Chapter 362: Chapter 341: Movie Star Dog_1
With the passage of time, Starlight’s long-planned New Movie “Hachiko” finally saw its launch day.
This day happened to be the first day of July.
A fortunate day for begging for children, weddings, engagements, and the start of construction. An inauspicious day for funerals, travel, praying for blessings, and planting.
A perfect day to start filming.
Yi Chenggong was still the director, and Mr. Shen, the big housekeeper, was still Shen Qing.
Unless there were special reasons, Lin Yuan was not planning to change the core crew of the production team.
He remained as unassuming as ever in his role as the principal scriptwriter on set.
Without making any perfunctory speech at the launch, he left that to the director and the producer. Instead, he played a guessing game with Antarctica, who he hadn’t seen in ages.
The so-called guessing game was simple:
He took out three medium-sized opaque cups, one of which covered a coin. He then quickly shuffled the order of the cups and finally let Antarctica guess which cup the coin was under.
Lin Yuan’s professional piano skills came into play; his hand speed was incredibly fast, almost dazzling, and yet his movements were graceful.
Soon, Gu Dong, the assistant who was guessing with Antarctica, got dizzy from watching Lin’s moving hands.
This wasn’t really an issue; after all, Mr. Lin was known for his quick hands.
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The issue was that even though Gu Dong was always guessing wrong, Antarctica was always guessing right. The dog’s paw could easily find the cup hiding the coin.
This upset Gu Dong.
She felt like she was dumber than a dog.
What Gu Dong didn’t notice was that Zhang Xiuming, the male lead of “Hachiko” who had been quietly watching Lin Yuan, coughed lightly to himself. His gaze, filled with bewilderment, rested on Antarctica.
Clearly, he had also tried his hand at guessing and had failed miserably.
“You won, here’s your treat.”
Lin Yuan opened a box of dog treats for Antarctica.
Antarctica wagged its tail, happily eating away.
Lin Yuan said to Antarctica, “Take your time eating, while I tell you about the script.”
Lin Yuan began to slowly explain the script to Antarctica.
Gu Dong: “…”
Zhang Xiuming: “…”
Is Mr. Lin serious?
Does such a thing as explaining a script to a dog actually happen?
If they didn’t know any better, they might think Antarctica was a human in a dog costume!
Well, okay.
There are people who communicate with animals this way. It doesn’t matter whether the animal understands or not, as long as they themselves feel that the animal understands.
In daily life, don’t we often see pet owners seriously chatting with their cats or dogs?
Mr. Lin is probably like that.
They figured as much, and didn’t think too much of it at the time.
However, during the actual filming that afternoon, a startling event left them, and the entire crew, dumbstruck—
Antarctica began to display its acting skills!
As strange as that sounds, to be more precise, Antarctica was performing exactly according to the script!
Whatever Lin Yuan asked Antarctica to do, Antarctica did!
Even when the action wasn’t perfect, Lin Yuan would intentionally correct Antarctica.
For example, at this moment, Mr. Lin was seriously telling Antarctica: “You’re running too fast. The camera movement isn’t nice. You need to slow down, follow this path, and if you deviate, you will be out of shot.”
“…”
The older members of the crew who had worked with Lin Yuan during “Flirting Scholar,” for some reason suddenly remembered how Lin Yuan had trained the male lead, He Sheng.
It was the same back then.
He Sheng, who couldn’t act well no matter what, suddenly possessed sky-high acting skills after being coached by Mr. Lin.
Scenes that were previously impossible to get through, as soon as Mr. Lin taught him, he seemed to understand it all, as if Mr. Lin had unblocked his governor and conception vessels!
Back then, the entire crew found it miraculous. They still marvel at it whenever they talk about that incident.
But they didn’t expect to see something even more incredible today…
Mr. Lin was teaching a dog to act!
Normal people teaching a dog to act would be like playing the lute before a cow.
But when Mr. Lin teaches a dog to act, the dog actually understands everything!
Lying down, jumping, seemingly upset, or merry, barking loudly, or humming under its breath…
Good grief!
The dog is actually acting!
Unbelievable!
Even if this is Mr. Lin’s own dog, this is a bit too much!
The dog does whatever Mr. Lin asks of it, as though it’s attained enlightenment or something!
“After all, it is Mr. Lin’s dog.”
Someone muttered, “Mr. Lin probably spends a lot of time with the dog and deliberately trained it, so they have developed a mutual understanding.”
Everyone grudgingly accepted this explanation.
Antarctica is, after all, Mr. Lin’s own dog.
Unfortunately, this explanation soon became untenable because the next day, the team brought in a puppy.
To explain:
When people watch a movie, they see the entire life of the dog on the screen, but in fact, this is just the crew’s Blindfolded Method.
They need to find three dogs to portray the puppy, the adult dog, and the old dog separately.
Antarctica is playing the adult dog in “Hachiko.”
As for the puppy’s role, it had to be played by this newly brought in puppy. No matter how good Antarctica’s acting skills are, it can’t shrink in size.
It’s not a Transformer, after all.
This puppy was clearly less cooperative than Antarctica when it came to acting, and the crew finally got a taste of the real challenges of shooting with a dog.
Compared to this puppy, Antarctica was more like a human being.
In some respects, it even acted better than humans!
When there was a scene where the puppy refused to cooperate, Lin Yuan stepped in.
He squatted in front of the dog, held the script, and seriously explained the scene to it.
The whole crew was in disarray…
Did he think this dog was Antarctica from his house?
This dog certainly wasn’t Antarctica. Although Antarctica could cooperate with the film crew without taking medication, the puppy needed to.
The Emperor’s Charm Potion.
This puppy, which had taken the Emperor’s Charm Potion, still wasn’t as smart as Antarctica, but it evidently gained some acting talent and could more or less understand Lin Yuan’s commands.
Thus, when Lin Yuan finished explaining the scene to the puppy, and the crew restarted shooting in a peculiar atmosphere, everyone was utterly stunned!
This puppy… actually knew how to act now!
This puppy… had been trained by Mr. Lin!
“In all my years in the industry, this is the first time I’ve seen someone improve a dog’s acting skills. If Mr. Lin can do this with a dog, wouldn’t training human actors be a breeze for him?”
“Did Mr. Lin learn dog training before?”
“Your family’s dog training skills can teach a dog to act? I think Mr. Lin must be psychic…”
“I’d rather believe that Mr. Lin can talk to dogs.”
“Mr. Lin may not be able to talk to dogs, but he can definitely communicate with them in some form.”
“No matter how you put it, this is just too amazing!”
“Compared to those big directors who only know how to train fresh-faced actors, Mr. Lin can even train dogs!”
“If you put it that way, I think, after being trained by Mr. Lin, the dog’s acting skills surpass many actors.”
“What, are you hoping for the dog to win the best actor award?”
“Why not best actress?”
“Because the best-acting dog, Antarctica, is a male.”
“…”
What these people didn’t know was that the puppy was obedient because of the power of the Emperor’s Charm Potion.
When the crew brought in the old dog later, Lin Yuan also used the Emperor’s Charm Potion to communicate with it.
Only Antarctica can truly understand, so Lin Yuan doesn’t need to spend money on it.
Some people tried to mimic Lin Yuan and communicate with the dogs.
But clearly, these three dogs basically only listened to Lin Yuan, especially when acting.
After these few days, the way the crew looked at Lin Yuan had become somewhat strange.
Gu Dong remembered the way his father gazed at the golden Buddha statue when he dragged him up the mountain to pray during New Year. It was exactly the same look.