All four contestants already had a fan base, so once the voting channel was opened, the votes started to surge without them even having to perform.
The increase is very close to the number of their Weibo fans.
Xue Xiao was in the lead, Dou Mingjian and Gu Ling were following closely behind, while Cheng Yang was at the back, chasing desperately.
The advantaged and disadvantaged players are very obvious. Whether there will be major changes later depends on how they perform in the film and whether they can attract onlookers.
The number of viewers in the live broadcast room has exceeded 100 million. With this amount of attention, as long as the performance is good enough, there will definitely be a chance to overtake.
On the stage, Jiang Quan led the process to the next stage.
As soon as they arrived here this morning, Xue Xiao and the other three drew lots and decided the order in which the plays would be played. The result was 1. Dou Mingjian, 2. Cheng Yang, 3. Gu Ling, 4. Xue Xiao.
Xue Xiao was the last one to appear again.
Jiang Quan said: "Let's ask Teacher Guan to introduce your group's repertoire first."
Guan Ruoying leaned forward, put her mouth close to the standing microphone, and said, "The name of our film is "At Fifty."
Xue Xiao asked curiously, "Then how did you become an actor?"
He wanted to turn back.
"Okay, let's first take a look at the rehearsal footage of Teacher Guan and Dou Mingjian's group."
The plot of this film is very old-fashioned. If it tried to appeal to the tear-jerking parts, it would be even more cliché.
"Cook?!"
It is precisely their relaxed, cheerful and positive performance style throughout that makes this clichéd story firmly return to a touching emotional tone.
"Is it singing?"
Xue Xiao watched attentively.
Xue Xiao was very surprised, and there were also sounds of surprise from the audience.
When the scene on the big screen jumped to their group's filming location, Xue Xiao took one look at the arrangement and leaned close to Dou Mingjian's ear, whispering, "Are you drawing a comic?"
—Of course, there isn’t a lot of comedy in this show itself.
In this story, the director, screenwriter and Dou Mingjian did not deliberately create tear points.
The poster has a white background. Dou Mingjian is sitting behind a professional drawing table with his hands on the table, holding a pen in his right hand, and smiling at the camera.
Dou Mingjian's acting level has always been stable, which is also reflected in this film. The only difference is that this is the first comedy Dou Mingjian has starred in since he joined the show.
It was a smile that, after half a year of life, had absorbed all the impetuousness and complexity and had become quite pure and beautiful.
"I play the role of Mr. Dou's assistant!"
The camera revealed every detail of his face, the furrows between his brows, his rough skin and lips. All of this should have seemed to make him look dull, but his eyes were so bright.
After the rehearsal highlights were played, the promotional poster appeared in front of all the audience.
This coincides with his earliest ideas!
The audience was very enthusiastic and started shouting.
Gu Ling on the side also looked over.
The duration of the footage is three minutes.
Jiang Quan smiled and said, "I heard that Teacher Guan is also starring in the film this time. What role do you play?"
The five big words "When a person reaches fifty years old" were splashed on the blank background above his head.
Thus, an idea was born.
The design style of the entire poster is simple but impressive.
He went back to the starting line where he wanted to start when he was young, and ran towards his dream path desperately.
"ah-"
"This is a story about life and dreams. Now that I've said this, you should be able to imagine what the story is about, right? You can also guess which of Mr. Dou's specialties he showed off in the film."
Dou Mingjian nodded embarrassedly.
Recently, his hair has been falling out more and more, his hairline has become more and more dangerous, and there are several rising arrows on the blood test results, indicating that his body functions are gradually declining.
Dou Mingjian: "Because I find that if I want to tell a good story, it is more refreshing to act it myself..."
The protagonist wakes up every morning and brushes his teeth in front of the mirror. Looking at himself getting older year by year in the mirror, he suddenly begins to fear that he has never been himself in his entire life.
Then, the film officially began.
Everyone thinks this is his shortcoming, but for the protagonist, his shortcoming is that he is over half a century old, but he has never tried to take the path he wants.
Hearing the laughter from the audience, Guan Ruoying also laughed: "Don't laugh, I know Teacher Dou is only 45 years old this year, this is not what the plot requires!"
Xue Xiao was stunned for a moment, then laughed.
The story is a light comedy from the beginning. The character played by Dou Mingjian is a senior executive of a multinational company. He is middle-aged and successful in his career, but he is not married yet.
Guan Ruoying blinked and said, "I won't reveal the answer. Just watch the video for yourselves!"
Like Su Shijin, Guan Ruoying invited another famous director to film for her this time, and the script was chosen by Dou Mingjian himself from three alternative scripts.
It can be clearly seen from the behind-the-scenes footage that Dou Mingjian did the drawing himself - his special skill is actually drawing comics, and his style and storyboards are really nice looking, with a very boys' comic feel. He could definitely become a professional cartoonist!
Dou Mingjian touched his nose and said, "To be honest, my dream when I was in elementary school was to become a cartoonist..."
Guan Ruoying has completely become a supporting role in the film. She has not taken away Dou Mingjian's presence at all. In other words, Dou Mingjian's performance is also able to firmly maintain his aura as the protagonist and keep all the audience's attention on him.
At the end of the 20-minute story, Xue Xiao's eyes were filled with tears. There were even sounds of sniffling in the audience, and the whole audience burst into thunderous applause.
Dou Mingjian breathed a sigh of relief.
So far, he has completely completed his journey in this program.
Regardless of the result, at this moment he felt that he had succeeded.
He stood up and bowed to the audience who were applauding enthusiastically.
Jiang Quan invited Dou Mingjian to the stage and said, "Come on, does the professional jury have anything to say?"
Several people raised their hands. Everyone had a strong desire to communicate, and Jiang Quan pointed to three of them.
The first one was a screenwriter: "The subject matter of this film has been filmed to death, whether it is a movie or a TV series. Now when I see this kind of subject matter, I don't even pursue whether the plot is novel or not. I only look at whether the actor's performance can move me and whether I can empathize with him. Dou Mingjian, you have done it perfectly!"
"The middle-aged man you play is open-minded, cheerful, wise and humorous. People around him think that he is a failure in life because he has not married or had children and is 'unemployed in middle age'. But I think no audience will think that he is actually a winner in life. Every audience will hope to be as brave as him. Thank you for bringing us such a wonderful story!"
The second person was a producer: "Actually, when I heard that Guantian was planning to host this program, I didn't take it seriously. There are indeed people who are overlooked in the industry, but if you want to say how amazing these actors who we haven't noticed are, then I really didn't think so. In the end, I was slapped in the face."
"Dou Mingjian, your performance is very stable, and on this basis, you are getting better and better. Today you acted with Teacher Guan, and you were not overshadowed at all. You are fully worthy of being the protagonist of a male lead! You and Xue Xiao are both actors whose future development I am looking forward to. I am curious about where your ceiling is, or in other words, do you have an ceiling at all?"
The third person was also a producer. He stood up and said, "Mr. Dou, I'm here to invite you to act in a play. I have already sent the script to your agent. I just don't know if you have read it yet?"
Amid the uproar in the audience, Dou Mingjian was flattered and said, "Not yet. My agent said that he would discuss the future work arrangements with me after this game is over."
The producer said, "Okay, okay, I'll wait for your news. My name is Lu Anzhi. I hope you can take a close look at the script I gave you. It's really suitable for you. I look forward to working with you!"
Dou Mingjian quickly said: "Thank you, thank you!"
After the ridiculous professional comments, it was time for the comments from the four mentors. In fact, at this stage, the four mentors had criticized what they should criticize and praised what they should praise, and there was really nothing to say, so this process itself was very casual, and there was no order.
As Dou Mingjian's instructor, Guan Ruoying sincerely helped him to get votes.
The microphone was finally handed to Dou Mingjian, and Jiang Quan asked him if he had anything else to say.
Dou Mingjian thought for a moment and said, "I was originally thinking about whether I should canvass for myself, but Teacher Guan has already done it for me, so I'll say something else. I'm really grateful to the "Studio Star" production team. I'm not complimenting them, I'm really grateful."
"In fact, when I left the crew and set out on the road to Lake City, I secretly wanted to regard this experience as the end of my acting career."
"I'm 45 years old this year, and my career hasn't made much progress. I only go home once or twice a year. Although my parents are very open-minded and have always supported me, sometimes I really feel like a useless person who has accomplished nothing."
A fan in the audience choked up and shouted, "Teacher Dou, don't say that!"
Dou Mingjian smiled naively and said, "But after coming to this program, I met so many friends and had a role to play, so I wanted to give it a try again. The reason why I chose the script of "When You Are Fifty" is because I remembered the badge with the word '起' that the program team gave us."
"When I realized that it's never too late to rush towards your dreams no matter how old you are, and when I realized that the starting point is always under our feet, I suddenly felt very lucky. Because although I have struggled for more than ten years, I have already rushed out of the starting line. Even if I ran a little slower, I have run seriously for so long, and I should see the dawn of victory, right?"
Audience: “—Yes!”
Dou Mingjian smiled and said, "No matter what the result is today, I have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you everyone!"
The audience stood up and applauded.
Dou Mingjian was really moved. When he sat back next to Xue Xiao, his eyes were red.
Xue Xiao whispered, "Brother Dou, you acted really well."
Dou Mingjian smiled and rubbed his head, saying, "It's up to you guys from now on."
The next one is Cheng Yang.
Unlike Dou Mingjian, Gu Ling and Xue Xiao who were particularly relaxed today, Cheng Yang was extremely tense today.
It was so tense that many people in the live broadcast room commented "Cheng Yang is so nervous".
His desire for gain and loss was written all over his face.
Feng Wei was very optimistic about him at first, but today, Feng Wei's mood has become very cold, and even his words are very brief when introducing the plays.
When the behind-the-scenes footage came out, everyone saw Cheng Yang struggling constantly on the set, while Feng Wei kept scolding him and helping him to find his emotions, and by the end, his voice was hoarse from yelling.
Feng Wei also found a well-known veteran actor to act with Cheng Yang. His original intention might be to add some highlights to their play, and at the same time let the veteran actor guide Cheng Yang. As a result, Cheng Yang was under so much pressure that he looked pale throughout the whole performance.
Live broadcast room barrage:
"It feels like this set of pills..."
"Cheng Yang's psychological quality is too poor..."
"I didn't like Feng Wei very much, but now I feel a little sympathetic towards him."
"Feng Wei has done his best for Cheng Yang, but Cheng Yang is totally powerless!"
"I now feel that if Xue Xiao hadn't helped Cheng Yang in the group of "Jigsaw Puzzle", he might not have been able to perform so well at that time..."
"I also feel that Cheng Yang's outstanding performance in the third round was all thanks to Xue Xiao..."
Fortunately, Director Feng Wei is very experienced and the final edited film turned out pretty good.
The veteran actor slightly overshadowed Cheng Yang's performance, but only slightly; Cheng Yang's performance was not too bad.
The professional judges made some polite remarks, Feng Wei tried his best to canvass votes, and Cheng Yang's final "closing statement" was quite good, and it was obvious that he had prepared it well.
The situation was originally fine, but something unexpected happened outside the venue...
Many netizens discovered that Cheng Yang’s tickets began to skyrocket.
The current number one is Dou Mingjian, who surpassed Xue Xiao after the film was finished, with the number of votes reaching 54,301,987.
But Xue Xiao was not far behind him, with 52,890,736 votes.
Gu Ling came in third with 39,029,720 votes.
Cheng Yang's votes were originally over 9 million. That's right, he didn't even reach 10 million, and he was pitifully chasing after the top three at the end.
But just now, his votes became 11 million, 15 million, 25 million...
The speed of catching up was astonishing.
Netizens were all dumbfounded.
In the video just now, Cheng Liyang’s performance was not that bad, but it was not that good either!!
Just when Cheng Yang's votes reached 35 million and he was about to catch up with Gu Ling, in a blink of an eye, his votes dropped back to 9.5 million...
The entire network: “… …???”
Some people in the audience of the studio also noticed this and started to make a commotion.
The four mentors, fifty professional judges and Xue Xiao all looked over, somewhat confused.
Today is a live broadcast, and the audience is allowed to bring their mobile phones into the venue - after all, there is no problem of leaking the recorded content.
At this moment, even Jin Xiaochen and the others were discussing in a low voice.
However, the mentors, judges and Xue Xiao were asked to leave their mobile phones outside as the camera could scan them at any time. Lao Gao would never allow a scene like someone looking at a mobile phone to appear in the live broadcast room.
They just knew that something must have happened off the field.
This situation occurred after Cheng Yang's play ended, and it was most likely related to Cheng Yang, so some thoughtful eyes fell on him.
Cheng Yang looks a lot more confident now.
He remembered his agent's arrangement and felt relieved. He straightened his back and looked calm, completely unaware of how subtle the gazes from the audience were.
Live broadcast room barrage:
"There's a bug in Cheng Yang's vote count???"
"He was cleared of the vote, right?"
"… The votes were definitely cleared. I said he had faked the votes when we voted for the finalists."
"You came once, and you dare to come a second time?"
"But the votes were always public when the finalists were being voted on, and there was no such data rollback."
"I guess the technology for counterfeit tickets has been updated."
"In the last round, they found that some votes were not counted, so they changed to new technology this time? I didn't expect the production team to update the checking method in real time and clear the votes on the spot?"
"Cheng Yang looks so confident... He probably has no idea that his fraud has been discovered..."
"Uh, didn't everyone notice that he had so many votes just now, but now he's in trouble, and there's not even one fan who came out to speak for him..."
“Is this the legendary house collapse with no casualties???”
"Public executions..."
"Light the candle for him."
(End of this chapter)