Studio Superstar: Chapter 25

After asking this question, Cheng Yun was a bit apprehensive. He was afraid to hear Xue Xiao say something like, ‘The end of this show is the deadline.’ However, Xue Xiao’s answer was quite normal.

Three years.

“Three years…” Chang Yun thought about it. “Have you been in the industry for over a year? Then there is only over a year left!”

Thinking about it this way, how could he turn things around if he couldn’t make a name for himself through ‘Studio Superstar’ and had to continue being a background actor?

Chang Yun couldn’t help muttering, “Three years is too short…”

“It is a little bit.” Xue Xiao didn’t deny it. “But the ‘making a name for myself’ in my parents’ mouth doesn’t mean I have to become a big star. It is okay if the future is a bit clearer. Brother Chang, you know what I mean, right?”

“I understand, I understand.”

He didn’t need to be a big star. It was fine if he signed with a company seriously and played a role that was more than a background actor.

Chang Yun smiled bitterly. “It is normal for your parents to worry. My father almost broke my leg when I resigned from the unit and said I was going to be an actor.”

“And I, cough, I was a bit of a mess back then. I didn’t have the concept of saving money, and I spent my monthly salary on food and drink. I only had a thousand yuan in my pocket before going to the film city. My parents said they wouldn’t help me. They said that if I chose this path, I should walk on it on my own. I also think this should be the case.”

“It is just a bit bitter at the beginning. You should understand since you have worked as a group performer. At that time, it didn’t matter whether it was auspicious or not to play a corpse. It was better to get an extra yuan in the red envelope.”

Xue Xiao nodded in agreement and said in a low voice, “For scenes in the rain, scenes of being beaten, wearing mourning clothes or being put in a black and white photo frame, it doesn’t matter as long as you can get more pay.”

Chang Yun almost forgot to smoke. “Oh my god, you are more ruthless to me. Do you know what I wanted to act most at the time? It was the type of scene that caused you to go out of the circle. If I have to be naked, the pay is too much. It is a pity that people don’t want me!”

Xue Xiao couldn’t help saying, “I did it just that once. The crew came to me and asked for a full naked scene. I thought about it and didn’t agree. I didn’t want to turn myself into a special naked actor.”

“Then it doesn’t matter if I do it once. By the way, did the camera in our dormitory record it?” Chang Yun opened the balcony door and yelled inside, “It doesn’t matter if I, Chang Yun, do all the naked scenes. The crew who needs it can come to me at any time. Director, don’t cut out this sentence!”

Zhao Dong, who had just come out of the bathroom, was stunned by Chang Yun and asked Gu Ling, “Is he mad or whining?”

Gu Ling spread out his hands, indicating that he had no idea what was happening on the balcony.

Chang Yun turned around and laughed with Xue Xiao.

After laughing, Chang Yun put out his cigarette. He stared at the sky outside and didn’t speak for a while.

Xue Xiao quietly accompanied him.

The night sky in this place was always so beautiful, and there were many stars every day.

Even if there was a heavy rain at night, the stars would come out again when the rain was over.

It seemed that as long as they were here for one day, this beautiful scenery would always wait for them here quietly, meeting them every day.

But how could they be with this beauty forever?

Chang Yun asked in a low voice, “Xiao, how can I be as positive every day as you?”

Xue Xiao replied simply, “I never think about what the result will be.”

Chang Yun was slightly startled.

“If you always think about failure, you will become very boring. You like acting and you want to be an actor. But no matter how much ambition you have, as long as you think about failure for a moment and you go home empty-handed, won’t you feel that acting has become boring?”

Chang Yun was speechless.

He was really completely seen through by Xue Xiao.

Xue Xiao turned his head and smiled softly at Chang Yun. “However, you haven’t reached that step. Brother Chang, how do you know if you will succeed or fail?”

“Being depressed because of your failure in your thoughts is complete emotional, internal friction.” Xue Xiao said. “It should be the other way around. Brother Chang, try to think about it. If you work hard and successfully advance to the next round—”

Chang Yun’s heartbeat increased, and he couldn’t help clenching his fists.

“—Isn’t there an urge to work harder, even harder?”

Xue Xiao’s gentle voice seemed to contain some type of magic, some type of power.

“Your ranking is a bit dangerous, but the chances of advancing to the next round aren’t small at all. Brother Chang, it is a bit too early for you to think about going home now.”

—

At 7 o’clock the next morning, the whole camp woke up one after another.

At 8 o’clock sharp, all the participants returned to the studio where the show was recorded. The host Jiang Quan met them there.

Jiang Quan was still dressed in a suit and was in good spirits.

“All participants should’ve received a letter from the show yesterday to understand the rules of this round of competition. I have one more thing to add—”

“This round is still a blind selection. Once you enter the selection room, you can only see which plays and roles have been selected. You can’t know who selected these plays and roles. All participants are invited to carefully make their own choices based on various considerations.”

The participants wailed. Jiang Quan held back a smile and said, “Then I won’t say much. Let’s move onto the selection link.”

“Let’s have the first student to choose the play—Gu Ling!”

There was loud applause in the studio. In the midst of everyone’s attention, the cold-faced Gu Ling stood up.

Jiang Quan took a step back, extended his left arm, and pointed to the door of the selection room that all the participants were familiar with. “Please enter the selection room to choose!”

Gu Ling was led in. Then Jiang Lianlian came over and asked, “Did you think about the play to choose yesterday? Or did you not think about anything and just plan to go in and choose the one you like?”

Zhao Dong wondered, “How else?”

Jiang Lianlian cast a disdainful look toward him. “This round has a five-person play and a four-person play. The complexity of a multi-person play itself is relatively large. If there are many members and the cooperation between them isn’t good, isn’t it easy to collapse?”

This was indeed something that hadn’t been considered before.

Jin Xiaochen cocked his head. “However, if there are many people, you can discuss it with each other when encountering problems, and maybe it will be easier to solve. If there are only two people in a group and the mentor doesn’t have enough time to instruct, isn’t it easy to be deadlocked when encountering a problem?”

Chang Yun raised his chin toward Xue Xiao and asked for an opinion, “Xiao, what about you?”

Xue Xiao thought for a while before saying, “I only look at which role I want to play.”

Dou Mingjian joked, “If there is Teacher Shen’s work again this time, will you still give it priority?”

Xue Xiao nodded without hesitation. “Yes, Teacher Shen’s movies and roles aren’t repetitive. There are all types. If I have the chance, then I want to try them.”

In the front row, Fan Xue pricked up his ears and listened to this sentence.

Gu Ling didn’t take too long. He finished the selection in three minutes, and it was Dou Mingjian’s turn to enter.

After Dou Mingjian, there were four participants with the same score, and they entered the selection room in order of debut age.

Half an hour passed, and it was finally Xue Xiao’s turn.

Xue Xiao still had a pleasant feeling when stepping into this huge selection room again.

All around him were posters from various film and television dramas. It was dazzling.

Among these 15 plays, he instantly found a movie that Shen Tingyan had starred in. The familiar silhouette on the poster made his eyes ‘snap’ and light up.

Here it comes. The little light bulb lit up again!

The cameraman quickly twisted his waist and focused the camera on Xue Xiao’s face.

Xue Xiao had just taken a step excitedly when his eyes were suddenly attracted by another movie next to him. His foot stopped abruptly.

The cameraman: “?”

Xue Xiao cautiously withdrew his foot and hesitated in place.

The cameraman looked at him with a puzzled expression. Seeing that Xue Xiao was in deep thought and not saying anything to give any materials, he couldn’t help shaking the camera to call back Xue Xiao’s soul.

Xue Xiao reacted and gulped. “Well, there is Teacher Shen’s movie.”

The cameraman continued to shake the camera. ‘Yes yes, aren’t you going to choose it?’

“However, there is another movie that I really like…”

The cameraman: “?”

Xue Xiao bent his elbows and clenched his fists against his lips. His eyes flicked as he fell into an unprecedented entanglement.

After 10 minutes passed, Old Gao asked in a puzzled manner as he stared at the camera from another room, “Why is he staying motionless in place? Hasn’t he figured it out yet?”

“Oh, he finally moved. He went to choose Old Shen—Huh?”

……

In another studio, the six people who already made their choices were sitting there waiting. Once they saw Xue Xiao come in, they all teased him. “Did you choose Teacher Shen’s part?”

“It must be the case!”

“This time, Teacher Shen’s role is quite suitable for you. We all endured and didn’t choose it. We specially left it for you!”

Xue Xiao: “……”

A sense of weakness rose in his heart.

Noticing Xue Xiao’s expression, the six people were slightly stunned. “Hmm??”

Three and a half hours later, Fan Xue was the last participant to choose and entered the room in an expressionless manner.

Then he became stunned.

He was still thinking that he had to avoid Xue Xiao in this round. He forgot that as the last place participant, he had no choice at all. He could only choose the one leftover from the first 49 people!

This role was also quite outrageous. He didn’t understand why the show wanted to prepare such a role for a group of people with an average age of less than 30. Who made the plan? Didn’t Director Zhang check it?

It was simply puzzling!

Forget it, at least the character wasn’t in Shen Tingyan’s movie. He couldn’t bump into Xue Xiao again. These two people had left him with a lot of psychological shadows…

Half an hour later, Jiang Quan walked in and said, “Your choices have been counted. Now, let’s get to know your new teammates!”

The list of plays was shown on the screen, and everyone craned their necks to take a closer look.

“Wow, Old Yang, I am with you this time. We have a bit of a tacit connection!”

“We are in a group. I’ll come over. Let’s sit together!”

“I’m kind of looking forward to your combination, hahahaha!’

“Hey, Xue Xiao didn’t choose Teacher Shen’s play?”

“Yes, the role of Teacher Shen was chosen by me. I was a bit surprised when I went in and saw that this role was still available.”

“Which one did Xiao Xiao choose? Oh, ‘Spring Garden’? It turned out to be this one?”

“Eh, the group for ‘Spring Garden’…”

“F*k…”

Everyone was shocked when they saw the grouping of ‘Spring Garden.’

This was one of the two groups of five-person plays.

Role No. 1: A terminal cancer patient who received the death sentence from the doctor. He was a male college student who hadn’t graduated from college yet.

Role No. 1: The father of character one. A desperate, middle-aged man.

Role No. 3: A depressed young man whose wife had been dead for two years.

Role No, 4: A father who had lost his son.

Role No. 5: A gray-haired, 81 year old man in his twilight years.

Role No. 1 was played by Xue Xiao.

In fact, Xue Xiao was a bit surprised when he found that Role No. 1 was still empty.

The original movie had four parallel story lines, with the ‘present’ and ‘past’ interspersed. It told the story of four families, each with similar scenes.

However, the arrangement of the characters would have to change a bit if they wanted to intercept one of the scenes and condense it into a short play several minutes long on stage.

According to the show’s sequence number arrangement of characters, it wasn’t difficult to speculate that the male college student with cancer would be the one with more scenes. Then the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th roles would decrease in order.

Before Xue Xiao, it was clearly displayed on the tablet that two people had already chosen this play, but none of them had chosen Role No. 1.

One chose Role No. 2 Xue Xiao had already guessed that it was Dou Mingjian based on the age of the character, and the truth wasn’t surprising.

Role No. 2 was played by Dou Mingjian.

Another person chose Role No. 3.

Xue Xiao immediately knew the answer after entering the studio. Role No. 3 was actually chosen by Gu Ling.

His reason was simple. “I want to play this role more.”

Gu Ling, Dou Mingjian, and Xue Xiao—1st place, 2nd and 7th place in the first round of the competition gathered in this play. How could the other students not marvel? This group configuration was a bit awesome!

Then they looked further down, and the cheers they were about to shout got stuck in their throats.

Role No. 4 was a participant who ranked low in the first round. This wasn’t the problem.

The problem was Role No. 5, the white-haired old man…

Fan Xue stared at the cast list in a shocked, stiff, and suffocated manner. Then he went mad.

As the No. 5 actor, he turned around and asked hysterically, “Xue Xiao, didn’t you say that you wanted to choose Shen Tingyan’s play?”

Xue Xiao: “……”

Everyone: “……”

This mentality was too obvious, right?

But then again—

All the people and cameras turned to Xue Xiao in unison. Dozens of meaningful eyes were saying the same thing.

Yes, I still have to ask, Xue Xiao, what is your love for Teacher Shen?

Where has the love gone? The love is gone!

There was a suitable role in front of you this time. Why didn’t you choose it?

Answer well. Teacher Shen will also see this!

Xue Xiao received everyone’s eyes, and his heart instantly exploded, as if Shen Tingyan was really looking at him.

His mind quickly moved, and he whispered, “Well, actually…”

“That…”

“—Role No 2 in this play was played by Teacher Shen Jingyang in the original work!”

After quickly finishing the last sentence, he sat upright while his head was lowered due to embarrassment.

Everyone thought about it carefully and suddenly realized.

Yes yes, this movie was the classic work of Shen Tingyan’s father, the famous old actor Shen Jingyang.

Thinking about it this way, wasn’t choosing Teacher Shen Jingyang’s movie choosing Teacher Shen?

They suddenly woke up and complained to the camera.

“—Good guy. Teacher Shen, listen to what he said!”

White Lily

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