When will I be the queen

Chapter 460 Setting
Moreover, some people are only outstanding in a certain area, and they feel they can afford to give up their good looks. For example, being 1.8 meters tall, having a doctorate, being an only child, or having a stable job.

This shows the world's desire for beauty.

"It's just that the gene for ugliness seems particularly stubborn. It's a biological instinct to choose the most easily recognizable features to prove one's lineage." Because good looks can easily lead to resemblance to others, but ugliness can be truly diverse and strikingly unique. You can tell at a glance that this is your child.
For example, Cai Cai's curly hair and eyes, exactly like her family members, were the reason they were able to accept her so easily. At that time, the blood test hadn't even been done yet. Her grandmother sent a photo, and the family agreed to adopt her. Keep in mind, this was the Tang family; the Cai family would never adopt a child.

The immortal chuckled. It was true; those faces that screamed "family resemblance" were basically traits inherited from ugly genes. Like Cai Cai's curly hair.
Thinking back, when he first saw Cai Cai, he genuinely suspected she was a wild child; her messy curly hair obscured her face. But when she turned around, her hair was combed back, revealing her face, and everyone was stunned. They couldn't understand how such a beautiful child could be abducted, but they could also understand why the traffickers went to such lengths to keep her, and if they couldn't, they even considered destroying her. If it weren't for her quick thinking and being a moment later, she wouldn't have survived.
Mei Zhang, Gu Sheng, and the others, who had been working silently on the other side of the room, were utterly speechless. "You two are really being impolite by commenting on beauty and ugliness."
While Cai Cai was speaking, she finished reading all the profiles. She didn't recognize most of them; they all seemed to be very new faces. However, a few of them looked familiar, probably artists from the company. The one she recognized the most was Meng Ning, who had acted in the drama she made as an amateur producer.

The drama was called "Flowers Bloom on the Longshang Plain." Cai Cai invested some money, but the majority of the funding came from the company at Xianjun's request. It had twenty episodes in total. Cai Cai didn't have time for post-production, so the music was composed by Xianjun, who found a few songs from her assignments, rearranged them, and used them. Meng Ning starred in the drama. It was sold to a streaming platform and didn't air on television, falling into the category of web dramas. However, it performed very well, becoming the top-rated drama of the year and winning several awards at various smaller competitions. Cai Cai herself won awards for screenwriting and music composition, which the company had Meng Ning collect and keep in her office.

Previously, her office belonged to the artists' office. Later, her office was filled with the production team's sign, and she became one of the project managers of the Wanqian Group.

Gee tut.

Although these events all occurred when she wasn't involved in anything, the company actively kept Cai Cai informed.

"Meng Ning could play the tenth prince."

Cai Cai felt that if the Immortal Lord wanted to make the Ninth Princess a more serious drama, he needed to ensure that none of the named characters were annoying. This wasn't just about omitting the sacrificial ceremony; there had to be a point that the audience would like. Of course, not the kind of point that everyone would like. You can't please everyone.

"Is it about pandering to a specific group?"

Cai Cai thought for a moment, "It's not just about the character; it's about making the audience feel that the character can be praised by the general public."

"." This is a bit difficult, isn't it?
The Immortal Lord asked Cai Cai to elaborate. Since these supporting characters might have their own scriptwriters, the Immortal Lord hadn't discussed it much with Cai Cai. The key was to preserve the best visuals and maintain the integrity of the Ninth Princess's storyline. Other characters' scenes could be cut at will, allowing their own scriptwriters to rewrite them as they pleased.

The main point is that you can go to great lengths and cause all sorts of trouble, while I remain calm and collected.

"For example, a very common villain trope is someone who kills, commits arson, cheats, and swindles, but also loves his wife, daughter, cats and dogs, and even food. These are all praiseworthy traits." Regardless of whether it's exploiting women, this kind of villain trope is the most common. It serves as an anchor point for goodness. It's said to make the villain's image more three-dimensional, more relatable, and to make the audience more vigilant, alerting them to the malicious villains lurking in their seemingly peaceful lives, and so on.

Cai Cai's requirement was something like this: "No matter how the scriptwriters change it, the basic character settings must be maintained. As for the rest, feel free to improvise."

The immortal understood. Fang Xiaoning judges people by their underlying character; only when an actor and a character have a fundamentally similar underlying character can the actor bring out 100% or even more of their acting skills, making the character more vivid.

However, "it's too difficult for these artists."

"..." Cai Cai's vision went black. "I'm not asking them to have any praiseworthy qualities as individuals, I'm asking them to play their roles."

"Yes, if you're asking them to act naturally, it might be easier; many actors play themselves. But if you're asking them to act out a role, firstly, their acting skills aren't up to par, and secondly, they're unlikely to deeply understand or interpret the character." How so? "You know, there's a type of artist in the industry who brings their own personal acting, physicality, and makeup coaches to the set. They help them find their positions and blocking, find the best shots, analyze the character, and even perform a scene first so the artist can learn to act it."

"They are mostly involved in business activities, so they don't have time to prepare for a role. If they can read the script once, they are considered very diligent and hardworking." Unlike some actors who prepare for a role in advance after receiving a script, they are not allowed to do so even if they want to. "Acting is one of their accolades, not their job." This is the essential difference between actors.

"..." Cai Cai panicked a little. "Am I going to have my eyes opened in this group?"

The immortal nodded. "Yes, you'll be amazed. This is already considered very professional. The industry accepts it, and the audience only sees what's in front of the camera, so they accept it too. It's much better than in the past when some actors couldn't act and used stand-ins and pushed into long shots." At the height of the entertainment industry's bad apples, many actors even finished filming a movie without joining the crew, just using green screens.

Cai Cai honestly said, "The worst kind of slacker I've ever met is Cao Xin." Cao Xin also had his own mentors, but he wasn't quite at the point of trying to act like a pro. Unexpectedly, he wasn't the worst. "Is this considered professional or unprofessional?" It's really hard to say.

"These actors are generally good-looking, photogenic, young, and have high popularity. Capital promotes them to make quick money. After three to five years, when this person is no longer good enough, they are replaced by another one, and new people will constantly fill the gaps. Lack of acting skills and wooden acting are not big issues in the eyes of capital, because everyone knows that the camera can be edited and that the camera can lie." In its earliest days, the art of film and television created classics by using a series of deceptive shots to deceive the audience.

Forget it, Cai Cai didn't want to dwell on this. "Since they have a cheat code, then the character design part is even more feasible." Can't act it out? Let's figure out a way.

The immortal was merely reminding Cai Cai not to be so short-sighted later.
"Where do you think Meng Ning is suitable to play the tenth prince?"

"We could arrange a plot where the tenth prince disguises himself as a woman to escape, and then the tenth prince is portrayed as having no sense of right and wrong, only power in his eyes, a hypocrite. But the character's underlying nature is naivety. He is a naive hypocrite, or rather, a born hypocrite. Because his father is the emperor, and he is his father's most beloved son, he thinks he will definitely become emperor too, so everyone should respect him. If someone doesn't respect him, he will wonder, 'I am the emperor, how can you treat me like this?'"

The Immortal Lord understood, "And add narcissism. It makes the character always have a mirror on them." Cai Cai agreed; this kind of setting is quite common, and, "As for serious dramas, I think the most obvious characteristic is that each character can have their own show. They need to have the presence of a protagonist." The Immortal Lord frowned, and Cai Cai quickly corrected herself, "The character needs to have the presence of a protagonist. The character needs a complete storyline, a logical thread, even if it's not shown on screen, the audience needs to be able to see it."

The Immortal looked at Cai Cai and said, "You really know how to grasp the key points; it's definitely directorial thinking. But you're so naive."
If these artists don't interpret their characters, how can they give the characters a complete storyline?

"They can't, but their personal cheat codes can. Didn't they pay us? Let's ask them to pay more." Cai Cai was really going all out.

The Immortal Lord could only nod. Indeed, if they really wanted to go for a serious drama, this was the simplest and most direct way. He gestured for Gu Sheng to contact Huang Xin and Li Muzi and start an online meeting. Gu Sheng immediately contacted the two of them and, incidentally, also shared the script and character information that the Immortal Lord had previously summarized with them.

Without saying much, the two immediately got into the swing of things and quickly grasped the key to the meeting: the basic character settings. This relieved Huang Xin and Li Muzi, as they had both been thoroughly tormented by the actors' pre-existing scripts. Now that Cai Cai and Xianjun had established their character tones, things would be much better; at least they wouldn't have to film empty-handed anymore.
But the simplest way to make each character resemble a protagonist is still through the actors themselves. However, they also participated in the casting process. These small-time artists sent from outside were basically newly acquired traffic stars by various capital groups. They had some fame and some works, but no representative works. They had a few popular works on their resumes, and had participated in film, television, variety shows, and even stage plays. They had many fans. From the outside, they were rising stars and candidates for the next generation of leading men. But from the inside, they were like worker bees—they could do the work but weren't very useful, and it wouldn't matter if they died.
The main reason is that they are the right age, the right looks, and the right status. Playing supporting roles to the Ninth Princess is a way to elevate their status, not lower their own. If it were actors in their mid-twenties with representative works and already established in the industry, they definitely wouldn't accept projects with so many supporting roles. They would much rather take on leading roles, or at least the only or one of the only two supporting roles. Only then would they feel they're justifying their perceived sacrifice.
Male actors who have established themselves generally hold a higher status than female actors. This is for the same reason: male actors have a longer career span than female actors. A male actor in his thirties can easily act in romantic scenes with female actors in their teens, twenties, thirties, or even forties. For a female actor in her thirties, acting with a male actor in his twenties is considered a stretch, with one in his thirties is considered lucky, and with one in his forties is just right. Actors in their fifties or even sixties are also possible, but acting with a male actor in his teens is basically like mother and son. The key point is that once a male actor has acted with an older woman, it becomes very difficult to act with a younger woman later.

This is the most common downhill path for female celebrities.

Even though the environment is better now and female artists have many job opportunities, some deeply ingrained perceptions from the audience are not so easy to change. It is precisely because they come from the audience that they are so difficult to change.

Male celebrities aren't always happy to work with female celebrities much younger than themselves. They often feel like they're sacrificing themselves, working themselves to the bone for a living, because they don't want to be compared to their age on camera. Male celebrities are also afraid of getting old.

Artists are afraid. Investors are afraid too.

Therefore, among the male celebrities who auditioned for the Ninth Princess project, aside from those vying for the role of the emperor, the oldest was no more than twenty-five and the youngest had just turned eighteen.
Given this level of artist quality, Huang Xin is truly the best—she'd film with her eyes closed and then frantically delete everything.

"Initially, there were over four thousand applicants. Because the net was cast wide, there were all sorts of weirdos, but there were just too many men who were exceptionally confident in themselves. After several rounds of screening and interviews, we finally selected a little over one hundred. Actually, they were all signed, just like with the female artists. If they weren't selected, they would play other roles." Capital is just desperate to cram people in.

Huang Xin also reminded Cai Cai, "Really, don't have too high expectations." She explained, "Why is this industry dominated by the offspring of insiders? Firstly, it's because it's easier for them, saving money for investors. Saving money is making money, right? And how do they save time? Because they have experience. Other jobs are easier, but acting is often a process of being trained through film after film, project after project, even for those with formal training. Very few people can act right from the start; most are just playing themselves, relying on the director's guidance."

Cai Cai nodded; she understood.

Huang Xin sighed, "You don't understand, you really don't understand. These hundred-plus people are all artists with works to their name, and you would expect them to have rich acting experience. But in fact, most of them can't even be called actors. They can't act. This inability to act is very direct. Acting requires actors to perform with continuity. It doesn't have to be about how many ups and downs there are, but the continuity between two shots, between two lines of dialogue, is something that must be acted out to be called an actor."

Huang Xin had noticed this during the initial interviews. However, given the camera angles and editing, it wasn't entirely unusable; it was something capital forced upon them, so they had no choice but to reluctantly comply. They certainly wouldn't get lead or supporting roles, but Huang Xin felt it was unfair to Cai Cai to send these people to her.
Cai Cai understands what Huang Xin means by continuity. Simply put, it's about continuity within the scene. Actors themselves maintain continuity in their scenes. For example, actors are acting out eating in the same scene. If only one actor is performing, it's much easier to film; the actor just needs to finish eating smoothly. They pick up food, chew, swallow, pick up more, chew again, swallow again. Simultaneously, they must portray the character's current emotions—the context in which they are eating. They might be seeking revenge, a great revenge, getting a divorce, getting married, searching for their child, and so on.

If multiple actors are filming a meal together, it might involve shooting from multiple angles and with multiple lenses simultaneously, or filming one shot from one angle before finding another. With a single actor, regardless of the number of shots, editing is easy, but with more actors, it becomes much more difficult. Therefore, actors need to maintain continuity. When filming their own scene, actors must subtly observe the eating rhythm of other actors; eating too quickly or too slowly is unacceptable. When filming other actors, actors must remember their own eating order. In the same shot, if other actors haven't even spoken a single line, but the actors have already changed several different foods, it will definitely disrupt the continuity.

Continuity is a complex thing, it can be a big or small issue, it can be overcome, but it's always better to achieve it.

Cai Cai has also seen many films and television dramas where actors deliver PowerPoint-like performances with constantly changing camera angles. Viewers find it difficult to connect with the story and perceive the director's editing skills as poor, and the actors' performances as stiff. This is the fundamental reason for the continuity of an actor's performance—the vitality of the character.

How does a fictional character become a living, breathing person in the eyes of the audience? The answer is that the character must have life. And for it to be alive, the actor must be able to bring it to life. This doesn't actually require extremely high acting skills; basic coherence is sufficient.

Huang Xin now says that most of these hundred-plus people cannot do it.
ah.
Cai Cai asked sincerely, "Am I not a film queen anymore? Can't I even find an actor with a little bit of acting skill to act with me?"

The Immortal Lord was a little embarrassed. "Well, I was so focused on writing a script for you with the lead role that I didn't consider supporting roles," he said. That's why his standards were so lenient. "You need to understand your situation. You've won the Golden Mask Award for Best Actress abroad, but domestically you've practically received nothing. I'm already doing a good job just to get you a project." Otherwise, you wouldn't have any work. "If you're willing to wait until after Kunlun to consider domestic projects, that's fine too. Things will definitely be much better then."

"Kunlun doesn't know when filming will finish, and the release date might be soon or late, so Fang Xiaoning isn't in a hurry at all. She can't afford to wait three to five years."

Forget it. We can't demand too much from others. Nobody wants that either. We're all just trying to make a living, why make things so difficult for ourselves and others?
"As long as the final result is good, that's all that matters." That was Cai Cai's only request.

Huang Xin and Li Muzi both said, "You can rest assured, unless it's a god-level shot, they won't leave a single one."

"." With just this group, plus her rabble, where would you find any god-like shots?

carry on.

Cai Cai just wanted to quickly resolve the character settings for these supporting roles. "The tenth prince has already agreed, the next one will be the emperor. The emperor will be as the scripted character: cunning and calculating, with imperial power above all else. No one except himself and his heir is considered human. His emphasis on the heir is also for his own bloodline and the throne. He's just a political animal." That's pretty simple. "The character's underlying nature is that of a puppet of imperial power. He needs to have the feeling of a tyrant in his twilight years, that resentment, that's a must. When filming, besides the emperor, all the other actors in the same frame will be young and fresh-faced, as foils, as background."