1990: Starting from Baojia Street

The last time Hua Yang wrote, he said that he wanted Zhou Yan to have time to go to their magazine to revise the manuscript. Zhou Yan had already written back and made an appointment with Hua Yang.

Zhou Yan planned to go to Chang'an first, and then return to Yanjing to go to their magazine.

Now Hua Yang suddenly received such a letter, which also left Zhou Yan confused. The key point was that Hua Yang did not explain the specific reasons in the letter. He simply said that after another internal discussion, they decided to directly adopt The Death of the Mayor.

Zhou Yan read the letter over and over again, but it was just a thin piece of paper with not many words written on it, and there could be no mystery.

After studying for a while, Zhou Yan put down the letter. Although he didn't understand why Yanjing Literature suddenly changed its mind, it was naturally a good thing for him that the manuscript was accepted, at least he didn't have to make a special trip.

After thinking about it, Zhou Yan took out a pen and paper and wrote back a letter to Hua Yang, giving Hua Yang a new contact address.

…

After staying in Qiaojiabao Village for another three days, Zhou Yan and the others set off for Chang'an.

When setting off, he was still telling Liu Qing that Qixian County was really abnormal this year. It hadn't snowed yet. If they had really insisted on waiting for snow before filming, it would have been difficult for them to go home for the New Year.

Interestingly, as soon as their car drove out of JZ City, snow began to fall from the sky.

At first it was just sporadic small snowflakes, but then the snow gradually became heavier. Because the snowflakes were so large, they encountered a lot of air resistance in the air, and they fell precariously, looking very laborious.

Fortunately, the heavy snow did not last long. After driving for more than an hour, the snow slowly became lighter again, which did not affect Zhou Yan's schedule.

Driving from morning to night, with three different drivers, the car finally arrived at Chang'an Studio.

This is the first time Zhou Yan has been in a studio. The studio he imagined before should be a three- or four-story office building, divided into offices. People work in the offices and interact with other agencies and units. No difference.

But the first impression that Chang'an Studio gave Zhou Yan was that it was just a factory. It is not much different from a spring factory, a leather shoe factory, or even a kiln factory.

It has brick walls and tile roofs, a tight structure, and few windows on one wall, giving it a particularly formidable feel.

If there was another layer of barbed wire on the outside of the wall, even Zhou Yan would believe it if he said it was a prison.

They arranged Zhou Yan in Liu Qing's dormitory. There happened to be an empty bed in Liu Qing's dormitory, and Zhou Yan also brought a quilt.

The next day, Zhou Yan and the others took the film to the developing and printing room for processing.

The film processing was very smooth, because the processing tasks in the photo lab were not heavy recently, and there was not much work at hand, so there was no need to queue. I took the film of Antfly in the morning and got the negative in the evening.

Negative film is also called negative film. Because the relationship between light and dark is opposite to that of the real thing, and the color is the complementary color of the real thing, people are accustomed to calling it negative film.

When the samples came out, Zhou Yan breathed a sigh of relief.

There will also be some accidents during the development and printing process, such as film processing mechanical failure, human negligence, and unstable developing solution. As long as there is a problem in one link, the work will be undone.

Therefore, when developing the film, Zhou Yan was always worried that something would go wrong.

After getting the samples, Zhou Yan finally saw the results of his shooting. As Zhao Fei said, there were basically no problems with the shots they shot.

If something goes wrong, they have no choice but to reshoot.

When filming, some film crews are afraid of this happening, so they will bring development equipment with them. The film will be taken here and then sent to the development room for development. The director will not release the film until the development room says there is no problem with the film. I dare to say that this time it really passed, otherwise, it is very likely to have to be reshot.

Or set up special film runners. These people are responsible for transporting the film to the developing and printing factory, and then bringing back the developed samples.

After the samples come out, the next step is editing.

It’s more difficult to get to this point.

The editing workshop was already a bit busy. During this period, their department was busy editing Raise the Red Lantern and had no time to deal with Zhou Yan's small project.

Zhou Yan thought that since it was a small project, could he ask them to help handle it first? It wouldn't take long anyway, so he ran to the leader of the editing workshop, hoping to be accommodating.

The director of the workshop is Yang Jinglan. She is a lesbian in her forties. She has a serious face and is businesslike. She does not accept Zhou Yan's flattering attitude at all and asks him to line up properly.

In this case, Zhou Yan could only wait.

Originally, Zhou Yan was going to report to Zhao Jiping about his work in the past six months, but Zhao Jiping went to Yudu during this period and would not be able to come back for some time, so during the waiting period, Zhou Yan could only stay in the studio With.

This wait is half a month.

One day half a month later, Zhou Yan suddenly received a notice that the editing workshop was about to start editing his Antfly.

Zhou Yan was also surprised when he heard the news. Why did Director Yang suddenly change his mind?

After asking Zhao Fei, Zhou Yan found out that it was Director Yang who saw him running to the editing workshop every day, which greatly affected their work. There was nothing they could do, so he decided to put his other work aside and edit Zhou Yan's film first.

After all, Antfly is relatively short, with all the material in total less than twenty minutes, and the subsequent audio track processing is also simple. This short film doesn't even have lines.

Logically speaking, ordinary people are not allowed to enter the editing workshop, but Zhou Yan is in a special situation. In addition to being the director of Antfly, he is also the soundtrack and main actor of Raise the Red Lantern.

As a member of the soundtrack team and a main actor, Zhou Yan's desire to enter the editing workshop is a reasonable request, and Director Yang has no way to kick Zhou Yan out.

For the past half month, Zhou Yan has clocked in early every morning. Whenever Director Yang and the others go to the workshop, Zhou Yan will go.

At night, when Director Yang and the others leave the workshop, Zhou Yan also leaves.

Every day Zhou Yan is like a follower, following Director Yang and the others.

And he not only followed, but also asked questions here and there. No matter what he saw in the editing workshop, as long as it was something he had never seen before, Zhou Yan would ask what it was, what it was used for, and how it was used.

Although Director Yang was not a fan of flattering, he still couldn't stand Zhou Yan's insistence. After half a month, he finally couldn't bear it anymore.

Because another cutter in the workshop, Du Yuan, was cutting Raise the Red Lantern, Director Yang decided to do it himself.

After getting the news, when Zhou Yan ran to the editing workshop, he bared his teeth and smiled at Director Yang: Thank you, Director Yang, for your kindness.

Director Yang rolled his eyes and said, Hurry up and put away those big teeth of yours. You're laughing so hard that I'm panicking.

Zhou Yan put away his teeth, but his smile remained, and he focused on smiling without showing his teeth.

Stop laughing, you're just smiling. Director Yang waved her hand. There was nothing she could do against Zhou Yan.

This young man Zhou Yan is really a bit special.

At the beginning, Yang Jinglan felt that Zhou Yan was a bit thick-skinned. Later, she gradually realized that it was not a bit thick-skinned, but very thick-skinned.

Of course, in addition to being thick-skinned, Zhou Yan is also studious, persistent, and much more mature than the average twenty-year-old boy.

Bring me your storyboard and we'll start now.

Okay. Zhou Yan had already prepared the things, and when Director Yang asked for them, he handed them over.

…

Because Zhou Yan had the finished film in mind, and the film was relatively short, he didn’t have much to express himself, so the entire editing process went smoothly.

In fact, Zhou Yan also learned a lot during this period, so he was able to help when editing.

Before entering the editing workshop, Zhou Yan had no intuitive impression of film editing and relied on guesswork.

After coming in, he discovered that the real film editing was completely different from what he had imagined.

The film editing process is much more primitive than Zhou Yan imagined. Cutting and splicing are all done in a physical sense. They are cut with a blade and pasted with glue. If the film needs to be filtered, it is still done manually and is masked directly on the film. A layer of filters, you can add the filter when copying...

Many industries that seem mysterious are very different from what ordinary people think after actually entering them.

After working overtime, the two of them spent three days together and finally roughly cut out the film.

It’s not over yet, Zhou Yan needs to add sound to the movie, and will later be asked to work for Era International to help with the special effects.

But at this point, there was less work to do, and Zhou Yan's heart was basically settled.