Chapter 35: Art Exam (1)

The 2002 Spring Festival was extremely bland and tasteless for Lu Kuan, making him miss the glitz and glamour, the colorful and fragrant life before his rebirth.

On New Year's Eve, he had a long phone call with Mei Yanfang; her treatment progress had already been put on the agenda.

Upon learning that she could be cured of her serious illness while retaining her fertility, this daughter of Xiangjiang burst into tears once again.

Lu Kuan politely declined her invitation to spend the festival in Xiangjiang, purely because he didn't want to see those three idiots, mother and son.

Some things are like chocolate; people feel good after eating it, but dogs feel uncomfortable. Lu Kuan's methods had made them obedient, and also created a peaceful recovery environment for Mei Yanfang.

The phone calls on New Year's Eve were constant; text message greetings weren't very popular in this era, and it wouldn't be until May of this year that China Mobile and China Unicom could realize information interoperability.

Even so, there were still phone calls from Zhou Xun, Zhang Jizhong, Mei Yanfang, Wang Minhui, Zhang Songwen, Li Yang, Fan Bingbing, and others; even Baoqiang, who couldn't afford a mobile phone, borrowed one to send his blessings.

Less than half a year after his rebirth, the little Daoist priest had also unknowingly accumulated a portion of connections in the entertainment industry, just waiting for the day he would make his mark.

And the first step to making his mark was the fourth round of the Beijing Film Academy art exam on March 20th.

Lu Kuan had achieved high scores in the previous three rounds of comprehensive knowledge, free statement, art and photography work analysis, etc., and finally, he had to compete with more than 20 other candidates for the only 6 admission spots.

The exam location was set at the Beijing Film Academy's standard screening room. (Note 1)

The exam room atmosphere was solemn and grave; when Lu Kuan entered, many teachers and students cast their gaze at him because his performance in the first three rounds was too outstanding.

More than twenty people sat down according to the time and exam room order and began the first two art exam processes: performance reporting and narrative essay writing.

The former was to examine the students' hypothetical cognition as directors, including stage space handling and the hypothetical nature of time.

In short, as a director, you must first convince yourself to accept this virtual performance method before you can better guide the actors.

Lu Kuan's group had a total of 10 people, and the topic they drew was "Train Station"; everyone played a group of people waiting for the train at the station at will, without a detailed script, all based on free play according to the outline.

Due to his excellent performance and high scores in the previous three rounds of interviews, everyone in the group trusted him very much and unanimously agreed to let Lu Kuan allocate and plan the performance scheme.

Only one "rat dropping" seemed so different.

"I disagree!" The speaker was a young man with a gloomy look and a 3-7 split hairstyle, probably only eighteen or nineteen years old.

"Liu Zeyu, if you don't want to, then withdraw from the exam; from the beginning to now, you've been looking for trouble, you're such a pain!"

Lu Kuan looked amusedly at the fat man who scolded the young man; this was the only familiar face among a pile of candidates, He Yanjiang.

He was older than the students in the group, born in '79, and participated in the screenwriting work of the Zhou Runfa version of *Confucius* as well as the Chen Baoguo version of *Emperor Wu of Han* and *Qiao's Grand Courtyard*.

Later, he went to work at China Film Group and eventually became the Vice President of Xiangjiang Asia Television, responsible for program planning and directing.

"Damn it! What did you say!"

Coming from a family of officials and with his family currently in power, how could Liu Zeyu endure this kind of bird-like anger!

He came to take the art exam just to play around, to see if he could get a directing department title to play with little girls.

Seeing everyone glaring at him, he chose silent resistance instead of provoking public anger.

Let you be proud in this round of performance reporting; let's see how you die in the next round of creative discussion!

Lu Kuan didn't take him seriously, and everyone allocated the plan and began to prepare separately.

The invigilation seat was held by Xie Xiaojin, the director of the directing department, Tian Zhuangzhuang, who was about to take office, Jiang Wei, the chief instructor, and Zhang Jiandong, as well as Wang Jingsong, the deputy director of the acting department.

"I didn't expect the children in this batch of the directing department to discuss things in such a decent way."

This was the evaluation given by Director Wang from the perspective of acting, and it was also the reason why he was sitting in the invigilation seat today.

Zhang Jiandong touched his chin and said: "Director Wang, look at that candidate in the black top; he has been allocating character roles and guiding the performance rhythm."

Xie Xiaojin nodded secretly; this is the director's overall planning ability.

Similar to the group discussions in interviews of the future, this part of the process also incidentally examines the candidates' organizational and overall planning abilities.

Who are the generals, who are the commanders, and who are the useless ones can still be roughly distinguished.

"How is it, everyone."

Several invigilators hurriedly stood up; it was Principal Zhang Huijun coming for a routine inspection.

He signaled everyone to sit down and not disturb the candidates who were doing the final preparation work.

Several teachers looked over, and following Zhang Huijun into the venue quietly were the well-known fifth-generation director Zhang Yimou, actor Chen Daoming, Jiang Zhiqiang of Edko Films, and a relatively unfamiliar face.

Zhang Huijun smiled: "Let me introduce to everyone, Chairman Jiang of Edko Films, Director Zhang Jianting of Emperor Motion Pictures are guests invited by the school to attend the forum next week."

Tian Zhuangzhuang teased: "Yimou, is this alumnus of the Beijing Film Academy here to inspect? Why don't I give you this seat, and you can give them a score today."

"Forget it, old Tian, just stay honestly, don't scold me as soon as we meet."

Zhang Huijun, Zhang Yimou, and Tian Zhuangzhuang were all classmates of the 78th class of the Beijing Film Academy, and their relationship was very good, and they were relatively casual when chatting and joking on weekdays.

Zhang Jianting looked for a target on the stage, met Liu Zeyu's eyes, nodded, and gave a hint; he was here with a mission this time.

"Hey, Principal Zhang, I heard that the last round of the Beijing Film Academy directing department art exam is a creative discussion; I have a proposal, I don't know if it's appropriate."

Zhang Huijun was stunned; he didn't like this director with a problematic stance very much, but he had to give face to Emperor Motion Pictures.

"Director Zhang, please speak."

"Chairman Jiang is chatting with Director Yimou about their next script *People in the Jianghu*; I think it would be better to use this semi-finished script for the topic of this last round, how about it?"

Zhang Jianting adjusted his thick glasses and gave Jiang Zhiqiang a wink.

Jiang Zhiqiang smiled noncommittally, but threw the question to Zhang Yimou: "Yimou, what do you think?"

Since the person involved wasn't worried about the script leaking, there was no substantial obstacle.

Zhang Yimou didn't know why this Xiangjiang director suddenly had a whim, and his face smiled into wrinkles: "I'm fine with it, if Principal Zhang thinks it's appropriate..."

Although he felt strange, he also held an open attitude toward this proposal.

The so-called *People in the Jianghu* was actually the first version of *House of Flying Daggers*, but at this time, there was just a prototype of the story.

The Zhang Yimou of the past life had also invited more than a dozen domestic screenwriters to hold a discussion meeting to communicate about script creation during the script creation stage; there was no problem of premature leakage for a script at this progress.

Note 1: The fourth round process of the Beijing Film Academy in this chapter has been magically modified; under the standard process, the fourth round takes three days. The first day is for writing narrative essays, the second day is for creative problem discussion, and the third day is for performance reporting.

In addition, the annual admission of the Beijing Film Academy directing department is about 18-20 people, and in the early 2000s, it was basically single digits because the teaching staff couldn't bring so many students. In 2002, besides international students, the actual number of admissions was only 6.

Here, the fourth round process has been magically modified to end in one day.

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(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 36 =====