The three of them spent another half a day climbing up and down the steep slopes and steps.
Jiang Kaiwen bent over with his hands on his knees, panting. He felt like half his life had been left behind on the steps of Shancheng, while the other half was being dragged forward by Cheng Songran, who was navigating with his tablet.
He looked up at the two people ahead of him—one holding a tablet to find camera angles, the other standing at the mouth of an alley with his eyes closed to get into character—and felt utterly speechless.
Were these two made of iron?
On his end, he was about to be promoted from talent manager assistant to an unofficial, temporary worker of the Shancheng Mountaineering Association.
“Found it!”
Jiang Kaiwen dragged his nearly useless legs and shuffled over.
Looking up, he first encountered an even steeper set of stone steps. Glancing to the side, he saw a light rail track passing right through a residential building.
The train roared past the side of the building, its body scraping along the walls. The sound rolled down from above, making the stone steps beneath their feet vibrate slightly.
Cheng Songran brought the tablet over to Jiang Yue, his finger tracing back and forth between the storyboard sketches and the real scene.
“Look at this place.”
Cheng Songran thrust the tablet right in front of Jiang Yue, gesturing back and forth between the storyboard and the real view. “These steps in front of us go all the way down, out of sight. When the character walks down, the audience will instinctively feel like he's falling into a deeper abyss.”
“And when the light rail passes by, the urban noise will completely drown out his voice. At that moment, if the camera shakes a little, a sense of realism and loss of control will instantly hit the screen.”
Jiang Kaiwen's head throbbed as he listened. Having gotten a sense of Cheng Songran's temperament over the past two days, he began to voice his own opinion.
“Director Cheng, are you shooting a suspense thriller, or... making a creepy promotional video for Shancheng?”
Cheng Songran's eyes lit up. Far from being offended, he nodded seriously.
“You know what? That description actually paints a picture. It means we've got the right vibe.”
Jiang Kaiwen: “...”
Jiang Yue took the tablet, looked at the storyboard sketches that had been drawn beforehand, and then looked up at the narrow alley split by the light rail and the stone steps.
The sunlight was sliced into fragments by the buildings, scattered across the damp stone steps. In the distance, the aroma of hot pot base mingled with the scent of moss after the rain. The city was outrageously bustling, yet it crowded people so tightly they had nowhere to run.
He watched for a moment, then nodded. “This location works.”
Cheng Songran immediately leaned in. “How should we use it?”
Jiang Yue handed the tablet back. “The moment Chen Jingan first suspects his memory has been tampered with can be set here.”
“Right when the light rail enters the building, the external noise can cut off his internal monologue...”
Cheng Songran's eyes grew even brighter, and he quickly jotted down a few notes on his tablet. “This is great.”
Standing to the side, Jiang Kaiwen felt completely numb. He never thought he'd live to see the day when an actor taught a director how to shoot a film.
One really dared to suggest, and the other really dared to take notes.
Over the next few days, they traversed the old districts of Shancheng like this, walking through every key scene in the script once more.
If a previously suitable spot had been renovated, Cheng Songran would change his plan on the spot. If an alley had been painted with murals, he would squat by the roadside flipping through maps, muttering that the place had been “blessed” by sunlight and its suspenseful atmosphere had been completely exorcised.
From his initial endless complaining, Jiang Kaiwen slowly began to see the method in the madness.
Cheng Songran kept crying poverty every day, yet he lived in a mid-mountain villa, rode in an Alphard, and was picky about his bottled water brands. But when it came to creative work, it was as if his system core had been completely swapped out—he obsessed over details to an absurd degree.
His poverty was fake, but his madness was real.
By the time the grilled fish at the riverside food stall was served, the sky was pitch black.
The plastic stools swayed gently in the river breeze. The red oil in the pot bubbled and boiled, and the fragrance of chili drifted into their noses with the night wind.
Jiang Yue set down his chopsticks and looked at Cheng Songran, who was currently gnawing on a fish tail opposite him.
“The main locations are all set. When do we start shooting?”
Cheng Songran wiped his mouth and replied crisply, “Soon. The camera and art departments arrive tomorrow.”
“What about the commencement press conference?”
Jiang Kaiwen asked casually.
Cheng Songran waved his hand. “We're not doing that. It's a waste of money and time.”
Just as Jiang Kaiwen was about to nod, Cheng Songran continued.
“The day after tomorrow at nine in the morning, I'll have someone invite a master from a nearby Daoist temple, set up an incense burner, and we'll each light a stick of incense. Then, we start shooting immediately.”
Jiang Kaiwen's chopsticks froze in mid-air.
Wait.
He was holding a ritual instead?
Jiang Yue, however, was in no rush to judge. “What about the most important main location?”
Cheng Songran picked up his beer bottle and pointed across the river.
Across the river, a cluster of old tenement buildings stacked up, their window lights scattered and dim. Stairs, corridors, external air conditioners, and tangled wires merged into the night. From a distance, the entire block looked as if it had been abandoned in a corner by the city.
Cheng Songran stared at the tenement buildings.
“The core of the story is right there.”
“Chen Jingan lives there.”
Jiang Yue followed his gaze, raising his glass to clink it against Cheng Songran's.
“Alright. Here's to a smooth start to our shoot.”
The three glasses clinked in the night, a crisp sound that served as the first clap of the slate for this low-budget suspense thriller.
At nine in the morning on the day of the shoot, on a patch of open ground outside an old Daoist temple in the Jiangbei District of Shancheng, the main body of the crew had already arrived by the time Jiang Yue and Jiang Kaiwen showed up.
There was no red carpet, no media cameras flashing, and not even a canopy.
Peeling yellow paint covered the Eight Immortals table standing in the center of the open ground. A brass incense burner was placed on it, flanked by two plates of apples and mandarin oranges. Under the table lay a pig's head tied with a red string, its face pointing toward the sky, looking eerily festive.
A Daoist priest in a blue robe stood before the table with his eyes closed, his goatee swaying gently in the wind. He flicked his horsetail whisk back and forth, muttering unintelligible words under his breath.
Standing in the front row of the crowd, Jiang Yue's brow twitched slightly.
Where was this?
Uncle Ji's movie set?
He turned to look at Cheng Songran.
The director had uncharacteristically skipped his flashy, trendy clothes today, wearing only a black printed T-shirt. He was staring devoutly at the incense burner, as if what was burning inside wasn't incense, but the views and ratings of his drama.
Standing behind them, Jiang Kaiwen really couldn't hold it in. He leaned over and whispered, “Director Cheng, is this supposed to be the commencement ceremony?”
Cheng Songran didn't even turn his head, his tone entirely serious.
“Why wouldn't it be?”
“Sincerity brings results, you know? I even went to the wet market early this morning to pick out that pig's head myself.”
Jiang Kaiwen followed his gaze to the pig's head under the Eight Immortals table, feeling completely dumbfounded.
You, a young master living in a multi-million-dollar villa, went to a wet market early in the morning to pick out a pig's head?
What kind of modern performance art was this?
He couldn't help but lean in and whisper in Jiang Yue's ear, “Third Brother, is this a commencement ceremony or an exorcism? Anyone who didn't know better would think we're filming Approaching Science.”
Jiang Yue remained fairly calm on the outside, but he found it quite novel in his heart.
The commencement ceremony for 《The Hidden Sentry》 had also followed a procedure, but that was a standard setup arranged by the production company—complete with speeches from executives, a grand scale, and a very formulaic vibe.
This was indeed his first time seeing someone invite a Daoist priest directly to the set like Cheng Songran did.
Just then, the priest pulled a yellow talisman from his sleeve and waved it twice in front of the incense burner. With a soft poof, the yellow talisman caught fire, flames creeping up from the corner of the paper.
Jiang Yue's brow raised slightly. This was getting interesting.
Rate on N.U.
