Chapter Fifteen: Hua Yi's New Play

  Fourth place went to Lu Zhengyu's "High Hand", which failed to make the top three, with Lu Zhengyu consoling himself that "the 200,000 yuan prize is enough for me to shoot a film."

  Lu Zhengyu has been writing a story called "Mo Xiaobai's Water Monster Diary", which is expected to be filmed in his hometown, and he believes that his next work will definitely be better. Before going on stage, he glanced at Tao Qiumu and thought: One day I will surpass you!

  After the third prize was given out, it was time for the second prize. The overall score winner of the third place is "The Thinker on Wheels". After hearing his name, Li Wen Hua let out a loud whoop without any restraint. Whether he got the second or third place didn't matter, as long as he got 100,000 yuan in hand, which was earned through his own abilities and also the first time he had ever earned so much money. The other day, that kid Zuo Jun had earned 2,000 yuan and still bragged to him about it, but now Li Wen Hua could finally counterattack.

  The work that won the second prize is ranked fifth in the click-through list, "Ping An Jie", He Mu never thought that the director of this work would be Wang Mingfei among them!

  When Wang Mingfei walked down from the podium with a calm and elegant demeanor, all her friends asked her what was going on, and Wang Mingfei gave a brief explanation.

  Originally, in the photography contest she participated in during her freshman year, Wang Mingfei took two works, A and B. One of them was sent to participate in the competition and won a gold award, while the other was put on hold until Li Wenhua asked for her help with editing his short film and preparing it for the competition. It wasn't until then that Wang Mingfei remembered this original work B, so she uploaded the video to participate in the competition. The work relied on its superb and dazzling photography skills to rush all the way to fifth place on the click-through chart, and ultimately won a second prize of 100,000 yuan, which was like picking it up for free.

  Everyone was amazed, and the second prize was actually won by these two people. It's really unreasonable.

  The first prize is undoubtedly undisputed, "The Legend of Zhen Huan" has now broken 30 million clicks on Tudou.com, creating a miracle in mainland China's online video industry. At that time, the number of domestic netizens was only tens of millions, and 30 million clicks were not crazy. In addition, Tudou.com's registered users also surged by 80% in this month, and it is well-deserved to win the first prize.

  Tao Zhuo went on stage to receive the award and shared his hardships and joys during filming. On stage, he thanked all the behind-the-scenes staff, thanked his girlfriend for her support, and finally thanked the male lead He Mu.

  Others may not know why he put the male lead's thanks last, but his friends in the audience are clear about how important this film is to He Mu, and they also understand Tao Qiu's gratitude towards He Mu.

  Here is the translation:

  With this, Tudou.com's original creative short film contest has come to a complete end. The top five directors are Tao Qudu, Wang Mingfei, Li Wenhua, Lu Zhengyu and Lin Qingyi. When people look back on this competition years later, they will be astonished to discover that those who have become pillars of the Chinese-language film industry were once here. This is how magical and unimaginable it is. Although the following competitions were not very successful, this one alone is enough to make it a legendary part of film history!

  Before Tao's downfall, the host reminded him that a gentleman wanted to see him. So when he left the stage, he asked his friends to go celebrate at the "Long Gun Short Cannon" bar first and he would join them later.

  He Yimu and several others had been drinking for half an hour when Tao Qudu finally arrived. Everyone asked him what was going on, but before he could say anything, he downed three cups in a row, exclaiming excitedly: "Brothers, I've found a job!"

  It turned out that Chen Xiaoming, the brother of Huayi Brothers, had instructed the host to keep Tao Quan down. In 2005, Huayi Brothers was already showing a trend of becoming the dominant force in private film and television companies, and now it can be said that they are financially powerful, with many talented people, and are in a period of rapid growth. Although Wang Jinghua jumped ship in May and took away a large number of stars, it did not hurt Huayi's vital interests.

  In the entire Huayi Brothers system, Chen Xiaoming is just a small figure, serving as the deputy manager of the production department of Huayi TV, a subsidiary of Huayi. But even such a small figure is still an existence that Tao Qiumo, a small director, needs to look up to.

  Chen Xiaoming greatly admired Tao Qudu, and without mentioning his directing talent, just being able to stir up a storm on the internet was already quite impressive. So he specially kept Tao Qudu behind and asked if he would be willing to join Huayi Brothers' big family, to do some co-directing work in his department for TV dramas.

  He also knew that he couldn't rise to fame overnight, and it was already pretty good that he could start as an assistant director. Compared to those directors who had to work their way up from being a scene recorder and struggled for years until middle age, he was considered lucky. Of course, the success of "The Lady" was also a contributing factor, but his background in film directing at the university was also an important consideration for Chen Xiaoming.

  He even agreed without asking about the treatment, and he seemed to see a glimmer of hope for his directing career.

  Excited Tao Qiumo didn't forget He Mu, he asked Chen Xiaoming if the company could sign a contract with He Mu, who is an actor with great potential and worth cultivating.

  Ke Chen Xiaoming refused Tao Qudu's recommendation on the grounds that it was a matter of Huayi Brokerage's business, so in the bar, Tao Qudu didn't mention this matter and secretly made up his mind to do his best to help He Muyi.

  In the bar, to celebrate Tao's award and Li's entry into Huaye, Wang Mingfei and others drank a lot, finally only He Mu, who had a good capacity for liquor, was still somewhat sober.

  "Hey, fatty, didn't you say you'd pay the bill? Wake up!"

  "Taodao, aren't you supposed to pay the bill? Why are you not reacting?"

  "Fei ah, forget it, we're all drunk like this..."

  The last three guys who got a good deal will still have me, this poor guy, pay the bill. He Qing only regretted that he was born with a good capacity for wine.

  The next day, Tao Qudu rushed over early in the morning to give He Mu his share of the bonus money, not the wine money from yesterday.

  They originally agreed that He Mu would take out 200,000 yuan, accounting for 40% of the shares in the short film investment, and the bonus would be split 60-40. Now the bonus is 3 million (after tax), He Mu should get 1.2 million, and Tao Qudu came to deliver this 1.2 million yuan.

  Twelve stacks of 100-yuan bills were placed on the table, He Mu took away two dozen, "Investing 200,000 and earning 1.2 million, making a profit of 1 million yuan!"

  Li Wenhua also learned from his example and put his own 100,000 on the table. "Zero investment, high returns, I also made a profit of 100,000."

  "How do you plan to spend it?" He Mu asked Li Wen Hua.

  "I originally wanted to start a publishing company after I had some money, but this amount of money is not enough, so I want to buy a car." Li Wen Hua got his driver's license in the second semester of freshman year, He Mu got it even earlier.

  "Alright, I'll listen to you."

  Half an hour later, the two appeared at a car dealership in Beijing, and that afternoon they took out their cars, each with a Volkswagen POLO, He Mu's was black and Li Pang's was blue. The two cars were identical except for the color, like twins. It happened to be during the National Day period, when buying a car had discounts, plus they bought two cars together, and the salesgirl was also a fan of He Mu, so she decided to give them some discounts. With all the above conditions, including various taxes and license plate fees, 100,000 yuan was spent cleanly, normally it would cost 120,000 yuan.

  He Mu also bought a laptop and pulled a line from A Bing, entering the internet age.

  The "real-life experience" craze has gradually faded away, and the heated discussion about He Mu on the internet has also cooled down. It can't be denied that He Mu did gain some popularity, but it seems that this hasn't brought any turning point to his acting career. No one has approached him to film a movie, he no longer gets discounts when buying things, and he's fallen back to the state of loitering around the entrance of Beijing Film Studio as an extra.

  In fact, he didn't know that it wasn't that no one was looking for him, but rather that people couldn't find him at all. Many manufacturers who valued online influence wanted to borrow He Mu's online influence to shoot some ads and put them online, but they didn't have the actor's contact information. Asking Tudou.com, they also didn't know which company He Mu belonged to. Domestically, there wasn't a complete actors' union, ordinary actors lacked ways to be understood and recommended to others, and those who wanted to hire some actors had to go through various intermediaries, which was also very inconvenient. Since they couldn't contact He Mu himself, those manufacturers just gave up, and He Mu also missed an opportunity to rise online, it's hard to say whether this is a gain or loss several years later.

  One day in late October, Tao Qudu called and said, "Xiao Mu, there's a play here at Huayi that hasn't confirmed many roles yet, want to come give it a try?"

  ……

  (Buddha asks: Do you know which play this is? Guess correctly and get a prize~~)