Chapter 303 Overcoming the Tribulation
In the crew, Zhang Yuan chatted leisurely with cameraman Du Jie.

He graduated from the Photography Department of Beijing Film Academy, just like Zhang Li, the photography master of the crew of "A World Without Thieves".

But so what even if we go to the same school? Life opportunities are not only determined by study, but also by background, connections, luck, etc.

Du Jie obviously did not have the family background and fortune like Zhang Li, but just after graduation, he received an invitation from Ning Hao, a senior from the same school and department, to go to the vast grassland to shoot an art film called "Green Grassland".

I just graduated, and my major is photography.

When I heard it was an art film and I could shoot it on the prairie, I was very happy.

What the hell!

Isn’t that just “poetry and distant places” shining into real life!
Of course he agreed immediately.

The price and other things are easy to negotiate. We are young, full of energy and not afraid of hardship!
Later young people all knew that if you can endure hardship, there will be endless hardship to endure. This sentence came true for Du Jie.

The crew had just started filming when the investor withdrew his investment. Ning Hao emptied his family's savings to ensure that the crew could continue filming.

But the team originally expected to have 60 people was reduced to 11 people.

The driver has to work part-time as a stage manager and lighting engineer.

In other words, he is irreplaceable as a cameraman, otherwise he would have to take other part-time jobs.

It’s just a little difficult… that’s what he thought at the time.

We are all brothers, let’s fight for our dreams!
Then, the crew encountered a series of "small accidents" such as car accidents, broken bones, fire, getting lost, falling into the water, etc. The only multi-talented person in the group, a full-time assistant, was forgotten when the crew changed the shooting location.

It was not until a few days later that everyone remembered that when they found this person, he was sitting on an empty oil drum, and had survived for several days on the only remaining packet of instant noodles and rainwater.

The assistant ran away and went home crying.

Of course, God is fair, and everyone in the crew has their own sufferings.

The accident that Du Jie encountered was that he was almost struck by lightning!

Kucha sound!
This person was filming when he heard a deafening noise next to him, and his head was buzzing.

Turning around, he saw a small charred pit on the grass less than three meters away from him.

If he had taken a few steps to the side, it would have been almost the anniversary.

After listening to this, Zhang Yuan sighed inwardly.

If a person is not unlucky, he really does not know how unlucky he can be.

Getting food stuck in your teeth after drinking cold water is just a minor problem; all kinds of strange things can happen.

What’s scary is not that he has filmed "Green Grassland", but that his first work after his debut was "Green Grassland"!
It’s just like when your first love met Ma Rong, who can resist this?
Zhang Yuan even wanted to invite Du Jie and Gao Hu out for a meal, so that they could communicate with each other as fellow patients... Oh, that's not right.

Both of them are so unlucky, but what they have in common is that they are both closely related to Ning Hao.

Zhang Yuan seemed to have discovered a blind spot!
"Is he a nuisance?"

"Why do I feel like I'm a little dangerous?"

Zhang Yuan calmed himself down and then thought about it.

"Others say that this guy was almost struck by lightning. I think it's half Ning Hao's fault and half his parents' fault."

"Look at this unlucky name, Du Jie, Du Jie..."

"Can it be good?"

When young people encounter difficulties, they can easily go from one extreme to another.

This is exactly what Du Jie is doing now.

"grass!"

"What poetry and distant places!"

"I nearly died several times while filming a movie. I was exhausted like a dog, but in the end I only got a few thousand dollars."

"Go dream!"

This man took the cigarette handed to him by Zhang Yuan, took a puff, and said indignantly.

"Actually, I don't blame Ning Hao."

"We still have money to earn, but he lost hundreds of thousands. He is the most unlucky one."

"I just blame myself because this market cannot accommodate quiet souls."

This guy blew out a smoke ring and suddenly became artistic.

"My literary youth syndrome has come back..." Zhang Yuan complained in his mind.

"So, I want to make money now!" Du Jie said solemnly, "Before, I was away from the capital for several months to film Green Grassland. When I came back, I had no money and my girlfriend broke up with me."

"So..." Zhang Yuan glanced at the camera stand, which still had a lot of vomit to be cleaned up. "Is it okay to be treated like a third grandson by those Hong Kong people?"

Du Jie closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

"There's money to be made, so what's there to be afraid of!"

"Besides, look at this camera." Du Jie pointed at the Arri camera worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in front of him and said, "In a small crew, there is no chance to use a camera of this level."

“I can see that I have learned so much here.”

"After a few years of experience, it won't be too late to make plans."

From being full of ideals to being full of reality, all it takes is a movie called "Green Grass"...

Zhang Yuan chatted with him for a while. Although he said that he came here for paid training, he actually had a lot of dissatisfaction in his heart.

"Damn it, those newcomers from Hong Kong who are also photographers and have the same job as me, or even an easier job, earn three times as much as me!"

"These high-paid grandsons..."

"You can't say that..." Zhang Yuan coughed a few times and persuaded.

Because he calculated his own pay, based on the number of scenes and episodes he appeared in, he was the third highest paid actor in the entire crew.

Nicholas Tse's salary per episode is about 17, Zhang Weijian's is 13, and he makes just over 10... The second female lead Fan Bingbing only makes 6 per episode.

His salary is higher than that of the leading actress Yuan Quan, who has not yet joined the crew.

Du Jie cursed others and even cursed himself.

Senior employee Zhang Weijian's salary is not as high as that of Xie Nicholas Tse, who has big connections, and is only slightly higher than that of Zhang Yuan, who has small connections.

This is no different from the salary situation in most companies.

Otherwise, why does the pay have to be kept secret? Otherwise, it’s easy for fights to break out.

When the chat was almost over, the crew members and Mr. Xie, who had recovered, returned to the scene, and filming was about to begin again.

"Thank you for what you did just now." Master Xie came to him specially to thank him.

[Received thanks from Nicholas Tse, Guitar Basics +1, Music Basics +1! ]

Because of his relationship with Wang Fei, he was quite polite to Zhang Yuan.

"You were so quick just now!" Master Xie praised with a suspicious look in his eyes, "I couldn't see it clearly, you covered it with your clothes."

"Have you ever practiced martial arts?"

Zhang Yuan raised his eyebrows, and completely different from usual, he gave a silly smile that he often used when lying, and replied.

"I have never practiced martial arts."

"You thought I was moving fast just now because you were not feeling well. You were mistaken."

"Really?" Master Xie tilted his head in confusion.

"I wish I had practiced so I could do cool martial arts moves."

"Yeah." He nodded without thinking any more. Then he glanced at Yang Xue beside him and turned around to film.

"I felt ashamed for vomiting in front of my elder sister..." Zhang Yuan saw what he was thinking.

As a result, this scene was finally shot in two shots according to Wang Jing's plan.

After vomiting, Mr. Xie learned his lesson and stopped "challenging himself".

After fishing all day, in the evening, in addition to learning calligraphy from Wang Bozhao and Xu Jingjiang, he also went to the place of Du Jie, a person he had just met, to drink and chat with him.

“Are you interested in photography?”

Du Jie said in surprise.

"What, you know something about photography?"

Du Jie didn't understand even more.

You are an actor, and a well-known one at that. If you are not earning a lot of money, why do you need to learn this?

You think you earn too much and your job is too easy, so you want to steal my job?

Du Jie didn't understand. But when the two started discussing, Du Jie was shocked again.

"You really know your stuff!"

Yes, he has borrowed properties related to lenses and cameras from many directors.

Not to mention the distant past, just talking about the crew of "A World Without Thieves", he got a lot from Du Jie's senior brother Zhang Li.

Now, they can all be used!

"I think at this stage, in terms of camera language and picture language, Zhang Yuan is still the best in our country." Zhang Yuan started to deceive people.

"Let's not talk about anything else, let's just talk about 'Hero' which is currently the highest-grossing movie in Chinese film history."

"It is said in the Zhou Li written by Zhou Gongdan."

"Painting and embroidery are mixed with five colors."

"The east is blue, the south is red, the west is white, the north is black, the sky is dark, and the earth is yellow."

"This is the origin of the five-color concept in our country."

“And ‘Hero’ just happens to correspond to the five colors of blue, red, yellow, white and black.”

"Director Zhang's mastery of color is second to none."

As a professional photographer, how could I not study the lens language of "Hero"? This is a compulsory course and I cannot escape it.

Now, seeing Zhang Yuan quoting from classics as soon as he opened his mouth, Du Jie couldn't help but move closer to listen.

“Except for the theme color of Qin as black, the other color themes all appear in the memories and conversations of different characters.”

"There is a point in this film that many people discuss, which part of the story is true, or relatively true."

"In fact, you can tell Director Zhang's original intention from the color."

Zhang Yuan paused, and when the other party's curiosity was aroused and he could no longer wait, he continued.

“In fact, if we talk about the master of color, especially the master of bright and pure colors, even if we look at it from a global perspective, we have to talk about the one from the island country.”

Du Jie was stunned, then spoke immediately.

"Kurosawa!"

If a famous Chinese director's idol is a filmmaker from an island country, many people may have national sentiments.

But Master Akira Kurosawa influenced not only Chinese filmmakers, but all film industry practitioners around the world!
In 70, Kurosawa Akira's "Train Mania" flopped at the box office. He was unable to get investment to shoot "Shadow Warrior" and even committed suicide due to depression due to the failure of the film.

After hearing about this, George Lucas and Coppola, who were far away in the Beacon Country, directly asked Fox for 150 million US dollars to invest in Kurosawa Akira.

These two were very popular back then, and one became a world-class director with "Star Wars".

One who had just finished filming "The Godfather" a few years ago and became famous all over the world.

Both of them are loyal fans of Akira Kurosawa.

Even the inspiration for "Star Wars" came from Akira Kurosawa's "Sengoku Hideo".

Hayao Miyazaki, Martin Scorsese, Quentin, these well-known bigwigs are all die-hard fans of the old man.

"If you are familiar with Akira Kurosawa, you should know that the master often uses highly saturated costumes and decorations to express dreams or hallucinations."

"so……"

“So in the movie ‘Hero’, whenever highly saturated colors appear on the screen, the content is unreal.” Du Jie continued before he finished speaking.

“Only stories with white pictures are real.”

The young cameraman was silent for a long time, then clapped his hands excitedly.

“This is an interesting interpretation!”

"Infer the plot from the color of the picture."

"Rather than using the plot to analyze the color of the picture."

"wonderful!"

He really didn't expect that the actor in front of him, who was younger than him, was really knowledgeable!

In fact, Zhang Yuan also admires Zhang Yimou very much. He is also a great director and he also uses a lot of highly saturated colors in his films.

Compared with "The Promise" and "Hero", it is far behind.

Whether in terms of artistic conception, implication, visual language or visual effects, the two are not on the same level.

"Brother Zhang's profound remarks are very beneficial to me!" Du Jie slammed the table generously.

"Apart from the picture, do you have any special understanding of the lens?" the man asked.

Zhang Yuan waved his hand without hesitation.

“If I were to film.”

"Then I'll make a whole movie."

"One shot through the whole thing!"

"Isn't that bold?"

Du Jie was very excited to hear this!
“It only takes 20 days, or 25 days, to shoot a movie.”

"We filmed it twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, for ten consecutive days."

"That's twenty times, I'll just pick one."

"We spent another ten days rehearsing beforehand, and then it was all shot in one take!"

Clap, clap, clap... Du Jie was so excited that he kept clapping his hands.

"Okay, if there is such an opportunity one day, Brother Zhang must call me and I will help you take the photo!"

Zhang Yuan: …

I was just bragging, and he seemed to really believe it.

Chatted with him for a long time.

The reason why Zhang Yuan is on good terms with him is that, firstly, he is Ning Hao's friend and junior, and with this relationship, he naturally has to treat him with courtesy.

Secondly, I am not satisfied with being just an actor.

Well, just like what Uncle Li said in "A World Without Thieves".

What is the most expensive thing in the 21st century?
Talent!

This person is definitely a talent as he can handle the working environment of "Green Grassland".

Now that my team is just starting out, I am eager to recruit talented people.

Besides, he has just made his debut and needs the support of a noble person.

Just like an investment company, the most profitable round is definitely the angel round.

The same goes for investing in talent. The biggest benefit is definitely to provide support to them when they have nothing.

However, in addition to these two points, there is a third!

"Oh, what a pity!" After chatting for a long time and drinking all the bottled beer on the table, Zhang Yuan sighed sadly.

"It's a pity that I only have the interest and theory, but no chance to put it into practice."

“That’s just paper talk.”

"Forget about filming. I haven't even touched the camera."

This is the truth!

On the crew, the prop master's boxes cannot be moved, and the cameraman's equipment cannot be moved.

Cameras have many settings that suit personal habits, and they are expensive precision instruments, so it is taboo for others to touch them!

Not to mention the actors and crew members, even the cameramen rarely get to use the same camera.

But Du Jie was different. He had a heroic character and he had a very pleasant conversation with Du Jie, so he patted his chest.

"What's the big deal? The crew has plenty of machines."

"Whichever one do you want to watch? When I use it, I can secretly let you play with it for a few times. It's no big deal!"

"That's great. I like your temper."

The two clinked glasses again.

Zhang Yuan's purpose was to understand how the crew used the camera.

This will be of great use to the purpose of his trip!

(End of this chapter)