Chapter 53: The Woman Who Lost the Lead Role

Chapter 53: The Person Who Failed to Become the Female Lead

After answering a few questions, Li Jingkun handed Cai Wenwen a few lines to read.

She silently read them over a few times, then put the paper away and began to recite: "I shall temporarily acquiesce to your childish thoughts, but an essay, especially an excellent essay, requires deep deliberation, deep deliberation..."

Stumbling slightly at this point, Cai Wenwen's face flushed a little, and she began to grow nervous.

Li Jingkun said, "You can just read directly from the script. You don't need to memorize it right now; I just want to hear your voice and see your line delivery skills. Memorization can wait until after you pass."

"Oh, okay."

Cai Wenwen let out a sigh of relief and brought the paper back up to her eyes. She took a breath and started over:

"I shall temporarily acquiesce to your childish thoughts, but an essay, especially an excellent essay, requires deep deliberation as a virtue. How can one abandon the meaning of creation merely for the sake of a few points? Not only must we write with style, but we must also write with integrity!"

Li Jingkun nodded and said, "Not bad, but now change the feeling a bit. Read it with a slightly more theatrical, exaggerated tone."

"..."

Cai Wenwen didn't think much of it, but Wang Yang broke into a sweat.

Most directors wanted actors to be down-to-earth and natural; he hadn't expected Li Jingkun to ask for something exaggerated.

However, remembering that this was a comedic short drama, he understood the reasoning behind the request.

"Alright, read it one more time, and then switch to these lines."

...

"How is it? How many did you pick?"

After the afternoon auditions concluded, Guo Junli and the other three classmates all came in together.

"Not bad, the harvest is pretty good overall," Li Jingkun asked Wang Yang, "What do you think?"

"If we follow your list, we're still missing a few, aren't we?" Wang Yang said.

"It's fine. We're in Beijing, and there are plenty of unemployed ordinary actors. We'll continue auditioning for the rest next week."

Actually, another thing had happened over the past few days. Someone had been spreading rumors on campus forums, Tieba, and various QQ groups about *Days Floating in the Air* crew, claiming that the director and the production team were overestimating their own capabilities and reaching too high, preparing to shoot a short drama just because they had a little money. Naturally, a few busybodies had joined the discussion, hurling cynicisms and mockery.

However, it had little impact on the production team, and Li Jingkun ignored it.

"You don't think Weida is behind this, do you?" Wang Yang asked.

"No way, right? No matter what, we hung out together for so long. Even if we didn't call him this time, he shouldn't act like this, should he?" Guo Junli said.

"It's fine, ignore it. Just focus on our own matters. There will be plenty of things like this in the future. As long as you want to accomplish something, as long as you want to progress and strive hard, a lot of people will come to dissuade you. And the very first ones are likely to be your close friends and relatives," Li Jingkun said.

Aside from casting actors, hiring other crew members was also crucial—makeup artists, lighting technicians, administrative staff, and so on. Therefore, the three of them had a lot on their plates and no time to bother with extraneous matters.

Setting aside all the extra or minor supporting roles for a moment, the director, cinematographer, main cast, and other crew members would ultimately total at least thirty to forty people. Calculated at an average salary of 3,000 yuan per person (though some were paid less and others more), that already exceeded 100,000 yuan.

This made both Wang Yang and Guo Junli gasp. Although they had always known about filmmaking budgets, only when truly confronted with it could they feel the sting of burning money.

Even though it was a low-budget short drama, it was still beyond what they could afford independently at present.

Thus, to avoid wasting money, they had to execute everything properly.

...

About a week later, practically all the main roles were locked down. The three leads were all from the Department of Performance—two undergraduates and one junior college student. The teacher's role was cast from outside, as were the two female supporting roles.

Consequently, the script for the first episode was distributed to each of them. The first episode was shot almost entirely inside a classroom, keeping the production difficulty relatively low with only a handful of camera setups (essentially shooting in the style of a television series).

The location had also been secured, so over the weekend, the core creators needed to scout the location and familiarize themselves with it.

The actress playing the female lead was Cai Wenwen, and the male lead, in the same class as her, was named Sun Hao. The male supporting role, from the junior college program, was named Zhang Tianyu.

Cai Wenwen and Sun Hao obviously knew each other, but they weren't very familiar with Zhang Tianyu. Therefore, for this collaboration, the three of them would hang out whenever they had free time to chat or rehearse their scenes.

"No way? Neither of you has heard of our director's great name?" Sun Hao asked.

Both Cai Wenwen and Zhang Tianyu shook their heads.

"Then how on earth did you end up auditioning?" Sun Hao asked.

"Saw it on the bulletin board," Cai Wenwen said.

"Me too," Zhang Tianyu said.

"It seems both of you turn a blind eye to the world outside your windows at school, burying yourselves entirely in books of wisdom," Sun Hao said.

"I suppose that's normal. There are so many talented people; we can't possibly know all of them," Zhang Tianyu said. "Besides, I'm from the junior college track; it feels like we don't have much presence in the school."

"Our director is probably the most famous student in the Class of 08, right? He must rank pretty high across the entire school." With that, Sun Hao told them about Li Jingkun's identity as both a writer and a music creator, leaving the other two quite surprised.

"You really couldn't tell just by looking at him," Cai Wenwen said.

"No wonder. This short drama was written by the director as well, and the lines are quite interesting," Zhang Tianyu said.

"In that case, the director must be quite wealthy now. He'd be totally fine even without making films," Cai Wenwen said.

"He's definitely richer than us, otherwise how could he pay our salaries and finance this short drama?"

The three of them chatted for a while at the campus milk tea shop. While browsing her phone, Cai Wenwen suddenly noticed a message in the class QQ group. She tapped on it to find it was posted by Lv Xinting, and it was directed straight at her:

"No way, Wenwen, are you really going to act in that short drama made by a freshman? What's the point of shooting something like that? It's neither a movie nor a TV series, and it's only three episodes long. What good is filming it? It's just messing around for fun. With that time, you'd be way better off running around to different film crews looking for real opportunities!"

Reading this, Cai Wenwen naturally felt stifled with anger. What business was it of hers? And she had to air it out in the group chat!

"What's wrong?" Zhang Tianyu asked, noticing that both of them were staring at their phones in silence.

"Don't mind her, she's acting like a lunatic."

Sun Hao had naturally seen the message too, and to be honest, he was somewhat annoyed—wasn't this insulting him as well?

...

After class one day, Su Zhijun called Li Jingkun over to inquire about the crew's progress.

"Have all the actors been found?"

"Yes. We'll deal with the extras later; there aren't many anyway."

"What about the equipment?"

"We'll rent it. We'll have three cameras ready by then." Su Zhijun had previously suggested he apply for equipment through the school, since the film studio had some. But Li Jingkun felt that if a problem could be solved with money, he'd rather not cause trouble.

Su Zhijun deliberated for a moment before getting to the point: "Teacher Yang Lin pulled me aside a couple of days ago and said a few things."