Chapter 3641: Film Project (Part 5)

"Adding scenes?" Wei En said, sounding somewhat surprised. "Why the sudden need to add scenes for me? Is there something wrong with this character?"

"No, it's just that after seeing your look, I felt that if you were just a flat, ordinary doctor, it would be too much of a waste. Your temperament will bring more mysterious qualities to the role, which fits people's imagination of magic perfectly."

Ke Lisi said a long string of words, but Wei En didn't understand a single bit of it. This wasn't because Wei En had a problem with his comprehension, but because he truly didn't know what magic looked like in the eyes of an ordinary person like Ke Lisi.

The "mysticism" they spoke of was clearly different from the kind understood by Strange and other mages; it was more like an ordinary person's yearning for mysticism. And yearning is the thing furthest from understanding.

Wei En already understood the existence of magic and had dealt with quite a few mages and cosmic demons. In his eyes, these existences held no secrets. But Ke Lisi and the others clearly had another understanding of magic, a kind of unrealistic fantasy.

This fantasy sounded very beautiful and was well-suited for display in a film, but it was so far removed from the facts that Wei En, who knew the truth, felt a bit lost in the fog.

Clearly, he wasn't the only one in this situation. Not far away, the screenwriter was pulling Strange aside, describing what the "magic world" was like to the Sorcerer Supreme with flying spittle, leaving Strange stunned.

"Alright, I don't have any objections to adding a few scenes," Wei En said. "But don't affect the main plot; I don't want to be accused of buying my way into the cast."

"Don't worry," Ke Lisi said with a smile. "It's just a shift in character setting, making a relatively one-sided character three-dimensional and adding a sense of realism. It won't steal anyone else's scenes."

Wei En nodded, and from a distance, he saw Strange walking over. He was clearly one of the two people whose look had been finalized, wearing that Sorcerer Supreme uniform and even having his sideburns dyed white.

Strange touched his sideburns and said, "They said if I'm going to be the headmaster, I need to look a bit more mature. What do you think?"

"Not bad." Wei En nodded. He truly felt that way; the white sideburns did add a touch of steady temperament to Strange, and distinct from his usual image, it made him look more like a mage.

"I heard someone else's look is finished. Who is it?"

"It seems to be Wang Da. She was the first to arrive, so she should be over there. Shall we go over and see her?"

Wei En nodded, and the two walked together toward the other side of the dressing room. It was actually quite large, with all kinds of vanity tables and racks in the middle, and many people moving between them, so you couldn't see the end at a glance.

When they rounded a pile of things and finally saw Wang Da on the other side, both let out a gasp.

"Oh, God." Wei En looked at Wang Da and said, "It's amazing, Miss. You look like a goddess from ancient Greek mythology. Aphrodite?"

Wang Da was currently floating in the air, though not too high, just slightly off the ground, with her arms spread to make it easier for the stylist to work on her look.

She was also wearing academic robes, but the texture was softer, closer to silk, floating slightly under the influence of magic. Her red hair had become longer, almost dragging on the floor, and the slightly curly strands emitted a faint luster; when spread out, it reminded one of the brilliant purple-red star clusters in the universe.

The glasses on her face added a touch of intellectual aura, and whether it was the scroll in her left hand or the staff in her right, both flickered with strange faint light, full of a thick magical aura. Anyone seeing this look would surely think she was a powerful and beautiful female mage.

Because someone was still adjusting the hem of her clothes, Wang Da didn't move, just smiled at the two of them. Wei En waved his hand at her.

"She looks more like the Sorcerer Supreme than you do." Wei En looked at Strange and said.

"That's because I haven't turned on the special effects," Strange snorted and said. "If I were to go full power..."

"Then you'd look like a demon invading Earth."

Strange was speechless.

The superiority of Wang Da's image lay in the fact that she didn't need particularly exaggerated light or special effects to possess a very thick, mysterious temperament. To be precise, she was the true synonym for mysticism, because even she herself didn't understand the principles of the Scarlet Power, nor did she have any desire to explore it; she just used it like an instinct. This made her look effortless, which could satisfy the audience's wish that "magic should be whatever you want, relaxed and at ease."

Wei En went around to the other side and saw a few more people sitting in chairs getting their looks done. Xu Shangqi was the first to wave at him; he had just put on his wig, and the makeup artist was modifying the shape of his eyebrows.

Xu Shangqi's setting was that of a mage from the East, so he wore long hair, along with a hair crown and hairpin. There seemed to be people in the styling team who knew their stuff; the Eastern look actually looked quite authentic.

The Hippo Goddess sat in the chair in the very middle, with three or four stylists surrounding her, hanging earrings on her ears. She was video calling her daughter, letting out loud laughs from time to time.

Clearly, she was welcomed by everyone; the screenwriter sat in the chair next to her discussing the script, the director was studying her staff, and there was even a makeup artist specifically mixing blush suitable for hippo skin, currently using her arm for experiments.

Sitting in the chair at the very edge, Gu Yi was yawning. That was an old man with a long white beard, wearing blue mage robes and a pointed mage hat with star patterns, almost exactly the same as the image in the original comics.

Several makeup artists were crouching in front of him, braiding his beard. Although his beard was very long, it was combed very smoothly with magic, so it was easy to manage, but it took some time to braid it into a style.

"Which universe is this Gu Yi from?" Wei En asked.

"Helen's friend, uh, the Doctor Strange who almost destroyed his own universe by playing with time."

Wei En nodded, heard a call for lunch at the door, and the staff went out in twos and threes. Wei En wasn't particularly hungry, so he went to get a sandwich and leaned against the window to eat.

Just as he was eating lunch, his phone rang. He picked it up and said, "Hello? Oh, there's a result already? Good, I'll come over to get it later, thank you!"

Then he walked to the table next to him, sat down, and said to Strange, "The magic energy sent for analysis has a result. The experts at Harvard say that under normal circumstances, the electromagnetic radiation of this energy is very low, about the same as ordinary electronic products used daily, and has no impact on soil and groundwater. However, if spells are used, the energy should be in an activated state, and whether there will be changes is unknown."

"As long as there's no impact in the non-activated state, that's fine, because after the school building is completed, I will add a small protective shield to the school, the principle of which is similar to a magic defense network. The energy of the magic defense network is usually in a non-activated state and can also isolate the activated magic energy within the school to avoid causing pollution to the environment."

Wei En nodded and said, "I heard that the materials for building the school have been collected? How do you plan to transport them, using portals?"

"The individual portals of the mages are too small, and some large stone materials can't be transported in, but if we build a large portal, it will be too eye-catching. So we'll still use the old method."

"The old method?"

"Within the atmosphere, we'll use the aerial transport system to transport them directly, and outside the atmosphere, we'll rely on mages to pull them."

"Isn't that too troublesome?" Wei En took a bite of his sandwich and said. "Those stone materials brought from Xiangong aren't light; how long will it take to move them?"

"There's no other way; we must follow the Near-Earth Management Law. At worst, we'll just work harder these few days and make more trips."

"Have you considered a more convenient method?" Wei En touched his chin and said. "Don't you have storage bags or something?"

"We do, but as you said, those building materials brought from Xiangong are too large and have all kinds of magical properties, so they're really hard to pack; it's better to just move them."

"I have an idea," Wei En suddenly had a flash of inspiration and said. "What do you think of Flerkens?"

"What kind of beast?"

"Flerkens, that's my cat. Wang Da also keeps a few, Tony also adopted one, but Nick seems to have some left. You can go ask him, or just borrow Goose; they can move quite a lot of things at once."

"I almost forgot if you hadn't mentioned it," Strange said. "This thing looks exactly like a cat, so I always thought they were little cats on Earth."

"Actually, it's about the same," Wei En sighed and said. "They meow the same, shed hair all day long, scratched the new sofa in my nursing home beyond recognition, and the sound of them spitting up hairballs is like a tsunami..."

"Then it seems I'm not fated to have one," Strange said. "I absolutely cannot tolerate even a single cat hair on my clothes."

"Then you're in trouble. Since the day I adopted it, there hasn't been a time when my clothes didn't have cat hair, and it must have floated onto your clothes too." Wei En said with schadenfreude.

"Oh, forget it." Strange showed a look of disgust. "Then you go find Nick for me; I don't want to have close contact with that group of furry monsters."

After lunch, Wei En first flew to Harvard with the gray mist to get the test report, then called Nick, asking him to contact Captain Marvel to borrow Goose, the Flerken pet of Captain Marvel, to act as a porter.

The afternoon was the main event because they were going to have auditions. Simply put, it was sitting in front of the camera to perform a short segment to see if there were any problems with the look on camera and if they could handle basic acting.

In the afternoon, the three little leads also arrived; they didn't look very old, even younger than in Harry Potter, probably around the second or third grade of elementary school. In addition, there were some minor roles playing classmates.

After the children arrived, it was even more chaotic. Every adult in the crew became a sheepdog, either catching children or on the way to catch children. The entire studio was filled with gasps, laughter, and the scolding of adults.

Every little actor wanted an autograph, running to Strange here and Wei En there, and after getting the autograph, they wanted to take a group photo, and after the photo, they wanted to shoot a short video together. The stage manager spent a lot of effort to catch them all and take them to do makeup.

Wei En, who had been surrounded and chattered at for half an hour, finally breathed a sigh of relief, but he had already anticipated that the subsequent filming probably wouldn't be very peaceful.

During the audition, the leads auditioned first, and supporting roles like Wei En watched from the side. Don't look at how noisy the children were when they first arrived; they were quite decent when acting.

The scene they were auditioning for was the first encounter of the trio. Very coincidentally, Director Ke Lisi still chose to let the little mages take the train to school. This wasn't a suggestion given by Strange or Wei En, but purely something they thought of themselves.

This was actually because the trains in Massachusetts were very distinctive. The train passing through Somerville, Massachusetts, would first pass through a lush forest, then cross over a river bridge, the clear water reflecting the azure sky and the speeding train, full of fantasy romanticism.

So in Director Ke Lisi's setting, the way all little mages in the United States went to school was to first go to Boston, and then take the train from Boston station to the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at the foot of Mount Greylock.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 3642 =====