Chapter 218
"Innovative, subversive, and perfectly expresses the core theme of fairy tales"
At eight o'clock in the evening, after finishing their New Year's Eve dinner, the Ling family sat in front of the TV on time.
Hao Ren was cutting fruit and Ling Fei put some toothpicks on the table.
She asked Ling Suisui: "You should be quite famous now. Haven't you been invited to the Spring Festival Gala?"
"Yes, they asked me to perform a skit." Ling Suisui said while eating fruit, "But my career plan is not in this area, and I don't have much time to rehearse for the Spring Festival Gala, so I turned it down."
In fact, the problem is not the skits themselves, but the repeated censorship of language programs. Ling Suisui knew that there must be works in this world that could combine value output and humor, but this was not her specialty.
The number of Spring Festival Gala programs is limited, so she should leave the opportunity to actors who wish to delve deeper into this field.
"But there are actors from our company who will be performing on the Spring Festival Gala." Ling Suisui found Zhu Yue's official photo from his cellphone album and showed it to his parents.
"Look - this is the actress I signed last year. She was also my former colleague at Freedom House. Her name is Zhu Yue."
Zhu Yue has already decided to pursue comedy. After all, in this regard, the audience still has a filter for her role in Freedom House. After watching one of her performances, Ling Sui decided to buy shares of her.
In fact, she has been sought out for many comedies, especially comedy movies, in recent years. Zhao Xianning and others cannot take on such resources, but Zhu Yue might be able to, even if he can start from a supporting role.
After watching the Spring Festival Gala for an hour, Ms. Ling Fei's evaluation was "neither good nor bad, just for the atmosphere." When Chi Jia was performing solo, she took a rare second look at him and praised the young man for his good singing.
Ling Suisui thought that Chi Jia had made a name for himself in the singing world and would be able to have a solo stage this year. Although Xiang Yanchu's stage was for four people, she stood in the middle and the segment she was assigned was also very outstanding. She has also established a firm foothold in the past two years.
Both of them are her friends and are singers of OSTs for film and television works with whom she often collaborates. Almost all hit TV series will have their own original soundtracks. These highly popular TV and film hits will also deepen the audience's impression of the series. This is a win-win situation for both tracks.
This year's language programs, on the whole, are more about form than meaning. In addition, there are huge differences between the north and south of China. Northerners will laugh at some jokes, but southerners will not understand them at all. As they watched, Ling Fei and Hao Ren both began to yawn and prepared to go back to their rooms.
Ling Sui glanced at the program and called them to stop.
"The skit of my company's actors is coming soon - and also my former colleague from Freedom House, Bian Yuanzhou. They have been working on this work for nearly half a year and have waited until this point. Let's watch it before we leave."
Now that their daughter said so, they sat back on the sofa.
It has to be said that the fact that Bian Yuanzhou and Zhu Yue's program was ranked last in the language category actually took advantage of the fact that "audience expectations have been lowered." In order to eliminate cultural differences and reduce the sense of deliberate preaching, they used more comedy action techniques.
Bian Yuanzhou played the role of a leader. He first made a classic speech in a serious manner, and then suddenly dropped a stool, which tickled Hao Ren's funny bone. Zhu Yue played an employee who was slacking off during a meeting. While her leader was speaking on the stage, she was eating noodles with soybean paste below. In order to help her, her colleagues even acted like a "guerrilla".
The highlight of the whole sketch was when a colleague accidentally added a "lethal amount" of soy sauce, but Zhu Yue still wolfed it down before his leader turned his head.
The close-up shot was fixed on her face. She wanted to vomit but didn't dare to. Physiological tears were welling up in her eyes. However, she tried to force a smile which made the audience in front of the TV burst into laughter. Ling Fei almost couldn't stop laughing.
Ling Suisui was also smiling. She was not only amused by Zhu Yue, but also happy for her future.
This was a successful skit, not only because of her parents' performance, but also because of the hot search terms. As Zhu Yue's boss, Ling Suisui knows more than the average audience.
She knew how hard their team worked during rehearsals, especially Zhu Yue. She must practice this performance to perfection, without any mistakes, before the Spring Festival Gala director will allow her to go on stage.
Even so, Zhu Yue still faced the crisis of replacement. It was Ling Sui who used several connections to pass on the message and owed someone a favor, and it was Bian Yuanzhou, Director Yin and others who also made some efforts that saved her from being replaced.
Although the ending of the sketch is a bit stereotyped, the process is exciting enough. Thanks to the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, Zhu Yue's name became known to the public again. The opportunity she missed a few years ago finally came back to her.
It is difficult to say what suffering has given the actors - based on Ling Sui's understanding of Zhu Yue's character, if she had not been hit to the bottom, she might not have had such a strong fighting spirit to complete this difficult performance.
The saying "Misfortune may be a blessing in disguise" flashed through her mind, but she felt that this saying was too frivolous compared to Zhu Yue's experience; she had some feelings about fate, but she also thought that she was standing from a God's perspective, and her attitude was a little arrogant, which was not right.
Ling Sui turned off the TV.
No matter what happens in the world, the sun will rise tomorrow. Year after year, day after day.
**
Not long after the Chinese New Year, Ling Sui boarded a plane to the United States.
She had originally planned to go before the Chinese New Year, but plans could not keep up with changes, and the trip was postponed to after the Chinese New Year.
Her agent Tong Xiaoman was unable to travel with her this time as she was unable to spare the time. After all, Sister Tong is also a partner of Fengshou Media. It’s just the beginning of the year and there are too many things to do in the company.
Sister Tong has to get resources and discuss business for Zhu Yue, whose popularity has skyrocketed, and also find time to care about the low-budget drama starring Zhao Xianning. That ancient idol drama is a B-level shared-revenue drama. The entire series has been released online on Aoqi. Non-members can watch the first four episodes for free.
So, it was Zhang Wen who accompanied Ling Suisui abroad this time. In fact, she has already taken over Ling Sui's agency affairs. In the future, when Fengshou Media becomes bigger and stronger, Tong Xiaoman will move towards the position of CEO and chairman, and Zhang Wen will be the company's chief agent.
In preparation for this trip to the United States, Zhang Wen took intensive courses on Business English three months in advance. Fortunately, she had a good foundation when she was in college, so even if she had neglected it over the years, she picked it up again quickly.
Ling Sui's English is excellent, especially his spoken English. As an agent, Zhang Wen doesn't want to lose to her.
Alas, the benefits of working in Ling Suisui's team are good, and there is a lot of room for career development, but there are always rolls of different sizes at any time and anywhere, and there is no moment to relax.
After getting off the plane, there were so many fans coming to pick us up. Ling Suisui's team was mentally prepared, but the Diland employee who came to pick her up was shocked.
Among the airport reception crowd, although the majority were international students and Chinese with obvious Asian looks, there were also people of all skin colors. Ling Suisui's popularity overseas is truly real!
After Ling Sui landed, he first went to the hotel to rest. The next day he visited the Deland Film Company and also went to the Deland Theme Park for a tour. He bought a lot of souvenirs and took vlogs and photos of the trip as "postcards" to send back to his fans.
Well, this is completely a tourist mentality, and the team members following her are also leisurely. Anyway, Dilland paid for all the food, drinks and entertainment. If they were willing to treat them, how could they refuse?
As for the "competitive pressure in casting"... I don't see any of that in Ling Suisui. She neither urged the guide to arrange a meeting between her and the director and producer as soon as possible, nor did she ask who would be on the final shortlist. If Dirand hadn't invited her, people would have thought she was just here for vacation.
In this psychological tug-of-war, Ling Sui's extreme sense of relaxation achieved absolute victory. Dilland had to admit that there was probably no way to pressure her in terms of contract benefits by putting pressure on her or creating a psychological gap.
Really, I thought the Chinese outsiders were easy to bully... It turns out that all the actors who have made it in the entertainment industry are very smart!
After receiving a very formal meeting invitation from Dyland Films, Ling Suisui and Zhang Wen exchanged glances.
——Although Diland has created many excellent works, never have any illusions about big companies.
Zhang Wen was in charge of the negotiations regarding film remuneration, and Ling Suisui met with the director and screenwriter to discuss the content of the script of "Beauty and the Beast".
She has actually been curious about the script for a long time. After all, in several online auditions, the director described it as "innovative, subversive, and perfectly expressing the core theme of the fairy tale." This seems a bit contradictory, right?
Ling Sui was prepared for the director to exaggerate, but after truly understanding the script, she felt that... maybe it wasn't too exaggerated.
In this adaptation, the previous story remains unchanged. The prince was still turned into a beast, and the spell could only be lifted if someone truly loved him; Belle's father also mistakenly broke into the castle and was imprisoned by a beast.
The turning point of the story happened when Belle came to rescue the beast. When she heard that the beast's condition was that she stay in exchange for her father's return, she chose to refuse.
Her refusal doesn't mean she won't save her father. Instead, she brought the weapons she invented and defeated the beast.
——It is true that Belle cannot compete with the beasts in strength, but isn’t the difference between humans and animals the use of tools?
In the fairy tale setting, Belle is a smart and brave girl who likes reading and studying. Therefore, the director and screenwriter thought that this adaptation was very reasonable. They chose Ling Suisui because her representative work is "Zhao Jiang". The impression she leaves on North American and global audiences is that she is a very capable fighter.
If she plays Belle, even if she maintains her current body shape and does not deliberately gain muscle, the audience will automatically associate her face with a sense of strength, thereby reducing the audience's discomfort with the plot adaptation.
As for perfectly expressing the core of fairy tales - the director believes that Beauty and the Beast wants to convey how to love.
"In the original story, Belle and the Beast were not equal. Although Belle wanted to go home, the Beast rescued her and Belle developed a crush on him. The underlying logic was that if I treat you well, you have to love me. This is not true respect, and the relationship between them is not true love."
"So, I let Belle defeat the beast. If Belle chooses to stay in the castle, it is not because of the beast's coercion, but her voluntary choice. Now they are on the same level and can talk to each other as equals."
"I hope that the actress who plays Belle will have strong self-confidence and can show it on the big screen and pass it on to our movie audiences."
Ling Suisui smiled at her: "I agree with you. Congratulations on finding the right person."
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