From unemployment in crosstalk to top star in Chinese entertainment

Summer rains can come down suddenly.

It's been raining since yesterday afternoon until 4 a.m. this morning and shows no sign of stopping.

Yu Liang was woken up by the phone ringing. He reached for his phone, the screen's light making him squint. It was 4:15.

The notice stated that makeup would begin at 5:00 and filming would start at 6:00, but the production crew had already sent three messages in the group chat: the rain was too heavy, there were several leaks in the roof, the props team had temporarily adjusted the position of the mechanism triggering device, and the floor tiles at the front of the tomb passage needed to be re-treated for anti-slip properties.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his face. The rain outside sounded so dense, like someone was using a high-pressure water gun to wash the roof of the RV.

During the day, Hengdian is so hot you could fry an egg, but at four or five in the morning, the wind blows in through the cracks in the window, carrying the coolness of the mountains.

He put on a coat and pushed open the RV door.

Rain cascaded down the edge of the RV's awning and then splashed on the ground.

In the distance, the lights of shed number two were blurred into a dim yellowish mass in the rain.

Several stagehands were pushing carts to transport equipment into the shed, the reflective strips on their raincoats flashing under the lights.

He wrapped his coat tighter around himself and waded through the puddles toward the dressing room. Rainwater trickled down the gaps between the RVs, forming a makeshift stream, and splashed water all over his trousers as he jumped across it.

---

The dressing room was in a temporary prefabricated house on one side of tent number two. As soon as the door was pushed open, the white light from the fluorescent lamps was so bright it made one's eyes sting.

Then, Yu Liang saw the makeup artist, Xiao Zhou, catching up on sleep on the dressing table, wearing a thin jacket, with a half-cold cup of instant coffee next to her.

Hearing the door open, she abruptly looked up, revealing two obvious dark circles under her eyes.

"Teacher Yu," she said, rubbing her eyes, her voice still sleepy, "please have a seat."

"Didn't you go home again last night?" Yu Liang sat down on the dressing chair.

"Don't even mention it."

Xiao Zhou picked up the clothes and put them aside, then unscrewed the bottle of foundation.

"Team B didn't finish filming until 2 a.m. yesterday. Uncle San was not satisfied with the scene of the swarm of corpse beetles, insisting that the corpse beetles made by the special effects team were not disgusting enough, so the props team revised the props seven times overnight."

"In the scene where Teacher Chen acted, the fake blood on his face was made with syrup by the props team. By the end of filming, his hair was all tangled and stuck together."

As she spoke, she smeared a layer of pale white foundation onto Yu Liang's face.

"Teacher Yu, you don't look too good today." Xiao Zhou stopped applying powder and leaned closer to look under his eyes. "You have quite a few red veins."

"I didn't sleep well last night," Yu Liang said.

Xiao Zhou didn't ask any questions. She took out an eye primer from her makeup case and applied two more layers under his eyes.

She unscrewed the fountain pen and began to draw eyeliner on him, her movements very light, the pen tip gliding along the base of his eyelashes, causing a slight tickling sensation.

Yu Liang tried hard not to blink, letting the pen trace over and over her eyelids.

"I heard today's scene was quite difficult," Xiao Zhan muttered while drawing. "The props team put together a three-meter-tall gear, and it took them three days just to assemble it. Last night, during the testing, it got stuck once and almost pinched the stuntman's foot. The martial arts director got furious on the spot and said he wouldn't film it if something like that happened again."

"And then?"

"Later, the head of the props team personally climbed in and adjusted it for half an hour."

Yu Liang didn't reply. He stared at himself in the mirror and suddenly frowned.

After finishing work last night, he lay in bed, tossing and turning over the action design for today's scene.

The scene where Zhang Qiling shields Wu Xie from an arrow in the tomb passage—how exactly he did it—wasn't written in the script.

The action director let him decide for himself, but he always felt that no matter which side he blocked first, something was wrong.

Later, he got up and practiced several versions in front of the mirror in his room.

I finally managed to fall asleep around 2 a.m.

Studio No. 2 is the largest indoor photography studio in Hengdian Industrial Park.

The dome, about half the size of a football field, is covered with a dense array of lights and steel wires, resembling an inverted steel forest.

The ground has been transformed into an antique-style tomb passage. The stone walls on both sides are made of foam board sprayed with imitation stone paint, but the moss is real.

The props team dug up moss from Jinhua Mountain and planted it in the gaps of foam boards, with someone watering it every day.

So when Yu Liang came out of the dressing room, she smelled a damp, earthy smell, mixed with the odor of foam board, paint, and fake blood.

The shed was already quite lively.

The lighting crew is squatting on the scaffolding of the dome, adjusting the angle of the diffuser.

An old man with a cigarette butt dangling from his mouth was tightening a screw while cursing under his breath. Cigarette ash fell onto the fireproof cloth laid below.

On the ground, the stunt team members were laying out soft mats.

The cushions were sprayed with the color and texture of bluestone slabs, so you couldn't tell they were soft unless you looked closely, but they would sink slightly when you stepped on them.

The tomb mechanisms in "Reboot: The Lost Tomb" were created using real props and mechanical devices, combined with post-production special effects. The core principle was "props were made on-site by the prop team, and real-life footage was used whenever possible, with post-production only adding parts that couldn't be done in real-life footage."

At this moment, Lao Cao from the props team was squatting in a corner, adjusting the trigger mechanism of the gear with a tiny screwdriver. The gear had a maximum diameter of over three meters, its surface was coated with copper paint, and it was densely engraved with inscriptions, each character the size of a thumbnail.

The inscription was painstakingly drawn stroke by stroke by the art team over half a month. Uncle Three personally supervised and revised it several times, saying that the atmosphere of the tomb in "Reboot" had to be accurate, otherwise it would be criticized by book fans if it was too unrealistic.

At that moment, Lao Cao's fingers were fiddling with something in the gaps between the gears.

Several prop team members stood nearby, but no one dared to speak; they were all watching him work alone.

Next to him squatted Xiao Lin from the coordination team, holding a walkie-talkie in his hand and today's notice spread out on his lap.

The list was filled with more than twenty shooting tasks, each marked with its priority in red pen.

The top line is highlighted with a highlighter. Today's tomb passage puzzle scene is the only A-level priority this week.

"Old Cao, how much longer?" Xiao Lin couldn't help but ask.

"Soon." Old Cao didn't even look up, his voice muffled.

He's said "soon" almost ten times already.

Xiao Lin didn't urge him any further; he simply changed the channel on the walkie-talkie and confirmed the location of the food delivery truck with the stagehands outside the shed.

Breakfast hasn't arrived yet, and the prop team members in the studio have been working all night on empty stomachs.

Yu Liang walked around the tomb passage.

His costume was a black night suit with tight cuffs and a belt around the waist, revealing a well-proportioned waistline.

His clothes made almost no sound as he walked. Several new crew members were visibly startled when they saw him emerge from the shadows of the tomb passage; they nearly dropped their walkie-talkies.

"Oh my god, Teacher Yu, don't just pop up like that!"

The stagehand patted his chest and gave a sheepish smile.

Yu Liang didn't speak, but simply nodded at him.

Today we're filming the scene with the interconnected traps in the tomb passage. The script is simple, but it turned out to be the most complex scene of the entire filming period.

The plot involves Zhang Qiling and Wu Xie triggering a series of interconnected traps deep within the tomb passage.

First, the floor tiles slipped, and the sound of mechanisms starting came from underground. Then, a dense rain of arrows shot out from the hidden holes in the stone walls on both sides.

Before Wu Xie could react, Zhang Qiling had already stepped in front of him.

Pan Anzi wanted to use a long take to film the entire process so that it would be coherent in the shot.

The Steadicam operator carried the equipment, which weighed dozens of kilograms, and moved around the tomb passage repeatedly, stepping on the pre-drawn yellow markers with each step.

"Teacher Yu Liang, let's go through the part where we block the arrow first, without the equipment."

"Teacher Yilong, you're here too."

He led Yu Liang and Zhu Yilong to the entrance of the gear array.

This gear array is the core of the entire mechanism.

Three rows of enormous bronze gears are arranged in a triangular pattern, each slowly turning and emitting a deep rumble.

The sound was added in post-production. During the actual filming, the gears were silent, but the action director required the two actors to be aware of the sound and to portray the feeling that the sound could be heard on set.

The art department's lights shone from the side, casting long shadows of Yu Liang and his companion on the gear array.

He and Zhu Yilong walked through the area six or seven times, marking each step on the ground with tape, from the spacing of the gear array to the angle at which Yu Liang turned around.

-

"Attention all departments—" came Uncle San's hoarse, raspy voice, like someone stomping on a chicken's neck, from the loudspeaker.

"Filming starts at 6:30! Stop dawdling, the food hasn't arrived yet, and those who are hungry will take their frustration out on takeout later."

Then came Pan Anzi's voice: "Everyone to your positions—"

All the lights in the shed were turned on, simulating the dim torchlight deep inside the tomb passage.

The light fixtures shone beams of warm red light down from the dome, illuminating the moss on the stone wall so brightly that the veins of the leaves were almost visible.

Yu Liang walked to a dark spot on the left side of the tomb passage and stood still. This spot was marked with tape, and the light was just dim enough to make one's outline visible but not one's expression.

A voice came from Uncle San's loudspeaker:

"Walk!"

-

This scene was filmed five or six times before it was finally completed. Because many of the special effects and mechanisms required post-production, even though the production crew had marked the positions, Yu Liang and Zhu Yilong could only work on their physical coordination through repeated rehearsals.

After finishing work, Yu Liang changed out of her sweat-soaked costume, and her tense nerves, which had been stretched for half a day, slowly relaxed.

The damp, earthy smell of the shed was still there, but the "roaring" of the gears had faded from my mind, replaced by a solid weariness.

"Brother Long, where are we going after work?" After spending some time together, Yu Liang and Zhu Yilong had become familiar with each other.

"Memorizing lines." Zhu Yilong still maintained his focused yet shy and slow-to-warm-up personality.

Yu Liang couldn't help but say, "No, don't you have any personal life at all?"

"Like hobbies?"

"A little hobby?" Zhu Yilong thought for a moment, "I like to bend over and look at my phone."

"Huh?" Yu Liang was stunned for a moment, then revealed a wicked smile.

"Cat pose, that's great!"

Just as Yu Liang wanted to explore the matter further,

My phone vibrated.

Yu Liang picked it up; it was a message from Wang Churan.

"I've decided what I want."

"Huh? What do you want?" Yu Liang looked completely bewildered.

"You said I'd sew you a button if you agreed to one condition."

Yu Liang remembered.

That day, his button popped, and Wang Churan helped him sew it back on. He casually mentioned that he owed her a favor.

I wanted to make her a Douyin video to repay the favor, but then the "scumbag quotes" incident came out, so I put it off.

I didn't expect her to remember.

Yu Liang smiled and replied, "Go ahead."

The screen displayed "Typing...", then paused briefly before the message arrived:

I want you to come with me to the movies.

Yu Liang replied, "What are you looking at?"

Wang Churan: "Dying to Survive".