The wrap party had come to an end, and the lobby of the Qionzhou Hotel was piled high with luggage of all shapes and sizes.
The crew members were busy adding each other on WeChat, and voices of farewell echoed one after another.
Chen Jiaming, dressed in a gray tracksuit, was leaning against his van, flipping through a bound manuscript, writing and drawing on it with a red pen in his hand.
Jiang Yue glanced over and guessed it was the script for his next project.
Chen Jiaming waved to Director Xu Pingqiu, got into the vehicle, and headed straight for the airport.
Tomorrow morning, he had to be at another set in Hengcheng on time for hair and makeup.
Jiang Yue put away his phone and looked at Han Song, who was slumped over the armrest of a sofa nearby.
“Are you calling it a day already, Brother Han?”
Jiang Yue raised an eyebrow slightly. “Two producers just asked to add you on WeChat.”
Han Song was twenty-eight years old and had just built up a solid foundation with a few hit dramas.
With both popularity and acting skills, he was at the golden age to rake in money and climb to the top of the industry.
He pulled a tin of mints from his pocket, popped two into his mouth, and casually tossed one to Jiang Yue.
“No more filming. I need to rest for two months.”
Han Song rested his hands behind his head.
“Teacher Chen is an acting maniac; he feels miserable if he doesn't act for a single day. I'm different. Once I finish a shoot and make my money, I have to go spend it.”
“Work is never-ending, and you can never earn enough money. I don't have a mortgage, and I don't have to feed dozens of mouths in a studio. Why should I force myself to sleep only four hours a day?”
Jiang Yue bit down on the mint, a refreshing coolness rushing up his nasal passages.
“If I don't find a script I like, I'll just rest. Even if investors throw money at me, I can't be bothered to join the hype.”
Han Song stood up straight and patted down the creases on his clothes.
“I don't have grand ambitions. As long as I eat well, drink well, and live life on my own terms, I'm good.”
Jiang Yue let out a soft laugh.
In a vanity fair like the entertainment industry, where everyone fought tooth and nail for resources, there really weren't many who could live with such clarity.
“You're heading back to Donghai, right? I happen to want to look around there.”
Han Song nudged Jiang Yue's shoulder. “Let's go. Let's book the same flight.”
Two hours later, the flight landed at Donghai International Airport.
The cold January wind poured in through the gaps in the jet bridge, making it feel like a completely different world compared to Qionzhou's temperature.
Han Song shivered several times and quickly pulled the zipper of his down jacket all the way up to his chin.
“This is brutal.”
He rubbed his hands together, exhaling a breath of white mist. “Just a moment ago I was wearing a thin jacket, and now I want to wrap myself in a thick quilt.”
Han Song's assistant had booked a private hotel in the city center in advance, so he went straight there to catch up on sleep.
Jiang Yue wrapped his thick coat tightly around himself and took a taxi straight to the headquarters of Yuantu Technology.
Project Director Li Hai was waiting early at the door of the server room.
“Mr. Jiang, the server has finished a round of testing.”
Li Hai pointed to the dynamic data bars on the central screen, his tone brimming with excitement.
“The underlying logic you provided is extremely stable. The company team optimized the peripheral code overnight, and the model is basically complete.”
Jiang Yue pulled out a swivel chair at a workstation, sat down, and skillfully pulled up several core logs.
His eyes swept quickly over several sets of key data. After confirming everything was correct, he leaned back against his chair and nodded.
“Email me if there are any issues. I have other plans for the next few days.”
Li Hai looked at the perfect operating curves on the screen and then at Jiang Yue's calm profile, clicking his tongue in wonder.
He had seen plenty of top graduates from prestigious universities at Yuantu, but he had rarely seen a young man who could bridge theoretical foundations and engineering practice so seamlessly.
After leaving Yuantu Technology, Jiang Yue returned to his rented apartment.
At nine o'clock the next morning, Jiang Yue arrived at a recording studio.
This was the post-production center rented by 《The Grand Game》 crew in the city.
In filmmaking, especially for historical dramas like this, on-site audio recording had inherent flaws that were difficult to resolve.
During on-location shoots at the Palace of the Qin King in Hengcheng or in wild mountain forests, besides the actors' voices, the recording would be mixed with the whirring of high-power wind machines, the sound of horses' hooves treading on sand, and the occasional noisy chatter of tourists in the distance.
These background noises could not be smoothed out through post-production noise reduction. Forcing their removal would directly eat away the high-frequency details of the actors' original vocal cords.
In addition, how well the voice matched the character's face was a strict standard.
If a refined, scholarly, and gentle noble young master spoke with a deep, coarse, and raspy voice from a young actor, the audience would experience a jarring sense of disconnect while watching the drama.
Xu Pingqiu had heard Jiang Yue's lines on set. He believed that with such a solid foundation in line delivery, there was no need to hire any external professional voice actors, so he directly had him do his own dubbing.
Jiang Yue used his access card to enter the lounge. The door of the soundproof booth at the end of the hallway creaked open.
A man in a down jacket walked out, accompanied by two people, clutching a script in his hand.
It was Zhang Yu, the third male lead in 《The Grand Game》.
Facing the cameras and staff outside through the window, Zhang Yu stopped, turned sideways, and extended his hand toward Jiang Yue.
“Teacher Jiang, you're here.”
The smile on Zhang Yu's face was very amiable, but in Jiang Yue's eyes, the upward curve of his lips was extremely forced.
Jiang Yue reached out and shook his hand.
When their fingertips met, Jiang Yue noticed that the other man's knuckles were tense, yet there was no strength in his grip at all, breaking contact almost instantly.
Nearby, a staff member pushing professional camera equipment was holding a Sony cinema camera, aiming the lens at this picture of harmonious interaction between the two actors.
For large productions like this, the crew would specifically hire at least three behind-the-scenes teams to accumulate video footage of daily interactions, bloopers, outtakes, wrapping up, and dining together from the very first day of filming.
Once the drama aired, whichever characters gained popularity and sparked discussions online, the marketing backend would edit and distribute the corresponding highlight clips to various platforms within half an hour.
Zhang Yu had struggled in this industry for years and knew exactly where the cameras were.
He called Jiang Yue "Brother" with an impeccable, gentle expression on his face.
But Jiang Yue knew that deep down, the man rejected him. On set, they had no communication other than acting out their scenes. This sudden familiarity was clearly just a show for the cameras.
Jiang Yue calmly withdrew his hand, choosing not to expose the other man's superb acting skills in this setting.
No matter what industry one worked in, there was no need to bare one's soul to every colleague, let alone in the entertainment industry.
As long as they didn't actively sabotage him or touch his actual interests, Jiang Yue viewed any performance as mere routine socializing.
“Teacher Zhang, which episodes have you recorded so far?”
Jiang Yue asked politely.
“I just finished recording the first twenty episodes.”
Zhang Yu patted his script and smiled brightly at the camera. “I saw your call sheet; you have quite a task ahead of you today. Keep it up! I'll take my leave first.”
Zhang Yu walked toward the elevator with his assistant.
The moment he turned the corner, the politeness on his face vanished completely. With a dark expression, he simply instructed his assistant about the car arrangements.
Jiang Yue glanced at the cameraman's equipment and directly pushed open the heavy double-layered soundproof door of the recording studio.
The recording engineer, Old Zhou, sat in front of the mixing console with monitoring headphones on his ears.
Seeing Jiang Yue walk in, he directly pushed up a fader on the console.
Old Zhou spoke, “Hello, Teacher Jiang. My last name is Zhou.”
“We have a heavy workload today—six hundred lines. We're in no rush, so we can polish them line by line. If the emotion isn't quite there, we'll do it again.”
Jiang Yue walked into the booth, stood in front of the floor-standing microphone, and picked up the script on the music stand.
“No need to polish them line by line.”
Jiang Yue flipped to the first page. “Let's just do a continuous run-through first and see how it goes.”
Old Zhou's hand, which had just picked up his teacup, froze in midair. The tea almost spilled over the rim as he looked at Jiang Yue inside the booth in disbelief.
The entire set of lines had massive emotional fluctuations. He wanted to record it all in one go, without any NGs or pauses?
Even the top voice acting giants in the industry wouldn't dare boast so easily in a recording booth.
Jiang Yue raised his hand to adjust the height of the microphone pop filter. His gaze fell upon the script, and his tone was calm. “It's fine, Brother Zhou. Let's just try running through it from the beginning.”
Rate on N.U.
