1980 My Entertainment Era

Chapter 259: Luck rises greatly—in this life!

On September 9, the Red Mansion crew originally planned to shoot the scene of "Qin Keqing's Funeral", but this day happened to be the Mid-Autumn Festival on the 18th day of the eighth lunar month.

How can we film a scene like a "grand funeral" during this reunion festival?

So, everyone decided to postpone it for one day.

However, since it is Mid-Autumn Festival, we can’t just sit there doing nothing.

A day earlier, the leaders of Zhengding sent people to discuss it - it was the Mid-Autumn Festival, so could they invite the actors of the crew to hold a party and broadcast it to the audience at that time.

Following Xia Tian's idea, the county has invested a lot of resources in the Ningrong Mansions and Ningrong Street, intending to turn it into a cultural attraction.

It has just been repaired and the effect cannot be seen yet, but if the crew can help and give the local people some hope, that would be great. It can also be regarded as a publicity for the follow-up.

As the saying goes, eat people with short mouths and take people with soft hands.

They support you so much, even sending people and cars to film here, so the crew must give them face!
Don’t treat bean buns as dry food—Xia Tian: Director Wang, you are holding on to a big granary!

So of course I agreed. After all, actors nowadays are very versatile. Performing a show, singing a song, singing opera, etc. are really their main profession!

By the time Xia Tian found out, he had someone report it!
Director Wang: Leader, it happens that one of our crew’s actors, Comrade Xia Tian, ​​is here. He is also a well-known singer and actor. Let him sing a song for the people of Zhengding and wish everyone a happy Mid-Autumn Festival reunion!

The young leader heard this and said: "Great! I've seen Comrade Xia Tian on TV many times before. He's a writer, a singer, and an actor, but I've never met him in person. I must meet him this time!"
When Xia Tian knew about this, an idea suddenly came to him!

I quickly called Yanjing: "Sister Peng, yes, do you have a performance? It's like this, there is an evening party here, yes, I would like to invite you to come and sing a song..."

The sister was very considerate and agreed to the deal since it wasn't far away. Xia Tian immediately contacted her workplace to get her approval.

After everything was confirmed, Xia Tian smiled - I have it in this life~
……

The Mid-Autumn Festival Gala has been fixed in this place, after all, the highest comrades have come to the scene.

Xia Tian originally wanted to sing "May We Live Together Forever", but someone else snatched it away!

Xiaoxu, Zhang Li, Deng Jie and a few others wanted to sing this song together, but Xia Tian didn't get the chance to do so.

There were also those who sang "Grandpa Makes Mooncakes for Me" and "The Full Moon on the 15th", and the rest were some opera-type programs.

The crew even wrote a skit and asked the male actors to perform it.

Sister Peng came from dozens of miles away and "wrote" a new song for her in the summer, "Mid-Autumn Festival Reunion" - the "Reunion" by the great devil Tan Jing in the original time and space.

As for Xia Tian himself, he sang a song called "The Moon Rising in My Heart", a song by Li Jian!

"Birds fly back to the mountains and forests, the sun sets in the East China Sea
My love, where are you from?

The green mountains follow the clouds, the earth follows the rivers

This deep affection, waiting for someone to take it in

How can I place myself in this vast world?
How can I place this vast world?

Woo~ah~…"

As soon as he got off the stage after singing, Sister Peng came over and praised him: "Xiaotian's singing of this song is extremely poetic!"

After all, this is a formal art unit, and it is definitely not allowed to sing pop songs at this official party. I envy Xia Tian and his friends.

However, what impressed me about Xia Tian was his creative ability!

He has written many popular songs and tunes, which is really important for a singer.

No, I got one song just by coming here~
"Haha, thank you for the compliment, sister! I'm very proud~"

At this time, the party was basically over.

Xia Tian saw the young leader approaching surrounded by other people, and immediately made a "please" gesture and took the sister to meet the leader.

At the end, there were handshakes, photos, and chats...

Xia Tian looked back before leaving, feeling quite proud!

According to the original time and space, the two met through an introduction this year and became husband and wife the next year.

But this time the introducer became myself~
Suddenly, Xia Tian wanted to ponder over the ancient books on divination such as "Zi Wei Dou Shu" that he had collected. Was he following the will of heaven? !
——The luck will definitely rise~
On the next day, guests from many departments of radio, film and television in Yanjing came to the crew.

From deputy BU to station director, from director to chief producer, from Red Mansion consultant to Ningrong Mansion designer...all are here!

Basically all the actors have arrived to welcome the final scene of the TV series "Dream of Red Mansions".

The grand funeral is one of the few grand scenes in the Dream of the Red Chamber!
The biggest scene before was in Shandong Province, where we filmed the scene of Tanchun marrying far away, which was not described in detail in the original novel. It cost a lot to do this, and we also found some local units and enterprises to sponsor it~
Ever since Xia Tian joined the crew of Journey to the West and Red Mansions, they have all learned this trick.

At that time, we got six or seven large local ships on the seashore, made some simple decorations, and found two to three hundred extras. It was quite difficult!
The grandeur of this funeral procession lies in the props!
Everything is arranged according to the actual funeral scenes of princes and nobles of that era.

The various paper figures displayed on site - road-clearing ghosts, road-beating ghosts, fairy children offering fruits, etc. - were specially made by an 82-year-old master named Hong, who led his colleagues and apprentices in making them over several months.

Dozens of workers worked on it for several months in the backyard rooms of Rongguo Mansion.

Among them are several veteran artists who were apprentices in the old Yanjing "Mourning Clothing Shop" and have several unique skills.

In the old days, "Ming Yi Fu" was a special industry in Yanjing. It had two main businesses: one was to make paper figurines, paper horses, gold mountains, silver mountains, and tombs for families with funerals. Because these had to be burned after the funeral, they were called "burning work."

The second is to paste the house, the roof, the walls and so on, which is also a special skill.

Fu Hai, the protagonist of Lao She's "My Life", does this.

In such a grand scene, several main actresses had no chance to act.

But they were not idle either - they were temporarily transferred by Director Wang to serve as leaders of the on-site teams. They all wore straw hats and stood in the scorching sun, leading their respective teams to practice over and over again at the command of the loudspeaker.

Not to mention Xia Tian, ​​who has to take care of everything on his own, from dispatching props to allocating several shots. The assistant director is even busier than him!
Director Wang: You’d better be busy. You’re about to graduate. You’ll have to experience this sooner or later!
Xia Tian suspected that he was simply being lazy and threw the work to himself, and then went to accompany his leader himself!

Although the scale of the funeral procession is indeed quite large, and just "taking one trip" takes an hour or so, the preliminary preparations have been done to the utmost.

Not counting the movements during drills, the entire team moved three times during the formal filming alone.

The final shot was shot with three cameras at the same time, and it took most of the day to complete the shoot under natural light.

The big scene was finally successfully taken down.

Director Wang and the crew members were very proud of the smooth progress. All relevant leaders also praised Director Wang for his excellent work and hard work.

Several department leaders also asked about Xia Tian: You will graduate next year, right? That’s perfect! I’m in need of capable people here!
However, the other leaders who didn’t speak looked at them strangely: You are the only ones born by a smart mother, are we stupid?
Not to mention that his ability is already extremely outstanding, even if he has no ability, we can't give you just this reputation, right? You are still in need of capable people, if you are in need, you~
……

In the evening, the leaders had left, the actors had eaten, and they laughed and cried as they pleased, all of them in a daze.

Director Wang was like a deflated ball, completely wilted!

He sat down on a step, leaning against a pillar, his back unable to straighten.

The three years of filming had almost drained all his energy. Now that the filming was finished, he felt a little exhausted.

Xia Tian took two bottles of soda, came to Director Wang, and sat on the lower level - which was also a level higher than Director Wang.

He handed a bottle of soda to Director Wang, and the two of them drank in silence.

After finishing a bottle of soda, Director Wang recovered a little and sighed, "It's done!"

Xia Tian smiled: "Don't worry, there's still the later stages! You have to keep an eye on it too."

Director Wang nodded, not knowing what he was feeling.

From the time I was commissioned to carry out this project until now, it has been like a dream, and half a nightmare!
It is said that it is a kind of happiness to watch your work gradually take shape and finally be completed. However, not all works take shape smoothly.

The difficulty of Journey to the West lies in the objective conditions, and also because Director Yang has a stubborn temper and there are some "opponents" in the studio, but these are all visible difficulties. Just grit your teeth and persevere!
The difficulty on the Red Mansion side is different. It is "soft", omnipresent and pervasive!
From the adaptation of the work itself, to the difficulty of filming, to the debate among factions of Redologists, to the discussion of actors, to the interference of the film version...

The plot after the 80th chapter written by the original time and space screenwriter Zhou Ling could have been filmed in 12-14 episodes, but in the end only 7 episodes were filmed.

This makes the plot seem abrupt. Although it has a tragic ending that is in line with the spirit of the original work, many characters and clues are dealt with in a perfunctory manner.

It feels like a sloppy ending.

In fact, the film could have been shot and the money was available, but Director Wang was under too much pressure and couldn't handle it.

There were many factors that interfered with the filming of Dream of the Red Chamber, including those given by superiors and scholars - this was all thanks to the strong support of the two deputy directors Dai and Ruan.

But this time there was Xia Tian. First, Xia Tian had a war of words with someone in the newspaper, which attracted a lot of attention.

Later, when Redologists were fighting for the right to speak, the chief engineer said one more thing that silenced the noise.

Xia Tian had been cheering Director Wang on, and had done psychological preparation and psychological massage in advance. This time, with more people and more power supporting him, he was able to hold on.

Not only did we shoot everything as planned, but we also shot content such as "The Land of Illusion" that we never dared to think of before.

He assigned a lot of work to Xia Tian during the day, and when he went to speak in front of those leaders, this is what he said - finally made it to the end!

Director Wang stuffed the empty soda bottle back into Xia Tian's hands and said, "It's already like this. We've finished filming. Even if they want to shoot me, I'll accept it!"

(End of this chapter)