Entertaining Children

  Chapter 552 A sweet dance

Paul and TJ couldn’t guess what Zhou Jingyi was thinking, but what they could see was that Zhou Jingyi had indeed been very serious about helping Xiao Yao and Sun Tingting rehearse that sweet duet dance for the past two days, and even helped them. Modified and perfected some movements designed by Xiao Yao to make this dance more effective.

  Two days later, the group of people arrived at Paul and they found a good shooting location in advance, and the MV for this song started shooting smoothly.

  This is a room that looks like a performance hall in a European palace. The surrounding walls are decorated with very delicate patterns, simple and elegant wall lamps, and there are many prominent semi-circular terraces on the opposite walls. Below the terrace, there are curtains with string of small light bulbs. When the yellow light bulbs are lit, the dots of light on each pair of curtains spell out a pattern of a boy and a girl doing intimate actions together. There are many murals on the ceiling with a group of huge ornate European chandeliers.

  The entire floor of the performance hall is covered with cyan carpets with elegant patterns. On the carpet in the center, a square with a side length of about six meters is formed with a wooden floor. This smooth and flat square wooden floor is also the stage for two people to dance. And around the wooden stage, there are also some classical European-style wooden sofa chairs and small tables. On the small table, there are also antique European-style small lamps.

When Xiao Yao and others arrived, the preparations on the scene were almost done. In addition to the obvious square wooden floor, a spotlight that is fixed obliquely downwards is installed above each terrace, and two rows of oval light spots are cast on both sides of the wooden floor. On the walls of two adjacent corners, two movable follow-up lights are installed. There are a total of three cameras at the scene, one of which is carried by the cameraman and held hand-held to shoot, and the other is set up on a sliding rail trolley on one side of the wooden stage. The sliding rails laid on the ground are curved, which can basically guarantee the sliding The camera on the trolley can adjust the shooting direction of about one hundred and fifty degrees, while the third camera is installed on a rocker arm erected on site to ensure the shooting angle from top to bottom. As for audio equipment, it is of course essential.

  All the staff of the shooting team have also arrived. It just seems that the configuration of this team does not seem to be neat. It’s understandable that there is no sound engineer who is responsible for the on-site sound recording when shooting the MV. However, there are only cameramen, prop artists, lighting engineers, field recorders, and technicians operating the rocker and sliding trolley. , Not even a director.

  The makeup artist is naturally made up by Xiao Yao’s assistant and personal makeup artist Pei Minyi when he comes to the guest. The job of the costume designer and director is that Xiao Yao, who plays the main role, comes by himself. Yes, Xiao Yao’s MV was written, directed and acted by himself. He had experience in filming the short film "Tuner", and now he is familiar with doing this again.

  After entering the shooting location, Xiao Yao gathered the cameramen, lighting engineers, and technicians who operate the rocker and slide car, and explained his shooting plan to them. The three cameras are shooting at the same time. When should each camera be at what shooting angle, when should the camera be zoomed in, and when should it be zoomed out. Xiao Yao must explain in detail how the lighting engineer should adjust the brightness of the on-site lighting, when to turn on the wall lamp, and how to use the follow-up light.

  After the shooting plan was explained, Xiao Yao and Sun Tingting went to change clothes and make-up.

Xiao Yao is dressed in a white shirt, black vest, and black trousers, except that the sleeves of the shirt are rolled up to his forearms. They are basically the same as Boss Huang in the original MV in the previous life. The difference is that there is a loose black on his neck. The tie, but this outfit is exactly the same as the last time I performed the song with a shovel guitar on the singer's stage. Sun Tingting's costume is more conservative than the female dancer in the original MV in the previous life, but it looks equally soft and elegant. The light cyan gauze slanted one-shoulder long skirt did not highlight Sun Tingting’s chest curve, but the thin, soft and slightly transparent fabric of the lower body and the diagonal cut of the skirt hem can also highlight Sun Tingting’s graceful leg lines during the dance.

  Filming started, and the official version of Xiao Yao’s recorded songs and music began to be played on the live speakers. Compared with Xiao Yao’s previous live music, although this version’s music is still dominated by electric guitars and drums, it has greatly increased the proportion of piano sound, making the whole song less folksy, but There is a taste of classic and elegance, which is more suitable for this environment and the whole dance.

  The lights on the scene dimmed, and the lights of the two follow-up lights hit the wooden stage obliquely, forming two bright cone-shaped light beams. Xiao Yao and Sun Tingting walked slowly towards each other from the darkness on both sides of the stage in an elegant modern dance. When the two figures entered the beam of light, the chasing lights began to follow the two figures. As the two slowly approached each other, the oval light spots cast by the two follow-up lights on the stage slowly overlapped together, but the light spots did not completely overlap, but were spelled out on the stage. A heart-shaped pattern.

At the beginning of the dance, Xiao Yao made a relatively large modification. The two did not make physical contact at the beginning like the original dance. Instead, they borrowed from the previous life "The Vampire Diaries" the scene of Duan Meng and Elena dancing. Dancing a short section of Mescolanzas in the square dance, the two of them each stretched out their palms to face each other, but they did not touch each other. It was just the look of the two men looking at each other affectionately during the step and rotation, which made them look at the monitor. Everyone feels too sweet to be undesirable.

This dance is still a modern dance as a whole, not a ballroom dance, so Xiao Yao and Sun Tingting did not turn to the three with their right hand, left hand, and hands facing each other but not touching like Elena and Ding Meng and Elena in the previous American dramas. After a circle and a half, Sun Tingting put down her arm and turned around and made a move to leave. Xiao Yao grabbed Sun Tingting's lowered wrist and pulled inward, and Sun Tingting stood on tiptoe in a modern dance. Xiao Yao's spin action plunged into Xiao Yao's arms.

After raising his head from Xiao Yao’s arms, Sun Tingting took the initiative to raise Xiao Yao’s hand, put her right palm in Xiao Yao’s palm, and gently picked Xiao Yao’s chin with her left hand, making her face shy. Xiao Yao, who was embarrassed to lower his head, moved his head upwards, and the two eyes met again.

   "Ha~" Looking at Xiao Yao's shy look in the close-up of the monitor, several of the onlookers couldn't help but laugh softly. Such Xiao Yao seems to have never been seen by anyone. Fortunately, there was no live radio for the MV shooting. The laughter of a few people was not loud. As long as it did not interfere with the performance and dancing mood of the two actors on the scene, there would be no problem.

The next dance moves are almost the same as those in the original MV of the previous life. The observers Paul, Fang Dian, Mei Fang and other groups have also watched it many times during the two days of rehearsal, but in such a In the scene, with the effects of lighting and music, I saw it all over again. Everyone thought it was a sweet dance.

  In the whole dance, in addition to the lingering movements that the two are tired of being together, there are also many difficult professional movements. However, the more difficult movements are basically Sun Tingting, the female dancer. Xiao Yao's movement difficulty is only reflected in the strength, accuracy, and coordination with Sun Tingting required in those lifting movements. So the whole dance is more brilliant, it is also the female dancer Sun Tingting, not Xiao Yao.

But when both of them were on the floor, Sun Tingting’s feet passed under Xiao Yao’s armpits, Xiao Yao grabbed Sun Tingting’s left ankle with his left hand, and pulled Sun Tingting’s left leg straight up diagonally. At the same time, the right hand was imaginarily held on the outside of Sun Tingting’s curved right thigh to make a plucking action. When Sun Tingting’s legs were used to simulate the fun action of playing the guitar, the focus of the audience inevitably focused on Xiao Yao’s body. Everyone also showed a smile of "I have taken you". In the design of the dance moves, the appearance of playing the guitar must be added. Such a choreography is not acceptable to others.

At the end, when the two lay on the floor side by side with their fingers clasped tightly, and then Sun Tingting leaned sideways on Xiao Yao’s chest, two follow-up lights could be seen in the overhead shot of the camera on the rocker arm. Moved a bit, and once again spelled out a heart-shaped light spot pattern on the floor, placing the two lying people in the center of the heart-shaped light spot. Everyone watching from the side had the urge to turn off all the other lights on the scene and leave, leaving them alone to linger.

At the end of the dance, Xiao Yao lay on the floor for a while, not only took a little breath and rest, but also took some time to withdraw himself from the emotion of the dance, and then stood up and stood in front of the monitor to look at it. Playback of footage taken by several cameras.

This dance-based MV is basically a long shot. The occasional shots are switched on several cameras on different camera positions because of the angle relationship. So when shooting, Xiao Yao and Sun Tingting were the same. The dance was finished in one breath, and all three cameras were arranged to take a shot from beginning to end with a long shot of nearly five minutes. After a dance is completed, watch the playback again to judge the effect of the shooting.

Whether it’s a movie, TV or MV, there are very few shots that can be taken at once, not to mention long shots that are close to five minutes in length. So when watching the replay, Xiao Yao inevitably found some problems . Some are caused by the movement flaws in their dances, some are related to the coordination of the lighting control of the lighting engineer and the dance, and some are related to the camera angle and movement of the camera. Xiao Yao pointed out and recorded all these problems, discussed with the cameraman and lighting engineer, and discussed an improvement method, and then he was ready to start the second filming and recording.

  This dance is nearly five minutes long from beginning to end. It will take Xiao Yao almost a quarter of an hour to watch all the three cameras. Adding in the discussion time, this adds up to almost half an hour. Sun Tingting has been sitting on the wooden sofa next to him during this period of time. Although Xiao Yao seems to be busy watching the replay and discussing shooting methods, he is also resting physically. Both of them have very good physical strength. It's not a problem to start jumping a second time immediately.

Although the photographers, lighting engineers and other staff hired by TJ and Paul to help Xiao Yao are not very well-known, their own technology and experience are still very strong, and they are regarded as the first-class level in the industry in the United States. However, Xiao Yao himself is right. The requirements for MV shooting materials are also very high, and the difficulty of shooting with a five-minute long lens is indeed a bit high. Therefore, Xiao Yao and Sun Tingting danced repeatedly ten times for the dance material of this MV, and a group of people also shot for a whole day. It can barely meet the quality requirements Xiao Yao expected.

The reason why it is barely achieved is because even if the tenth time is taken, the pictures taken by the three cameras are not flawless from beginning to end, but Xiao Yao did not delete the previous nine shots. With this Ten pieces of dance footage. Xiao Yao, who has a strong memory, is confident that he can cut and splice these ten pieces of footage again through post-editing to create a complete dance picture that is perfect from beginning to end. This is for the purpose of making songs. For Xiao Yao of MV, it is enough.

  The post-editing and soundtrack of the MV, Xiao Yao still intends to do it himself, but this is definitely not done on-site, but to organize and package the material, and slowly make it after returning home.

  However, after the shooting of the MV dance, Xiao Yao did not announce the closing of work. Instead, he asked Sun Tingting to change clothes and continue shooting.

  Sun Tingting, who reappeared in front of everyone, not only put on an elegant and solemn red dress-like long skirt, but also obviously reworked her hairstyle and makeup. Without the lightness of dancing, she looked particularly demure and dignified.

  "Here!" When Sun Tingting went to the locker room to change clothes and look, Xiao Yao ran to the car outside and got her violin case. At this time, it was the violin that Xiao Yao handed over to greet Sun Tingting.

   "What is this going to do again?" Mei Fang looked at Sun Tingting, who was putting the violin on her shoulder, and asked Xiao Yao, who retreated behind the cameraman.

   "I'm planning to record a video for the next "Singer" competition. I don't plan to take Duo'er back to China. I plan to replace it with a video of her playing the violin." Xiao Yao explained to Mei Fang.

"What?" Mei Fang said in surprise, "Xiao Yao, you came to the United States and filmed the MV for several days. The next performance was spent with a video? You actually did it for the MV, for the sweet dance just now. Did you just come to America?"

  (End of this chapter)