novelnext Chapter 88 Breaking Records and Pushing the Bumper
Chapter 88 Breaking Records and Pushing the Bumper
Chapter 88 Breaking Records and Pushing the Bumper
Since the release of the new Chocolate phone's GGMV, Li Zhixing has devoted all his energy to filming "IRIS".
Although he didn't have many scenes in the first half, he still arrived at the set early every day, basically the earliest among all the actors.
In the evening, after the director officially called it a wrap, we would leave with everyone else.
On the second day after the premiere, at 6 a.m., Li Zhixing arrived at the Wenjingdong film set.
By this time, most of the crew members on set had already arrived.
The lighting, photography, art direction, and props teams were all busy at their respective tasks, and the action team had also gathered together to begin preparing for the action scenes to be filmed today.
Today's filming scene is about Kim Hyun-joon leading a North Korean terrorist squad to infiltrate the NSS headquarters and launch a terrorist attack.
There are quite a few action scenes in this film.
It not only involves the coordination of gunfights, assaults, suppression, and knockdown reactions, but also the movement within the NSS headquarters, explosion points, safe distances, and the coordination between extras and stunt performers.
Therefore, the action team started checking the firearms and props, confirming the movement routes, and checking the objects and scene details to be used later with the on-site staff early in the morning.
Li Zhixing didn't rush to the actors' rest area, but instead went over first to help confirm the props and blocking needed for the day.
They had to film all the scenes in Seoul for the first ten episodes within a week.
Next week, the crew will travel to Hungary for ten days of location shooting.
Therefore, the pace on set these past few days has been even tighter than before.
The staff were busy working while chatting about the first episode that aired last night.
Several newcomers in the action group even argued heatedly about who was prettier, Kim Tae-hee or Kim So-yeon.
Before the argument could reach a conclusion, action director Park Jin-woo kicked him.
Just then, a voice filled with laughter came over.
"Knowledge and action, knowledge and action."
The one waving and greeting Lee Ji-hyeong was Kim So-yeon, who had also arrived at the set early.
She was being supported by her assistant, and her left foot was hesitant to put any weight on it.
Li Zhixing handed the things in his hand to the action crew next to him, and then walked over there.
"Soyeon noona, what happened? Did yesterday's filming aggravate your foot injury again?"
Kim So-yeon smiled and waved her hand.
"It's nothing, it's alright."
"I stood for a little too long yesterday, and my muscles felt a bit tight this morning, but it'll be fine after a while."
Her ankle was still bandaged, and although it looked a bit in the way, it wasn't enough to affect the filming.
Kim So-yeon, clearly oblivious to her foot injury, beamed with joy and a hint of smugness as she asked happily, "Ji-hsing, did you read the viewers' comments after the first episode aired?"
Seeing Kim So-yeon's obvious desire to share her joy, Lee Ji-hyun readily agreed and asked, "Oh, I haven't had a chance to see it yet. Is the response pretty good?"
"How could you not watch it?"
As she spoke, Kim So-yeon took out her phone.
"Come, come, let me show you how to find it."
She opened the message board page on the IRIS website.
"IRIS" is one of the most anticipated TV series recently. Before its premiere, the official website's message board was very active.
After the first episode aired last night, thousands of new comments were added.
Kim So-yeon scrolled down, and Lee Ji-hyun also saw the various comments.
"The first episode is so fast-paced, it's more like a movie than a TV series."
"As expected of Lee Byung-hun, the opening gunfight scene was breathtaking."
"Kim So-yeon's look this time really suits her. Short hair, black clothes, and a spy vibe give her a completely different feel compared to 'All About Eve'."
Then Kim So-yeon paused over a few comments about herself.
"Although Kim So-yeon doesn't have many scenes, her presence is very strong."
"Kim Sun-hwa is a very charismatic character, cool and efficient. The later scenes should be very interesting."
"I didn't have this impression of Kim So-yeon before. This image change is very successful."
"The most surprising thing in the first episode was Kim So-yeon; she made a lasting impression in just a few scenes."
39
Looking at the comments, Li Zhixing smiled and said, "Congratulations, Nuna, it seems this role is very well received."
Kim So-yeon immediately smiled so hard her eyes narrowed, and she couldn't stop smiling.
He even looked a little silly.
The pressure that had been building up on her recently has eased somewhat, and at least the role has gained initial recognition.
Kim So-yeon put in so much effort for this drama and placed incredibly high expectations on it.
In retrospect, although she didn't have much screen time in the first episode, the amount of discussion about her new look, her cold and beautiful appearance, and her cool and sassy image was actually no less than that of the female lead, Kim Tae-hee.
This was completely beyond her expectations.
She excitedly talked to Li Zhixing for a long time until the staff called her to touch up her makeup.
Before long, the actors arrived one after another, including Kim Seung-woo, who didn't have any scenes in the morning. Everyone gathered together to chat about the first episode that aired last night.
Lee Byung-hun also unusually participated in the discussion.
Kim Tae-hee seemed a little down. Lee Byung-hun invited her over to chat several times, but she declined each time, staring blankly at her phone.
Lee Ji-haeng glanced at Kim Tae-hee's assistant, Lee Soo-jin, for a meaningful look.
Li Xiuzhen said in a low voice, "It might be related to the reaction to the premiere."
Lee Ji-haeng nodded, took a bottle of water from her hand, and walked towards Kim Tae-hee.
"Nunna, please have some water."
"Ugh————"
Kim Tae-hee looked up at Lee Ji-haeng.
"Thank you, Zhixing."
Then he looked down and saw a familiar water bottle, and instinctively glared at it.
"Hey, you brat."
Li Zhixing chuckled and pulled up a chair to sit next to her.
Why are you so listless?
He glanced at her phone screen and saw that it was indeed the message board interface of the IRIS official website.
"I think the reviews of Noona are alright; not many people are criticizing you."
Kim Tae-hee's face was full of anxiety.
"What do you mean 'okay'? It's extremely dangerous!"
Kim Tae-hee pointed to the screen and said methodically, "After yesterday's broadcast, the message board received more than 1,300 new comments."
"Only 210 of them specifically mentioned me."
"There were 158 comments praising my appearance, 17 criticizing my acting, and only 6 praising my acting!"
"The rest of the discussions were mostly about the characters, the costumes, and my scenes with other actors."
Li Zhixing was stunned as he listened, and then carefully looked at her somewhat tired face.
"Noona, you didn't stay up all night scrolling through and organizing the comments, did you?"
"I----"
Kim Tae-hee was speechless for a moment, then patted his shoulder hard.
"Oh, is that the important point?"
Lee Ji-haeng grimaced; Kim Tae-hee's slaps had been hurting a bit lately.
"Overall, isn't this mostly praise for you? You're good-looking, the role suits you, and the profiler's intellectual temperament matches you perfectly. These are good comments!"
Kim Tae-hee sighed.
"The vast majority of those comments were left by my fans, and of course they would praise me."
Then she lowered her voice and said, "Soyeon only appeared for less than ten minutes in the first episode, but she received a total of 190 comments, only 20 fewer than me."
"Not only that, the comments are overwhelmingly praising her, praising her short hairstyle, action scenes, gun-holding posture, acting skills, and everything else."
"Soyeon's first appearance received almost no negative reviews."
"Unlike me, all I can praise is my face, and almost all of those comments are from fans."
"Zhixing, what should I do? Am I going to get scolded again?"
Kim Tae-hee looked at Lee Ji-haeng with a worried and pitiful expression.
Li Zhixing couldn't help but laugh and asked, "Nuna, did you tally my comments?"
Kim Tae-hee rolled her eyes at him.
"You didn't even participate, what statistics are you going to compile?"
Then, Li Zhixing didn't change the subject anymore; he sighed.
"Noona, the audience hasn't even started criticizing you yet, why are you already getting anxious?"
"And you should have expected this a long time ago."
"Because of the reactions to your past works, and the label of 'GG star,' audiences are naturally more critical when they look at you."
Kim Tae-hee looked at him, her expression somewhat sad.
"So, I'm going to get really badly criticized again this time, right?"
Li Zhixing paused for a moment.
He could sense that Kim Tae-hee's acting in "IRIS" was actually an improvement compared to her past performances.
However, the improvement is not very obvious.
Kim Tae-hee's acting talent is rather lacking, or rather, the gap is more obvious compared to her outstanding appearance.
In particular, Kim So-yeon's new look is already showing signs of becoming a huge hit.
In comparison, as the series airs, Kim Tae-hee will likely face more and more intense criticism.
Furthermore, the gazes falling upon her will only become more and more critical.
Li Zhixing didn't say anything to comfort him.
Kim Tae-hee isn't stupid; she was able to get into Seoul National University.
Those perfunctory words of comfort meant nothing to her.
"Noona, today's NSS terrorist attack scene is very important; it's a major climax in the middle of the story."
"You're estimated to be filming for over ten hours today."
"You can't be anxious anymore. You didn't sleep well last night, you won't be able to hold on today."
"Wait until the audience really starts criticizing you before you figure out how to deal with it."
"What does it mean to be anxious in advance?"
"Let's go, let's go, there's still some time, let's rest in the van for a while."
Lee Ji-haeng stood up, took the phone from Kim Tae-hee's hand, and then gave Lee Soo-jin a wink, signaling her to help Kim Tae-hee to the van.
Kim Tae-hee caught a cold recently and hasn't fully recovered yet.
This time, with both anxiety and lack of sleep, she definitely doesn't look well.
Kim Seung-woo, who was not far away, glanced at it twice and knew what was going on.
He said softly, "The more you pay attention to those voices, the easier it is to get trapped."
It's 8:30 in the morning.
As the actors and staff eagerly awaited their arrival, Jung Tae-won and Kim Kyu-tae finally emerged from the office, while writer Kim Hyun-joon was conspicuously absent, clearly hiding somewhere writing his script.
After resting for a while, Kim Tae-hee looked much better and was waiting with the actors and staff for the director to announce the ratings.
Jung Tae-won and Kim Kyu-tae walked over, and the staff members surrounded them.
Jung Tae-won gave Lee Ji-hyun a strange look, said nothing, crossed his arms and stood aside, leaving the task of announcing the ratings to the director.
Kim Kyu-tae chuckled at Lee Ji-haeng, his expression quite amused.
Li Zhixing was somewhat confused.
What's going on with these two?
Kim Kyu-tae cleared his throat and picked up the piece of paper in his hand.
"Our show's premiere ratings were ————"
He paused for a moment, then, unable to contain his laughter, shouted:
"24.8%!"
"What?"
"Really?"
"Are you kidding me?"
This result clearly surprised everyone.
Everyone, from the actors to the crew, was stunned.
Then, a barrage of questions began to rang out.
Jung Joon-ho stepped forward and eagerly took the paper to read it.
The sign above read: "IRIS" ratings: 24.8%.
"You're Beautiful" has a viewership rating of 8%.
There is no viewership data for the "Heading the Ball to the Earth" segment.
After confirming that the numbers were correct, the staff cheered.
The premiere achieved a viewership rating of 24.8%, breaking the record for the highest premiere rating for a TV series this year.
This also means that there is even a chance to reach 40% in the future.
As for the level of success of dramas like "Queen Seondeok" and "Brilliant Legacy," it's certainly worth a shot, given how rare this premiere viewership rating is.
The actors were also exclaiming and cheering loudly.
Kim Tae-hee temporarily forgot her previous anxiety and laughed happily with Kim So-yeon.
The atmosphere on set suddenly became extremely lively.
Li Zhixing was also quite excited; this was an absolutely brilliant start.
However, he still managed to get close to Jung Tae-won, who was trying hard to suppress his laughter and whose legs were shaking uncontrollably.
"Representative Zheng, what happened to 'Heading the Ball Towards the Earth'? It wasn't broadcast yesterday?"
Zheng Taiyuan nodded.
"Yes, they broadcast a baseball game yesterday."
However, Zheng Taiyuan then added, "There is another piece of news that is not so good."
"Um?"
"Heading the Earth" has been decided to end early.
"It has been shortened from the original 20 episodes to 16 episodes."
Li Zhixing looked at him in surprise.
"That bad? Looks like not only are the ratings bad, but GG isn't selling either."
"This forced the TV station to shorten the number of episodes to cut its losses."
Zheng Taiyuan nodded.
"So, we're about to face MBC's next competitor ahead of time."
Seeing Lee Ji-hyeong's questioning look, Jung Tae-won said, "Lee Joon-gi's 'Hero'."
Lee Joon-gi —
Li Zhixing paused for a moment.
Since the release of "Haeundae", Lee Ji-hyung has been relentlessly attacked by Lee Joon-gi's fans for a long time.
Moreover, Lee Joon-gi has always been very popular.
Last year's "Iljimae" propelled his popularity to its peak, and now, more than a year later, he has a new work. It remains to be seen whether it will impact "IRIS".
After everyone had finished laughing and joking around, director Kim Kyu-tae shouted a few times to urge the overly excited staff to get ready for filming.
Kim Kyu-tae then took out several banknotes from his wallet, which were the money that everyone had bet the day before.
A total of 90,000 Korean won.
He waved the money in his hand and said, "You know how much you bet yesterday, right?"
"Hey, I didn't expect that kid Zhixing would actually win."
"Wow, the premiere ratings are outrageous!"
Li Zhixing accepted it with a smile.
"Thank you, director."
Kim So-yeon said with some regret, "It's a pity we were just 0.2 points short, otherwise we could have filmed the helicopter scene designed by Zhixing."
The others had obviously also thought of yesterday's 25% bet.
Jung Tae-won promised that if the viewership rating reached 25%, he would consider filming a scene where they compete for nuclear physics experts on a helicopter.
Kim Tae-hee couldn't help but step forward and say, "Representative Jung, it's only 0.2 percentage points short. Why don't you reconsider? Ji-hyung is also trying to make the plot more exciting."
Lee Byung-hun also looked at Jung Tae-won.
He was prepared to try to persuade Zheng Taiyuan if he refused.
His words still carried weight with Zheng Taiyuan.
Zheng Taiyuan pretended to consider it for a moment, and was about to reluctantly nod in agreement.
Unexpectedly, Li Zhixing objected first.
"That won't do. If it's 25, it's 25. If it doesn't meet the standard, it doesn't meet the standard. That scene will still be filmed according to the original plan."
Zheng Taiyuan nearly choked to death.
He glared at Li Zhixing.
The others also looked at him with strange eyes.
Kim Tae-hee tugged at him.
"Why are you taking this so seriously?"
"You don't want that scene anymore?"
Li Zhixing, however, said righteously, "Nuna, this does not conform to my principles. Do what you should do."
"Helicopter scenes cannot be filmed!"
"ah!"
Kim Tae-hee slapped him hard again, glaring angrily.
"Hey, you actually have principles, kid?"
Jung Tae-won couldn't help but complain.
He then realized that the kid had seen through his thoughts again.
After learning about the premiere's ratings from KBS that morning, he and Kim Kyu-tae had already discussed it in the office and decided that the helicopter scene had to be added.
In order to further boost ratings, this scene not only needs to be added, but it also needs to be filmed to be exciting enough, and even needs to be promoted and hyped up in advance.
He originally intended to carefully consider his stance before agreeing.
I never expected that this cunning kid wouldn't even give him this much face.
He didn't really not want to film; he just wanted more benefits.
"Hey, Li Zhixing, what are you up to now? Don't push your luck!"
Seeing that his thoughts had been exposed, Li Zhixing chuckled.
"Representative Zheng, since we're going to film the helicopter scene anyway, why not increase the budget a bit?"
"How about we add another set of close-up aerial chase shots?"
"Li Zhixing, why don't you just blow up the plane?"
"Huh? Is that okay? Or how about we buy another scrapped helicopter?"
"Hey...
"7
Jung Tae-won's expression was uncertain. After much hesitation, he still did not agree to the request to add more chasing shots on the spot.
He simply said, "Let's study it some more."
However, upon seeing the smile on Li Zhixing's face, he became displeased again.
"Since Li Zhixing won the bet on the ratings..."
"Then let's have dinner together tomorrow night, Li Zhixing will treat!"
Li Zhixing was dumbfounded.
"No, I have to treat everyone to a meal for a bet of 90,000 won?"
Which production team made the maknae (youngest member) treat everyone to a meal?
......