Chapter 448

For the film "The Eyewitness," the biggest regret was that it was a short film and could not participate in the competition of the main competition unit.

And now even the short film unit was gone, so it could only participate as a screening film.

However, Venice attached great importance to this film and to Wei Ming; "The Book of Heaven" was confirmed to be shortlisted for the main competition unit at the last minute, and it was rare in Venice's history for an animation film to be shortlisted, which was largely for the sake of "The Eyewitness," and of course, the BBC was also a bit useful.

So even though "The Eyewitness" was only a screening film, the film festival gave it a very high specification; when Wei Ming was in Sichuan, the original copy of the formal invitation letter had already been mailed from Venice to Yanjing.

And it said it was inviting the "The Eyewitness" team to visit Venice.

Wei Ming's new team was prepared to continue to go to the southern Sichuan region to look around; when passing through Chengdu, they received this news from the Ministry of Culture from the Emei Film Studio.

But the leaders didn't hope for Wei Ming to go abroad at this juncture, and Wei Ming himself was too lazy to put down the crew for such a long time for a short film, so he remained indifferent.

However, he did send a telegram to Hong Kong, asking A-Long to convey to Xu Jinjiang that if he and Xia Wenxi had time and were willing, they could represent "The Eyewitness" crew to participate in the Venice Film Festival, with all expenses covered by DreamWorks.

This could be considered an explanation for the film festival's kind invitation.

When Wei Ming and the others were resting in Chengdu, the actors who set off from Yanjing also arrived; they had come early to experience life.

The protagonist Li Baotian didn't come; his experience was mainly the identity of a musician; Wei Ming instead needed him to maintain a feeling of being out of tune with the countryside, so he was mainly hanging out at the Central Conservatory of Music now.

Three people came, Ge Cunzhuang and his son Ge You, and Wu Jing; it just so happened that they played three generations of ancestors and descendants in the movie, Principal Wang Baoding, Village Chief Wang Jianshe, and student Wang Shitou.

Originally, Ge Cunzhuang had rich acting experience, and he could play this kind of role as soon as he took it, but this was his son's first time playing an important role; in terms of weight, not counting those children, it was second only to the male lead.

Ge You only had three years of experience in the countryside in Changping before; his experience was mainly feeding pigs, shoveling pig manure, and postpartum care for sows; he was seriously lacking in other life experiences.

So Old Master Ge personally took his son to the filming location to experience life, specifically looking for those village cadres who were the only ones who had the final say in the village to learn from.

Because the filming location had not been finally determined, Wei Ming planned to let them go to the village where his grandmother lived to learn, with the eldest uncle responding.

Wu Jing was the same; he hadn't lived in the countryside, so his father took the initiative to suggest that he go to the countryside to experience life, and Wu Jing's father didn't come himself, directly acting as a hands-off shopkeeper; bringing children during summer vacation was very annoying, and he even regretted that Wei Ming didn't take the person away earlier.

Wu Jing didn't understand this; he asked Brother Wei Ming: "Why do I have to experience life? I have acted in plays, and everyone says I act well."

Wu Jing's role's scenes were actually not as good as Xizi's "Pipi," but Wu Jing's acting talent was also not as good as Xizi's, so experiencing life was still very necessary.

Wei Ming explained with a smile: "Jingzi, because you are a city child, you might not know what kind of life rural children live; in order to perform realistically, you must learn their living habits; you have to know that there is no television in the countryside, there are no traffic lights at the village intersection, and the language of the Sichuan children is not understood."

Wu Jing was strange: "Brother Wei Ming, you speak when you speak, why are you shaking your head and wagging your tail?"

Wei Ming laughed even more happily and touched his little inch-head: "Don't learn from me; you learn well from Grandpa Ge and Uncle Ge; in a few days, Xizi will come to keep you company."

Xizi was also learning martial arts at Shichahai some time ago and could be considered Jingzi's childhood friend; he had already started filming "Below the Bridge" at this moment; everyone was waiting for Teacher Xi's schedule; "Spring of the Sheep Class" was finished, and "Journey to the West" should be filming Red Boy.

There were a total of more than 20 primary school students of different ages in the village primary school in the movie; the four child actors with heavy scenes, two boys and two girls, were all found by Wei Ming from Yanjing, children with a certain acting foundation, including film emperors like Xizi.

Although rural children were more simple and could be used as soon as they were picked out, and didn't need to experience life, because they were too original and hadn't been in contact with the outside world, they might not have the concept of performance, and the communication cost would also be very large; they might be trained for a long time and finally be unable to be competent, unable to perform the feeling Wei Ming wanted, and even have a sense of fragmentation when together with professional actors.

The task of escorting the Ge family father and son and Wu Jing was handed over to Mi Jiashan; he happily accepted the task because Wei Ming gave the heroine's role to Pan Hong.

In the original work, Teacher Zhong's wife and children abandoned him, but fortunately, he had a soulmate in music, Teacher Yu, but unfortunately, he learned that she had also passed away in the end.

The movie didn't make it so complicated; the wife was his soulmate, but the final ending was also death, and Teacher Zhong still became a lonely person, so he finally adopted Pipi.

This wife's scenes were not many, basically appearing in memories, but she was the white moonlight of Teacher Zhong's life; Wei Ming even wanted to keep it for Sister Lin.

However, thinking that Sister Lin had already obtained two big plays, "Du Shiniang" and "Middle Age," it was better to supplement Teacher Pan.

Before leaving, Wei Ming handed a letter to Mi Jiashan and asked him to pass it to his eldest uncle.

During the time they left, information about all women in Sichuan named Xu Shujie who were 32 years old had been found, and the detailed information was all in this thick letter of Wei Ming; Mi Jiashan touched it and thought it was filled with money.

But this was more important than money to the Xu family.

When Xu Cunmao received this letter, he understood that it was his turn as the eldest brother to fulfill his responsibility.

Now the feed factory's business was only in one county; next, he had to expand to the whole city and the whole province, running business on one side and looking for his younger sister based on this information on the other.

Xiao Ming also said in the letter: "The possibility of the little aunt changing her name is very high, and the possibility of leaving Sichuan also exists; if we still can't find her like this, we will find other ways; I heard that a technology called parent-child identification has been introduced in the country; even if the little aunt doesn't remember it herself, as long as we find a suspected one, we can determine whether it is her with a single hair."

Xu Cunmao had never heard of this technology, but he believed his nephew; if he said there was, then there must be.

This technology is called DNA parent-child identification technology, which is currently only used for the detection of major criminal cases and will only be used for parent-child identification after several years.

However, Wei Ming had foreign channels; the eldest uncle was responsible for screening, and he himself was responsible for confirmation.

Hong Kong, Zhou Huimin and her mother were watching the weekly "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

This was the second episode officially broadcast, and it had started to become a hit since the last episode.

Every episode, countless families in Hong Kong would guard the television set to answer questions with the contestants inside, and then complain that the other party was too stupid, and what if it were themselves.

Before the first official episode, the best result was someone who fell at the 14th question, and then could only take away the prize money of 60,000 yuan for the 10th question.

And in this episode, a strong person successfully took down the 14th question after using all the lifelines; this was a company clerk who wore glasses and was gentle and refined, with a university degree.

At this time, he was unknown to the 15th question; answering the 14th question correctly almost exhausted his luck; he knew that the last question would definitely be more difficult, more biased, and more misleading.

So at this critical moment, he chose to stop, take away 500,000, and no longer challenge 1 million; he said that with this 500,000, plus the recent drop in housing prices, he could buy a house of his own.

This move would inevitably trigger widespread discussion in society; many people might scold him for being stupid, and then stimulate more people to participate in this program.

And the focus of Zhou's mother was the housing price mentioned by the contestant; compared to the peak period, it had already started to decline, and the distance for their mother and daughter to own a house of their own was getting closer and closer.

Liu Rulong also planned to buy a house for himself and A-Ying by next year; after all, his mother was about to give birth, and there were more people.

At this time, he had already received Wei Ming's telegram and conveyed the meaning to Xu Jinjiang.

The junior brother was a bit hesitant, feeling that going abroad and spending Teacher Wei's money was not very appropriate.

A-Long advised: "A-Ming is not a stingy person; how about this, A-Ying and I will accompany you together; it just so happens that she also yearns for Milan's fashion, so let's treat it as our make-up honeymoon."

Xu Jinjiang was also moved; he liked Italian sculpture art very much, and finally nodded: "I'll ask Xia Wenxi again."

When Wei Ming and the others returned to Chengdu for the second time, August was almost over, and Wei Hong also returned to Chengdu, planning to tell her brother before returning to the capital; she was about to start school.

After personally seeing Wei Hong off, Wei Ming convened a crew meeting to analyze the results of the location scouting for the past month.

The result was that the Fanshan Village originally recommended to them by Long Xiaoyang was still the most suitable.

In addition, parts of the landscape of several other small mountain villages could be used as a supplement to the main scene.

And in different regions of Sichuan, they also found places suitable for acting as county towns and townships, but these two scenes were not very important, adding up to less than a quarter of the movie.

Wei Ming said: "Then it's Fanshan Village; the Fanshan Village village committee is very welcoming to us and is willing to fully support us; next, we have to turn this village into the appearance of the 1960s; Old Feng, Little Feng, it depends on you."