HPDBC Chapter 117 In the Play
Chapter 117 In the Play
Chapter 116 In the Play
The preparation period for "Tales of Wonder" was longer than Luo Jinnian had expected. The script went from the first draft to the sixth draft. Because it needed to be localized, some things were overturned and some things were added in each draft.
Director Mo suggested during the third draft that "the pacing could be a bit tighter." Luo Jinnian went back and readjusted the structure, compressing the setup of the first three episodes into a little over one episode, and the second episode began to delve into the core event of the "disappearance."
When the fifth draft was read, Director Qin said, "The emotional storyline could be a bit stronger." Luo Jinnian then added a few more scenes between Lin Yuan and Eleven, where they communicated only through their eyes and actions without any dialogue.
When the sixth draft was submitted, Director Mo was finally satisfied.
The casting process took nearly two months. The casting director traveled to six cities, observing at children's palaces, art schools, and community activity centers, and recording videos of four or five hundred children. Luo Jinnian and Director Mo sat in the conference room watching those videos for three whole days, each with a stack of resumes in front of them. Screenshots of the children's auditions were playing, and they would pause after watching one, make a few notes, and then move on to the next.
Most children have the same problem: they want to perform too much.
When facing the camera, they unconsciously amplify their expressions, raise their voices, and their body language becomes very unnatural.
That's not what Luo Jinnian wanted; he wanted the kind of sensuality that couldn't be acted out.
The casting director found Tao Xiaopang from Guangxi, which was great. This chubby kid's eyes disappear when he smiles. He's not nervous or stage-frightened in front of the camera and doesn't deliberately look at the camera. He can also tell jokes vividly and spontaneously.
After watching the video, Luo Jinnian said, "That's him."
He discovered Zhou Mingyuan in a video of a school arts performance. He was sitting on the far side of the second row of the choir, his mouth wide open, the gap between his teeth very noticeable. During a break in rehearsal, while the other children were chatting, he took out a well-worn copy of "100,000 Whys" from his pocket and started reading it.
Luo Jinnian felt that Dustin's character was exactly like that. He loved reading, was curious, and spoke with a lisp, but everyone would listen to him finish what he had to say.
Sun Lei was the last one to be cast. The casting director found him in a youth martial arts team in Chongqing. The boy stood in front of the camera with unwavering eyes, spoke in a soft voice but enunciated each word clearly, and had a self-control that surpassed that of his peers.
After deciding on the three children, Luo Jinnian called them together with Gu Yanxi and held a week-long performance workshop in Chongqing.
Director Mo hired a children's acting coach to guide them. Every morning, they would do improvisation exercises, giving them a scenario to improvise freely, without reading the script or memorizing lines, relying solely on their on-the-spot reactions.
The first two days were a bit chaotic, and the children weren't used to performing. On the third day, Tao Xiaopang broke through that restraint first. He actually cried during an impromptu rehearsal. When the scenario he was practicing was "Your best friend is moving," his eyes reddened as he spoke, and then tears fell. He hurriedly wiped them away with the back of his hand and continued speaking without deliberately showing anything.
Zhou Mingyuan was stunned. Then he went in as well, head down and silent, his fingers clutching the hem of his clothes.
Luo Jinnian stood by and watched. Later, he wrote a line in his memo: "Not bad, not bad."
Scene setup is the most expensive and labor-intensive part of the entire project.
The art department mentioned in their location scouting report that there was an abandoned underground air-raid shelter in the factory area. It was very spacious with a high ceiling and remained damp and cold all year round, making it particularly suitable for conversion into an underground laboratory for Bureau 749.
Luo Jinnian and Director Mo went down to see it once. It was pitch black inside. The light from the flashlight cast swaying shadows on the walls, and they could hear the sound of water droplets falling, the echoes lingering in the empty space.
Director Mo stood there and looked around, then said, "No need to build anything, just modify it here." The art department spent three weeks transforming this underground space into what was needed for the show, adding a heavy iron door at the entrance, with a sign that read "749 Bureau Underground Experimental Field Third Passage 0".
A row of old-fashioned fluorescent lights was added to both sides of the corridor. When powered on, they emitted a buzzing sound and flickered occasionally. In the room at the end of the corridor, there was a row of old instruments. These machines were salvaged from flea markets, some so rusted that their original functions were no longer visible. But their presence alone created a sense of oppressive pressure, as if some unknown research was taking place.
The scene renovation on the ground floor is more complicated. The factory's residential area still retains traces of life from the early 1990s. Ivy climbs all over the walls of the tenement buildings, old newspapers and honeycomb briquettes are piled up in the corridors, and several half-dead flowers are placed on the windowsill on the second floor.
The art team added to the existing elements: a mailbox was hung at the end of the corridor on the first floor, with the words "Room 702" painted in white on it, which was Lin Yuan's house number.
A 28-inch bicycle was placed in the open space downstairs, which was the most common type of bicycle in that era.
I drew a few hopscotch squares on the wall in the corner of the yard with chalk, and the chalk marks faded naturally.
What pleased Director Mo the most was a detail the props team had done: they placed an old-fashioned television set in the windows of several buildings, with the screen facing outwards and all tuned to a static channel. When filming began in the evening, those static screens flickered in the twilight, making the entire building appear to be silently alive from a distance.
A week before filming began, Luo Jinnian brought Gu Yanxi to the set ahead of schedule.
The two walked around the factory area, from the residential area to the entrance of the underground laboratory, and from the laboratory building to the grove of trees.
As Luo Jinnian walked, he told Gu Yanxi about the shot and camera angles for each scene. Gu Yanxi didn't take notes, but stopped at certain places to take a closer look and then nodded.
Filming officially began in mid-July. The summer heat in the Sichuan Basin was unbearable; the cameras frequently shut down automatically due to overheating, forcing the crew to place ice blocks next to the equipment to cool them down. Director Mo had a very tight schedule.
We start work at 6:30 every morning and finish work almost non-stop except for meals.
The first scene was filmed on the afternoon Lin Yuan discovered Li Ming's disappearance.
Luo Jinnian, wearing a faded white shirt and carrying a military green canvas backpack, stood in front of the bulletin board below the tenement building.
A missing person notice was posted on the bulletin board, and the corner of the paper was patched up with two strips of transparent tape because it had been blown up by the wind.
He stared at the paper for a while, getting into character, so long that Director Mo, behind the monitor, was a little worried that he might be stuck. Then Luo Jinnian reached out and pressed the corner of the paper flat, then turned and left.
Director Mo called "Cut!" and peeked out from behind the monitor to ask him what he was doing when he pressed that button.
Luo Jinnian said, "The character I played, Lin Yuan, felt that the paper wasn't pasted neatly, so he wanted to make it neater. He was worried about whether Li Ming would ever come back."
Director Mo didn't speak, but nodded.
The scene we filmed in the afternoon was the one where Eleven escapes from the underground laboratory.
After Gu Yanxi shaved his head, he wore a baseball cap on set. Before filming started, he took it off and handed it to his assistant, revealing his round head.
Her frame was thinner than that of children her age, and the hospital gown was more than a size too big for her, with the cuffs hanging down to her fingers and the trouser legs bunching up at her ankles.
Gu Yanxi ran barefoot from the depths of the corridor. Luo Jinnian stared blankly at her distinct little toes. The camera shot from the front of the girl, and the light shone from behind her, making her shadow very long.
She has no lines; the entire passage in the script consists of only one description: "She runs. She doesn't know where she's running to, but she knows she can't stop."
Gu Yanxi ran three different routes, each with a different pace. On the third route, she suddenly slowed down in the middle of the corridor, not because she was exhausted, but because she was confused and didn't know how far she was going to run.
Director Mo clenched his fist behind the monitor and said, "When we finished filming the first take, Gu Yanxi was barefoot on the cold cement floor of the air-raid shelter, her soles covered in dust. Luo Jinnian handed her a pair of slippers."
She looked down at her feet without wearing any clothes and asked, "Can I still go barefoot tomorrow?" Luo Jinnian turned to look at Director Mo, who said, "Go barefoot. This character can go barefoot for a while."
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The second day's filming focused on Lin Yuan and Eleven's first encounter in an abandoned warehouse. The warehouse was on the edge of the factory area; it used to be a place to store mechanical parts but was later abandoned. The iron gate was half-open, and inside were piles of rusty gears and chains, with a layer of grease on the ground.
Luo Jinnian and Gu Yanxi stood in the warehouse, about two meters apart.
The script reads: Lin Yuan walked in with a flashlight, heard some noise in the corner, shone it over, and saw a bald girl squatting against the wall, hugging her knees like a stray cat soaked by the rain.
Director Mo shouted "Action!"
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Luo Jinnian pushed open the iron gate, and the beam of his flashlight swept around in the darkness, past the old parts piled on the ground, past the spider webs hanging on the wall, and finally stopped in that corner.
Gu Yanxi squatted there, hugging her knees, burying her face in her arms, curling up into a small ball. When the flashlight beam fell on her...
She slowly raised her head, because she sensed someone approaching and wanted to see who it was to determine if the person posed a threat.
Her eyes squinted slightly in the light, like a small animal that had just peeked out of its nest, not yet adjusted to the light.
Luo Jinnian stood there, the flashlight beam suspended in mid-air, saying nothing. The two children stared at each other in the darkness for about ten seconds, then she spoke her first line—a single word: "You—"
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They filmed over a dozen takes, and in each one, Gu Yanxi's tone when saying "you" was different. It was filled with fear, with tentative anticipation, with a trembling voice that was almost about to cry—the later takes were better and better.
Director Mo struggled to choose, saying, "Eleven isn't afraid of Lin Yuan; she's afraid of the world. Lin Yuan is the first person she's met who doesn't frighten her."
The focus of filming in the third week shifted to the scenes between the four children. Tao Xiaopang, Zhou Mingyuan, and Sun Lei had a scene in Lin Yuan's living room where they discussed how to find Li Ming. The four of them sat on an old sofa, with Lin Yuan in the middle and the other three surrounding him.