Global Film Emperor

Chapter 351 What the hell is this film?
"Get out, you're not welcome here, get out now."

"Why? Aren't I a customer? Can't I use my legal income to make purchases? I have the right to buy things, and you have no right to target me."

"I'm saying this one last time, get lost. You can complain about us, but you're not getting a single item out of here today. Get out now, or I'll beat your mother up."

Kyle looked the clerk straight in the eye, shrugged, took a bag of cereal from the shelf and tucked it under his arm. He walked to the checkout counter, threw in some change, and just as he stepped out the door, the clerk snatched the cereal back from his arm. He turned around angrily, only to be met with a vicious punch from the clerk.

A punch landed squarely on Kyle's chin, knocking him to the ground where he lay motionless for a long while before his fingers twitched. He endured the pain and dizziness as he got up, snatched some cereal from a clerk, only to be knocked to the ground again by three clerks who then ganged up on him and began to beat him repeatedly.

"Okay! Get ready... Damn, it's six o'clock. Pack your things and it's time to go home."

"Hey Lu, are you alright? Are you hurt? God, I thought I really hit you when you fell. I'm so sorry, buddy. Can you get up?"

Lu Ze was still lying on the ground with his back up. The blood plasma he had made himself, using red dye, black dye, and dish soap mixed in the correct proportions, was slowly spreading on the ground. It looked as if Lu Ze was really dead. This made the burly shop assistant a little nervous. He hurriedly went over to help Lu Ze and turned his body over, only to find that Lu Ze's eyes were closed and he was completely unconscious.

At this moment, Mickey and the others also felt something was wrong and hurriedly ran over to check on Lu Ze's condition. Mickey questioned the clerk, asking if he had really hit Lu Ze. After receiving a negative answer from the clerk, he asked Elena to call an ambulance and told everyone to move away a little. Only he and the guilty clerk, disregarding the stickiness of the blood plasma, knelt down on one knee next to Lu Ze to observe him carefully.

"Boom!!"

When Lu Ze saw that they were about to call an ambulance, he knew that the act couldn't continue and things would get really bad if they did. He suddenly opened his eyes and roared, scaring the shop assistant and Mickey so much that they fell to the ground.

"Fuck! This isn't funny! You son of a bitch! You can't joke like that!"

"Hahaha, were you scared? That's a wrap, let's go home and eat. Elena, I'm starving! What should we have for dinner?"

Lu Ze stood up, ignoring the anger in the eyes of those around him, laughed loudly, wiped the blood off his face, looked around, took a loaf of bread from the shelf, and without caring about the pungent smell of blood on his face and hands, tore open the packaging and took a big bite.

"I really want to punch you, but since you're alright... fine, you don't need to pay for the bread."

The shop assistant was a real shop assistant; after all, hiring an actor for such a minor role would have exceeded the budget. So they had to let the manager of the Ilkurburg gas station supermarket, who was good at acting, take the role himself. He did have the authority to not charge Lu Ze for the bread.

"No, no, no, you really hit me just now. My shoulder blade still hurts. You can compensate me with a box of cereal. It's settled then."

Picking up the cereal that had fallen on the ground during filming, tucking it under his arm, Lu Ze strode leisurely away from the supermarket. But instead of leaving, he squatted on the green belt at the supermarket entrance, watching the sunset and the occasional passing car, and ate his bread with gusto.

Under the setting sun, the man squatted by the roadside with cereal in his hand. The occasional passing car added a touch of humanity to the otherwise desolate scene, but it also made people feel inexplicably tight in their chests. Elena looked at Lu Ze through the window with a worried expression and asked Mickey.

"what happened to him?"

"You got too into it... After you've packed up the props, go get the car, pay for the cereal, and come pick us up when you're done."

After handing over his work, he left the supermarket and stood behind Lu Ze. For some reason, a sense of guilt suddenly welled up inside him. He squatted down next to Lu Ze, reached out from Lu Ze, pinched off a piece of bread, and stuffed it into his mouth.

"Lu Ze? You're Lu Ze, right?"

"Nonsense, of course I am."

Mickey breathed a sigh of relief, finally feeling at ease. Since nothing serious had happened, it was natural for someone like him to find it hard to resist joking around with his friends.

"That's good. I was worried you were out of your mind. It really scared me to death. I really don't have the money to find you a psychiatrist."

“No need, I have no problems, or rather, they are all temporary. Mickey, you have to believe one thing: no one can interfere with my brain except myself…”

Lu Ze tapped his temples with his index and middle fingers, swallowed the last bite of bread, smiled at Mickey, got up and dusted himself off. Elena drove back to the main entrance. The blood plasma had dried. After the two got in the car, Elena, as the driver, turned the steering wheel and began the return journey.

……

Back at Mickey's ancestral home, Lu Ze took a relaxing bath in the tub, then washed the blood off his clothes. After finishing all his business, Lu Ze came out of the bathroom with a towel drying his head. He smelled the aroma of stewed meat wafting from the room. Seeing Elena busy in the kitchen, he felt embarrassed to act like a big shot like Mickey and asked her a question.

"Do you need any help?" "No, it'll be ready soon. Um... if you could, could you get me some plates?"

"no problem."

To take care of Lu Ze, who is Chinese, Elena went to a Chinese supermarket to buy some rice. Lu Ze helped to put the rice into a plate, and she opened the pot lid, scooped out some yellow stuff and put it on top of the rice. Lu Ze used his little finger to pick up a little bit and put it in his mouth. It tasted good, and he nodded unconsciously. He picked up the plate and placed it on the dining table in the living room.

They weren't eating excrement, of course; it was just curry, which is quite common in Britain and considered a staple of British home cooking. After all, India was once a British colony, and this dish originated there.

Interestingly, curry isn't called curry in India. I forget what it's called, but it's not called curry. The ingredients are also different from those in England. The word "curry" actually originated in England. It was named after manufacturers standardized the ingredients for mass production. Later, it spread to Asia, which led to things like Japanese curry and Korean curry.

Lu Ze didn't really like curry, but it was really good with rice. Plus, beef wasn't expensive at local butcher shops, and Elena's curry wasn't like the curry sold in small shops back home, which was mostly potatoes. Instead, it was full of big chunks of beef, which made it quite satisfying.

"Mickey! Time to eat! Come here! Are you paralyzed? Do I still need to feed you?"

"Okay! I'll be there right away!"

After receiving Mickey's reply, Lu Ze opened two bottles of beer and started eating by himself. Soon, Mickey also came to the table with his laptop, placed the laptop in front of Lu Ze, and the two chatted about editing while eating. Yes, editing.

Thanks to Lu Ze's exceptional stability and the relatively easy portrayal of other characters, the filming progressed at an astonishing pace. In just two months, they had already reached the end of filming, and after shooting three more scenes tomorrow, filming will wrap up.

Half a month ago, they had already filmed quite a few shots, and the two of them started editing. In fact, this kind of work mode of shooting and editing at the same time is not recommended, but Lu Ze and Mickey are different. They know what they want and what kind of effect they want to achieve. For this movie that has not yet been released, they already have a picture in their minds.

Tomorrow's three scenes are just reshoots, added during post-production because something seemed missing. Normally, today's filming would have been completed, and editing today's footage into the final cut would have made it a complete movie.

In just two months, they filmed and edited a standard 112-minute movie. This speed is perhaps comparable only to old Hong Kong films and those poorly made Hollywood movies. But if you judge "The Effect" by the standards of a bad movie, you would be very wrong.

Lu Ze and Mickey argued more than once over editing, because Mickey insisted on using a flashback structure to edit the film, since his previous film used this structure and it failed miserably. This time, he wanted to redeem himself with "The Effect." Lu Ze, on the other hand, kept trying to persuade him to use a standard three-act structure, that is, a beginning, development, and ending.

In the end, the two had a big fight, so much so that Lu Ze was so angry that he wanted to pack up and go back to China, saying he would never film again. This move scared Mickey away. After all, the movie wasn't finished yet, and if Lu Ze left, the compensation wasn't important. The key was that he couldn't find another actor as suitable as Lu Ze. There was no other way but to follow his heart.

As for other minor details in the editing, the two had argued about them countless times. After all, Mickey was not one to listen to advice. If he had listened to advice back then, things wouldn't have come to this. If he hadn't considered Lu Ze a friend, one of them would probably have died.

The two quickly ate their food and began discussing how to use the footage from today's shoot. Elena couldn't get a word in edgewise, so she got up to clear the dishes and then went back to her room to watch the scenes to be filmed tomorrow.

She has made great progress in the past two months. After all, with an exceptionally talented teacher guiding her, it would be impossible for her not to improve quickly. Also, because of Lu Ze, she has really come to enjoy acting. However, it's hard to say what her fate will be after this filming is over.

The two in the living room worked until midnight to resolve their conflict, wasting countless hours of breath. Aside from reshooting some scenes, the complete version of "The Effect" was finally finalized.

"Phew... Let's see how it goes."

A light tap on the spacebar changed the previously frozen image, and sound came from the speaker, but the two people had their brows furrowed, clearly showing great dissatisfaction.

This has nothing to do with the movie itself; it's just that Mickey's computer configuration is a bit low. Not only are the transitions between the edited scenes not smooth, but in order to run it smoothly, Mickey also lowered the resolution, making it at best a high-definition. The sound also has problems; some shots don't record sound well. The characters' dialogue is okay, but the ambient sounds are rather bad.

There are solutions, of course. After filming tomorrow, we can go to Clive Films and have them re-edit it using professional equipment. We can also find a sound engineer to do some simple sound imitations for the audio recording. These tasks are quite simple and can be completed in about a week.

Let's get back to the movie itself. After gradually getting used to the visuals and sound, I immersed myself in the film. Gradually, I was emotionally affected. Even if it was my face showing up on the screen, I would feel a sense of unfamiliarity and experience the joys and sorrows of the protagonist. Even though Lu Ze had this experience many times before, it still felt very magical.

In the latter half of the movie, the two men lit cigarettes much more frequently, one after another, as if the room was about to catch fire. Neither of them reacted, their eyes still glued to the screen. It wasn't until the 112-minute movie ended that Lu Ze, holding the cigarette butt between his fingers, pressed the end of his palm against his eyes, tilted his head back at a 45-degree angle, feeling the pent-up frustration in his heart about to materialize, like a block of ice buried in his chest. Negative emotions kept surging out, and finally Lu Ze sighed and muttered a curse with some emotion.

"What the hell is this film I took...?"

"..."

How are my fellow book lovers in Sichuan Province? I heard there will be aftershocks around 3 PM, so please be careful and stay safe. Wishing you all a safe journey.

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(End of this chapter)