This article is from WeChat official account:Gun draft (ID: QiangGaooooo)< span class="text-remarks">, author: Guo Xinyue, original title: “Little Actor, Crowded in a Place Out of Light”, head picture from: Visual China
one
A while ago, I read a post on Douban. A group of girls from the rice circle carried a Weibo of a post-85 actor: a selfie with a 45° angle, low eyebrows and nodding. The accompanying text roughly said, I figured it out. From now on, he will withdraw from the show business and no longer be an actor.
The reason is helpless and passive: unable to receive the show.
The movers and commentators are all with regret and surprise-after all, in the eyes of many ordinary people, “actor” is a gold-collar profession. Besides, this actor has several famous masterpieces of leading actors, so I shouldn’t be reduced to this no matter how you think.
I have a friend who is not in the film and television industry. He signed a contract with a film and television company on a whim and invested in a movie under the banner of Xu Zheng.
The movie hasn’t started for a long time. He wanted to confirm whether the matter was reliable, so he asked me seriously if he could meet Xu Zheng for a meal. I was dumb at the moment.
Although I am considered to be a practitioner in the film and television industry and have the title of “producer”, there are probably thousands of distances between myself and Xu Zheng.
It can be seen that perhaps in the eyes of non-industry people, the film and television industry in Beijing is very small, and everyone may have WeChat.
No matter which industry, there is probably an eternal 28th law. I am also a member of this “eight”. Around me, there are also many others of the same kind who are hard to see. And it is only the 20% that dominates people’s sight every day.
two
In June 2014, “STB Super Teacher” was broadcast on LeTV. At that time, I had just graduated for a year, and I was looking for a job at LeTV Pictures. I am passionate about itIn the release of the “Little Times” series of films, it was only in exchange for a signature that was drastically drowned in the ending subtitles.
In “Super Teacher”, Wang Sen, who was favored by Zhao Wei and Jin Han, who became a traffic niche, were the main characters at that time. In the play, the actor Yan Yihai, who played the class leader Zhong Bai, is now my boyfriend; Lei Mu, who played the class leader Ms. Liao, is the author of the Weibo at the beginning of the article.
In the seven years since the broadcast of “Super Teacher”, Yan Yihai has maintained a close friend relationship with him. He calls Lei Mu the “Master”.
“Super Teacher” received a Douban score of 7.8, which is already excellent in the web dramas
Yan Yihai was born in 1987 in Wenzhou, the birthplace of Jiangnan Tannery. He is three years older than me, but he is an alumnus of my class. And this is what I have always admired for him: He took the college entrance examination three times.
When he grew up at the age of sixteen or seventeen, his height and appearance conditions attracted some olive branches from advertising agencies and model agencies. It was also at that time that he heard for the first time that there was an option to study acting on the road to college entrance examination.
Sometimes people’s perseverance is also stimulated. I asked him how he went from the ignorant period when he didn’t know anything about acting, or even heard of Nortel Chinese Opera, until he was determined to be admitted to the acting department and did not hesitate to take three consecutive years for this. He told me a “three hundred yuan” story.
At that time, he was attending art test training in Beijing, and one day wandering in Wangfujing, he was stopped by a deputy advertising director and asked him if he wanted to shoot an advertisement. He was immediately excited: Isn’t he going to be popular with scouts before entering a professional college?
It was an advertisement for a fast food restaurant. It was filmed late at night, and dozens of youthful boys and girls were separated around. He heard the assistant director yell, “The left side of the college entrance examination, the right side of the failed entrance.” Immediately afterwards, there were snacks and drinks, while the white water pipes were enough, and the sentence was decided.
Some children don’t believe in evil, and tentatively want to sneak to the other side, but before they succeed, they are sternly stopped by the assistant director. At that moment he understood:If you fail to enter a professional college in the future, you may only drink cold water for the rest of your life.
The differential treatment of different qualifications has always been a sad topic in the entertainment industry. /The picture shows the stills of “The King of Comedy”
Adman No.1 is a boy from across the strait. Yan Yihai saw that he had been retching, so he went to ask. “It’s all raw.” The opponent pointed to the half-eaten hamburger in his hand. It turned out that because it was late at night, all the staff in the store were off work, no one could process the food, and the shooting needed to capture the details of eating burgers, so he could only eat the half-baked semi-finished products from the freezer over and over again.
It stands to reason that to be elected as the male number one must belong to the so-called “professional” group of people. And this experience made Yan Yihai understand that even with this “professional” label, it is just a chance to eat a hamburger. Of course, if you don’t have this label, then I’m sorry, you don’t even have this qualification. nothing.
It was dawn when work was over, and the deputy director quietly called Yan Yihai aside, “Little brother, I’ll give you one hundred more. You take it, don’t tell anyone. They are all two hundred.” With these three hundred dollars, he secretly made up his mind on Wangfujing Street in the early morning-in the future, he will be admitted to professional colleges and receive professional education, and he will become a hot performer in the actor industry.
But it wasn’t until he repeated three years and chose the middle pass that opened his arms repeatedly, that he realized that everything was just beginning.
three
I asked Yan Yihai, why haven’t we met in school for four years at the same time? He told me that the courses and assignments of the acting department are scheduled from Monday to Saturday, from morning to night. Finally, on Sunday, most people will choose to fall asleep in the dormitory for a day, and there is no time to participate in any other activities.
The teachers will never allow them to go out to pick up the show during class time. The teachers have their reasons for this arrangement. It’s a pity that the surplus of the performing arts circle has long since been able to achieve results through hard work and study.The lake.
This phenomenon is probably not an exception. According to industry news a few days ago, the dilemma of many young actors today is that they are already too old after graduation. Even if the company is willing to invest resources to make it popular, it will not be possible to enjoy a good situation in a few years. For the brokerage company, this is not worth the loss. While at school, if you do not complete the academic requirements on time, you will not only fail to learn the professional methods of acting, but also fail to meet the graduation standards.
For this reason, many opportunities during school just passed by. After graduating, the psychological presupposition of “beginning in a subject” made him unable to accept small roles that were grouped together, made special appointments, and only filmed for five days. However, just by looking at the large numbers of young actors who gradually fade out each year and do not know what to do, one can imagine how fierce the competition between men and men is. Many times, as a college student who just graduated, the reason he received for rejection was: “I haven’t filmed a movie.”
After starring in “Super Teacher”, Yan Yihai’s Weibo began to have followers, but it was still difficult to receive the show. The picture shows in 2015, Yan Yihai is preparing to start shooting on the set of “Border Transit”.
It took nearly a year in this way. With the twists and turns of his classmates, Yan Yihai finally got the contract for “Super Teacher”. Although the pay is not much, but after all, it is the main role of a web drama. As soon as the play was broadcast, he discovered that someone had found his Weibo by following the name on the cast and crew list, and he began to have fans.
I thought I was going to get ahead, but unexpectedly fell into the vicious circle of the “ecological contempt chain of the film and television industry”. what? Acting in a web drama? Sorry, TV shows and movies will not consider you.
Three years after graduating, the number of scripts he received was decreasing, and the quality was getting worse and worse. Sometimes he had even agreed to join the group, but when he was packing his luggage, he received a notice of changing roles. The compensation he got from filming was not even able to support his life in Beijing. Not only did his parents fail to enjoy the backfeeding in time, they also continued to supplement his expenses.
Sometimes we would go back to school together, walk through the campus buildings and stadiums, and he would tell me his schedule during school: riding a small motorcycle for morning classes and morning work. , Rehearsing with classmates in the invisible theater, rehearsing scene changes and moving props, 4 pmAfter putting on makeup, I can only hide in the backstage of the theater and not show up again.
I interrupted him, why? He laughed, because after putting on makeup, he will enter the role. If he is seen by the audience with makeup, it will affect the audience’s understanding and feelings of the role and drama. I can’t help but sigh, how sacred the performance is.
He said, “Yes, at least at that time, I also had this kind of sacred yearning.”
four
I saw Lei Mu at several gatherings, and I gradually got to know him a little bit.
Listening to Yan Yihai, Lei Mu’s experience is legendary. In order to pay the tuition fees at the performing arts training institution of Emperor Zhongbei, he had to work part-time as a security guard while attending classes. Then he went through a long career in group acting until he had the film and television drama work where he served as the male number one. He has also been reprimanded by big-name protagonists for trying to stay in front of the camera for a few more seconds, and he has also tried to get justice for new actors who have been treated unfairly.
In 2017, Lei Mu and Yan Yihai once again co-starred in the web drama “The Chef in the Flower Room”, which was broadcast on iQiyi. This drama was once promoted as a low-cost small hit by the marketing account. I have always felt that if they took advantage of that wave of publicity, maybe they would have a different life today. But Yan Yihai told me, not necessarily. Sometimes, the popularity of people is not popular, in addition to the right time and place and opportunity, it also depends on the individual’s personality.
Douban scored 7.9, the web drama “Hua Jian Hu Fang Chu Fang” has gained a certain popularity and ranked first in the masterpiece of Lei Mu’s actor page Bit
They have many similarities. To put it simply, they are simple and idealistic. In the entertainment industry, this is an easy problem. They are unwilling to succumb to a role and bow to their knees; they are unwilling to accept too small or too bad play appointments, and rather wait for their satisfactory script to appear. Some people say that they stick to integrity, others say that they don’t know how to be flexible; some say they keep their true colors, and some say they have good eyes and low hands.
——It may be all right.
People often say, don’t let the world polish your edges and corners just to fit into a circle that doesn’t belong to you. But in fact, often you have worn your head and shed blood, but still can’t blend into the center of the circle, at most you can only wander around the edges. Those who choose not to change may just try to change but to no avail.
Yan Yihai sometimes asks me, if I don’t have the status of “Star II”, and I will never go with the bad trades, an actor who has good conditions and is diligent and practical in acting, would he not? Will there be a bright day? I don’t know how to answer him.
Perhaps everyone who has three right views will feel that the answer is undoubtedly affirmative. However, if it is not in its place, how can one know the difficulty and the low probability of this?
When they can’t receive a play appointment, they all like to play games at home, or gather a group of friends to drink and chat all night. It’s not so much entertainment, it’s better to hide in the chaos and fireworks in a hurry, and talk about the anxiety of the passing of time.
They have to constantly face the hopelessness and emptiness, and they have to slap themselves from time to time to prevent themselves from sinking in this bubble. They have to get used to being frustrated and rebuilding, they are accustomed to a one-man show in an empty theater, they are accustomed to no one to applaud, but they have to tell themselves: You are good, you are gold It will definitely shine. ——This powerful heart, to be honest, I can’t learn it.
The last time I saw Brother Lei Mu, it was another actor’s brother who celebrated his birthday. The children are only born in 1998, but some are young and mature. Talking about the reasons, most of them have something to do with the living conditions of unknown actors who are used to seeing them. Lei Mu was very silent and depressed that day. But when a vice president of a film and television company and a web drama director came to the scene, he opened the chatterbox as if he had been injected with adrenaline. I can fully understand his excitement-what ignited him was not the surrender to capital, but the unwillingness and persistence of the superego.
Dreams are very expensive, and sometimes you still can’t afford to pursue it with all you have; but dreams are very cheap until they are covered in the streets and between everyone’s lips and teeth. When you mention it, you can’t restrain your eyes from shining brightly and the corners of your mouth rise. It’s just the cheapest clothes you can use to dress yourself up.
They are talking about the current online content market and Aristotle. Good nights are so long.
Five
Due to the nature of the industry, we need to continue to pay attention to the market every dayMovies and TV dramas online. Often, Yan Yihai would pause the video, “Look, this scene shouldn’t be handled like this.” As he said, he stood up abruptly and entered the situation for a second. The front is like automatically turning on a spotlight, reflecting the sincerity flashing in his eyes.
Many times he said that he was disappointed in the performance. But I know that the magic of performance has never faded. What disappointed him was not the performance itself, but the huge psychological gap-the top-flowing clouds drifted across the sky, and the dream of the man at the bottom of the tower had no trace to follow.
In “I’m an Actor”, Zhang Songwen once became emotional and burst into tears when he saw a plot of a young actor being brushed off during an audition. He said that it reminded him of the ten years he had truly experienced.
In the third season of “I Am an Actor”, because he saw his own experience in the works of Ye Zuxin and others, Zhang Songwen mentioned “the whole ten years It’s all like this”, she shed tears rarely.
You would say, who is easy to live in this world? Yes, it is not easy for anyone to live. However, compared to people who have never had the illusion of taking off, most of those who choose to be actors have been praised by those around them as the pride of the sky since they were young. Most of them have outstanding looks and talents since they were young. If they are lucky enough to get one or two good opportunities, it will increase their expectations for their future colorful chapters.
However, when you move forward with the motto “Every effort, no gain” as the motto, you find that many things are not just hard work.
My undergraduate major is “Cultural Industry Management”, and my training direction is film and television producer. After graduation, except for me, there are very few students who really stay in this field. I remember having an argument with a classmate of mine. The topic was whether “culture” and “industry” are suitable for matching together. I think this is a pseudo concept. “Industry” is developed by capital, while “culture” is difficult to stabilize in the currency wave. Wherever hot money gets together, the culture will quickly melt away. The other party believes that culture can only grow by cash flow, continuous scale and industrialization.
At the end, we gave up arguing. Because we sentNow, this is not only an inconclusive topic, but also a topic that the two of us who have no foundation in the film and television industry have the right to interfere, and there is no need to discuss it.
As a producer who is just beginning to explore and try to develop film and television projects, I am not so exquisite, and I haven’t added any works yet. But I have seen all kinds of actors who are out of the sight of the audience-I don’t want to call them “little actors”. I always feel that this term is derogatory and indifferent. They may not be young or small, and even their acting experience is not suitable to use the word “little” to discuss seniority.
But they failed to become “big actors”, just because they didn’t have a reputation.
In the past years, they have also tried to understand the Steinney and Brecht in the textbooks, and they have also swayed in front of the screen, and they have even thought that they will become showbiz fans in the near future. darling.
But reality is difficult to take care of the idealists’ heroic dreams, it just squanders their enthusiasm and patience over and over again. So they raised their arrogant heads while trying to quietly pick up their frustration and defeat. They were still using their mouths to arm the fragile bubbles in their hearts last second, but maybe they encountered some small puppets in the next second, and they exploded the sky full of fireworks.
six
Every night, in Beijing, where people come and go, nightclubs, clubs, and hotel boxes are full of “bureaus” in the film and television industry.
The attendees are often with producers, producers or directors as the core, and groups of actors who are eager to enter the audience’s sight, are ready to go. They must first use their best efforts to obtain an admission ticket that is allowed to be a “game” boarding visitor, then push the cup and change the cup, force their cheers, and drink gastric bleeding on the spot for the phrase “call you next time the play”.
They clearly know that this kind of culture is pathological, but they don’t want it to stop, and some even enjoy it. Drinking a cup of wine, treating yourself as a bet, greet it like an addiction and continue to be engulfed in it—because other than that, the other possible paths to success will only be slimmer. “First get a familiar face, then pursue art.” The vast majority of them may have made such a calculation in their hearts. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, when you choose a path, you also firmly choose you.
The achievement of fame is more important than anything else in the minds of many young people. /The picture shows the stills of “Burst Drummer”
Next, either continue to stay calm, or one day we will have it. But in any case, it may be difficult to remember the self who was so eager and hopeful.
The overall situation has been set, and if you don’t follow the trend, head against the wind.
Starting almost in 2018, the tax turmoil, the tightening of inspections, the spread of the epidemic, and the economic downturn, a series of heavy blows have caused the capital of the film and television industry to repeatedly ebb. The film and television companies that once sprung up like bamboo shoots after a rain, have died unexpectedly. A large number of practitioners are owed wages or even unemployed. Too many people are dead before they can realize their grand career. The already immature Chinese film and television market is becoming more and more devastated and precarious.
The crew was shut down and the team was disbanded. Everyone who can stick to the dream of film and television in Beijing is living a life without knowing where to go. The profit-seeking attribute has also allowed limited resources and capital to unquestionably choose those traffic artists, well-known directors and leading companies.
On the one hand, there is a premium project that is lining up and shouting, but suffering from nowhere. On the other hand, there is a small and medium cost that no one cares about when the creator’s throat is broken. The terrible “two-eight law” has appeared again.
Similarly, this cold current only affects the 80% of people who are out of sight of the audience. The actor friends I knew finally went from being able to receive one or two small roles in a year to never receiving any more roles. If you don’t look carefully, the audience will never find that there is nothing missing on TV, but some people will never say goodbye to the stage he loves.
On the other hand, for the producers and producers, as long as you are not a “star”, then it doesn’t matter who you are. They can accept the “additional conditions” brought by capital, and they can also adopt the “newcomer recommendation” given by the platform. In many cases, the uproar of the group news is just a play. There are not many people who really carefully consider the degree of matching between roles and actors. In other words, this is a requirement that can be put later.
Since you have no traffic and no topics, no matter how talented you areWhat, whatever your resume, you are just an ordinary tool person. Out of the sight of the audience, a group of people broke blood, but they can only become a denominator and a symbol. This indifference to individuals is cruel and real.
We who are accustomed to listening to inspirational stories always like to use the grassroots model Wang Baoqiang as the ironclad proof of “bearing hardships and being a master”. However, today’s real “horizontal drift” data is that 30,000 group performances will not make an 18th line star. Wang Baoqiang, like the uncle who won 5 million in the lottery in the news, is so commonplace and so far away. Even Zhang Songwen of Keban seems to be an exception.
Wang Baoqiang’s success has not been repeated so far. /The picture shows the stills of “The New King of Comedy”
seven
My boyfriend, Yan Yihai, is now slowly transforming into a film and television screenwriter. He was troubled, and started writing novels and scripts in 2017-if you don’t receive the script, it is better to learn to write by yourself-he explained his decision to me in this way.
He still insists that one day the script he wrote can be recognized by the market, then he can tailor a role for himself without worrying about the pay, schedule, or worry about being replaced temporarily, just play it happily. field.
And Lei Mu, I dare say that if he meets a character that suits him next time, he might not remember the Weibo he sent out in anger, and he will be prosperous and be ignited again, and then send a WeChat message saying, “I’m going to join the group soon, get together.”
When I go downstairs to take out the garbage at night, I occasionally run into some young boys and girls who have just left art exam training classes in the elevator. The years are verdant, they humming songs, telling jokes to attract attention, and the hormones of youth are diffused. They may be the pride of their hometown and come to Beijing with the fascination of becoming famous. The evening breeze is cool, and their steps are full of hope.
I can’t make any assertions about their future, as the saying goes: There are always people who are still young, and there are always people who still believe.
This article is from WeChat official account:Gun draft (ID: QiangGaooooo)< span class="text-remarks">, author: Guo Xinyue, editor: Xu Yuan