Bright Era of China Entertainment

Chapter 779 Lyrics and Arrangements

We had dinner with the crew at the restaurant on the villa set and called it a day.

It was a rare day without a late show, and the teachers were in a good mood, so they decided to walk together on the streets of Shenzhen.

Chu Xuan, Liu Yifei, Zhou Jielun and Fang Wenshan had something to discuss, so they did not go out to play with the teachers. They asked the staff to stay on the set to clean up the mess, and then they returned to the hotel with Liu Xiaoli in the nanny car.

"When will the rest of my scene be over?" Liu Xiaoli asked as she got out of the nanny car when it stopped in the hotel's underground parking lot.

Chu Xuan got out of the car and looked at his mother, jokingly saying, "Mom, are you addicted to filming? You actually asked me this proactively, which is very different from your previous look of disgust."

Liu Xiaoli smiled and lifted the bag on her right shoulder: "A little bit, I suddenly feel that filming is quite fun."

Zhou Jielun, who got off the car later, raised the corner of his mouth. Filming is fun, but this word rarely appears to new actors. People like Aunt Liu made a lot of low-level mistakes today and had to change their lines. If it were someone else, they would at least be scolded.

In other words, Aunt Liu is the queen of the crew, but she is also a very nice person. No one in the crew will say anything bad about her. Instead, they are willing to actively and enthusiastically comply with her. This is of course very fun.

"Mom, the sponsorship period for the scene in which you're going to act next is scheduled for ten days or half a month later. I'll tell you when the filming starts." Liu Yifei smoothed her hair and walked towards the elevator with the group.

"Will it take that long?" Liu Xiaoli said with a hint of regret.

Today's filming really brought her a lot of freshness, so much so that she became a little addicted to acting.

The daughter and son-in-law in the play are in love, and she, as the mother and mother-in-law, has to break up the couple, but also slowly compromise until they give their blessings. She has to argue with her daughter, and also argue with her son-in-law. This situation has never happened in real life and it needs to be filmed in the play, and she has to act with her own daughter and son-in-law. It's fun to think about it.

Too bad, we still have to wait for a while.

Taking the elevator to the floor of the room, Liu Xiaoli came out of the elevator and invited: "Jie Lun, Teacher Fang, can I listen to what you are discussing? If I don't want to disturb you, come to my room and eat some iced fruit. It's comfortable to eat something cold occasionally in this weather."

"Are there any chilled fruits again? Auntie, you are so impatient. I won't be polite then." Zhou Jie Lun said with a smile.

He felt Aunt Liu's enthusiasm on the crew these days. Perhaps it was because the "My Love from the Star" crew was the territory of her daughter and son-in-law, Aunt Liu's enthusiasm towards the crew was even better than what he had heard from hearsay. From time to time, she would buy some chilled food, small fans or some preventive medicines for the crew at her own expense.

When he shared his life on the set with his mother Ye Huimei, his mother was looking forward to asking him to invite Aunt Liu to visit their home in Taiwan. His mother really wanted to make friends with Aunt Liu, a very friendly peer, but it also depended on whether the family was free.

Although the crew would arrange meals every day, Aunt Liu would always cook and make some fruit snacks for Lao Chu and Xixi out of her concern for them. As a producer, he was close to the couple and naturally became a beneficiary.

He is now familiar with Aunt Liu and goes there every now and then to eat and drink. Aunt Liu's iced fruits are not simple, and they are made with exclusive recipes such as milkshake and curry. They are always swept away by them. When he heard that Aunt Liu had made iced fruits again, he was so greedy that he accepted the order without hesitation.

Seeing that Zhou Jielun was so rude, Fang Wenshan followed his family to Liu Xiaoli's suite without saying much.

On the way, Zhou Jie Lun went to his room to get his laptop. He sat on the sofa with everyone, eating fruits and delicacies while opening the music production software and pressing Enter to play a song.

"What song is this? The high notes are so high, it sounds like Russian?" Liu Xiaoli picked up a piece of watermelon with a toothpick and ate it while listening to the music playing on the computer. When she saw that it was a foreign song with very high notes, she couldn't help but ask curiously.

"Yes, Russian. You know Vitas, the soprano prince of global pop music? This song is his representative work, and its translation is "Stars." Liu Yifei picked up a piece of dragon fruit with a toothpick.

Liu Xiaoli nodded. She had heard the name but was not familiar with it. She was more curious about the purpose of playing this song: "Are you going to use this song in the play?"

A director, a chief producer, a music producer, a lyricist and artistic coordinator, they had something to discuss and brought up such a song. She had some guesses for a moment.

"Yes." Zhou Jielun nodded, ate a piece of cantaloupe, chewed it and said, "The songs on this album that I collaborated on have limited styles. There are two situations that don't have good music to match, so I found this song and another song to fit them."

"My Love from the Star" has two plots. One plot is about Song Huiru, played by Yang Mi, and Yang Feifei, played by Gulina, who walk out of the shadow of unspoken rules, presenting a picture of moving from darkness to light. Here, a more inspirational music is needed to express the emotions.

One plot is the two-way running of the male and female protagonists in the ending. After the male protagonist knows that the "virtual world" is the "real world", he awakens from the breakup state, gives up everything in reality and travels to the female protagonist's world to reunite with the female protagonist who is waiting for him. Strong emotional music is needed here to render the biggest climax of the whole drama.

But whether it is the need for inspirational or strong emotional music, there is no such style in his album "Capricorn", so he, as the music producer in charge of this area, found two songs to fill these two gaps.

One song is "Stars" by Vitas, which serves as a musical plot point that evokes strong emotions in the happy ending of the hero and heroine.

One song is Zhang Shaohan's "Invisible Wings", which serves as an inspirational musical plot point for the two female supporting characters to step out of the shadows.

"A foreign song, is it really appropriate to put it in this drama?" Liu Xiaoli roughly understood what was going on, but based on her own understanding, she felt that it seemed a little inappropriate to put a foreign song among Zhou Jie Lun's albums full of Chinese songs.

"So we need to adapt it." Zhou Jielun said: "The crew just got the recording and adaptation rights for this song. We need to adapt it into a Chinese song and re-arrange it."

Liu Xiaoli understood it completely and nodded: "Although I don't understand what the lyrics are, the melody is very artistic, ethereal and elegant."

"This song is really nice." Liu Yifei ate dragon fruit while listening to the song and she really appreciated the song "Stars".

As the dolphin sound ended, the music playing on the computer ended.

After listening to it once, Zhou Jielun and Fang Wenshan had some musical feeling. Zhou Jielun looked at Chu Xuan expectantly and reached out his hand: "Come on, Director Chu, let's take a look at your lyrics."

Chu Xuan ate fruit with a toothpick in one hand and took out a USB flash drive from his pocket with the other hand and handed it to Zhou Jielun.

Liu Xiaoli was surprised, looked at her son-in-law, and asked in surprise: "You can also write lyrics?"

Chu Xuan ate an apple slice and said vaguely, "Although I don't understand music, it has nothing to do with writing lyrics. Anyone who has been to elementary school can write a line or two. Is it surprising that a college student like me can write a few lines?"

Zhou Jielun plugged the USB into the port and operated the computer and said, "It's unexpected. Our teacher Fang only graduated from a vocational school. You, a college student, are a bit beyond the scope."

Liu Xiaoli and Liu Yifei laughed and looked at Fang Wenshan with interest.

Fang Wenshan shook his head helplessly and ate the fruit without saying a word. Having been a partner with Zhou Jielun for many years, he was used to being teased by Zhou Jielun.

"What does this prove?" Chu Xuan spoke for Fang Wenshan: "A person who graduated from a vocational school can write songs like "Dong Feng Po" and "Blue and White Porcelain". This shows that diplomas cannot represent the level of cultural level. There are many people without high diplomas who are much better than the so-called professors. Teacher Fang is a representative example among them."

Fang Wenshan smiled and clasped his fists: "Thank you for the compliment."

"Oh, not bad." Zhou Jielun opened the USB file and looked at the contents. He said, "Your words are interesting. What's your idea?"

Liu Xiaoli and Fang Wenshan leaned in to look at the screen, and were very curious about the lyrics written by Chu Xuan.

Liu Yifei was eating fruit by herself. During her menstrual period, Chu Xuan took the time to work out the lyrics with her. She knew what the lyrics were, so she wasn't as curious as her mother and Teacher Fang.

"My idea is to interpret their love from the perspectives of Anxin and Qiao Ke respectively."

Chu Xuan finished eating the apple, put the toothpick in his mouth, bent down beside his mother, looked at the screen and told them his thoughts.

"In this plot of the script, An Xin won the Best Actress award and her career started to go smoothly, but she was not happy because Qiao Ke, who made her happy, was not around, so she came to the rooftop of the teahouse and looked up at the stars in the night."

As Chu Xuan spoke, they looked at the lyrics.

[Looking up at the sky with expectation, the starry sky is silent.

Just like me who was once confused, I remain silent.

Rekindled faith breaks the lock, he is by my side.

When I tried to catch it, I found it had disappeared. 】

"Now that you mention it, I kind of get the feeling." Zhou Jieren folded his arms and imagined that the heroine was sitting on the rooftop looking up at the stars. The feeling of heartache and loneliness evoked by this lyric combined with the melody of "Stars" made sense.

“Then the camera switches to the male protagonist’s side. Jock is ready to travel through time in his world. He sits on a chair in front of the window and looks at the sky. This allows for a little more panning to give the music time to render the emotions.”

Listening to Chu Xuan's words, Zhou Jie Lun slid the mouse to see the next verse of the lyrics.

[The wind of the past is like smoke, and the memories are hard to recall.]

The broken me in this world appears and disappears.

Picking up the spark again and searching for the light, she is before me.

When you want to give up, look up to the sky and have no distracting thoughts. 】

"Very literary, I like it." Fang Wenshan praised. Chu Xuan's lyrics were more literary, and some of his word choice angles and ideas were similar to his.

For example, the third sentences of the two paragraphs, the first one is "rekindle the faith and break the locks", and the second one is "regain the spark and search for light", and the reason is "he (she) is by my side (in front of me)".

For example, the first sentence of the first paragraph is "looking up at the sky in silence", and the last sentence of the second paragraph is "looking up at the sky and asking oneself", which is another clever echo.

This immediately gives the lyrics a connection, a sense of narrative, and an atmosphere of story, rather than just whining or being empty and boring with fancy words but no content.

Seeing this, Fang Wenshan also understood Chu Xuan's intention. He looked at Chu Xuan and said, "It is obvious that the first part is An Xin's confession, and the second part is Qiao Ke's confession. You want to sing this song as a duet between a man and a woman."

Chu Xuan nodded and expressed his thoughts: "Find two male and female singers who can sing dolphin sounds, one to sing me and the other to sing Sissi. Jielun, you can also add some dolphin sound arrangements that can be sung by men and women to maximize the atmosphere. I think the touching emotions of this climax will be rendered to the extreme. What do you think?"

"I have an idea." Zhou Jie Lun put down his folded arms, picked up a piece of dragon fruit with a toothpick in his right hand and ate it.

"Okay." Liu Xiaoli patted Chu Xuan on the back and praised: "I didn't expect that you can apply your literary skills to lyrics so freely. The lyrics are really good, with neat parallelism and rhyme. The two paragraphs are two stories and two lives, just like a modern poem. It's really good."

"I helped him with some advice." Liu Yifei muttered nearby, eating a slice of watermelon with a look of seeking praise.

"Excellent." Liu Xiaoli praised her daughter.

Liu Yifei squinted her eyes with delight and continued to happily finish the fruit platter.

"Where are the chorus lyrics?" Zhou Jie Lun flipped through the document but didn't see any subsequent lyrics.

“I haven’t figured it out yet.” Chu Xuan straightened up: “I thought writing lyrics was the same as writing literary works, with the same pattern of word choice and sentence structure, but when I was writing lyrics a few days ago, I found that they were two different things.”

He sat down on the sofa: "Literary works emphasize comfort in reading, while musical works emphasize comfort in listening. In my opinion, the latter has higher requirements on words than the former. Anyway, I felt that nothing was right while I was writing and singing, so I changed the lyrics many times."

Zhou Jie Lun tilted his head to look at Chu Xuan: "Director Chu, it's good. You have stepped into the threshold of the lyric writing industry. It is true. The lyrics have a storyline, which is the first criterion. Each line of the lyrics has meaning, which is the second. The parallelism is neat and has rhyme, which is the third. The core is that it does not sound abrupt, which is the feeling you just mentioned."

Fang Wenshan nodded: "When writing lyrics, you have to pay attention to every word. Some words may sound beautiful to you, but they don't sound right when you listen to the melody. This is the result of the words and melody not matching the arrangement."

"Even if a word is wrong, it will affect the listening experience. For example, for the word '的', some people sing it as 'de', while others sing it as 'di'. This is just to suit the listening experience. Therefore, each word must be carefully crafted, and then it is combined into a word and finally a sentence."

“Sure enough, every job is not easy.” Chu Xuan looked like he was being taught, and said, “Because ‘My Love from the Stars’ is my and Xixi’s own story, we know it best, so we thought about writing the lyrics for the Chinese adaptation of the song ‘Stars’ to tell our own story.”

"This is something we have never done before, so we just wanted to give it a try. However, we are not professionals after all. We need to trouble Mr. Fang to give us some advice on the overall quality of the words and the final planning of the paragraphs."

"It's nothing, you're welcome." Fang Wenshan said, "Write the complete lyrics for me to see, and we can discuss it together."

"Okay." Chu Xuan nodded.

"Thank you, Teacher Fang." Liu Yifei thanked.

Zhou Jielun put a toothpick in his mouth and looked at the lyrics. He said, "It seems that there has never been a version of "Stars" adapted into a duet or chorus. The main reason is that there are not many singers who can sing high notes as high as Vitas, and there are even fewer who can adapt to the combination of male and female soprano. You are making my work more difficult."

"You're a musical genius, can't you handle it?" Liu Yifei joked.

Zhou Jielun saw Liu Yifei praising him, and he shook his head and said, "If I only arrange the music without considering other factors, then I am confident, but I also have to consider whether the singer's voice can adapt to my arrangement. And I have to consider more than just one singer, and the combination of men and women, which is very difficult, okay."

"Come on, we can only support you spiritually." Chu Xuan poked the fruit with a toothpick.

Zhou Jie Lun raised his eyebrows and said, "When I promote my album offline, you guys can help me run a few stops to support me. This way I will be more motivated."

Chu Xuan raised his eyebrows and asked, "Is there an appearance fee?"

"No, this is a bit hurtful to my feelings, Director Chu." Zhou Jielun complained.

"Call me when the time comes and I'll definitely come. I'll make the decision." Liu Yifei couldn't help laughing and made the decision for Chu Xuan.

"Stars" is not a song in Zhou Jielun's album, and Zhou Jielun did not mention any money for helping with the secondary creation. He hoped that she and Chu Xuan would appear for free to help promote the album. She felt that this was not only helping a good friend, but also repaying the favor.

"Mrs. Chu is still straightforward." Zhou Jielun and Liu Yifei smiled at each other.

Liu Xiaoli, who was standing nearby, also found the conversation between these young people quite interesting.

Zhou Jielun switched back to the music app, pressed Enter and played the song "Stars" again: "Listen to the song's vocal range again. I first think about which singers can carry this song. They must ensure sustainable high-intensity high-pitched quality, and the tone must be explosive and penetrating. There don't seem to be many such singers in China."

As he was speaking, a cell phone rang.

Liu Yifei picked up the phone and answered it. It was the production director Liang Datong calling.

Zhou Jielun paused the music, only to see Liu Yifei frowning: "What do you mean by a little unexpected situation?"

Hearing this, Chu Xuan, Liu Xiaoli, Zhou Jielun and Fang Wenshan focused their attention on Liu Yifei. An unexpected situation? Did something happen to the crew?

(End of this chapter)