Chapter 210 - Shooting the Movie xYuna's Thoughts

Rebirth of a Fashionista: This Life Is Soo Last Season

The name of the movie was ‘Frost at Dawn’.

It sounded very literary and artistic. The movie was about two people living in different worlds who inadvertently crossed paths. They struggled for the same goal and saw eye to eye, ultimately falling in love with each other.

How nice would it be if it ended like this, but sadly, the male lead dies at the end. As such, the female lead gives up her bright future in the city and returns to the place where she first met her lover and chooses to remain as an ordinary teacher.

The female lead’s name was Chen Xi, a romantic literary young woman from a big city. She also had a rich and handsome boyfriend. Her boyfriend, Ou Yang, was always surrounded by women, and he was very kind to all of them. Additionally, he’d never proposed to Chen Xi to demonstrate his standpoint. Chen Xi went to talk to him about this, but Ou Yang, on the other hand, felt that Chen Xi was acting overboard. Since Ou Yang's attitude towards her wasn’t firm, Chen Xi was hurt. She decides to leave for a while, giving them some time to calm down and think things through. As such, she heads to the mountains and volunteers as a teacher.

While she was teaching, Chen Xi noticed that several families in the mountain area were acting strangely. They obviously had children who were of age for school, and tuition wasn’t an issue since she was practically teaching for free; yet the parents were cruel enough to keep their children at home and didn’t even let them come out to play, let alone go to school.

Then, while wandering around, she meets the male lead, Zhang Pojun, who was sneakily following a parent. At first, when she saw this stubbly, tall and sturdy man, she thought that he was a bad person. She wanted to tell the parent that someone was tailing him, but before she could make a sound, she was stopped by Zhang Pojun. At this turn of events, she becomes certain that this man was up to no good.

Zhang Pojun was actually a police officer. He was originally on leave because he was severely injured while solving the last major drug case. It was now his recovery period. While he was idle, he wandered around and inadvertently came across a human trafficking ring. In order to not alert the enemy, he first sent a message back to his squad before tailing one of the suspects in an attempt to find more clues and get to the bottom of the human trafficking ring.

This was how Chen Xi and Zhang Pojun fatefully met.

Fearing that Chen Xi would reveal his whereabouts, Zhang Pojun captured Chen Xi back to her place and identified himself to her. However, since he didn’t bring his ID card with him, Chen Xi didn’t believe him. Chen Xi initially wanted to escape and report him to the police and let them arrest him. But, how could she possibly escape from Zhang Pojun's hands? Zhang Pojun repeatedly saw through Chen Xi's escape plan and he had no choice but to take her to the small town to contact the Criminal Police Organisation to prove his identity.

Following this, Chen Xi finally believed Zhang Pojun. In order to save those unfortunate children and to prevent more casualties, she started to unconditionally help Zhang Pojun. The villagers in the mountain area were very xenophobic, but since she was a teacher and a gentle person, the villagers were less wary of her. In this way, she helped Zhang Pojun approach the suspicious household. She almost gave herself away in the process, but fortunately, Zhang Pojun appeared in time to help her.

At this time, Zhang Pojun had no choice but to reveal himself in front of the villagers. Chen Xi hurriedly announced that he was her boyfriend. Knowing that she was teaching there, her boyfriend asked for leave to look for her. Her answer luckily diminished everyone's suspicion.

When Zhang Pojun found new clues, things suddenly changed. Chen Xi's boyfriend, Ou Yang, suddenly came knocking at their door. The main issue was that Ou Yang had seen Zhang Pojun before, so he revealed Zhang Pojun’s identity on the spot with just one sentence.

The villagers immediately locked the three of them up.

Zhang Pojun did all he could to lure the enemy away by using himself as bait to divert the villagers’ attention. During this, Chen Xi and Ou Yang could take the opportunity to escape.

Ou Yang stopped his car at the foot of the mountain and they ran to the small town, but Chen Xi didn’t leave after that. She timely contacted the others, who were waiting in the small town for Zhang Pojun’s news, and went back with them without delay to stop a bloody fight from taking place.

Chen Xi tried to reason with the villagers and managed to persuade some of them. As more clues were exposed, the criminal police squad followed the trail and uncovered the entire chain of human traffickers. This included the buyer, the middleman in charge of bargaining, the person in charge of kidnapping, and the people who provided them with information. The criminal police squad rounded up the whole gang in one fell swoop.

While Zhang Pojun was solving the case, Ou Yang proposed to Chen Xi.

After experiencing this period of painful separation, Ou Yang finally decided to marry Chen Xi.

Chen Xi, on the other hand, didn’t feel any traces of happiness when she received the ring. Her heart felt empty, but at the same time, she seemed to have a lot of things on her mind.

Ou Yang wanted to get intimate with Chen Xi and they went to bed together. However, Chen Xi was completely out of it, so she pushed Ou Yang away and left.

Chen Xi wandered the streets absentmindedly and inadvertently saw Zhang Pojun on the opposite side of the road. In that instant, many memories flashed through her mind. Their first misunderstanding, working together, and him using himself as bait to divert the villagers’ attention, granting her a chance to escape. This man already occupied her heart entirely.

"Zhang Pojun!" she shouted.

Zhang Pojun, who was standing at the pedestrian crossing and waiting for the green light, heard the cry and glanced over at her with a hearty smile. As soon as the light turned green, he strode towards her.

But, Heaven likes to play jokes on people. When she finally understood her heart and knew that he was the man she loved, she could only watch on helplessly as a car sped up and hit him, sending him flying through the air. The perpetrator was one of the escaped fugitives on the wanted criminals’ list.

He fell not far from her and vomited blood while still smiling at her.

Like this, Zhang Pojun unexpectedly died in front of her eyes before she could tell him that she liked him.

In the end, Chen Xi returned to the mountain area and continued to teach as a volunteer teacher, contributing to the underdeveloped area in silence.

Sheng Jiaoyang was currently acting as Chen Xi, and Gu Zhou was acting as Zhang Pojun.

They had to stay in the mountain area for a long period because most scenes in the first half of the movie took place in the mountains.

In the movie, Sheng Jiaoyang and Gu Zhou had feelings for each other, but there were no intimate scenes between them. After all, they didn’t even get a chance to confess their feelings before the male lead had his accident. On the contrary, Sheng Jiaoyang had an intimate scene with the second male lead.

The second male lead didn’t join the crew even after they started filming. He probably felt that he had too few scenes in the movie and wanted to shoot them all at once. In short, no one in the cast and crew had seen him yet.

After a week of getting along, Sheng Jiaoyang had established quite a friendly relationship with the crew. Whenever she asked Zeng Huan to go out and buy delicious snacks, she’d share them with everyone present. Since they were currently residing in a remote corner of the mountain, it was already a very blissful thing eating something other than plain bread and water.

Sheng Jiaoyang looked up information on Qin Fengyi, the one who was to play the second male lead. According to the internet he was a good-looking, attractive young man with fair skin and nice facial features. He belonged to the category of male stars that particularly attracted young female fans.

Qin Fengyi debuted from a singing competition talent show and quickly gained popularity thanks to his celebrity aura. His agency then made great efforts to promote him and he successfully joined the ranks of the most popular young male idols. Afterwards, he started to broaden his scope and became an actor. He’d played some minor roles in idol dramas before being cast as the second male lead for ‘Frost at Dawn’.

Logically speaking, this role ought to be very important for Qin Fengyi. After all, this was his first major role in a big-screen film production.

From a conversation between Cen Jin and Gu Zhou, she overheard that Qin Fengyi was currently part of another production team. He was cast as the male lead for that TV series and probably thought that this chance was hard to come by, so he abandoned the ‘Frost at Dawn’ crew.

The days in the mountains were arduous. After half a month, the small amount of plumpness on Sheng Jiaoyang’s cheeks was nowhere to be seen.

"Your acting has improved a lot, it’s much better than when we were shooting the perfume commercial. It flows more naturally now." While they were eating lunch, Gu Zhou suddenly praised her.

"It's easier to get into character in such an environment. Brother Zhou, let's go over our lines later. There’s a section I want your opinion on."

"Alright," Gu Zhou replied with a smile.

The two had grown much closer than when they were shooting the commercial.

Although there were no intimate scenes in the movie, they still had some physical contact when filming the scenes of the misunderstanding during their first meeting, and the scene where they acted as girlfriend and boyfriend to mask the male lead’s identity. However, the two were already very familiar with each other, so it wasn’t awkward filming those scenes.

During mealtimes and short breaks, everyone would browse through their cell phones. In the movie, there was no signal in the mountains, but in real life, signal towers had been built in some places. Although the signal wasn’t good and disconnected occasionally, it still worked under normal circumstances.

"Alright, let's get back to work!" Director Cen urged.

The sky had already darkened, so they were going to film the night scene where Zhang Pojun acted as Chen Xi's boyfriend. A villager harbouring suspicions went to check on them and see if they were a real couple. Upon sensing that someone was standing outside the window, Zhang Pojun deliberately pushed Chen Xi down on the bed and covered them with the blanket, pretending to be intimate with her.

The actor playing the villager, as well as Sheng Jiaoyang and Gu Zhou, all stood in position, ready to act.

After filming the scene of the villager peeping through the window, it was time to film Chen Xi and Zhang Pojun’s part.

Since they were mere acquaintances, Zhang Pojun’s sleeping spot was made up of three stools put together, covered with a blanket that was used as bedding and a quilt at the same time. He was about to sleep on the stools when he caught sight of a shadow outside the window out of the corner of his eye. He immediately turned and walked back to the bed. Chen Xi was sitting on the bed reading a book. When she saw him approaching, she asked, "What's wrong?"

Zhang Pojun signalled to her with his eyes and leaned over. He locked her in the middle with his hands against the walls before pulling her into his arms and saying, "I might as well give up my job and come here to volunteer as a teacher. My days aren’t complete when you're not around."

Chen Xi couldn't help but look towards the window, but Zhang Pojun cupped her face and stopped her.

Just as she was about to respond according to the script, Gu Zhou suddenly burst into laughter.

Everyone was shocked. Gu Zhou, who’d never laughed before while filming a scene, actually laughed without rhyme or reason. This was a revelation for everyone.

As for Gu Zhou, he didn’t laugh without reason. When he’d cupped Sheng Jiaoyang’s face, he didn’t control his strength and squeezed the flesh on her cheeks into a pile, which turned into quite an amusing sight.

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TL: Yuna | Editor: Purpledragon | TLC: Grace