“Wow, I actually heard the words off the script coming out of your mouth?” Aidan was so surprised he could barely keep his sunglasses balanced on his face. “I thought you would call me to demand my head on a platter if I missed a single punctuation mark on an approved script.”
“Fun pee! Don’t always portray me as if I have no human empathy. I just feel that with the changed styling, the commercial style in the script is a bit lacking.”
With that, Gong Nanxing unscrewed a bottle of mineral water. Sitting in the director’s chair and looking at the scenery really did feel quite different from usual. Even someone like him, who wasn’t particularly interested in artistic creation, suddenly had many images flashing through his mind.
“Fine. Since you gave the word, I will try out one version, but I am warning you, you are not allowed to call my work incomprehensible again!”
Taking advantage of the brief moment when Gong Nanxing reached for the script to swat him, Aidan jumped up, sprinted over to Little Bull, snatched the script from his hands, and began gesticulating wildly as he explained his shooting requirements.
From a distance, Gong Nanxing watched as Little Bull nodded like garlic pounding in a mortar while trying out a few poses to confirm things with Aidan. It was truly miraculous that the cow could actually understand what that freak Aidan was thinking. He recalled being invited in the past to Aidan’s photography exhibitions and award-winning short film premieres. Looking at those bizarre and surreal visuals, the people around him either wore expressions of religious pilgrimage or wept silently, while Gong Nanxing only felt completely baffled. Every time Aidan talked to him about his inspiration and artistic intent, the two of them would stare at each other in blank incomprehension, like a chicken talking to a duck.
However, although Gong Nanxing understood none of these so-called stream-of-consciousness things, it didn’t stop him from helping Aidan operate his studio and turn him into a well-known artistic photographer. Perhaps that was the reason their friendship managed to last to this day.
“Attention all departments, prepare for the first test shot.”
Within the time it took to drink half a bottle of water, Aidan had already coordinated the shooting arrangements on site. Returning to his chair, sitting down, and calling the shot, today’s filming officially began.
By this time, the sun had climbed higher into the sky, though not yet reaching its zenith. Sunlight filtered through the trees and spilled onto the water, making the calm lake surface shimmer with fine, crystalline light. Barefoot, Little Bull stepped onto the pebble beach by the lakeside. The camera panned all the way up from the ground to a pair of leather shoes he was holding in his hand. As Little Bull tossed the shoes backward, the camera appropriately pulled back, revealing the entire lakeside camping setup across the frame.
“Cut! First shot passed. Get the leaf blower ready.”
Staring at the monitor, Gong Nanxing also understood what the first scene was meant to convey. Little Bull walking barefoot into nature gave a sense of intimate contact with the earth, and then tossing away the leather shoes representing the modern city behind him. Overall, it certainly looked and felt much better than putting on airs in a camping chair while wearing business-casual clothes and trying to look chill.
“Second scene, action!”
Continuing the mood from the previous shot, Aidan captured various frames of the wind blowing through the lakeside grass and wildflowers. The camera then cut to Little Bull sitting on a rock by the lake, hugging one leg, while the wind swept through his slightly curly hair, making his bronze skin look healthy and full of youthful radiance under the natural light.
“Cut, cut, cut! Wardrobe, go up and fix his hair. Pull one side of his jacket down so it is not worn too neatly, and make sure the logo is visible.”
“Director! Should we add some props? The frame looks a bit empty!”
The crackling current of the walkie-talkie connected the work across the entire set, and everyone started rummaging through boxes and cabinets for logo-free beer cans, filling them with sparkling water before shoving them into Little Bull’s hands. After test-shooting a few frames, Aidan angrily yelled that this wasn’t some sentimental love song music video, and told everyone to take off the earphones and soda cans from Little Bull.
“Big Brother, just sit there and think of something.”
With such a massive presence like Gong Nanxing stuck next to him, Aidan got annoyed just watching him sit there looking so unbothered. Didn’t he say he came to supervise? Why did he look like he had snuck out to space out and slack off, assuming those two concepts even existed in Gong Nanxing’s life dictionary.
“I don’t understand the feeling you guys talk about. I just think sitting by the water and posing is boring; it makes me want to sleep.”
Aidan pondered for a moment, beckoned Little Bull over, chattered a whole bunch into his ear, and shoved a sports camera into his hands. “Go ahead, improvise.”
“Huh? You are letting him improvise? Self-shooting?”
“Oh, you don’t understand. Just wait and watch.” At this point, Aidan found Gong Nanxing’s interjections annoying again.
With no other choice—he was the boss on set—Chief Director Gong ground his back teeth and continued sitting in his chair, staring fixedly at the monitor. Just because he understood a little art, what a show-off!
Soon, as the camera rolled again, the two monitors displayed different images. One showed Little Bull’s first-person perspective: he walked barefoot into the shallow waters of the lake, revealing the varying shades of stone colors at the bottom and occasional small fish swimming past. The other monitor captured an expansive panoramic view, recording Little Bull walking by the lake, occasionally bending down to look for fish or picking up a suitable rock to skip across the water.
Next, a close-up shot focused on Little Bull’s dampened trouser hems and the slightly open, slipping windbreaker jacket. With the transition from the previous content, it was no longer an empty, sentimental music video whine. Instead, it looked like Little Bull taking a break on the rocks to dry his clothes after getting tired of playing. The water droplets on his skin and his slightly flushed cheeks captured this feeling just right.
“Cut! Good, let’s pause and have lunch.”
Right on cue for lunch, Qiao Xi returned to the set with a car full of meals, and the crew members swarmed in from all corners to wait for food. Gong Nanxing and Aidan had separate lunches and didn’t need to queue. Seeing Little Bull walking over from afar on his own, Gong Nanxing waved at him.
“Big Brother, I won’t eat.”
“Nonsense, whose fault is it if you starve to death? It’s just a salad.” Gong Nanxing had Qiao Xi prepare a separate meal for Little Bull as well, and the three of them huddled next to the director’s station to eat a simple bite.
“Wow, thank you, Big Brother.”
“Good heavens, Gong Nanxing, I’m not used to this! I don’t care who you are, get away from him right now. Gong Nanxing doesn’t need human empathy!”
It wasn’t until Gong Nanxing placed the thermos cup he had prepared earlier for Little Bull onto the table that Aidan finally quieted down, turning away to ask the photography assistant for the computer to review the footage just shot.
“Big Brother, are the pictures I thought of are they okay? There are lots of these things we play with in my village.”
Gong Nanxing repeatedly wanted to correct Little Bull’s pronunciation, but stopped himself each time. Forget it, I’ll teach him properly when we get home.
“Pretty good. Much more vivid than posed shots.”
“Hehe, I…”
Before Little Bull could finish what he was saying, the wardrobe team called him away. Before Gong Nanxing even had time to retract his gaze, Aidan yanked him aside.
“Hey, don’t you think these shots look like a boyfriend’s perspective? There is a mock-documentary movie vibe to them.”
“Hold on a second. The cow is a guy. Are you sure you don’t mean a girlfriend’s perspective?”
Gong Nanxing still couldn’t fully grasp Aidan’s phrasing, but he could roughly feel that underlying meaning from the footage captured. Although the film hadn’t been edited yet, one could tell it looked as though someone was recording Little Bull’s joyful journey of returning to nature. He just couldn’t figure out why it was supposed to be a boyfriend’s perspective. The cow was a guy; wouldn’t shooting from a female perspective make more sense?
“You really don’t get it. Which girl would go around filming a guy’s feet?”
“Are you out of your mind?” Hearing that made an unprovoked fire flare up in Gong Nanxing, and he almost reached out for his thermos.
“I am explaining to you what a male gaze means from a cinematic perspective. A female gaze doesn’t have such peculiar fetishistic undertones; overall, it’s embodied within an atmosphere. Look here, this feeling of the wind blowing through his hair, and the way he looks up while playing in the water—hey, that’s exactly the feeling.”
Aidan placed the computer between the two of them so the aesthetically challenged Gong Nanxing could look at the footage, desperately trying to awaken his emotional perception of the imagery.
“Aidan, you are shooting a commercial, not a movie…”
“Hey! You don’t understand again!” Whether Aidan just loved being a nuisance or couldn’t stop once he provoked Gong Nanxing, he pressed on. “If you want people to understand your brand through a commercial, you have to arouse the audience’s voyeuristic desire.”
“Our product is not Little Bull! Don’t use these random things as selling points.”
“What on earth are you thinking, Big Brother? Sounds like you’re the one whose mind is wandering, hahaha!” Hearing that answer, Aidan laughed so hard he couldn’t straighten his back. “But you know what? If these visuals can attract even you, then I know what needs to be done…”