a singer?”
Stars from the early days were basically dual-career artists. Actors singing might not have great strength, but at least theme songs for film and television dramas were no problem.
As soon as this was said, it directly startled Chi Leying. From the sound of it, he planned to take on Teacher directly—such guts.
Yu Wei wasn’t acting on a whim. Qi Yuan was already among the top of their young generation. After beating him, the readers’ threshold had risen. To continue raising their expectations, he had to go upward compatible.
He also knew this Teacher Lin liked blending in with young people, which was why he asked. If it were some slick old jianghu type, he might not proactively approach.
Lin Yi, who was preparing for the audition, didn’t expect him to ask this, but after a brief daze, she quickly understood Yu Wei’s intention.
Lin Yi started as an actor, and singing was several years ago. Writing it in and losing wouldn’t be embarrassing, and she was quite curious what song Yu Wei would use to compare with her.
“Sort of. I sang a movie theme song before. You can write it if you want…” Lin Yi pointed to her script. “But you have to help me revise the script too. Can’t just revise for Teacher Qi alone.”
She had even seen last night’s trending search, so she was indeed quite with the times. Many older actors, let alone surfing, were no different from being offline.
Actually, just letting Yu Wei write it directly wouldn’t be bad, but Lin Yi was a bit curious if he really knew scripts or not, so she decided to test him.
“Alright.”
Yu Wei wasn’t very confident, but looking it over and revising was still doable. If worst comes to worst, just change a few punctuation marks.
He was just about to start writing when Chi Leying quietly pulled him out. As she walked out, she didn’t forget to give Teacher Lin an apologetic smile—her manners were impeccable.
“Teacher Lin Yi’s song was quite popular, and the audience has an emotional filter. Not easy to beat.”
For Chi Leying to be so serious about it, one could see the song’s influence. The ones Yu Wei beat before were recent new songs with not that deep audience nostalgia, but old songs were different.
“What type of song is it?”
“Time.” Chi Leying looked solemn. “I really liked this song back then. Don’t laugh, but I cried listening to it several times.”
Time? Looks like the same type of stand-in.
