Huayu: Starting from Fahrenheit

Chapter 15: Taboos in Photography

Nightclub, private room.

Three young girls in suspender skirts were dancing in a coquettish manner. Zhang Haoming hugged two of them, one on each side, and shouted loudly with a flushed face.

"Dadong, you will definitely be popular with this drama, so let me celebrate this for you in advance.

You can choose any of these girls, take any one you like!"

"Haha, brother Haoming is so generous!"

Wu Zhuo looked at Jiro Wang, whose face turned red due to the teasing of the two little sisters not far away, and joined in the fun.

After dinner, several girls from the crew left early. After Na Weixun and several veteran actors also left, only Wu Zhuo, Jiro Wang, Chen Yiru, Danny Tang and Zhang Haoming were left.

Zhang Haoming suggested going to a nightclub to have fun.

This guy knows how to have fun. As soon as he entered the private room, he ordered ten girls, two for each of them.

Among the few people, Zhang Haoming is obviously a veteran, and Chen Yiru is a rich second-generation who also seems to play often.

Even Wu Zhuo and Tang Yuzhe were not stage-frightened.

The only problem is Jiro Wang.

This guy had drunk a little when he came, and he started to talk nonsense at the door, saying that you are no longer a virgin at the age of fourteen, and that he has changed girlfriends like changing clothes in recent years.

After he came in, Zhang Haoming ordered two girls for him, gave him some extra tips, and asked them to treat Jiro Wang well.

Then, Jiro Wang softened.

The two little sisters made him stammer and hesitant in his speech, no longer looking like a seasoned man as before.

"Dadong, you can't do this! Why are you shy? Look, you are not as good as Wu Zhuo."

"You said you were not a virgin at the age of fourteen, right?"

Chen Yiru and Tang Yuzhe were bullying Jiro Wang from the side.

"How is that possible? How could I lie? I just feel that I have something to do tomorrow and can't do anything rash..."

Jiro Wang looked dissatisfied, but before he could finish, the girl next to him hugged his arm and said:

"Brother, my chest hurts so much, can you help me take a look?"

As she spoke, she raised her chest.

Wang Dadong glanced back and blushed again.

Seeing this scene, Chen Yiru smiled secretly and turned back to whisper to Wu Zhuo and Tang Yuzhe:

"I said this guy was bragging, with his straight masculine personality, how could he have had seven girlfriends.

I seriously doubt he is still a virgin.”

After a pause, he said with some regret: "It's a pity that we have to shoot a movie tomorrow, otherwise I would let those two girls take good care of him tonight."

Hearing this, Wu Zhuo looked at Chen Yiru speechlessly, "If you want him to end his singleness, shouldn't you introduce him to a girlfriend? What the hell is this!"

This guy is such a bad friend. He actually plans to find a girl in a nightclub for his good friend to have sex with.

"You weren't going to be in the nightclub on New Year's Eve as well..." Wu Zhuo asked curiously.

"Damn, do you think I will do so badly?"

Calvin Chen retorted on the spot, "I gave my New Year's Eve to my girlfriend, a Canadian foreign girl."

"I think we should go. It's getting late. If we keep drinking, we'll delay tomorrow's sacrifice to the gods. I'm afraid the director will cause trouble."

Tang Yuzhe next to them interrupted the two of them.

Wu Zhuo glanced at the time and it was almost eleven o'clock.

Although I was a night owl in my previous life, 11 o'clock is when my night life begins.

But after traveling through time, this body maintained its regular routine, and Wu Chao didn't want to break it.

After taking a look at Jiro Wang, he also suggested that they could leave.

"Let's go! Let's go! We can play together some other time!"

Several of them were people who wanted to have fun and make noise but didn't want to affect their work, so they just left when they said they would, and left after paying the bill.

When they left, the two sisters who accompanied Wu Zhuo were reluctant to leave and chased after him to ask for his phone number. Not only him, but also the sisters who accompanied Zhang Haoming and the others were reluctant to leave.

This is not surprising. Wu Zhuo and his friends all have outstanding looks, so it is normal that they are popular with girls.

However, it was obvious that none of them were the type to hang out with the girls in the nightclub, and they each found an excuse to refuse.

During this period of time, no one wanted to go home, so a few of them checked into a hotel nearby.

……

Silent all night.

When I woke up it was already the next morning.

After a quick wash, they set off for the crew.

When the few of them arrived, most of the crew had already arrived.

Under the guidance of the staff, several people quickly changed into the Ultimate Class One school uniforms, put on some simple makeup, and then came out to help the staff arrange the items for worship.

The altar, offerings, red cloth, and statues of gods.

In today's Chinese film and television circles, whether in Hong Kong, Taiwan or the mainland, whenever a new film starts shooting, there must be a start-up ceremony.

That is to say, choose an auspicious day and hold a ceremony to worship the gods.

Generally speaking, at the power-on ceremony, the table used for worship is covered with red velvet cloth. Guandi is worshiped on the table, with incense burners and roasted suckling pigs and delicious fruits on both sides.

Usually, the camera is covered with a red cloth, and then the crew burns incense and worships the gods in turn. Finally, the red cloth of the machine is lifted and the camera is announced to be turned on.

It is said that this procedure originated from the fear of film scratching. In the early days of film, the film in the camera was accidentally scratched by the internal parts during shooting.

If scratching occurs, it will cause immeasurable losses to the crew, but machine scratching is unpredictable and difficult to prevent.

Add to that some vague ghost myths and legends, and gradually there developed a procedure of covering the camera with a red cloth to ward off evil spirits, and then praying to the gods and asking for their blessings.

The custom of worshipping gods first became popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In fact, the gods are not of high rank, probably the likes of Guan Gong and Wong Tai Sin.

Because older filmmakers are very social and corporate, worshiping gods basically comes from the rules of the opera industry.

The way of worshipping gods on the mainland is relatively different.

The atmosphere of atheism is very strong in the mainland, which ultimately makes the ritual of worshipping gods in name only. Basically, no gods are worshipped. Whoever you want to be is anyone, from Sun Wukong to Lumiere.

And most of them are more like crew mobilization meetings, and the mystery is not that strong.

But compared with the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are different.

The atmosphere of worshipping gods in these two places is very heavy and serious, and there are many taboos.

First of all, the auspicious time cannot be missed, and this time is usually deduced by professionals.

Secondly, the direction in which you worship God must be correct.

The filming started at different times and locations, and the direction in which people worshipped gods was also different. Roughly speaking, there was a rule for all four directions. If due south was placed instead of southwest, then a slight error would lead to a huge mistake. Some even had to be accurate to the longitude and latitude.

Of course, there are people in the film and television industry who do things against the rules. For example, Jay Chou did not worship God when filming began because he believes in Christianity. He just stood aside and acted like a handsome man praying quietly.

However, Jay Chou can do this because he has the status that makes the crew agree to let him do so.

As for other people, if they want to avoid worshipping, it is obviously impossible without some skills and qualifications.

This is just the taboo of the opening ceremony.

After booting up, there will be even more.

For example, in film and television works, there are inevitably some special characters, such as disabled people, or those who died midway, or those who appear as photos on tombstones as soon as they appear. These special characters also receive special treatment in the crew.

Each of them will receive a red envelope, the amount of which will vary depending on the degree of their loss and the funding of the crew, just for the sake of good luck.

In addition, during filming, male actors can sit on the cameraman's lens box or footbox, but female actors are absolutely not allowed to.

It is said that the clothes box contains the king's clothes, and the helmet box contains the king's hat. It would be very unlucky if an evil person sat on them.

Then, after the filming is completed, we need to ask a master to calculate the release date and the title of the show and choose an auspicious time.

In a nutshell, there are a lot of rules.

Wu Zhuo actually didn't know about these things at first. He only found out about them when he was following a few senior crew members to move things.

(End of this chapter)