novelnext Chapter 118: Another story has ended.
Chapter 118: Another story has ended.
Chapter 117: Another story has come to an end.
The scene in the script is all dialogue, and the pace needs to be fast, so the actors need to be able to catch each other's improvisations.
Luo Jinnian practiced the blocking with them more than a dozen times in advance, telling them, "You don't need to memorize every line. You just need to know what you're going to say and how the other person will respond."
When filming officially began, Tao Xiaopang forgot his lines and paused for a beat. Zhou Mingyuan naturally picked up the conversation with "And then?"
Director Mo didn't call "cut," letting the take finish. Later, when reviewing it on the monitor, he discovered that the pause where they forgot their lines actually made the filming seem more natural. They weren't just memorizing lines; they had genuinely become close friends who could talk about anything.
A small accident happened when filming the rooftop scene. It was getting dark that evening, and Director Mo wanted to catch the fading natural light of dusk, so he called the five children to the rooftop of the tenement building.
The stairwell was narrow, and the lighting technician tripped while carrying the light up the stairs, almost dropping it. Luckily, someone nearby caught it in time.
The children stood on the rooftop. The wind was strong, making Tao Xiaopang's hair stand up.
He tried to press it down twice but couldn't, so he simply gave up.
After Director Mo shouted "Action," Luo Jinnian stood on the edge of the rooftop, looking up at the sky.
The angle was fixed, and he needed to show the changes in his expression in the next shot when he discovered something moving in the sky—fear, confusion, and a sense of helplessness that something was wrong.
He tried several times, but he always gave the expression too early. On the last try, he looked at the sky for two seconds, then squinted slightly and followed the invisible light with his gaze. Then, the corner of his mouth twitched.
Director Mo called "Cut!" from behind the monitor, then turned to the director of photography and said, "This kid is much quieter when he's acting than when he's explaining the script."
""
After that scene was filmed, it was completely dark. The children came down from the rooftop. Tao Xiaopang squatted in the corner, gulping down water. Zhou Mingyuan sat on the steps, rubbing his calves. Sun Lei stood next to Director Mo, engrossed in watching the playback.
Luo Jinnian stood under the eaves, the script in his hand rustling in the wind. He closed the script and looked up at the edge of the rooftop where he had just stood.
Dusk had completely fallen, the sky had turned a deep blue, and a few lights were on in the distance.
The underground laboratory scenes were the most expensive and difficult to film in the entire series. The art department built an "experimental chamber" set in an underground air-raid shelter. The four sides of the white metal walls were actually metal films covered with plastic sheets. When powered on, it emitted the bluish light characteristic of fluorescent tubes.
A row of instruments was placed against the wall, their screens lit up, displaying waveforms that even Luo Jinnian couldn't understand. These waveforms were made by the prop team and had no practical meaning, but they looked complex enough to make the room look like some kind of serious scientific research was being conducted.
Even fake things should have a fake sense of sophistication.
In one scene of the drama, Eleven is brought back to the laboratory to undergo a series of "tests." Gu Yanxi sits on a metal chair with her wrists and ankles tied to the armrests. Her expression is like that of an animal being anesthetized, with a rebellious look in her eyes, as if she is ready to pursue her own world at any moment.
During breaks in the laboratory scenes, Luo Jinnian noticed that Gu Yanxi would subconsciously rub his wrist every time he got off the prop chair. This wasn't acting; he was genuinely a little constricted from being tied up for so long.
Later, he asked the props team to add a soft cushion around the chair, and when Gu Yanxi got off, the rubbing of her wrists stopped.
"Thank you."
""
Luo Jinnian waved his hand: "They're all family."
During one period of filming, it happened to coincide with the rainy season in Sichuan, which lasted for four consecutive days, and all outdoor scenes were suspended.
Director Mo didn't let everyone rest. He called the children indoors and went through the next few key scenes in the temporary rehearsal hall, meticulously working on everything from their positioning to their emotions.
During a scene rehearsal, Tao Xiaopang cried several times, sitting on the ground and complaining about how difficult acting was.
Zhou Mingyuan squatted down next to him and patted him on the shoulder, while Sun Lei stood in the corner without saying a word.
Luo Jinnian sat on the folding chair next to him, holding the few pages of the script that had been turned so soft, and waited for the boy to cry for a while.
Tao Xiaopang looked up at him, his eyes still red, and asked, "Can I rest today?"
""
Director Mo wasn't a real slave owner, so he reluctantly agreed: "I'm giving you all a day off today. Go and get some rest."
""
As filming progressed, Luo Jinnian's demeanor on set changed along with the character of Lin Yuan.
He no longer needs a long time to get into character like he did at the beginning; now, all he needs to do is put on that white shirt and carry his backpack, and Lin Yuan will naturally walk in.
There's a scene where he's walking alone on the railway behind the family quarters. In the script, Lin Yuan is looking for clues and keeps walking along the tracks, not knowing where he's going.
That scene had no dialogue, no other characters, just Luo Jinnian walking alone on the railway tracks, with the backdrop of the hazy sky typical of the Sichuan Basin.
He walked about 500 meters, and Director Mo didn't tell him to stop, so he continued walking forward, past the railway tracks, past a patch of weeds, and finally arrived in front of a row of abandoned factory buildings.
Director Mo called out "Stop!" from behind. Luo Jinnian stopped and turned around. He saw Director Mo standing in the distance, muttering to himself, "This reminds me of something. When I was a child, I was walking on the railway tracks. My mother was calling me to come home for dinner, but I pretended not to hear her and kept walking forward, feeling like the world had no end."
Luo Jinnian stood in front of the abandoned factory area, listening to Director Mo's voice coming from afar. This play and all the scripts he had written over the years were actually about the same thing: what we are losing and what we are looking for.
The last shot of the entire series was filmed the day before filming wrapped.
Standing at the gate of the factory area, Shiyi looked back. Behind her were the red brick buildings where she had lived, and in front of her was a highway leading out.
She didn't know where the road led, but she knew she had to leave.
Gu Yanxi stood barefoot in front of the rusty iron gate, wearing a faded sweatshirt. That morning, fog rolled in, the typical autumn morning fog of the Sichuan Basin, thinly filtering the distant scenery into a blurry outline.
Director Mo didn't rehearse the location beforehand, letting Gu Yanxi stand in that spot for a while before starting to roll the camera.
Gu Yanxi stood for a while, glanced back at the red brick buildings behind her, then turned back, walked onto the road, stopped after a while, turned her head as if she wanted to turn back but did not, and continued walking forward.
When Director Mo called "Wrap filming," Gu Yanxi had already walked far away and didn't hear him. She walked a long way along that road, and Luo Jinnian ran after her from the film set, calling her name from the roadside.
She stopped and turned to look at him. Her face was blurred in the morning mist, but every inch of her skin was still clear in Luo Jinnian's eyes.
He ran up to her, panting, and said, "It's over."
Gu Yanxi looked down at her bare feet, then at the road stretching into the distance, and said something that left Luo Jinnian speechless: "Where will she go after she leaves?"
Luo Jinnian thought for a moment and said, "That's the story for the second season."
"Is a second season already confirmed?"
""
"It's in the script, but the actual performance will depend on the market performance of the first season."
That morning, after wrapping up filming, the crew took a group photo at the entrance of the film set.
Director Mo stood in the middle, with Luo Jinnian and Gu Yanxi on either side of him. Tao Xiaopang squatted in the front row, holding a gear he had picked up from who-knows-where.
Everyone had a natural sense of relief on their faces; the filming process, filled with laughter and exhaustion, was finally over.
In the photo, Luo Jinnian stands next to Gu Yanxi, with about a fist's distance between them, and neither of them is smiling.
Later, this photo was printed in the promotional materials for "Tales of the Strange," and one netizen commented below, "What a perfect couple they are!"
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When Luo Jinnian saw that comment, he remembered the way Gu Yanxi looked up at him when they first collaborated on "The Hidden Corner".
He had no idea then that the bald girl would later walk so far in the morning mist, and that he was the only one who chased after her and called her name.
After taking the wrap-up photos, Luo Jinnian walked through the factory area alone again.
From Lin Yuan's tenement building, walk to the abandoned warehouse; from the abandoned warehouse, walk to the entrance of the underground laboratory; and from the entrance of the underground laboratory, walk to the railway.
He stood in that open space for a while, the setting sun casting a long shadow of himself onto the walls of those red brick buildings.
"It's over. Another story has come to an end."