After the performance, everyone cleaned up the scene while chatting. Xie Lan and Dou Sheng dismantled sixteen sets of cameras, lenses, cameras, tripods, and filled two suitcases.
The group of people were carrying their belongings as they trudged towards the school gate. Xie Lan was carrying a violin on his back, thinking about buying a cup of milk tea.
He wanted the one called "Chang'an" with oolong tea base, full sugar, cheese cream, and cocoa powder.
Dou Sheng suddenly muttered beside him: "I plan to buy a cup of milk tea. I haven't had Chang'an for a long time."
"!"
Xie Lan suddenly turned his head and stared at him, his pupils trembling slightly.
Dou Sheng subconsciously touched his face, "What's wrong?"
Xie Lan said blankly: "No..."
Can Dou Sheng read minds
He had learned about a mysterious witchcraft society at school in England, whose members claimed that they could read minds.
Xie Lan paused, put aside all distracting thoughts, and tried to think in his heart: Dou Sheng is sick.
He thought about it three times and glanced secretly to his side.
Dou Sheng smiled and said, "I know what you are thinking. Do you think the chords we played together just now were a perfect match?"
"… "
Xie Lan regained his expressionless face: "Well, I praise you."
When they reached the entrance of the milk tea shop, Chen Ge said, "I'm leaving first."
The chatter stopped, and Dai You patted his shoulder, "Come on, brother. It's been a while since we had a meal together."
"I have something to do at home." Chen Ge moved away calmly.
The girls were silent. No one tried to persuade him, but no one nodded either. After two seconds of silence, Dou Sheng looked up from his phone and said nonchalantly, "Ah, bye."
Chen Ge glanced at him and turned away.
When he passed by Dou Sheng and Xie Lan, he stopped and said to Dou Sheng, "Give me the same amount of money as you gave to others."
Dou Sheng curled his lips, "We all have 20,000 or 30,000, how can we bully you when you are not in the fourth class? How can you do that? If you don't believe me, ask them."
"Ah..." Liu Yixuan looked at Dou Sheng with a look of suspicion, "Yes, he did say the maximum is 30,000."
Chen Ge frowned, as if he was a little unsure. After a while, he waved his hand impatiently, "Whatever."
When they passed each other, Xie Lan found that there was a thick layer of foundation at the corner of his mouth, and under the foundation was a shallow bruise that was not completely covered.
Dou Sheng sighed after he walked away, "At least you knew to cover the wound on your face and change into clean clothes to be on camera."
Dai You's face was filled with worry. "What on earth is he doing now? Working as a thug? Why does he have new injuries every time I see him?"
“Who knows?” Dou Sheng withdrew his gaze from the alley where Chen Ge disappeared and said indifferently, “Don’t worry about him.”
After finishing his meal, he hurriedly sent his things home, and when he got back to school, the bell for evening self-study rang. Dou Sheng pressed the table and flew into his seat. Before his butt even touched the ground, he had already turned on his tablet, ready to transfer the materials from the memory card to the hard drive.
Xie Lan couldn't help but ask, "Is it really that urgent?"
Dou Sheng whispered, "You have to upload it before tomorrow morning, otherwise all the attention will be taken away by the screen recording, and you will have no data."
He paused and asked, "You are the main creator, can you use Final Cut Pro, or PR?"
FCP and PR are both editing software. Xie Lan can use both, but he stared at Dou Sheng for a while, thinking that the sentence just now was a bit strange.
It was like a question, but it didn't sound like an inquiry. It sounded more like confirming a fact that Dou Sheng already knew.
Xie Lan couldn't figure it out, so he could only nod and say, "I'm fine with both of them. Go back to the dormitory and lend me your computer."
"It's too late to go back to the dormitory." Dou Sheng said immediately, "You can sort it out during the evening study and list the shots you want to splice. We can divide the work after we go back."
Xie Lan was stunned. "Why did you suddenly become so motivated?"
Dou Sheng sighed, "This is your first time creating a solo project, Xie Lan. You should put your ambition to good use!"
Blade
Xie Lan looked at him for a while, not quite understanding what he meant, and said "oh".
There are sixteen camera positions, each with a complete twenty minutes of material. Although the amount is large, fortunately they all have fixed perspectives and the timeline is easy to align.
Xie Lan returned to the dormitory and started directly from the three panoramic camera positions, watching and editing at the same time. Dou Sheng looked through the list he compiled during evening self-study, and searched other materials for the shots he wanted to splice, and directly picked out the minute number of the clip.
Although the corridor outside was noisy, the small room was very quiet, with only the sound of the computer hard drive clicking and the mouse clicking.
Dou Sheng said, "No. 4, 2 minutes 15 seconds 22 to 19 seconds 18, close-up of the side of the chinchilla's pipa position."
"Um."
"In fact, I think 2:12 is also acceptable. The plucking action of the pipa is very pretty when the wind blows."
"good."
Xie Lan casually typed what Dou Sheng said into the memo in the upper right corner of the screen, pointed the mouse at the timeline, and skillfully pressed the shortcut keys with his left hand.
In fact, he hadn't edited a video for a long time, and he thought he would be a little unfamiliar with it. Multi-layer cutting, time magnifier, timeline translation... If you ask him what the shortcut keys are, he really can't remember, but now he has subconscious movements when his hands are on the keyboard, without having to think at all, as if those instructions have been imprinted in his DNA.
The first song, "My Neighbor Totoro", took nearly two hours to edit, until Dai You and Wang Gou came back from the dormitory study room. Xie Lan didn't want to disturb their sleep, so she and Dou Sheng sneaked out of the dormitory with the equipment.
Before leaving, Dou Sheng grabbed a handful of chocolate from the cabinet, tore open a piece and handed it to Xie Lan, "This is the ultimate tool for editing videos, a must-have for all-nighters. Have you finished editing Totoro?"
Xie Lan sucked the rich sweetness in his mouth and hummed.
"Have the subtitles and audio tracks been checked?"
Xie Lan swallowed the chocolate before saying, "If you say the trimming is complete, then these must be included."
Dou Sheng let out a long sigh and said with a smile: "It's only been an hour and a half, your efficiency is quite high."
Upon hearing this, Xie Lan just glanced at him and said nothing.
In fact, he is not the only one who is efficient, Dou Sheng is also one of them. Before, Xie Lan also paid his classmates to help him find materials, but the timeline drawn by an amateur is always wrong. After cutting, he found that it was not the shot he wanted at all, and sometimes it was completely irrelevant, which was very frustrating.
But Dou Sheng and he might have some kind of aesthetic tacit understanding, or perhaps it could be said that they share a common professionalism among bloggers with millions of fans. Dou Sheng is very accurate in his selection, even to the millisecond. Each segment is directly cut using the time parameters fed back by Dou Sheng, and it is exactly the segment that Xie Lan wants in his mind, without any difference.
The collaborative experience is so smooth and comfortable.
It was already eleven o'clock. The high school students went to bed early and many rooms were dark.
Dou Sheng and Xie Lan moved their stools to the stairwell and continued working. The voice-controlled light went out every few seconds. Dou Sheng lowered his head to look at the material, and when the light went out, he gently hummed to make the light come on again.
That low voice always made Xie Lan break away from the thoughts of editing the video for a second. Although she was not thinking about anything, she would still pay attention to that voice. It was not the kind of attention that was disturbed, but an indescribable sense of presence.
In his peripheral vision, Dou Sheng’s slender fingers were swiping across the screen, and every move had a sense of presence.
The moment the time in the lower right corner of the computer changed from 23:59 to 00:00, Xie Lan just pressed the save button to save the second completed song.
Then, the computer screen suddenly went black.
“Fuck you!!!”
Dou Sheng, who happened to be looking over, screamed, jumped up from the stool, ran up a few steps, turned around and glared at Xie Lan who was sitting there holding a computer.
Xie Lan was stunned: "Do you have any brain disease?"
"Did you see the time? The computer went dark at the moment of midnight." Dou Sheng's Adam's apple moved, "Don't you think it's weird? At midnight, all the ghosts come out."
"???"
Xie Lan's face was very sour, "I only saw a coward."
He paused, then added: "A coward as timid as a bean."
Dou Sheng sighed and put his hands in his trouser pockets, "Let's see what's going on with the screen."
Xie Lan was already checking. There was a sound coming from the computer, and the main unit was obviously still working, but the screen was not lit. He pressed ctrl+s to save, shut down and restarted the computer. There was a startup sound, but the screen was still dark.
Dou Sheng jumped down the stairs in two or three steps and snapped the computer shut. "It's over. You failed at the critical moment."
Xie Lan subconsciously asked: "What should I do?"
"What can I do? I can only use it as an external host. I need to find a display screen."
Xie Lan was at a loss, "Where can I find the display screen?"
…
If Xie Lan had known that Dou Sheng meant to come to an Internet cafe, he would not have agreed. Domestic regular Internet cafes restrict minors, but the one Dou Sheng brought him to did not care at all, with a mixed crowd and a very poor environment.
It was already midnight, and the men playing games in the Internet cafe were still shouting and screaming. The smell of takeout was everywhere, and even the non-smoking area could be smelled with nicotine coming from the smoking area.
Xie Lan sat down in the cracked leather computer chair, looked at the leather scraps falling on his jeans, and began to withdraw into himself.
The guy behind me slammed the keyboard, "The top laner's mother has a pig in her head, I'm really fucked!!"
Dou Sheng whispered to the side, "Don't learn any words you hear here."
Xie Lan looked at him dimly, "Thank you for reminding me."
Dou Sheng couldn't help but laugh, "When did you learn this? You're so weird."
Ah.
Xie Lan sneered, connected the computer to the Internet cafe's screen, and began to operate it reluctantly.
In fact, the timeline will be more accurate after switching to a larger screen. Once you are immersed in the subtle flow experience, it is completely ok to edit videos here.
Xie Lan was editing the video while listening to Dou Sheng's report. It was quite strange. There were shouts of killing all around, and tables, chairs and benches were being beaten crazily, but Dou Sheng's low voice was still very clear. It seemed that the noisier the surroundings were, the more that low, somewhat boyish voice had a sense of presence.
At one o'clock in the morning, Xie Lan finished editing the third song and began to think about how to fade out the ending.
He asked casually, "We skipped bedtime again, won't we be caught by Old Hu?"
Dou Sheng said without even looking up, "Don't worry. The dormitory supervisor checked the dormitory at around 10 o'clock. We were both there at that time. As long as we don't go back tonight, how could Hu Xiujie catch us?"
Too.
Xie Lan felt relieved and turned to look at his brother who was already sleeping twisted in the chair.
"So...are you really going to sleep here?" He felt a little bitter.
Dou Sheng raised his eyebrows, "Didn't we agree to experience the hardcore high school life in China together?"
Xie Lan's face was numb. "Just lie. Who else in our class has this kind of high school life besides you?"
For the final fade-out, Xie Lan finally chose a segment recorded before the venue was set up. On the clean lawn, the wind blew the phoenix tree gently, and two phoenix leaves twirled and fell from the tree. The band's group image flashed back like a memory, and the camera slowly moved up and stopped at the clear blue sky.
—Symphony of the Sycamore Meadow in Early Summer
by Class 4, Grade 2, Yinghua Middle School.
The more beautiful the camera is, the more deafening the snoring behind you is.
Utopia and reality.
Xie Lan typed the last word, threw away the mouse, and sighed, "I can't see the problem anymore."
Dou Sheng put his hand on his shoulder and tapped his collarbone with his fingers like playing a piano. "Thank you for your hard work. I'll take another look."
After 2 a.m., Xie Lan's brain felt numb and his Chinese ability was basically lost. He didn't like staying up late, so he curled up on the simple chair, hugged his knees and prepared to sleep for a while.
The surroundings also became quiet. He rested in the darkness for a while, then couldn't help but look up at Dou Sheng.
Dou Sheng was checking the video carefully, looking up from a low angle. His shoulder blades were more prominent than usual. It seemed that when he was a teenager, his clothes were supported by his skeleton, but Dou Sheng held them up very well, making people unable to help but stop their gaze and measure his whole body with their eyes.
Xie Lan looked at it for a while, felt a little dizzy, and lowered his head again.
In fact, he had a very happy day today. Even though he was curled up in the Internet cafe in a mess, listening to the sound of Dou Sheng clicking the mouse from time to time, he felt somewhat satisfied.
When I woke up, I felt sore all over and everything around me was quiet.
Xie Lan opened his eyes. There were no curtains in the Internet cafe. The messy space was shrouded in morning light. All the guys who stayed up all night in the Internet cafe were asleep. Dou Sheng was also slumped over the computer desk.
The screen was black, but the laptop was still running. Xie Lan subconsciously touched the spacebar, and the interface that lit up was his B station background. The video was uploaded successfully and was in the review queue.
The sound of the space bar woke Dou Sheng up. He struggled to get up from the table and stretched.
"What time is it?" Dou Sheng's voice was a little hoarse.
"Five fifty." Xie Lan said.
Dou Sheng looked at the computer and let out a long sigh, "Finally the upload was successful. Let's go back to the classroom and sleep."
Xie Lan carried his schoolbag and followed Dou Sheng, carefully walking around a drunk who was sleeping on the ground with a bottle of wine in his arms.
When he reached the door, he couldn't help but look back at the man to make sure he was still alive. His belly rose and fell with his breathing.
Xie Lan sighed, "What was the word you used to describe Che Ziming last time? The Human World's Most Confusing Behavior Award?"
Dou Sheng didn't reply.
Just as Xie Lan was about to turn around and ask again, Dou Sheng suddenly grabbed his wrist and forcibly dragged him from the door to behind it.
Just like the secret agents in the movies, using the door as cover and standing against the wall.
Xie Lan was a little confused, "What's wrong?"
Are there enemies outside
Dou Sheng looked as if he had seen a ghost, and said angrily, "Hu... Xiu... Jie..."
Xie Lan was suddenly numb, "Why is she here?"
Dou Sheng gritted his teeth and said, "How would I know?"
A cold female voice sounded outside the door—"Come out! Dou Sheng and Xie Lan, I see you."
“… … ”
There was a small round mirror hanging next to the door of the Internet cafe. Xie Lan looked at his own face and Dou Sheng's face in the mirror, and vaguely saw a word on his forehead.
—Danger!
He reasonably suspected that Mercury retrograde had recently occurred, and that the retrograde orbit had collided with the Hu Xiujie asteroid. Anyone who violated the rules would be caught, and he would be caught without fail.
The two men, lifeless and with no light in their eyes, stepped out from the broken threshold.
Dou Sheng asked faintly: "Teacher, master, how did you catch us?"
Hu Xiujie's face was filled with rage and he raised his foot to kick. Dou Sheng didn't dodge, but she held herself back and just stared at the two of them fiercely.
"Routine inspection of Internet cafes near the school."
Dou Sheng couldn't help but whisper, "I should have returned to the dormitory in the middle of the night."
Hu Xiujie couldn't help it and hit him with his crutches.
After she beat Dou Sheng, she sneered at Xie Lan, "What's the reason for this today? Are you so stressed that you need to come to the Internet cafe to vent?"
Xie Lan whispered, "No, I was editing a video urgently and my computer broke down."
Hu Xiujie's face was numb, "Did I ever tell you not to let extracurricular activities interfere with your normal study and life?"
Xie Lan answered truthfully, "No."
Hu Xiujie tripped and her heel almost stepped into the gap between the tiles. Dou Sheng quickly pulled her back and said, "I told you, I didn't tell Xie Lan, but I told you, many times."
Hu Xiujie sneered, "Do you know what to do?"
Xie Lan and Dou Sheng sighed in unison.
"Know."
"Know."
**
After the Grassland Concert video was approved, the data soared. The platform operator sent Xie Lan an internal message, congratulating him on being named a newcomer and saying that he wanted to make a poster.
However, Xinrui himself had no time to reply to the message, and did not attend the morning class. He lay on the wall in the corridor and wrote a self-criticism.
Hu Xiujie got very angry this time. He ordered the children not to finish the inspection before break and directly went to the parents for questioning. But no matter what anyone said, it was useless.
It happened to be Chinese class in the morning. Lao Qin ran out during the reading break and looked at the self-review that Xie Lan had pressed on the wall with a melancholy look on his face.
"To do evil, this word is not necessary, change it immediately."
He sighed, "Dou Sheng, can you help him?"
Dou Sheng bit the pen cap and wrote quickly. He glanced at Xie Lan and said vaguely, "Don't write anymore. I'll do it for you. I promised you last time."
Upon hearing this, Xie Lan immediately said thank you, tore up the tattered thing he had written, and put it in his pocket.
Lao Qin immediately turned around and waved his hand, saying, "I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything, you two take care of yourselves."
The weather is pretty good today. The wind outside the window blows in the corridor, neither too cold nor too hot.
Xie Lan hadn't eaten breakfast and felt a little dizzy. He reached into Dou Sheng's pocket and took out two pieces of chocolate.
"Eat?" he asked.
Dou Sheng continued writing as if possessed, "Please peel a piece for me."
Xie Lan tore open the wrapping paper, took the pen cap out of Dou Sheng's mouth, and stuffed the chocolate into his mouth.
I didn't get enough rest, I have a headache, and I feel annoyed. When I feel annoyed, I can't write a review, and I'm too lazy to watch the video data. I just want to stand in this empty corridor, feel the wind, drink chocolate, listen to Dou Sheng writing the manuscript, and quietly relax for a while.
After a while, Xie Lan suddenly remembered something, "Do we really have to recite it under the red flag, the kind that the whole school can hear?"
Dou Sheng whispered, "It's not that shameful. Yingzhong doesn't force radio gymnastics. The seniors run in the back playground, and the freshmen and sophomores basically go to the cafeteria to buy food. There aren't many people in the front playground."
He paused and continued, "It is said that Hu Xiujie has begun to believe in spiritual education in the past two years. The purpose of self-criticism under the red flag is not to embarrass you, but to reflect on yourself. You grew up in such a good motherland and received so much love, why don't you want to make progress?"
Xie Lan was a little confused: "Why?"
Dou Sheng stopped writing and looked at him intently. Xie Lan was stunned for a moment before he suddenly realized, "Oh, because you led me astray."
Dou Sheng smiled proudly, and after a while he said, "It was my mistake this time. I should have thought of it. We just raided the dormitory a while ago, and we must have changed our position this time. We should go back directly after editing the film."
There is no point in saying so much.
Xie Lan sighed, "I don't blame you, it's all for helping me edit the film."
It was probably quite difficult to write two self-criticisms for the same thing, and not to make them identical. Dou Sheng took a long time to write his. It was not until the end of the second get out of class when the sound of Hu Xiujie's high heels rang out at the other end of the corridor that Dou Sheng hurriedly tore off the two pieces of paper, folded them, and stuffed them into Xie Lan's hands.
"Don't expand on it. There's too much difference between our characters. She'll find out." Dou Sheng reminded in a low voice.
Upon hearing this, Xie Lan immediately closed the paper that had just been opened a little, and whispered with emotion, "You are still experienced."
Hu Xiujie came up to them with a cold face and asked, "Have you finished writing?"
Dou Sheng lowered his head. "We've finished writing. We're ready to face our mistakes on the flag stand."
"Today is the first-year high school monthly exam, and there are not many people during the break. You are lucky." Hu Xiujie sneered, knocked on the front door of the classroom, and said to the inside: "Everyone in your class, come out and listen to the review of these two academic masters you admire. After the class division, I see that you are becoming more and more outrageous! Reflect on yourselves together!"
Xie Lan couldn't help but ask, "Teacher, if it's just our class, then we shouldn't go out."
"Am I the teacher or are you the teacher?" Hu Xiujie glared at him, "Xie Lan! I'm just too gentle to you!"
Xie Lan: “…”
One of him and Hu Xiujie must have misunderstood the word gentleness.
The whole class slowly gathered at the front playground. There were also students from other classes passing by. They saw Dou Sheng and Xie Lan standing on the stage and whispering to each other.
Dou Sheng whispered to Xie Lan, "Do you remember our previous agreement?"
Xie Lan was stunned. "What agreement?"
"Don't talk!" Hu Xiujie said angrily: "Xie Lan, come first!"
Xie Lan's scalp tingled. He sighed, reluctantly took two steps toward the national flag, and unfolded the speech that Dou Sheng had prepared for him.
Then, he froze subtly.
The paper was densely covered with words, some with pinyin on them. The first sentence was "I have done a great wrong. I have delayed my studies by doing trivial things in my spare time."
Classical Chinese
He turned around and stared at Dou Sheng in disbelief, asking with his eyes: Are you crazy
Dou Sheng seemed not to receive the signal, and his eyes chased the air aimlessly.
Xie Lan: “…”
Hu Xiujie urged, "Hurry up! I asked you to come down early to save your face. The seniors will pass by after their morning exercises and see how you feel!"
Xie Lan let out a long sigh and had to bite the bullet and read aloud.
"I have done a great wrong. I let trivial things in my spare time delay my studies. But everything has a reason. I now repent here—"
There was a commotion below, and Che Ming's pupils trembled, "Xie Lan! Are you possessed by Wenquxing?"
Wang Gou couldn't help but clap his hands, "Could this be the legendary story of you secretly learning Chinese and then surprising everyone?"
Hu Xiujie frowned and patted the podium, "Quiet! Xie Lan, what's going on?"
Xie Lan sighed, "Just... I've been taking ancient Chinese lessons recently, so I'll take this opportunity to practice."
Che Ziming whispered, "I believed your lies."
Dai You: “…I would like to hear the details.”
Hu Xiujie's expression was unpredictable, a bit like the spiritual and cultural heritage that Xie Lan had heard of before - Sichuan Opera face-changing.
After changing her expression countless times, she said stiffly, "Then go ahead."
Xie Lan sighed softly.
The sun is shining, the sky is clear, and my heart is beating in spring.
The sound of ritual music to thank the guests and the resonance of friendship should be promoted.
When a wave of trouble is about to arise, you must compile it carefully to become famous.
Even if the wish is small, we will work hard together with friends and not give up our main job.
With the praise of friends and good cooperation, most of the work was completed quickly.
However, the disaster started with friends, who were dull-witted and ruined halfway, when the time was tight.
Getting angry at a friend who doesn't argue with you is a recipe for disaster.
We couldn't sleep until midnight. Although we regretted it, it was too late.
My studies have only just begun to improve, and I must remember my major mistakes.
…
Xie Lan was already numb from reciting the same words, and felt like she had become Dou Sheng's reading machine, her soul dead, with only a cold shell left.
He mechanically read to the end of the page, raised his eyes from the paper and glanced around -
The atmosphere was solemn and solemn. The students looked up stupidly with their eyes wide open, having lost the character of an owl.
Even Hu Xiujie standing next to him put on a mask of confusion.
There was one more page to go, Xie Lan turned the page and continued reading without any disturbance—
"In short, to put it bluntly, I have deeply realized my mistakes. I have violated school rules many times since I returned to my motherland. I am really sorry to my motherland, my teachers, and my classmates. To this, I just want to say..."
His voice suddenly stopped, and his brain went blank after reading the last four words.
People's mouths may have inertia, especially after being kidnapped and reading interspecies languages for a long time -
Xie Lan remained in a daze and hesitated, "As expected... it's... me?"
The wind blew across Hu Xiujie's shocked face.
It blew over the owls of Class 4 and over the crowd that came here upon hearing the news not far away.
Makes me want to die.