Huayu: Starting with Xiang Yu, the Hegemon of Western Chu

Inside the side hall.

Chen Mo continued, finally reciting the line from the script.

"Second Uncle, please have a seat."

Jingming sat down.

His legs were weak when he sat down.

It wasn't an act; his legs were genuinely weak.

This was the first time in his acting career that he had received an impromptu line from a completely unprepared co-star in front of the camera, and he caught it with his body.

He had never had this feeling before.

He had practiced for over a decade and had never caught anything like this before.

He caught it today.

It wasn't that he suddenly improved.

His rivals forced him into that situation.

The play continues.

The next lines returned to the script, and the uncle and nephew followed the script. However, from that moment on, the atmosphere of the scene was no longer the atmosphere described in the script.

The script is written in polite, official language between uncle and nephew.

The play now depicts a prince whose origins have been exposed by the crown prince, and a crown prince who appears unharmed but has actually crossed the line, as they finish the second half of the performance on opposite sides of a low table.

Every line of dialogue carries twice the weight.

This scene lasts seven minutes in total.

When Luo Yifeng pressed the intercom, his voice was a little hoarse.

"Pass."

Inside the monitoring shed.

Luo Yifeng turned to look at the assistant director.

He didn't speak.

He just smiled.

There's something in that smile.

The assistant director mentally translated Luo Yifeng's smile.

That smile meant, "This scene is even better than I expected."

Inside the side hall.

Jingming stood up from the chair.

He walked out of the side hall, onto the corridor, and leaned against the wall for a moment.

He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

He wasn't a heavy smoker; he'd almost quit in the past year or so, but he brought a pack with him when he joined the crew today, knowing he might need it.

He took two puffs.

Smoke rose up, and he leaned against the wall watching it.

He reviewed the situation in his mind.

In that scene just now, he went from being firmly seated in his "safe zone" at the beginning, to having his rhythm broken by Chen Mo in the middle, and finally catching the line "Nephew, you have good eyesight" with his body—

He is still playing Zhu Gaoxu.

However, the Zhu Gaoxu he portrayed was twice as heavy as the Zhu Gaoxu he had imagined.

He knew why.

It's not that he suddenly became more capable.

It was the jade pendant that Chen Mo added on the spot.

He hadn't noticed the jade pendant when he changed his costume. But Chen Mo had specifically changed it that morning. Chen Mo's purpose in changing the jade pendant was to transform today's scene from "polite official talk" into "the first boundary demarcation between uncle and nephew."

Before filming this scene, Chen Mo had already mentally planned out its true significance.

He hadn't discussed this idea with Jingming.

He hid this idea in the props.

Then, in front of the camera, he used a temporary line to hand over this responsibility to Jingming in person.

Jingming stood in the corridor, thinking about this, and took another drag of his cigarette.

A thought popped into his mind.

His initial assessment before joining the team—"Will Chen Mo be able to handle Liang Lao's work?"—was wrong.

The issue isn't whether Chen Mo can handle other people's acting.

The question is whether others can handle Chen Mo's acting style.

He finished his cigarette and put it out.

He straightened up and walked towards the dressing room.

He needs to go back and study the character of Zhu Gaoxu.

The Zhu Gaochi he had studied before seemed too insignificant today.

He has to start the research from scratch.

The crew's schedule was tight but well-organized.

Here, all external interference is almost completely blocked out, and everyone is immersed in the filming of "Mountains and Rivers Under the Bright Moon".

Days go by.

With veteran actors Liang Guanhua and Wang Xueqi, two beacons of light in the industry, present, everyone in the crew was on edge.

The filming progress has accelerated considerably.

Of course, Chen Mo's smooth acting skills also played a part, with many scenes being filmed in one take.

The director couldn't find fault with Zhu Zhanji's later scenes, such as the bronze vat scene, the enthronement scene, the surrender scene, and the hanging scene.

Although not as amazing as the young Zhu Zhanji, Chen Mo's acting skills made up for it a lot.

In the eyes of Director Luo, Wang Xueqi, Liang Guanhua, and the others, this matter was not a very serious one.

You can't expect a young person to perfectly portray the state of an elderly person, as if the real person had descended to earth.

This is unrealistic.

Just like in a sweet romantic idol drama, you wouldn't want to see a middle-aged or elderly person in their fifties playing a young, handsome man.

That's so greasy.

To paraphrase Wang Xueqi and Liang Guanhua:

"Imperfection is good; it means there's room for improvement, which is a good thing!"

Jingming actually finished filming after the rebellion scene, but due to scheduling conflicts, he stayed on set to study.

The atmosphere on set of "Mountains and Rivers Bright Moon" is rare in the industry.

Many young actors gradually transform from casual when they first join a film crew to professional and dedicated actors as filming progresses.

The assistant director often said this in front of the newcomers in these film crews.

"You newcomers are fortunate to be part of a production with this kind of atmosphere for your first time. You must learn and observe carefully. Some people may never find a production with this kind of atmosphere in their entire lives."

The final scene is scheduled for early December.

The filming location was not an outdoor set in Hengdian, but an interior set specially built within the Hengdian film crew's studio. This set is called "Qianqing Palace West Warm Pavilion," the room where Zhu Zhanji stayed when he was seriously ill.

The scene was very short in the script, only one and a half pages long.

There are a total of nine lines of dialogue.

But Luo Yifeng spent two hours the previous night in his room repeatedly reading that page and a half.

He knew this scene was much more important than what was written in the script.

This is the last time Zhu Zhanji was seen on camera.

Historically, Zhu Zhanji died on the third day of the first month of the tenth year of the Xuande reign, at the age of thirty-eight.

He served for ten years.

In these ten years, the Ming Dynasty recovered from the war-mongering of the Yongle era, and its civil administration, river works, and official management began to get back on track.

Later historical records combined these ten years with the ten months his father spent there and called it the "Rule of Renxuan".

This decade was one of the most stable decade for the Ming Dynasty.

These ten years were sustained by Zhu Zhanji with his own life.

What Luo Yifeng wanted to film was the moment when this life finally came to an end.

The set design was meticulous.

The West Warm Pavilion of Qianqing Palace is not the main hall; it was where the emperor slept.

The room was small, with three walls, a wooden bed facing north and south, a bronze incense burner at the head of the bed, and a low table at the foot of the bed.

On the low table were two things: a small white porcelain bowl containing a cooled medicinal soup with a thin layer of brown oil floating on top, and a stack of memorials. The top one of the memorials was open, and Zhu Zhanji had made half of his comments in vermilion ink.

These two items were arranged by the art team, who stayed up until midnight the day before.

The medicinal soup was made from real herbs and had a faint bitter smell.

The characters on the memorial were handwritten by a calligraphy teacher who had previously written subtitles.

The light in the set came from the window on the west wall, the slanting light of a winter evening, shining obliquely through the window paper onto the bed. The light was dim, a grayish-yellow hue typical of late winter evenings.

The art team measured this light three times.

This is the kind of light that Luo Yifeng wants.

The light was so bright that Zhu Zhanji appeared to be quite energetic.

The lighting was too dim, making the whole scene feel overly oppressive.

Under the dim, grayish-yellow light, a thirty-seven-year-old emperor lay on his bed, his breathing already light, but he was still reviewing the last memorial.

This is the scene we wanted to capture.

It took Chen Mo three hours to get her makeup done.

Makeup artist Sister Lin started working on him at 2 PM.

This makeup was more difficult than any of the previous ones.

Sister Lin needs to make Chen Mo's face look like he's 37 years old, chronically ill, and has just survived his final days.

His complexion was bluish-gray, and the base color was a tinted grayish-blue foundation, which was applied layer by layer. By the fourth layer, Chen Mo's original flesh color was no longer visible.

The darkness under his eyes was truly intense; Sister Lin had applied a heavy layer of brown shadow under his eyes, and then added a layer of purplish-blue under the shadow.

The lips were treated with a peeling effect. Sister Lin used a gel-like cosmetic to apply to Chen Mo's lips, and after it dried, a thin layer of skin would naturally peel off.

You need to get your hair done too.

When Zhu Zhanji was seriously ill, his hair was thinning. Chen Mo's hair was to be styled so that "the rest of the hair was still neatly combed, but the front was already thinning."

Halfway through her makeup session, Chen Mo closed her eyes, leaned back in her chair, and didn't move.

As Sister Lin worked, she began to feel an inexplicable surge of energy rising within her.

She has been in the industry for over a decade and has done makeup for countless actors.

I've been doing Zhu Zhanji's makeup for Chen Mo since he was thirteen, and today is the last time.

She was halfway through her makeup when she realized her hands were shaking a little.

It's not that the technology is lacking.

As she worked on it, she realized that the face she was working on really resembled that of a dying emperor.

She had never felt this way before.

After finishing the last stroke, she put down the makeup brush and looked at Chen Mo in the mirror.

Chen Mo opened his eyes.

He looked at himself in the mirror.

I watched it for about ten seconds.

He nodded to Sister Lin.

He didn't say "Thank you, Sister Lin" or "Thank you for your hard work," he just nodded.

Sister Lin knew the weight of that nod.

She nodded back.

Neither of them spoke.

Chen Mo stood up from the dressing chair and walked out of the dressing room.

His walking posture had changed; each step was half an inch slower than usual, his shoulders were slightly hunched forward, and his left hand rested on his right wrist, like someone who had been suffering from illness for a long time and needed to support himself with his other hand to walk steadily.