RREI 03
Chapter 03
(TN: Starting this chapter, Cao Dingkun no longer refers to himself as CDK, but Luo Ding.)
When he came down from upstairs, Luo Ding realized that the place he was in was a single apartment. He roughly looked through his memory, and then remembered that this is the apartment rented by Yaxing studio for its artists.
Gu Yaxing, the founder of Yaxing studio, used to be a famous movie star in China. At the peak of his career, he fell out with his brokerage company. He then set up a new door to create this studio, which was neither warm nor hot. Most of the company's artists were selected from all kinds of talent shows locally and abroad, and some ordinary people with excellent external conditions will be mined by star scouts. However, under the increasingly mature entertainment method, the latter is becoming more rarer.
Coincidentally, Luo Ding happened to be one of the few in these groups.
Luo Ding grew up in an orphanage without a father and mother. He did not further his study after graduating from high school at the age of eighteen. After leaving the orphanage, he kept working in a coffee shop for a living, but because of his good appearance, he was discovered and signed by a scout from Yaxing, and he started to work as an advertising model. Later, Su Shengbai emerged from a singing talent show and was signed by Gu Yaxing himself. Gu Yaxing was in the low period of his career at that time. He urgently needed a highly popular combination to shoot up the vitality of Yaxing Studio. Luo Ding, the best-looking one, was arranged to work together with Su Shengbai.
In fact, his character is not suitable for entertainment. The symptoms of depression could be seen from a long time ago. In the same group, Su Shengbai was straightforward and adorable. One could see the difference between the one loved by all and this taciturn guy, so Su Shengbai gradually became popular. With other work besides singing, Luo Ding was the foil, just sit on one side without expression, and the image was slowly fixed as the "taciturn and sullen Prince".
Everyone including the audience knew it's just a front. But different attributes have different markets. Although the group's records were not popular, the combination of two handsome young men; the lovely and candid Su Shengbai with the opposite extremes of a gloomy and taciturn Luo Ding, created their own audiences. The two people worked together for a long time and their temperament was compatible. The studio was strict with them in making friends privately. Maybe it's to relieve the loneliness, maybe their long-term familiarity breeds fondness, they naturally got together. After confirming the relationship with Su Shengbai, Luo Ding's depression gradually eased. The tacit cooperation between the two men and his better performance made the originally tepid combination gradually gained some popularity.
Later, Su Shengbai was able to meet Cao Dingkun. Afterwards, he broke up and abandoned their relationship without hesitation which obviously gave Luo Ding a heavy blow. The symptoms of depression that had alleviated suddenly became serious, and even the drug treatment hardly helped. This situation made Luo Ding very vulnerable and easy to take advantage of.
When he entered the car with Wu Fangyuan, Luo Ding borrowed the other's cell phone while pressing down his brim.
It's May 2nd, ten days have passed since his death. Luo Ding calmly moved to the angle where Wu Fangyuan couldn't see the phone, opened Weibo and entered the words "Cao Dingkun".
Then there was a dull smile and low laugh came from him.
The news of his death was spreading wildly on Weibo. If he opened a picture at will, he could see his own, which was shot from various angles, appeared smashed, burnt and empty. Various familiar and unfamiliar users forwarded and paired a candle with a sentimental eulogy. He tapped into one of the popular microblogs, and one of them was Su Shengbai's.
It was not surprising that he had not gone to see the fake model, neither was he expecting that Su Shengbai to completely retreated from being associated with him. Su Shengbai is not an impulsive person. If he dared to drive and knock him down the cliff, he would have the confidence to not be implicated in this. What's more, the car fell from such a high mountain road. It's just that Luoding heard more than two sounds before he died. It'd be a wonder if he could not find out the cause of falling down the cliff.
Silently deleting all browsing records, he began to look at Wu Fangyuan's Weibo for Luo Ding. As far as an artist with a fixed exposure was concerned, having only 30,000 fans were really pitiful, and the content of Weibo was also very boring. It was nothing more than some photos taken by Wu Fangyuan for Luo Ding during the shooting. In the photo, Luo Ding only monotonously stared straight at the camera without any expression, and his eyes were gloomy and distant.
*******
《Tang Zhuan》is a documentary-style TV series shot by a Chinese TV station with the highest ratings in China. Produced by Chinese TV, supervised by Zheng Kezhen, a senior documentary director of CCTV, and Deng Jianlian, a director specializing in ancient costume drama, it is tentatively determined that the leading role of the male and female characters will be played by Wu Yuan, the most popular male star at present, and historical period drama queen Pan Yiming's appearance on the new TV show - these people alone could lay a huge audience base after the broadcast. This line-up could not be said to not be formidable.
(TN: Tang Zhuan = Biography of Tang Dynasty)
Adapted from a novel about wild history written by the ancients, the TV series covers a wide range of topic, from the rise and fall of the country to the enmity of the harem. It's not easy to capture the essence of this historical drama. However, once it was successful, the outcome from this TV series would definitely reach an unprecedented height. The reason why Chinese TV stations have such a great talent for writing was that they hope to win the highest audience rating of domestic TV stations. For this reason, they were willing to use all of their resources to ensure the perfection of the TV series, which was good news for all the actors who are lucky to participate.
People who were well-informed have used all of their contacts to gain the news of the casting. In recent years, domestic TV series has been on the decline. Good scripts were rare. The current situation of more actors but fewer superior scripts made the seniors and young actors in the TV circle who thought that they could jump into a higher level in the film circle in one day, and this particularly rare opportunity must be grabbed at all cost.
Luo Ding hadn't followed the news in TV circles for a long time, but he had previously read the original work of 《Tang Zhuan》. Although the language was difficult and the content was absurd, the unconventional way of description was very popular in Luo Ding's opinion. After repeatedly chewing the book for more than ten times, he also had the idea that if there was such a movie, he would play his favourite role even for free, but after all, the audience in the movie circle and the TV circle were too different, which was doomed to not have much box office to send only winning scripts to prepare for shooting, which was an undoubtedly good news for him.
Such a good play will naturally attract numerous famous actors. Wu Fangyuan obviously didn't think that Luo Ding would win the role. From the time he got on the car, he told Luo Ding that he must go up to say hello and get familiar with some of the famous actors. After all, if you want to go a long way in the performing arts circle, contact is absolutely an indispensable condition that can't be ignored. The resources of Yaxing Studio were too limited, and with Luo Ding's sense of existence, naturally, he got even fewer resources. Even if you want to be somebody, you still need to check your own capability.
The audition spot was crowded with people, and there were quite a few job fairs. However, the large number of people who came here obviously would not be fresh graduates. There were countless handsome men and women looking at each other, and there were already well-known artists wearing sunglasses with annoyed faces and assistants standing in the corner, seeming to disdain to be with other newcomers. No matter what their status and identity were, standing in this place, one could only be the most ordinary people. Watching the artists came out of the glass door with either excited or lost faces, the crowd outside couldn't stop whispering to each other and causing a small disturbance.
Luo Ding, who lowered his brim to the point of almost covering his entire face, was not particularly noticeable in the crowd. Although his leisurely temperament attracted some curious eyes, most people lost interest and no longer paid attention to him after seeing the assistant with yellow hair and eye-catching but unknown behind him. Such a lively and bustling audition, no matter how great the person was, they could on retreat and wait for their own turns.
Wu Fangyuan stood on tiptoe and looked around as if he was looking for someone. Suddenly, with a low shriek, he pulled Luo Ding and squeezed into the crowd: "Yang ge, they are over there!"
Luo Ding stared at Wu Fangyuan's hand holding his expressionlessly but decided not to shake it off after a bit of thinking.
His agent, Yang Kangding, looks like a man in his 40s. Wearing a pair of black-framed glasses, square face and small eyes, his face appeared very poor. Looking up, he saw Luo Ding and Wu Fangyuan approaching from afar, and immediately glared and scolded them: "What time is it now? You two still know how to come at this time!!! "
"Yang ge! Yang ge, it's not like that... " Wu Fangyuan immediately thrust out his face and got ahead of Luo Ding, and went to pull each other's arm with a smile. "Ah Ding's cell phone is broken, and he's a little sick, that's why we're a little late. Aren't we still arrived on time?"
The other side was disgusted and avoided Wu Fangyuan's touch, and looked at Luo Ding up and down angrily, staring blankly for a while.
Luo Ding turned his head slightly with his hands in his pockets and looked at him with a completely strange look. Although he was only wearing simple casual clothes, he didn't know how the whole person looks completely different from before. Just now, the thought of scolding Luo Ding slowly shrank back and hesitated for a moment. He just stared at Luo Ding, then turned around and continued to talk with Hu Xiao together.
Luo Ding only glanced at Yang Kangding, but he was not interested. He was a master of reading others expression. In the limited memory of the original master, there was no memory of Yang Kangding's amiable face towards him. Presumably, he also checked and saw the weakness and hopelessness of the original owner's future. Thus, Yang Kangding only put some work that he should have done to Wu Fangyuan as an assistant. They were focused on taking care of Hu Xiao, who had more advantages in development, due to Hu Xiao's unique stance to cherish money as an economic man, unknown how he wanted to hug this person's thigh.
Hu Xiao impatiently shook Yang Kangding's audition book that he had forgotten to take with the actor who failed the audition. Seeing Wu Fangyuan bringing Luo Ding over, he rolled his eyes and said, "Those who are full knows perfectly well that they can't run anymore."
Probably because of the crowds at the scene, he didn't say this loudly, but Luo Ding was keen and caught this sentence and glanced at the other side.
His eyes landed precisely on the crumpled paper in Hu Xiao's hand, and the title's character name immediately caught his attention.
Haha.
His eyes softened, and he smiled. What should he do? In his memory, the relationship of this person with the original owner was not very good. It seemed that taking revenge was certain this time.
Hu Xiao was a little absent-minded at first, and caught Luo Ding's eyes for the first time, thinking that the other party was not convinced of his own ridicule, and his frown was about to appear. He did not expect to look back, but the face even had a smile on it, the subtle radiance made the excellent facial features inexplicably softer, and the wrath of anger stopped for a moment, then it was like being poured over cold water and instantly went out.
"... Hum." He whispered and turned his head.
********
Zheng Kezhen and Deng Jian were not too young anymore, and there was no impetus from the emerging directors. They were more experienced and at peace. However, Ke Rao was not as such. After watching the audition performance which could be called the group of devil dance for more than four hours, he still couldn't help but wants to sigh.
Shaking the bell to stop endorsing a line of a domineering emperor like a village chief by an actor, Zheng Kezhen rubbed his forehead, finding it hard to hide his fatigue. Deng Jian on the side patted him on the shoulder: "This group is the last one."
Zheng Kezhen shook his head: "There's no next group? When will this day be over? Don't I only want someone who can act? How can it be so difficult!"
"Who of those who have the ability didn't run to the film circle?" Deng Jian was also speechless about the deformed market mechanism in the industry today. Once they entered the film industry, there were very few artists who were still willing to go back and shoot a TV series. The TV circle was like an embarrassing school that couldn't hold their trainee teachers. If this was an ordinary director, they would only helplessly compromise after seeing the prospect, but these two old people devoted their lives to art and wouldn't use their own face to smash their own reputation. No matter how hard and tired they became, they still firmly guarded their own bottom line and never compromise.
"The next group!" Zheng Kezhen drank a mouthful of tea, with a strong spirit, shouted at the assistant, then turned his head to look at the door with hopelessness.
The door was slowly pushed opened, and a large group of tall men and women with excellent looks came in through the gap.
Zheng Kezhen frowned slightly, staring at the crowd for a long while, then suddenly pushed Deng Jian on his side.
"What's wrong?" Deng Jian said.
Zheng Kezhen was pointing with annoyance in the direction of the door: "Look at that white shirt, quick take a look!"
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(TN: Starting this chapter, Cao Dingkun no longer refers to himself as CDK, but Luo Ding.)
When he came down from upstairs, Luo Ding realized that the place he was in was a single apartment. He roughly looked through his memory, and then remembered that this is the apartment rented by Yaxing studio for its artists.
Gu Yaxing, the founder of Yaxing studio, used to be a famous movie star in China. At the peak of his career, he fell out with his brokerage company. He then set up a new door to create this studio, which was neither warm nor hot. Most of the company's artists were selected from all kinds of talent shows locally and abroad, and some ordinary people with excellent external conditions will be mined by star scouts. However, under the increasingly mature entertainment method, the latter is becoming more rarer.
Coincidentally, Luo Ding happened to be one of the few in these groups.
Luo Ding grew up in an orphanage without a father and mother. He did not further his study after graduating from high school at the age of eighteen. After leaving the orphanage, he kept working in a coffee shop for a living, but because of his good appearance, he was discovered and signed by a scout from Yaxing, and he started to work as an advertising model. Later, Su Shengbai emerged from a singing talent show and was signed by Gu Yaxing himself. Gu Yaxing was in the low period of his career at that time. He urgently needed a highly popular combination to shoot up the vitality of Yaxing Studio. Luo Ding, the best-looking one, was arranged to work together with Su Shengbai.
In fact, his character is not suitable for entertainment. The symptoms of depression could be seen from a long time ago. In the same group, Su Shengbai was straightforward and adorable. One could see the difference between the one loved by all and this taciturn guy, so Su Shengbai gradually became popular. With other work besides singing, Luo Ding was the foil, just sit on one side without expression, and the image was slowly fixed as the "taciturn and sullen Prince".
Everyone including the audience knew it's just a front. But different attributes have different markets. Although the group's records were not popular, the combination of two handsome young men; the lovely and candid Su Shengbai with the opposite extremes of a gloomy and taciturn Luo Ding, created their own audiences. The two people worked together for a long time and their temperament was compatible. The studio was strict with them in making friends privately. Maybe it's to relieve the loneliness, maybe their long-term familiarity breeds fondness, they naturally got together. After confirming the relationship with Su Shengbai, Luo Ding's depression gradually eased. The tacit cooperation between the two men and his better performance made the originally tepid combination gradually gained some popularity.
Later, Su Shengbai was able to meet Cao Dingkun. Afterwards, he broke up and abandoned their relationship without hesitation which obviously gave Luo Ding a heavy blow. The symptoms of depression that had alleviated suddenly became serious, and even the drug treatment hardly helped. This situation made Luo Ding very vulnerable and easy to take advantage of.
When he entered the car with Wu Fangyuan, Luo Ding borrowed the other's cell phone while pressing down his brim.
It's May 2nd, ten days have passed since his death. Luo Ding calmly moved to the angle where Wu Fangyuan couldn't see the phone, opened Weibo and entered the words "Cao Dingkun".
Then there was a dull smile and low laugh came from him.
The news of his death was spreading wildly on Weibo. If he opened a picture at will, he could see his own, which was shot from various angles, appeared smashed, burnt and empty. Various familiar and unfamiliar users forwarded and paired a candle with a sentimental eulogy. He tapped into one of the popular microblogs, and one of them was Su Shengbai's.
It was not surprising that he had not gone to see the fake model, neither was he expecting that Su Shengbai to completely retreated from being associated with him. Su Shengbai is not an impulsive person. If he dared to drive and knock him down the cliff, he would have the confidence to not be implicated in this. What's more, the car fell from such a high mountain road. It's just that Luoding heard more than two sounds before he died. It'd be a wonder if he could not find out the cause of falling down the cliff.
Silently deleting all browsing records, he began to look at Wu Fangyuan's Weibo for Luo Ding. As far as an artist with a fixed exposure was concerned, having only 30,000 fans were really pitiful, and the content of Weibo was also very boring. It was nothing more than some photos taken by Wu Fangyuan for Luo Ding during the shooting. In the photo, Luo Ding only monotonously stared straight at the camera without any expression, and his eyes were gloomy and distant.
*******
《Tang Zhuan》is a documentary-style TV series shot by a Chinese TV station with the highest ratings in China. Produced by Chinese TV, supervised by Zheng Kezhen, a senior documentary director of CCTV, and Deng Jianlian, a director specializing in ancient costume drama, it is tentatively determined that the leading role of the male and female characters will be played by Wu Yuan, the most popular male star at present, and historical period drama queen Pan Yiming's appearance on the new TV show - these people alone could lay a huge audience base after the broadcast. This line-up could not be said to not be formidable.
(TN: Tang Zhuan = Biography of Tang Dynasty)
Adapted from a novel about wild history written by the ancients, the TV series covers a wide range of topic, from the rise and fall of the country to the enmity of the harem. It's not easy to capture the essence of this historical drama. However, once it was successful, the outcome from this TV series would definitely reach an unprecedented height. The reason why Chinese TV stations have such a great talent for writing was that they hope to win the highest audience rating of domestic TV stations. For this reason, they were willing to use all of their resources to ensure the perfection of the TV series, which was good news for all the actors who are lucky to participate.
People who were well-informed have used all of their contacts to gain the news of the casting. In recent years, domestic TV series has been on the decline. Good scripts were rare. The current situation of more actors but fewer superior scripts made the seniors and young actors in the TV circle who thought that they could jump into a higher level in the film circle in one day, and this particularly rare opportunity must be grabbed at all cost.
Luo Ding hadn't followed the news in TV circles for a long time, but he had previously read the original work of 《Tang Zhuan》. Although the language was difficult and the content was absurd, the unconventional way of description was very popular in Luo Ding's opinion. After repeatedly chewing the book for more than ten times, he also had the idea that if there was such a movie, he would play his favourite role even for free, but after all, the audience in the movie circle and the TV circle were too different, which was doomed to not have much box office to send only winning scripts to prepare for shooting, which was an undoubtedly good news for him.
Such a good play will naturally attract numerous famous actors. Wu Fangyuan obviously didn't think that Luo Ding would win the role. From the time he got on the car, he told Luo Ding that he must go up to say hello and get familiar with some of the famous actors. After all, if you want to go a long way in the performing arts circle, contact is absolutely an indispensable condition that can't be ignored. The resources of Yaxing Studio were too limited, and with Luo Ding's sense of existence, naturally, he got even fewer resources. Even if you want to be somebody, you still need to check your own capability.
The audition spot was crowded with people, and there were quite a few job fairs. However, the large number of people who came here obviously would not be fresh graduates. There were countless handsome men and women looking at each other, and there were already well-known artists wearing sunglasses with annoyed faces and assistants standing in the corner, seeming to disdain to be with other newcomers. No matter what their status and identity were, standing in this place, one could only be the most ordinary people. Watching the artists came out of the glass door with either excited or lost faces, the crowd outside couldn't stop whispering to each other and causing a small disturbance.
Luo Ding, who lowered his brim to the point of almost covering his entire face, was not particularly noticeable in the crowd. Although his leisurely temperament attracted some curious eyes, most people lost interest and no longer paid attention to him after seeing the assistant with yellow hair and eye-catching but unknown behind him. Such a lively and bustling audition, no matter how great the person was, they could on retreat and wait for their own turns.
Wu Fangyuan stood on tiptoe and looked around as if he was looking for someone. Suddenly, with a low shriek, he pulled Luo Ding and squeezed into the crowd: "Yang ge, they are over there!"
Luo Ding stared at Wu Fangyuan's hand holding his expressionlessly but decided not to shake it off after a bit of thinking.
His agent, Yang Kangding, looks like a man in his 40s. Wearing a pair of black-framed glasses, square face and small eyes, his face appeared very poor. Looking up, he saw Luo Ding and Wu Fangyuan approaching from afar, and immediately glared and scolded them: "What time is it now? You two still know how to come at this time!!! "
"Yang ge! Yang ge, it's not like that... " Wu Fangyuan immediately thrust out his face and got ahead of Luo Ding, and went to pull each other's arm with a smile. "Ah Ding's cell phone is broken, and he's a little sick, that's why we're a little late. Aren't we still arrived on time?"
The other side was disgusted and avoided Wu Fangyuan's touch, and looked at Luo Ding up and down angrily, staring blankly for a while.
Luo Ding turned his head slightly with his hands in his pockets and looked at him with a completely strange look. Although he was only wearing simple casual clothes, he didn't know how the whole person looks completely different from before. Just now, the thought of scolding Luo Ding slowly shrank back and hesitated for a moment. He just stared at Luo Ding, then turned around and continued to talk with Hu Xiao together.
Luo Ding only glanced at Yang Kangding, but he was not interested. He was a master of reading others expression. In the limited memory of the original master, there was no memory of Yang Kangding's amiable face towards him. Presumably, he also checked and saw the weakness and hopelessness of the original owner's future. Thus, Yang Kangding only put some work that he should have done to Wu Fangyuan as an assistant. They were focused on taking care of Hu Xiao, who had more advantages in development, due to Hu Xiao's unique stance to cherish money as an economic man, unknown how he wanted to hug this person's thigh.
Hu Xiao impatiently shook Yang Kangding's audition book that he had forgotten to take with the actor who failed the audition. Seeing Wu Fangyuan bringing Luo Ding over, he rolled his eyes and said, "Those who are full knows perfectly well that they can't run anymore."
Probably because of the crowds at the scene, he didn't say this loudly, but Luo Ding was keen and caught this sentence and glanced at the other side.
His eyes landed precisely on the crumpled paper in Hu Xiao's hand, and the title's character name immediately caught his attention.
Haha.
His eyes softened, and he smiled. What should he do? In his memory, the relationship of this person with the original owner was not very good. It seemed that taking revenge was certain this time.
Hu Xiao was a little absent-minded at first, and caught Luo Ding's eyes for the first time, thinking that the other party was not convinced of his own ridicule, and his frown was about to appear. He did not expect to look back, but the face even had a smile on it, the subtle radiance made the excellent facial features inexplicably softer, and the wrath of anger stopped for a moment, then it was like being poured over cold water and instantly went out.
"... Hum." He whispered and turned his head.
********
Zheng Kezhen and Deng Jian were not too young anymore, and there was no impetus from the emerging directors. They were more experienced and at peace. However, Ke Rao was not as such. After watching the audition performance which could be called the group of devil dance for more than four hours, he still couldn't help but wants to sigh.
Shaking the bell to stop endorsing a line of a domineering emperor like a village chief by an actor, Zheng Kezhen rubbed his forehead, finding it hard to hide his fatigue. Deng Jian on the side patted him on the shoulder: "This group is the last one."
Zheng Kezhen shook his head: "There's no next group? When will this day be over? Don't I only want someone who can act? How can it be so difficult!"
"Who of those who have the ability didn't run to the film circle?" Deng Jian was also speechless about the deformed market mechanism in the industry today. Once they entered the film industry, there were very few artists who were still willing to go back and shoot a TV series. The TV circle was like an embarrassing school that couldn't hold their trainee teachers. If this was an ordinary director, they would only helplessly compromise after seeing the prospect, but these two old people devoted their lives to art and wouldn't use their own face to smash their own reputation. No matter how hard and tired they became, they still firmly guarded their own bottom line and never compromise.
"The next group!" Zheng Kezhen drank a mouthful of tea, with a strong spirit, shouted at the assistant, then turned his head to look at the door with hopelessness.
The door was slowly pushed opened, and a large group of tall men and women with excellent looks came in through the gap.
Zheng Kezhen frowned slightly, staring at the crowd for a long while, then suddenly pushed Deng Jian on his side.
"What's wrong?" Deng Jian said.
Zheng Kezhen was pointing with annoyance in the direction of the door: "Look at that white shirt, quick take a look!"
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