Chapter 9: Miss Ni Ni

Li Xiaotian was originally holding a reflector at the scene. When shooting for the fourth time, he called someone to take over his work, walked quickly to the back of the monitor, and asked Zhang Yiyi: "Zhang Yiyi, what are you playing with?"

Zhang Yiyi sat in front of the monitor and said: "You come and see quickly, you look at his legs, this time the angle of squatting has changed, this line, too good, how much feeling."

Li Xiaotian's face was very ugly: "Yao'er, we agreed, this time we can't mess around."

Zhang Yiyi didn't look back, excitedly said: "But this time it's really different, definitely not messing around, you come and see. Look, here he has a clenching action, this represents Zhang Yaba's inner resistance consciousness. But immediately let go, indicating wanting to resist, but no courage. The second time, he changed a method, see, he didn't clench his fist, but..."

"Stop!" Li Xiaotian pulled Zhang Yiyi up, grabbed his collar, and said through gritted teeth: "Zhang Yiyi, do you know what you are doing now? Do you know that what you are burning is not film, it's the coffin money of your parents and my parents? Are you trying to piss me off! If you treat yourself as Wong Kar-wai again, specially return my money, you play however you want alone."

After shooting for the fourth time, Chen Nuo doubted himself a bit.

Where exactly was wrong?

One shot, shot four times. Can this still be an actor?

Chen Nuo decided, if he had to shoot again and it still didn't work, he must ask Zhang Yiyi how exactly he should act.

However, this take passed.

Chen Nuo didn't know what Zhang Yiyi's standard for passing was, because he didn't feel the fourth take was much better, nor did he feel the first take was much worse.

After the initial stutter, the subsequent shooting was exceptionally smooth. One morning, except for an accident when scheduling the extras, other Chen Nuo's scenes almost passed in one or two takes.

By noon, this crew had no boxed meals. Li Xiaotian took everyone to find a rice bowl restaurant, one 7-yuan rice bowl with two meats and one vegetable per person. Enough to eat.

After this day ended, Zhang Yiyi called Chen Nuo over, looking very excited, patted Chen Nuo's shoulder, and said: "Go, eat at my house."

At this time, the sky was already dark. After shooting for a day, Chen Nuo was a bit tired, so he declined: "Thank you director, but it's not early, it's quite a delay to come and go, forget it."

"What delay, not delay." Saying that, Zhang Yiyi pulled Chen Nuo into the Sihe Academy next to it, "Right here."

"Ah?"

Chen Nuo looked around. The courtyard he was entering now was exactly the Sihe Academy where the first scene was today. At this moment, it was time to eat, and every household was full of shadows. An old man just happened to come out of the room next to him, looked up, and greeted Zhang Yiyi: "Yiyi, your mom stewed the elbow for an afternoon, I smelled the taste."

"Haha, Uncle Zhang, how about you come to my house to deal with it?"

"Don't, if I go, you kid won't have anything to eat. Ouch, isn't this the male lead, Yiyi, this kid you found this time is really good, really handsome." The old man gave a thumbs up.

"That's it, acting department, future big star. Uncle Zhang, I'll go back first, talk later."

"Alright."

Chen Nuo stared at Zhang Yiyi, a bit unresponsive, "Isn't that old man?"

"Yes, it's him, the one who took the lead in making trouble with me this afternoon, saying this is wrong and that is wrong. My Uncle Zhang, watched me grow up."

"You... is this really your house?"

"Otherwise?" Zhang Yiyi said surprisingly: "Otherwise where do I find so many extras? Those neighbors this afternoon are all my acquaintances, pure friendly guest appearances, didn't want a cent."

The elbow stewed at Zhang Yiyi's house was delicious, fat but not greasy, crisp, soft, and rotten, melting in the mouth.

For Chen Nuo, the only disadvantage was that no matter how much spicy pepper was put in the north, it wasn't spicy enough. As a Sichuanese, it had been ten days since coming to Beijing, and he hadn't found a restaurant that suited his taste.

Zhang Yiyi's parents were very enthusiastic about him. Both were over sixty, and it could be seen that they especially loved this youngest son, Zhang Yiyi, saying "Little Chen ah, Yiyi has been weak since childhood, and his temper is not good, you act in his play, please be more accommodating." Chen Nuo couldn't imagine what the reaction of the two old people would be if they knew he had kicked Zhang Yiyi's life root once.

The next day, Chen Nuo got up at 5:30. Zhang Yiyi specifically told him to arrive early, because the heroine would come today, and the two would have a rival scene.

"You two should get familiar as soon as possible, by the way, she is even younger than you, you... don't have any bad intentions."

Chen Nuo looked surprised, "No, director, why do I feel you have been wearing colored glasses to look at people."

"Forget it, don't talk with you, roll back and rest early, tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock, be on time."

Chen Nuo arrived at 6:50. At that time, the sky in Beijing was already bright. More than a hundred meters away from the film alley, Chen Nuo saw Zhang Yiyi and a quite tall girl gesturing and talking about something.

"Good morning director." Chen Nuo walked over to say hello.

"Here? Let me introduce you two. This is Chen Nuo, from Sichuan. This is Miss Ni Ni, from Nanjing. You two are peers, should have more common language. Come, shake hands, get to know each other."

The girl was quite generous, took the initiative to stretch out her hand, "Hello."

"Hello."

Chen Nuo looked at the other party's face. Although she was still young, the girl's appearance already had some flavor. Especially her eyebrows, slightly wide between the eyes, her eyes were slender, slightly slanting upwards, and there was a kind of heroism between looking around.

He felt very familiar, and he had also heard of this girl's name.

So, this girl must be a star in mainland China in later life. But shouldn't be very famous.

Otherwise, even if he had spent a lot of time in LA in his previous life, he should be able to recognize her at a glance like Yang Mi.

"Alright, you two chat, I'll go over there and see. Prepare to start shooting at 8 o'clock." Zhang Yiyi said, and left.

Chen Nuo and Miss Ni Ni looked at each other, neither spoke for a while.

"I'm shooting for the first time, how about you?" Finally, Chen Nuo took the initiative to start.

"I shot commercials when I was very young, this is also my first time shooting a movie. Are you very familiar with Teacher Zhang? Before you came, he kept talking about you." It could be seen that Miss Ni Ni's personality was actually quite cheerful. Chen Nuo started, and she naturally followed.

"Me and him, quite familiar. He is... my acting teacher."

Miss Ni Ni laughed, her slender eyes narrowed into a slit, "What a coincidence, I also came to Beijing to take classes before. He also taught me. Can we be considered fellow disciples?"

Looking at the girl's smiling eyes, Chen Nuo couldn't bear to tell her that they were not fellow disciples, but should be called fellow sufferers.

After chatting for a while, the two started changing clothes. The first scene shot today was Xiaozhu secretly bringing a bowl of eight-treasure porridge to Zhang Yaba. When Zhang Yaba drank the porridge, Xiaozhu watched him from the side.

A quite simple scene, but it ng'd five or six times. This time, Zhang Yiyi didn't sit behind the monitor. Every time it cut, he would run over and teach Miss Ni Ni the play.

Chen Nuo only knew then that Zhang Yiyi would teach actors the play.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 10 =====