director of the millennium

"Whoo~"

A wave of hot air gushed out, and the snow-white yurt door curtain was lifted.

Wu Yuan, who had already put on thick clothes, came out with a washbasin in his hand and casually sprinkled the still warm water in the basin onto the ground.

As he moved, the mist continued to rise.

This is the Hulunbuir grassland in the north of our motherland.

The "Mulan" crew has officially arrived here for five days and has started filming smoothly.

However, due to the weather, these five days were more about adapting to life, and we only shot two or three scenes.

This time when the "Mulan" crew came to Hulunbuir, all the crew members really lived directly on the grassland, but they lived at the very edge of the grassland. Every day, there were scheduled trucks to deliver daily necessities and various items.

There is definitely plenty of daily supplies, but living on the grassland is something that requires adaptation.

Not to mention anything else, just going to the toilet and cleaning up household garbage every day is very troublesome. In addition, the temperature difference between day and night is very large, the accommodation experience in yurts and hotels is different, etc., which is a difficult thing to describe for most crew members.

Maybe in the first two or three days everyone's mentality is still mainly based on novelty, but after the novelty wears off, everything will really feel uncomfortable and inappropriate.

This is the case for ordinary staff members who are more hardworking, let alone the actors.

The actors Wu Yuan found are considered to be relatively dedicated and hardworking actors in China, but Hu Ge, Huang Xiaoming and others still couldn't help but complain a few words in private these two days.

People who have lived in cities all their lives really cannot adapt to this kind of "wild" life.

Even though variety shows often have outdoor camping segments, those are actually scripted. As soon as the filming is finished, everyone goes to the hotel to rest, and then rushes back the next day to shoot a waking up scene.

The limit for the environments that can really allow actors to stay is those in "Longing for Life" and "Dear Inn", and they only stay for one or two nights.

But the crew of "Mulan" will live on the Hulunbuir grassland for at least two months.
"With all the convenience in modern times, it's hard to live here. It's hard to imagine how the ancient people lived." This was Huang Xiaoming's complaint that Wu Yuan heard when he passed by the actor's yurt last night.

I can only say that this time, letting them play the role of soldiers guarding the border in ancient times really makes me feel the same way.

While thinking in his mind, Wu Yuan did not slow down his hands. After packing up the toiletries on hand, he lifted the door curtain and returned to the yurt.

When I looked up, I could see my wife sitting in front of the dressing table doing some simple dressing.

Because there were scenes to be filmed today, Liu Yifei did not put any makeup on her face. After all, a makeup artist from the crew would come to dress her up later.

In "Mulan", she appeared in 95% of her scenes without any makeup. Not only could she not put on beautiful makeup, but she had to make herself look uglier. Her skin had to be darker, her lips had to be peeled, and her face had to be a little dusty.

After all, she is a woman dressed as a man and a rough soldier, so she definitely cannot be delicate.

Although movies are movies after all, and the audience knows from the beginning that Mulan is a woman, she cannot dress up casually in the movie.

In many domestic film and television dramas nowadays, the heroines who dress up as men are so perfunctory. Not to mention that they don’t look like men at all, they even still maintain beautiful makeup, as if they are afraid that the audience will not know that this is a "great beauty".

Wu Yuan certainly could not accept this phenomenon, so he strictly required the makeup artist to make Liu Yifei look like a man. Although she is naturally beautiful, and no matter how much makeup she puts on like a man, her delicate features can still be seen, but the attitude still needs to be correct, at least the saying "After twelve years of working together, I still didn't know Mulan was a girl" should be more or less true to reality.

"Honey, the weather is nice today. It's sunny and not snowing. We have a lot of filming to do today. I'll get you some breakfast first. After you finish eating, we can start preparing for the filming."

Wu Yuan watched his wife getting herself ready, unable to help much, so he simply went to arrange the crew's filming preparations.

Soon, half an hour later, everyone had almost finished breakfast and the entire crew started moving.

The camera crew, props crew, and set crew all got in the car and started heading to the set to make arrangements before filming.

The makeup and costume crews entered the actors' yurts and began to put makeup on them and change into costumes.

Wu Yuan, along with the script supervisor and production staff, also came to the shooting location, which was about 3 kilometers away from the residential area.

Here, the crew has built a small military camp, which was built entirely according to the guidance of historical consultants and is full of the Northern Dynasties style of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

Today we will shoot a lot of scenes about Hua Mulan and her comrades’ life and training in the military camp, as well as the appearance of General Cheng Long.

Trucks carrying extras were rushing in from the distant city.

Because the filming was taking place on the Hulunbuir prairie, just hiring extras was a very troublesome matter. Not only did they have to pay more than film and television bases like Hengdian and Xiangshan, but they also had to be picked up and dropped off from the city every day. After all, the extras certainly had no means to live with the crew.

There are only 30-odd extras who can join the group. They all play the kind of special extras who will appear frequently in the camera but have only one or two lines.

"Extras, come over here and get your costumes!"

The casting director on the scene was directing the extras who had gotten off the truck, arranging them to change their roles and put on makeup, mainly wearing long hair wigs.

Wu Yuan observed for a while and made sure that everything was in order. He did not interfere with the casting director's work. He sat quietly in the director's seat behind the monitor, waiting for the extras and leading actors to arrive before it was his turn to perform.

Time passed little by little. After the extras were in place, the leading actors also arrived in cars. They had changed into their costumes and put on makeup in advance. After saying hello to Wu Yuan, they took their places in a camp with their red faces from the cold.

Liu Yifei, who was wearing a red lining, leather armor and a helmet, also came to Wu Yuan's side.

"Are you cold?" Looking at his wife's red face, Wu Yuan asked with some heartache.

The winter on the grassland is really cold, with strong winds that are very damaging to the face, but for the sake of work, Liu Yifei is the heroine, so it is really difficult for her to get special treatment.

"It's okay." Liu Yifei said nonchalantly, "I have a lot of hot packs on me, so I'm not cold at all. It's just that my face is red because of the wind."

"And this is in line with the character's image."

It's true, now that her skin color is obviously two shades darker, her face is red, her lips are cracked, there is a bit of frost on her eyebrows, and her forehead and nose are a bit gray, Liu Yifei really looks like a rough guy, but she does look feminine, there's really nothing you can do about it.

Wu Yuan looked at her deeply, and then said, "Then get ready to start filming, and try to finish it as early as possible today." (End of this chapter)