Chapter 766

Li Zhibai nodded.

"I have that thought."

"That's good." Lin Suyang nodded, "It's just that in the future, perhaps there will be competition between you."

"Between us, cooperation will definitely outweigh competition," Li Zhibai said. "Such a big market, such a big cake—Lu Yan He always says this; he never worries about others doing well, he even hopes that the more people who do well, the better."

"Because that can grow the market, right?" Lin Suyang smiled and shook his head, "However, that's because our domestic market is in an upward phase; one day, this ceiling will appear."

"Then it certainly won't be one company swallowing the whole world," Li Zhibai said. "Rather than worrying now that we will compete with each other in the future, it's better to worry about what we will do if we don't have the strength to help each other and end up being suppressed by others working together."

Lin Suyang gave Li Zhibai a thumbs up.

"Your idea is awesome."

Li Zhibai: "We are the kind of friends who would absolutely never want to step on each other to prove ourselves; we are the kind of friends who hope to have the ability and the skill to lift each other higher."

Lin Suyang: "Sometimes, your bond is truly enviable."

Li Zhibai said: "I think so too."

A look of pride overflowed on Li Zhibai's face.

The movie "Godless" is mainly filming indoor scenes in the United States—to be precise, it is filming green screen scenes in a studio.

After finishing this part, they will move to other places.

Therefore, this was also the first time Lu Yan He had encountered a film crew that needed to "enter and exit three times."

He is not the primary lead, and the entire story is not unfolding from his perspective. Therefore, his filming also has to accommodate the crew's schedule.

However, Lu Yan He felt that this was fine too.

The director of "Godless" is named Ignaz Bell.

This is a director who once filmed the special effects blockbuster "Ghost Ship Log"—at the time, this movie grossed 560 million US dollars globally, a very outstanding result.

However, because this director often goes over budget when filming, despite most of his box office results being excellent and allowing the studio to make a good profit in the end, his new projects always have a difficult time getting off the ground.

Various Hollywood film companies do not trust him very much.

The last time he directed a movie was five years ago.

Green Valley also didn't know where they remembered this talented director who doesn't treat budgets as budgets but has many fans.

However, the fact that Green Valley could choose this director shows that they really wanted to make this movie well.

After all, other than liking to go over budget and being expensive, Ignaz Bell has no other flaws.

The works he directs basically all belong to the category of critically acclaimed films. It's just a matter of niche acclaim versus mass acclaim.

Lu Yan He had video chatted with Ignaz Bell a few times before.

This time coming to the United States was their first meeting in person.

Ignaz Bell is a man who is not tall, and could even be described as "short and chubby."

He wears round glasses and looks "naively adorable."

Unlike many film directors, he started as a television screenwriter and has been developing in the American film and television industry since he was very young.

Later, he walked step by step to where he is today.

Logically, a director who grew up in such an industry should be very good at controlling budgets, but he is not.

He always has a reason to spend more money than what is on the budget sheet.

But such an "unruly" director is, in reality, an overly enthusiastic middle-aged man who is like a helpful neighbor.

"Lu, I watched "The Mist" that you starred in, I am your fan!"

Lu Yan He couldn't help but pull him over and give him a hug.

"Director, if I had known they invited you to direct when I was signing for "Godless", I would have signed the contract even more readily."

Ignaz Bell: "After I watched "The Mist", I really wanted to work with you, so when they told me that "Godless" had your participation, it solidified my determination to direct "Godless"."

Some directors do not respect actors, believing that actors are just tools for the director and appendages to the film.

Some directors, however, view actors as "gods," because the director equates the actors with the characters in their films and invests all their emotions.

Most directors fall somewhere in between these two.

For the actors he approves of, Ignaz Bell is the latter type; for the actors he doesn't approve of, he is even worse than the former type of director.

This is what Darren Wilson told him.

Lu Yan He doesn't know what kind of impression or opinion Ignaz Bell has of him. However, he did get a general understanding of Ignaz Bell from Darren Wilson's evaluation.

Although Ignaz Bell has always been a blockbuster director, he also seems to be an auteur director.

Blockbuster directors can also be auteur directors.

Many people roughly assume that auteur directors must belong to the field of art films.

In fact, whether it is Peter Jackson who filmed "The Lord of the Rings", or the even more famous James Cameron, the blockbusters they film are bigger than average blockbusters, but they have distinct personal imprints.

There is still a very big difference between blockbusters and commercial films in the traditional sense.

Then, Lu Yan He realized that he had also become one of those "you have talent, you have a point" supporters.

After realizing that Ignaz Bell is this type of director, Lu Yan He actually felt happy, even relieved.

This feeling was the same as when he was on the set of "Burning Fire" and discovered that Wan Renhai was not just a director who only knew how to film commercial blockbusters and special effects blockbusters.

An actor like Lu Yan He is definitely not the kind of actor who only hopes that the box office of the movie is good enough.

Many people think this is a cliché—are there really actors who don't hope for both box office and critical acclaim?

But some actors have an attitude toward box office: this must be there, and everything else is just icing on the cake; if it's not there, it doesn't matter, even if it's a bad movie, it doesn't matter—for example, Wang Baoqiang's first work as a director, if judged by box office, it was undoubtedly successful, but he dared to go and accept the Golden Broom Award, dared to apologize, and dared to admit that he had messed up the filming despite the box office harvest, and that he would work hard to improve himself in the future.

Therefore, even when the word-of-mouth for Wang Baoqiang's first directorial work was so bad that it was almost criticized as "cashing in," his second movie "In the Cage" could still be trusted by the audience, and the box office exploded.

Many times, details really determine success or failure.

Whether an actor truly cares about their reputation, cares about the quality of the movie, and cares about the audience can be seen in many cases, and it must be conveyed to the audience. Otherwise, it is like high-brow music with few listeners; even good wine fears a deep alley.

Lu Yan He doesn't know what kind of movie "Godless" will become.

This is also the first time for Lu Yan He to be in a movie filmed by the world's top film company using top-tier resources.

Such a movie also means that it must be aiming for multi-faceted goals.

The box office must be good, the word-of-mouth must be high, and ideally, it could enter the classics of film history.

Lu Yan He also doesn't know what kind of mark this film series will leave on his acting career.

But he is very clear that even though he is a supporting role in this movie, he is a well-deserved lead-type supporting role, comparable to heavyweight supporting roles like Professor Snape and Headmaster Dumbledore in the "Harry Potter" series; even Sirius Black's weight in "Harry Potter" is not as heavy as Lu Yan He's in "Godless". The role Green Valley gave Lu Yan He runs through the entire series and has an important influence on the main plot of the movie.

Lu Yan He wouldn't be so arrogant as to think that even though he has already won so many trophies and has so many representative works, this film series is just "icing on the cake" in his acting career.

Just like Professor McGonagall in "Harry Potter", the actress for this role, Maggie Smith, a renowned actress, won the Academy Award for Best Actress with the highly acclaimed art film "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", not to mention other nominations; after acting in "Harry Potter", she also starred in the equally influential "Downton Abbey". However, for this actress, in the public's mind, when they think of her, the first reaction is Professor McGonagall.

Lu Yan He is very clear about what a blockbuster film series that can truly enter film history means for an actor.

Precisely because he is clear, he did not take it lightly at all—

And precisely because he is clear, that was why he was so disappointed with the North American distribution of "Burning Fire" back then.

In Lu Yan He's heart, he believed that the quality of "Burning Fire" could compete with those top blockbusters.

Was it lacking in the movie itself?

Lu Yan He always believed that what it lacked was top-tier global distribution.

A few hundred theaters were used to dismiss the North American distribution of such a movie—

Of course, no one would say anything.

Because that's just how Chinese films are.

A few hundred theaters is already a lot.

You got a few million dollars at the box office, are you still not satisfied?

This is America, not your China.

But Lu Yan He felt regret. It actually could have been possible to try; perhaps, he isn't saying definitely, but if the distribution conditions were a bit better, and all aspects of promotion and publicity followed up, perhaps "Burning Fire" could have achieved the same success in North America as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero" did in another time and space.

Is the quality of those two movies so high that they could break through all boundaries?

No, it is that these two movies gained the confidence of the North American distributors, possessed the best distribution conditions in North America for Chinese films in history, and then, their own content and quality carried these distribution conditions and didn't waste them.

Lu Yan He studied the role he was to play in "Godless" very seriously.

Then, he went for a makeup test first.

Lu Yan He spent three days just on the makeup test.

He really almost wanted to look for help from China again.

Because the look that "Godless" stylist Lucy Bates created for Lu Yan He was not very suitable for him.

However, unlike the time with "The Mist", Lucy Bates didn't even wait for Lu Yan He to speak; she took the initiative and said: "After this look was put on, it deviated a bit from my idea, it needs to be adjusted."

Lu Yan He nodded, and he also expressed his true thoughts.

"Is it necessary to put eyeliner on me?"

It makes his character look a bit evil and charming.

Lucy Bates said: "We can try wiping it off. I put eyeliner on you because the character you are playing is a wanderer by nature, and I wanted him to look more... like a wandering poet, more worldly."

Actually, Lucy Bates didn't describe it very accurately, but Lu Yan He understood her meaning in a second.

Lu Yan He said: "You actually got inspiration from the Gypsy look and wanted to add those elements to me."

Lucy Bates's eyes lit up, and she looked at Lu Yan He in surprise.

"That's right."

Lu Yan He said: "But my current look makes me look more like an ordinary wanderer, dusty and tired, as if I have experienced a long journey and only arrived at the destination after pulling a cart of goods. It's a sense of toil, not the image of a wanderer with a mysterious background who is a bit out of place with the surrounding environment."

"Another thing, I am Chinese, and my appearance is very different from the Gypsy look, so when their elements appear on me in a large area, we will all subconsciously feel a sense of dissonance the moment we see it," Lu Yan He put forward his point of view.

Lucy Bates nodded.

Lu Yan He thought of something and said: "Wait for me a moment."

He immediately made a phone call to Chen Siqi.

"Siqi, did "Jump Up" do an issue on traditional Chinese strange legends before? You guys collected a lot of materials at that time, right? Can you pack them up and send them to me?"

Chen Siqi immediately said okay.

After Lu Yan He received the materials, he pulled Lucy Bates to look at the pictures in these materials on a tablet computer together.

"These are the images from our traditional Chinese strange tales; there are gods, demons, ghosts, and monsters, as well as traditional Daoist priests, monks, and some related images," Lu Yan He said. "You can refer to these elements."

Seeing this, Lucy Bates said on the spot: "These materials really should have been found earlier."

Lu Yan He said: "It doesn't matter, there is still time before the movie officially starts filming. We will hurry up and adjust it, it should be in time, right?"

"I hope it's in time," Lucy Bates said. "Let's see if we can find a way to adjust the feeling of the whole look through some modifications of elements."

Lu Yan He nodded.

"Actually, I quite like these looks you designed for me, but there are individual elements that look a bit strange on me," Lu Yan He said with a smile. "For example, this eyeliner and black eyeshadow of mine; maybe it's because I have never tried this kind of look before, I still haven't gotten used to it when I look at myself."

Lucy Bates nodded.

Fortunately, apart from his look, the looks of other main actors did not show any deviation that was far from the original design after the actors put them on.

Thus, Lucy Bates started working with her team. (End of chapter)