Bright Era of China Entertainment

Chapter 804: Breaking the Rules
In the bright and airy master bedroom on the second floor of the villa, Chu Xuan sat at the end of the bed, basking in the sunlight and flipping through the photo album in his hand.

I slept well on the first day back home. After waking up and washing up, I immediately took action. I went to my mother's room and found the photo album. I selected some of the most beautiful photos of my mother in order to give her a surprise for her upcoming 50th birthday.

In addition to the album in his hand, there are three more albums placed on the bed. Each album is very thick and contains a wide variety of photos.

However, what made Chu Xuan feel melancholy was that these photo albums were found in the storage box under the bed.

Who would throw a photo album under the bed?
Photo albums are used to reminisce about the past. Unless the person does not want to reminisce about the past, he will stuff the photo album under the bed and seal it up completely, never to see the light of day.

Through the small details of the place where the photo album was stored, he discovered that both he and his daughter Liu Yifei seemed to lack care and understanding for their mother.

I used to think that my mother's attitude towards my past dancing would give me a great sense of accomplishment and honor.

Now it seems not to be the case. It seems that my mother doesn't want to miss the past.

If so, think about his and Liu Yifei's previous behavior, whether it was when Liu Yifei was practicing dancing before winning the Golden Eagle Goddess in 06, or when they encountered other situations where they could talk about dancing, the couple would show off their mother without hesitation and were not stingy with any words of praise.

Every time this happens, my mother looks happy, but she is actually unhappy inside?

Is mom's friendly expression just to please the couple?

"Mom put the photo album under the bed?" The phone was placed beside her legs with the speakerphone on, and Liu Yifei's voice came from it.

Her tone sounded a little puzzled, and she was surprised that her mother would put the photo album under the bed.

"Yes, I found it under the bed." Chu Xuan said as he flipped through the photo album: "Maybe we did something wrong in the past. We regarded our mother's past glory as glory, and we always showed it off to make her happy. But in my mother's heart, this may be the past she is most reluctant to mention."

"Oh..." Liu Yifei sighed, not knowing what to say.

Chu Xuan said, "I just thought about it and it seems to make sense. Grandma said that if mom had persisted, she might be the second Yang Liping now. With such potential and achievements, she gave up everything for you. Although mom has been very happy with us these years, it seems that this matter is still weighing heavily on her mind and she is most reluctant to mention it."

"I should say so. Now that you mention it, I did feel some sadness from my mother sometimes in the past..." Liu Yifei muttered.

If you don't mention some things, you may never experience them in your life.

But once it is mentioned, the scenes from the past will involuntarily emerge in my mind.

In the past, whenever she saw her mother staring blankly alone, she just thought she was bored.

Now, combined with what Chu Xuan said, she suddenly realized that this was not the case.

"What should we do? Should we continue with our plan?" Chu Xuan asked.

"Why not continue?" Chu Xuan's question interrupted Liu Yifei's thoughts, and she immediately replied.

Chu Xuan said: "If my speculation is true, then wouldn't it be a stimulus to take out old photos of me? Wouldn't it be a good opportunity to reveal her sad past on her 50th birthday?"

Liu Yifei had another idea: "Let's think about it from another angle. For example, I was cyberbullied before, and this was the last thing I wanted to talk about. But after being with you, I experienced a lot of beautiful things, and those things in the past just disappeared."

"Yeah." Chu Xuan nodded: "What does this have to do with what we are talking about?"

Liu Yifei continued, "Put yourself in my shoes. Mom has the same sadness in her heart. I have completely let it go because of you, but Mom hasn't. Maybe it's because no one has talked to her about these things over the years, and no one really understands her feelings, right?"

Chu Xuan shook his head: "I don't know if it's right or not. You are the one who knows my mother best."

Liu Yifei said: "If you are my good medicine, then my mother has not had good medicine to cure her suffering for so many years, so why not fight poison with poison? We are not just showing her dancing photos, but photos from her childhood to the present day, step by step to today's happiness, which symbolizes a better future. Mom will definitely like it!"

"Fight poison with poison..." Chu Xuan laughed: "You are a good daughter."

"What do you mean!" Liu Yifei said indignantly, "You men are so rational. When you encounter something, you only know how to avoid it instead of emotionally thinking about how to save the relationship. Based on a woman's understanding of a woman, my analysis is absolutely correct."

Chu Xuan nodded repeatedly: "Yan Zhi is right, you are beautiful and everything you say is right."

Just because you are beautiful, everything you say is right?
Does that make sense?
Is Yan right?

Liu Yifei chuckled and said with a hint of joy: "Are you playing word games with me? Do you think I don't understand?"

Chu Xuan smiled and said, "You can tell from what I heard. That's fine. Let's do this. I'll look for some photos first. If there are no dates, I'll email them to you. See if you can confirm the dates. If not, I'll look for them again."

"Okay, honey, you've worked hard. I want to go to sleep too." Liu Yifei said playfully.

"Good night."

"good afternoon."

After hanging up the phone, Chu Xuan continued to look through the photo album.

He discovered that the most recent photo of his mother was taken in 1997.

To be precise, it was June 1997, 6, Children's Day.

In the photo marked with this year, there is a photo taken in a photo studio with the mother and 10-year-old Liu Yifei, with sunflowers and sunlight in the background.

It was also in this year that my mother gave up her dream and took Liu Yifei to America.

According to the album, none of the photos after 1997 were taken in a photo studio, and none of them were selfies of my mother. Most of them were photos of Liu Yifei and my mother on the crew.

From this, we can infer that when my mother was still in the dance industry, she liked taking photos of herself and her daughter Liu Yifei, otherwise the number of photos would not have accumulated into four large albums.

In 1997, my mother gave up her dream for her daughter. Perhaps she wanted to completely wipe out the dimming light in her heart and fight for her daughter's dream wholeheartedly. Perhaps my mother also wanted to completely break away from this career. Perhaps this habit would remind my mother of dance and her past self...

This will only increase the sadness, so it is better not to recall it. From now on, taking selfies or taking photos will no longer be my mother's hobby.

At least from this album we can see that there are no more solo photos of my mother after 1997.

"Oh." Chu Xuan sighed. On the one hand, he felt sorry for his mother giving up her dream. On the other hand, he felt great for everything his mother had done for Xixi.

In his opinion, this seemed to have surpassed the boundaries of maternal love. It could be said that the mother's love for her daughter was extremely pure and flawless. It could not be expressed in words and could only be felt but difficult to understand. However, he had a very deep understanding of it.

"Mom." He called his mother.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Liu Xiaoli's voice came.

"What...is your favorite dish? Which ones?" Chu Xuan asked stutteringly.

Liu Xiaoli was silent for a few seconds, and asked in an inexplicable tone: "What the hell are you doing? Why are you asking this?"

Chu Xuan scratched his head: "Well, the company has a quiz activity recently, and I want to participate. I drew this question, so I came to ask you."

Liu Xiaoli was silent again, and then said: "Do you think your mother is a fool? When will the company have such a boring activity?"

Chu Xuan burst out laughing, but he didn't dare to laugh out loud. He lay down on the bed and tried his best to hold back his laughter, saying, "Mom! Just tell me, it really helps."

Liu Xiaoli also laughed: "It's really useful, right? Then you have to tell me the truth when I come back... Stir-fried pork with green beans, boiled fish fillets, fried loach, and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall."

Chu Xuan said cheerfully: "Okay, Mom, that's it, I'm hanging up now."

"What the hell are you doing?" Liu Xiaoli noticed something was wrong. Her son-in-law called her and asked her what kind of food she liked. This was almost impossible in her mind. It was too strange.

"No tricks, that's it, bye, hanging up." Without giving his mother a chance to react, Chu Xuan hung up the phone immediately.

Chu Xuan lay on the bed with a big character on his face, reciting silently: Fried meat with green beans, boiled fish fillets, fried loach, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.

Then he quickly sat up and recorded the four dishes one by one in the memo of his mobile phone.

“How to make these four dishes?”

"Is there a chef association in Shangri-La?"

"I should be able to learn it in a day or two, right?"

"Mom, I, your son-in-law, have never cooked in my past life or this life. Even if I did, I would just cook instant noodles. I'm going to make an exception for you this time."

Chu Xuan muttered to himself, feeling the difficulty of his mother and also the difficulty of his mother raising Xixi.

He was touched and decided to cook a few dishes for his mother on her birthday. This was a sudden idea and also a small way to show respect and gratitude to his mother.

……

Over the next few days, Chu Xuan flipped through the photo album, racking his brains to pick out the aesthetically pleasing photos of his mother from that period in the album based on his own aesthetic taste. At the same time, he chatted with Liu Yifei by phone or email to confirm whether the age of the photos and the degree of their beauty were feasible.

The family albums only contain photos of my mother after she became an adult. The black-and-white photos of her childhood are rare. I heard from Liu Yifei that my grandmother has a lot of them, so I can only go to my grandmother's house in Wuhan to look for them.

At the same time, Chu Xuan also went to the company every day to accompany Sister Hua to handle group affairs.

The group affairs are fine nowadays. Since the company was grouped, each business area is controlled by the branch independently, and has the joint authorization of the two major shareholders, him and his mother. Unless it is a major matter that requires the signatures of the three major shareholders for decision-making, most of the document signatures and decisions can be handled promptly by Sister Hua alone.

It is no longer like before, when Chu Xuan had to sign, stamp and attend meetings for everything. This saves a lot of trouble and a lot of worry for the family.

After three days of living between home and work, the post-production stage of "My Love from the Star" was put on the schedule as scheduled.

"300 million for post-production, this is Lao Liang's estimate. Let's do this for now. If it's not enough, we can make up for it. The rest of the funds will not be returned to shareholders yet. We'll talk about it after the show airs. If "You Who Came From the Stars" is not enough for post-production, we can always make up for it."

On this day in early June, Chu Xuan came to Century Culture to sign the post-production contract for "My Love from the Star".

Listening to Li Yu's plan, he had no objection, but recalled an idea from before and said, "Teacher Li, the expansion of film and television drama investment is also a variation and gameplay of stock speculation expansion. It is a good thing to make profits for the company, but be careful of those money laundering things."

Chu Xuan had thought about this problem when he was in Shenzhen. He forgot to talk about it when he was with Sister Hua these days. When he came to Century Culture Company and met Li Yu again, he suddenly remembered this drawback.

Li Yu nodded slightly: "I understand. Sister Hua also told me that the investments accepted by Brilliant Times are all company-to-company account transactions, and they are all registered with the Industrial and Commercial Bureau. Although there is no guarantee that the company accounts registered with the real name will not be money laundering, it is also the greatest possibility to prevent this situation. After all, those registered with the Industrial and Commercial Bureau are subject to national control. If something goes wrong, it has nothing to do with us. It is the result of poor supervision by the relevant departments."

"Okay, I'm sorry for talking too much." Chu Xuan smiled. After all, he was young and had little experience in this area. The unexpected situations he could think of were naturally also thought of by senior people like Sister Hua and Li Yu.

After hearing what Li Yu said, he felt relieved.

His main worry is that some capital will use the media to fabricate "money laundering" incidents to attack him, Liu Yifei and their works, which will have a huge impact.

But if the company does not do this, if anyone wants to do this to them, they will have the confidence to fight back.

"Mr. Chu, should we focus on the main part first and then the supporting part in the later stage?" asked Long Fei, the chief cameraman who is also the editing and producer of "My Love from the Star".

The post-production of film and television dramas, except for special effects, is generally divided into more than a dozen stages: main line editing, branch line editing, paragraph deletion, logo setting, subtitle adding, music adding, dubbing adding, montage effects, color adjustment and image quality setting, lens customization, production of highlights and format transcoding.

The soundtrack of “My Love from the Star” is in charge of Zhou Jielun, and the following major projects are the things to be dealt with in the final stage.

The several major projects before the music composition are the top priorities, and are also what Long Fei and the camera crew and director team teachers need to keep an eye on.

The logo setting is to serve the sponsors, and clear logos and special shots are set for the sponsored products that appear in the play.

The main line editing, branch line editing and paragraph deletion are the core of the post-production process. Among these three core links, there is a saying as to whether to edit the branch line or the main line first.

If there are many preset montage effects, it is usually necessary to edit the branches first.

There are many different theories about montage effects. The most obvious way to express it in film and television dramas is that various side plots and supporting characters are repeatedly interspersed into the main line. The cutting and presentation methods here are the montage effects, which vary according to the different ideas of different directors.

Because there are so many montage effects, the side plots are destabilizing factors.

So, it is safest to edit the side plots first, stabilize the most unstable factors, and then edit the main plot and add the stable side plots to make the whole drama look smoother.

On the contrary, if most of the plot of a drama is about the male and female protagonists, it means that there will be less montage effect, because there are fewer shots cutting into the side lines and supporting characters. In this case, it is equivalent to the main line being more stable than the side lines, and the editing method is generally to edit the main line first and then the side lines.

"Let's start with the main plot first." Chu Xuan said. "My Love from the Star" is an idol drama starring him and Liu Yifei. The storyline of the couple runs through the whole play, and the side plots are also triggered by the main plot. It would be more stable and reasonable to deal with the main plot first and then the side plots.

"Okay." Long Fei nodded and followed Chu Xuan's instructions.

Chu Xuan added, "You guys go ahead and do it. I have something to do during this period, so I guess I won't be able to come and take a look until the end of the month. You guys just edit it according to the three-act framework. If there's anything to discuss, Producer Liu and I will communicate with you guys."

"I understand." Long Fei made an "OK" gesture to show that he understood.

Chu Xuan's "three-act framework" was thoroughly understood by the core members of the crew, and it was not difficult to understand. It was as simple as "beginning-process-result".

However, although it is simple, it is difficult to ensure that each plot has a complete three-act expression, because some expressions are invalid. This depends on the editors' understanding of the plot.

Moreover, Long Fei also agreed with Chu Xuan's "three-act" theory. Apart from anything else, he realized Chu Xuan's pursuit just because the concept of "three-act" was the most basic way of expression in film and television art.

This is equivalent to science, nano research is basic science, and the products produced by nano are derivative science.

The three-act style is also a basic art form, and most of the artistic concepts of domestic directors are derivative art.

In short, Chu Xuan plays with the basics. Only by expanding the scope of artistic basics can derivative art flourish in an all-round way.

In this regard, he felt that Chu Xuan was very ambitious. Just as there were very few scientists in the scientific community who were engaged in basic science, there were also very few people in the film and television art world who were engaged in basic art, because the basic things were the most difficult to hone, which required perseverance and determination.

"Is everything alright?" Chu Xuan signed the last contract and put his fingerprint on it, then picked up the pen and closed the cap. "If everything is alright, I'll leave first. I have to catch a flight to Wuhan."

"Going to Wuhan?" Li Yu wondered.

Chu Xuan raised his eyebrows: "Wedding..."

Li Yu said "Oh——" with a smile in his eyes: "This is a big deal! Go quickly, I will help you deal with any problems."

Chu Xuan raised the corner of his mouth and waved his hand: "Let's go."

(End of this chapter)