Rebirth 02, the Celestial Being Told Me to Stop Pretending

The interplay of light and shadow sounds artistic, but it can be quite wild in practice.

He recalled a European short film he had seen at an independent film festival in his previous life.

The story revolves around four residents in a building who each experience a small event on the same night. The director uses cross-cutting to connect the four storylines, ultimately revealing a hidden causal relationship between the four events.

It's only eight minutes long, but you'll feel like you've watched a whole movie after you finish it.

He decided to use this structure to move the background to China and to a more down-to-earth setting.

Four families lived in an old residential building. One night, the lights suddenly went out.

It wasn't a power outage; rather, the lights in each household went out at different times and in different ways.

After the lights went out, each household reacted differently, and these reactions intertwined to form a complete story with a suspenseful element.

"Who Turned Off My Lights" is simple and straightforward, with both explicit and implicit meanings. It combines layers of suspense and emotion, making it a blend of art-house and commercial films. It can be enjoyed by ordinary viewers as well as appreciated by professionals.

He spent one night creating the script framework, without writing complete dialogue, only four scenes, the behavioral logic of four characters, and the cross-cutting points.

A young man living alone was reading at home one evening. After the lights went out, he went out to find the property management and encountered several other residents in the hallway.

This is the main perspective storyline, connecting the other three storylines. The other three storylines are: a single mother with a child, an elderly woman suffering from insomnia, and a student secretly practicing guitar at home, afraid of being overheard by the neighbors.

The four lines converge in the hallway, and it is eventually discovered that the reason the lights went out was an absurd coincidence.

The script is not complicated, but its structure is intricate. The timing of each character's appearance, the switching points of each cross-cut, and the final convergence all require a very high level of editing rhythm. If it is a second too fast, the audience will not be able to keep up; if it is a second too slow, the suspense will dissipate.

Lu Chen drew a timeline diagram in his notebook, marking the four lines with four different colored pens and circling the intersections in red.

Lu Chen looked at the completed script outline in his hand, as if he were looking at a battle map, accurate to the second. "I'm a fucking genius," Lu Chen thought to himself.

He closed the notebook and tucked it under his pillow. He wouldn't show this picture to Zhao Bo for the time being.

Zhao Bo is the kind of person who thinks the word "commercialization" taints art. Lu Chen doesn't intend to change his aesthetic; he only needs Zhao Bo's sense of the camera, and he'll handle the structure himself.

The preparation for shooting the short film was more complicated than Lu Chen had expected. The equipment that the department could borrow was limited. There was a Sony DVW-790WSP, which was considered the best digital camera at Beijing Film Academy at the time. In addition, there was a tripod, a boom microphone, two red lights, and a 60-minute DV tape.

When Lu Chen went to register at the equipment department, Teacher Zhang, who was in charge of the equipment, glanced at them and asked, "Is there only three people in your group?" Lu Chen said there were only three.

Regardless of anything else, Teacher Zhang reached out and handed over the equipment requisition form, which was stamped with: Damage will be compensated at cost.

Lu Chen stared at the stamp on the equipment requisition form he had just received. The stamp was applied with little force, and the color was uneven. Of course, it was also possible that there was no ink left.

The machine is worth about 200,000 yuan on the market. With the 50 yuan that Liu Yifei lent him, his total assets are no more than 500,000 yuan. He still has to wait for the magazine's payment.

Wang Yan leaned over and whispered, "Brother Lu, if I break this thing, will they sell me to a coal mine?"

"It's not that bad."

"It still has to be Boss Lu, because..."

Before Wang Yan could finish speaking, Lu Chen interrupted him humorously. "I'll just bury you. Saves trouble."

Wang Yan shrank back and stopped talking.

The location issue was quite troublesome. The script was set in an old residential building, but there was no such place on the Beijing Film Academy campus.

Lu Chen's previous rental apartment was too big and unsuitable, and he had already terminated the lease because he couldn't afford the rent.

Lu Chen rode his bicycle around the school for two days and finally found a five-story old tenement building in an alley behind Sanlitun.

The building is mostly inhabited by people who run small businesses nearby. They are usually not home during the day and only come back at night.

He knocked on the door of a house on the first floor. A woman in her thirties opened the door, wearing an apron and holding a spatula.

Lu Chen said he was a student at the Beijing Film Academy and wanted to film a class assignment. He asked to borrow the hallway and an empty room on the first floor for one night so as not to make a mess.

The older woman looked him up and down and asked, "What are you filming? You think you can film a movie in this godforsaken place? You're not a con artist, are you? Let me tell you, I'm not ignorant. Don't think you can fool me. I can find the police in a few steps."

Hmm, very good, you have a strong awareness of fraud prevention. It's a shame you didn't install the "National Anti-Fraud Center app".

"Big sister, look, this is my student ID. I really am a student at Beijing Film Academy, studying directing."

Lu Chen took out his student ID from his pocket and showed it to his older sister, then put it back under her suspicious gaze.

"I've never seen a student ID from the Beijing Film Academy before, but yours looks like it. What kind of movies are you making? Can I act in them? I could play a housewife perfectly well."

Lu Chenxin thought to herself, "Big sister, you're quite the actress. You even know how to play yourself." But on her face, she wore a kind smile and said, "Big sister, we're not making a movie. We're making a short film, a five-minute suspense film about the story of the lights going out in the building."

"The lights are out? The lights in our building go out all the time. Last Wednesday, someone shot and broke a light bulb on the upper floor with a slingshot, and no one has replaced it yet." The woman curled her lip. "You can take pictures if you want, but don't take pictures of my apartment number."

Lu Chen said no problem, and that all the house numbers should be pasted on with paper.

The older woman asked again, "Will you pay?"

Lu Chen said, "Fifty yuan for one night of filming."

The woman thought for a moment, then switched the spatula to her left hand and extended her right: "Pay first."

Lu Chen took out a fifty-yuan note from his pocket, the one Liu Yifei had lent him.

The older woman took the money, stuffed it into her apron pocket, said "Take pictures as you like," and closed the door.

Lu Chen stood in the stairwell, looking at the empty space in his hand. He thought to himself that he had paid back the fifty yuan in advance, but the creditor didn't know that. He would have to scrape together another fifty yuan to pay her back later.

Lu Chen went back and told Zhao Bo about the scene. Zhao Bo went to check it out on site, and when he returned, his face was expressionless. He only said, "The corridor is too narrow; the machine can't operate properly."

Lu Chen said, "We don't have any machines to deploy. And think about it, a person walking in a narrow, dark stairwell, with darkness behind and in front, and only a small patch of light from their flashlight. That sense of space itself is suspenseful."

Zhao Bo thought for a moment and nodded in agreement.

There were four actors. Zhao Bo played the single man, which he requested himself.

The single mother eventually found a place on the first floor of the tenement building where Lu Chen could open the door and play the role of the older sister. She wasn't an actress, and although she wasn't particularly good-looking, she had a very down-to-earth quality.

The old lady was a retired teacher from the building next door; Wang Yan invited her over with two boxes of milk.

The student practicing guitar was a young man named Li Bo from the Performing Arts Department. Hearing that Lu Chen's short film needed people, he proactively came to ask if he needed help.

Lu Chen glanced at it but didn't recognize it. "Then you definitely won't become famous later," but he certainly couldn't say that, so he just thanked her for helping.

The filming was scheduled for 7 p.m. on Saturday, because most of the residents of the old tenement building would be back home by then.

There will be people walking in the hallway, residents will hear the sound of doors opening and closing, and the sound of the TV will leak out due to poor sound insulation. These realistic background sounds are better than any post-production sound effects.

At four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the three of them arrived at the tenement building with their equipment.

Hearing the commotion, the eldest sister opened the door and came out of the house. As soon as she saw Lu Chen, she immediately beamed with joy and shouted to the surrounding residents, "Here he comes! This is Lu Chen, the student from the Beijing Film Academy whom I told you about. He's going to be filming a movie here, and I'll be the lead actor!"

Everyone was happy to hear this and congratulated you, hoping you would become a big star, but no one believed it.

Zhao Bo walked around the corridor, measuring the distance from the first floor to the third floor with his footsteps, and then began to adjust the light positions.

After discussing with Lu Chen, Zhao Bo decided to use a mixed light source: the existing light bulbs in the corridor would be used as ambient light, and the brightness would be reduced by covering them with tissues to create a dim, yellowish atmosphere.

Then, use a red-headed lamp to provide auxiliary light at several key locations to simulate the effect of a flashlight.

In this way, the entire corridor will appear as a warm-toned dark scene, the kind that is visible but not clearly discernible.

Filming will begin promptly at 7 PM.

The first scene is when Zhao Bo is reading in his room and the light suddenly goes out. This effect of the light going out couldn't be achieved by actually turning off the light, because the camera needed to keep shooting.

Lu Chen instructed Wang Yan to pull the power switch outside the door, but at the same time, Zhao Bo had to make a reaction as if he were startled by the sudden darkness, with the time difference not exceeding 0.5 seconds.

It took five takes to get it right. Zhao Bo's reaction was too slow in the first two takes, Wang Yan pulled the switch too early in the third take, and Zhao Bo's expression was exaggerated in the fourth take, as if he had been electrocuted.

The five people worked together perfectly. The moment the lights went out, Zhao Bo blinked and leaned back slightly. It wasn't a big movement, but the instinctive reaction of being suddenly deprived of his sense of security was very real.

The second scene cuts to the single mother, the eldest sister, whose real name is Ren Hui. As the lights go out, she's making formula for her child, and the sound of the baby crying can be heard in the darkness.

Sister Ren's performance in this scene was unexpectedly good. She didn't need to act; as soon as the lights went out, she instinctively reached for the child's spot, her hand flailing wildly in the darkness. That kind of panic couldn't be faked.

While Lu Chen was watching the monitor, Wang Yan whispered beside him, "Has this woman actually taken care of children before?"

"Nonsense, how old is she? Has she never taken care of a child before? Her son is in elementary school this year."

How did you know?

"I know a lot, but do you think I should tell you that you're wearing white underwear today?"

Wang Yan glanced at Lu Chen speechlessly, "I only have white underwear."

"Yeah, that's your style, you repressed pervert."

The third scene cuts to the old woman. After the lights go out, she doesn't panic. The old woman slowly stands up, walks to the window, and looks outside.

When the retired teacher was acting out this scene, Lu Chen said to him, "Don't act scared. You're an old man who has lived in this building for thirty years. When the lights go out, you won't be scared. You'll just think, 'Huh? Why is the power out again?'"

The word "again" made the retired teacher pause for a moment, and then her expression changed from a vague tension to a weary calm.

The fourth scene cuts to a student practicing guitar. After the lights go out, he continues playing, but the tune he plays in the dark changes from a pop song to a very rock-and-roll improvisation.

This design was something Lu Chen had thought of during the scriptwriting stage: This student usually doesn't dare to play loudly for fear of being scolded by his neighbors, but he feels free after the lights are turned off because no one can see him anymore, and the darkness gives him courage.

Li Bo also nailed this scene, and in one take.

After filming the four individual storylines, they began shooting the scene where they converged. The four people left their homes one after another and met in the hallway. This scene is crucial to the entire film, as the four storylines intersect here, and the editing rhythm needs to reach its most intense point in this segment.

Lu Chen's design is: first, film Zhao Bo going out and walking to the corner on the second floor, where he encounters Sister Ren carrying a child and walking upstairs. The two brush past each other at the corner, with Zhao Bo going down and Sister Ren going up. Then, the scene cuts to a retired teacher slowly walking down from the third floor, holding a flashlight in his hand.

Then the scene cuts to Li Bo rushing down from the fourth floor with his guitar on his back, his steps very hurried.

The four people finally met at the entrance of the first-floor stairwell and discovered that the circuit breaker had been tripped by a rat accidentally touching the electrical distribution box on the first floor.

This scene took a full two hours to film. The problem was that the corridor was too narrow, and the camera didn't have enough space to move around.

Zhao Bo suggested removing the tripod and shooting handheld instead. Handheld shooting would cause the image to shake, but in this confined space, the shaking would actually increase the realism and tension, so Lu Chen nodded in agreement.

Zhao Bo's hand is very steady, a kind of steadyness that feels like breathing. The picture will have slight undulations when moving, but it won't make the audience dizzy.

When the last take of the reunion scene was filmed, it was almost 11 o'clock.

It was already 11:30 when they got back to the dorm. The three of them were exhausted. Wang Yan collapsed onto the bed, while Zhao Bo sat at the table in a daze.

Lu Chen locked the device, sat on the edge of the bed, and opened his laptop to look through the timeline chart.

The footage was about fifty minutes long. According to his estimate, about twenty minutes would be usable after a rough cut, and six to seven minutes would be fine-cut. There were no major structural problems, but a few cross-cutting transitions needed to be fine-tuned based on the actual shooting results.

He closed his notebook and was about to lie down when Zhao Bo suddenly spoke.

"Your four-line design," Zhao Bo said softly, almost to himself. "is very precise."

"Thanks."

"But I don't like it."

Lu Chen glanced at him and thought to himself, "It has to be you, kid. I know what kind of shit you're going to take if you don't stick your butt out."

"It's too full," Zhao Bo said. "Every switching point has a clear purpose, every line has a clear function, like a machine where every part turns when it's supposed to. But people aren't machines, and human life doesn't operate like that."

Zhao Bo is right. From an artistic point of view, the structure is indeed too full, with no blank space and no breathing room.

But given his current situation, he doesn't need a work that is artistically perfect; he needs a work that can shut everyone up.

It's full, so let's just focus on surviving first.

"You're right," Lu Chen said, "but let's go with this for now, and next time I'll give you one that's not quite full."

Zhao Bo didn't say anything more, stood up, climbed onto the bed, and lay down facing the wall.

Post-production editing was done in the dorm. The editing room at Beijing Film Academy had long queues, so Lu Chen couldn't wait and borrowed a computer. The Celeron processor made Premiere run like a slideshow, with several seconds of delay for every time the timeline was dragged.

Lu Chen gritted his teeth and cut the video for four days. He attended classes during the day and edited videos at night, sleeping only four or five hours a day.

The editing process was more painful than he had imagined, not because of technical issues, but because of the mismatch between the amount of footage and the complexity of the structure.

Reducing fifty minutes of footage to under seven minutes means a lot of cuts. Some shots, though well-shot, had to be removed from the structure.

The night the final cut was released, the three of them huddled together in front of Wang Yan's computer screen to watch it.

At six minutes and fifty-two seconds, the four lines advance alternately, with the pace increasing from slow to fast, reaching its highest density at the point of convergence, and then abruptly stopping after a mouse bumps into the electrical box on the first floor.

The last scene shows four people standing at the entrance of the building, with the light from a flashlight shining on a distribution box. There is a notice from the neighborhood committee on the distribution box, but the contents of the notice are not clear because of the dim light.

When Zhao Bo saw the last image, he leaned forward slightly.

"Was that notice deliberately made illegible?"

"right."

"What does it say on it?"

"There was nothing written on it, just a blank piece of paper stuck there. And how would I know what the notice said? I've never lived in a tenement building. But the audience doesn't know it's a blank piece of paper, so they'll think there's something important written on it, even if they can't see it clearly."

Zhao Bo leaned back in his chair and remained silent for a long time.

"What's your name?" he asked.

Who turned off my light?

Zhao Bo nodded and didn't say anything more.

Thursday, in the small screening room of the Directing Building.

The class watched thirteen short films in a row. Most of the films were narrative, some about campus romance and others about father-son conflicts.

Sun Hao and his group made a comedy short film with martial arts scenes that imitated Stephen Chow's style. The whole audience laughed a lot, but the teacher commented that the imitation was too obvious and lacked originality.

Lu Chen's group was seated in the middle, which was a perfect spot. The teachers and students were able to immerse themselves in the film without feeling tired.

The lights dimmed, the screen brightened, and the old tenement building appeared on the screen.

The first shot shows Zhao Bo sitting in his room reading a book. Footsteps are heard passing by in the hallway, and the light bulb flickers slightly.

The light swaying wasn't in the original plan. It happened because someone was walking through the hallway on the night of filming, causing the light bulb to vibrate. Lu Chen decided to film it without stopping the shoot. Later, during editing, they discovered that this unexpected shaking was better than any design.

As the four storylines progressed in turn, the atmosphere in the classroom noticeably changed. During the previous films, some people yawned and others whispered "crickets," but after Lu Chen's group's film was shown, the chatter gradually subsided.

In the final scene where the scenes converge, the editing pace suddenly quickens, with the four storylines switching seamlessly. Footsteps, crying, guitar music, and flashlight beams intertwine in the hallway. Several people in the classroom instinctively lean forward.

After the film finished, the classroom was quiet for about five seconds.

Tian Zhuangzhuang, the head of the directing department, sat in the last row. After watching the video, she didn't rush to comment but first asked, "Who edited this?"

Lu Chen raised his hand.

Who took the photo?

Zhao Bo raised his hand.

Who wrote the script?

Lu Chen raised his hand.

Teacher Tian nodded and remained silent for a while. "The cross-cutting rhythm of the four storylines is well controlled, especially the converging part, where the choice of switching points is very precise."

"But you have a problem. The four storylines in the first half are too mechanical. Each storyline is given almost the same amount of time, which lacks a sense of hierarchy. If Zhao Bo's storyline could take up more space, with the other storylines serving as support, the overall flow would be better."

He paused for a few seconds and then said, "Well done," which was already a very high compliment.

Lu Chen nodded. He knew about this problem, but at the time, the available footage was limited, and there weren't many usable shots for each storyline, so he didn't have much room for choice.

Teacher Tian paused again, "Also, the shot of the light bulb swaying in the hallway was excellent." This sentence carried more weight than the previous technical evaluations.

After they left the theater, Sun Hao came over and patted Lu Chen on the shoulder: "Dude, was that a movie or an escape room? It made my head spin."

The people around him laughed along.

Wang Yan, standing nearby, was indignant and muttered under his breath, "He spent a thousand yuan to hire a martial arts instructor for that film, and it turned out like a promotional video for a small town enterprise. What right does he have to criticize others?"

"Stop talking nonsense," Lu Chen said. "Let's go to the cafeteria."

When he arrived at the cafeteria entrance, Lu Chen subconsciously glanced at the corner seat, but no one was there.

He looked away and lined up for food.

Back in his dorm that night, Lu Chen lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. Zhao Bo was writing something, and Wang Yan's radio was playing music, the static of the circuitry mingling with the guitar chords.

He reached under the pillow and felt for the wallet. The fifty-yuan note, folded twice, was gone from the innermost compartment.

He put his wallet back, closed his eyes, and plotted his next move. No matter how well the short film was made, it was still far from what he truly wanted to do.

The posts on Tianya continue to generate buzz. The magazine is accepting three to four articles per month, with payment ranging from one to two thousand yuan. The money issue has been temporarily stabilized, but only temporarily.

He needs a real work. Not a classroom assignment, not a magazine article, but a blockbuster work that can attract social attention.

But that requires money, people, and resources. He has none of those things right now.

Forget it, let's focus on surviving first.