Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Early in the morning, Wang Yang got up. He never struggled to get up from the bed because, ever since he was a little kid, he needed to get up to practice martial arts for more than a half-hour every day, sunny or rainy. Practicing martial arts had already become a legitimate part of his life. Even stopping the practice for one day would have made him feel uncomfortable all over. Maybe it was because of the practice, but Wang Yang’s figure was quite strong. It was not like the huge build of those quarterbacks, but a lean, solid, and muscular body. Simply put, he was in very good shape.
But Wang Yang’s father had another opinion about why he turned out to be tall and strong. He insisted that it was because of the sufficient nutrition provided by his restaurant. Of course, it was also because of his good genes.
The genre of the martial arts that Wang Yang practiced was called “Bajiquan”. It was a rather aggressive type. He had learned it from an old man named Mr. Wu in Chinatown. It was said that this old man was an officer of the Beiyang Army and came to America to dig gold. Originally, he planned to go to Las Vegas but instead ended up in San Francisco. However, the gold was long gone in San Francisco, so Mr. Wu, with his broken gold dream, had to come to Chinatown to make a living. Later, Wang Yang’s grandfather had hired him as the assistant chef in the restaurant.
Mr. Wu had always said that Wang Yang was a lazy boy who never treated the practice seriously. Therefore, Wang Yang hadn’t even mastered 30 percent of his skills. On the other hand, he also had said that Wang Yang was a combative boy, so he couldn’t teach those fatal tricks to him, in case he would make some irretrievable mistakes.
“It can build up my body and help me defend myself when necessary. That’s good enough for me.” Wang Yang practiced the tricks one by one and thought unkindly, “Old man, before long, you’ll have to watch your tricks disappear from the world!”
After a half-hour practice, sweat was all over Wang Yang. He exhaled heavily and felt so comfortable. He changed into a clean shirt and took a look at the watch–half-past seven. From the conversation last night, Jessica said she would be there around 9 o’clock.
Then, Wang Yang quickly went to the hardware store nearby to get some putty powder and brushes, and he also rented a ladder. The task for today was to paint the old walls white!
When he first rented the apartment, the old landlord told him that he could paint the wall whatever he wanted under only one condition: he must not use the Nippon paint. This old, white man served in the army during the Second World War as a soldier of the Marines. Unfortunately, his brother died in the Battle of Iwo Jima.
But Wang Yang wasn’t planning on renovating the walls with paint, because it was unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming. He needed the walls to look like they did in a new house, so painting them with a putty powder would do the work.
Even though he tried so hard to save money, the purchasing of the putty powder, brushes, and all other stuff, plus renting the ladder, had cost him about five hundred dollars, meaning the production cost of “Paranormal Activity” had risen to a three-digit number from zero…
After a laborious process, he finally brought those tools home. Jessica hadn’t shown up yet, so Wang Yang began to pace around in the apartment thinking about the script, settings, and arrangement of the camera movement.
The “Paranormal Activity” in the future was completely produced by the filmmaker Oren Peli in his house, but that was a big independent house in the suburb, not like the apartment Wang Yang was living in. Therefore, it was unrealistic to copy the content and shooting method from that movie directly. Of course, Wang Yang had never planned on plagiarizing from the original movie.
No matter if it was “The Blair Witch Project” or “Paranormal Activity”, the key to their big success was the originality, creative promotion method, and some luck. As for the movies, it was true that the shooting technique was no doubt innovative, but the content was still far from classic. Therefore, it was highly doable to alter the plots and settings.
As a matter of fact, Wang Yang’s passion for movies began when he was a little boy. He had always been conceiving and collecting materials. Moreover, although he had only studied in USC for one and a half semesters, he had already read all of the theories in the textbooks for the future years. He also had a little talent for filmmaking.
From his perspective, “Paranormal Activity” was in need of a major “surgery”. The original version wouldn’t be suitable for his current situation, not to mention that there were plenty of flaws in the movie, such as the slow pace of the story and some boring plots, etc… Maybe it was because of Wang Yang’s personal taste, but he thought he could do better than that!
“This position is pretty good for the camera. If I dim the lights in the room, the feeling of the shot must be so right…” Wang Yang stroked his chin while walking around in the living room and picking a position. He crouched down and put his eyes in the same position and angle as if there was a DV camcorder. Looking at the empty living room, he gradually created all the settings in his head. He murmured, “I need to put a TV right in front of the camera and let the TV reflect a human shadow…”
While Wang Yang was designing all of those terrifying scenes, his cellphone suddenly rang, which startled him badly. He rolled his eyes and muttered, “That’s why I hate horror movies.” On the screen, it was Jessica Alba. Then, he answered the phone smilingly. “Jessica? Good morning.”
“Good morning!” It was Jessica’s voice coming through the line. She said, “I’ve arrived. I’m at downstairs from your apartment.”
“Wait there. I’ll meet you downstairs.” Hanging up the phone and dragging a coat from the sofa, he went downstairs in a hurry.
Outside of the building, Jessica was waving her hand, smiling. Maybe she knew that today’s mission was to paint the walls, so she wore a rather worn-out jean jacket and a pair of old jeans. And, then, Wang Yang froze for a second because, beside Jessica, there was a man. A young, muscular man, who was in a jean outfit, too–good looking, but his eyes were not that friendly.
“Hi, Yang! Good morning!” Jessica greeted him as she walked over, and she pointed to the young man, introducing him. “This is Joshua, my…”
“Boyfriend! Hi there, I’m Jessica’s boyfriend.” The handsome young man called Joshua finished the sentence preemptively. He stepped forward and “heartily” hugged Wang Yang, squeezing. And then he smiled and said, “Jessica has told me that you are her good friend from back in San Francisco, correct?”
It seemed that he wanted to demonstrate his power, and he kept squeezing. Jessica, rolling her eyes, stood aside and spread her arms open to Wang Yang apologetically.
“How’s it going?” Although Wang Yang felt a heartache hearing the word “boyfriend”, he didn’t show his feelings at all. He squeezed his arms outward and broke out from Joshua’s hug, saying, “Oh man, you are so enthusiastic!”
“Oh, dude, not bad, not bad at all! Nice biceps!” Joshua rotated his arms in pain and stared at Wang Yang’s face, saying discontentedly, “Come on, so you are not even a tiny bit unhappy? Tell me, how do you really feel?” Wang Yang was confused and said, “I don’t understand what you are talking about, man. What do you mean?” Joshua frowned and said, “I am Jessica’s boyfriend! Boyfriend! You should be depressed, disappointed, and desperate!” Wang Yang peacefully said, “Dude, what are you talking about? You are being paranoid.”
At this moment, Jessica finally broke her silence and said, shaking her head, “That’s enough. Come on, Joshua, stop your stupid game right now!” Then she re-introduced him to Wang Yang. “He is my brother–my baby brother–one year younger than me. He is also in the performance school now. He is available today, so I dragged him here to help. I hope you don’t mind.”
She punched Joshua’s arm and complained to him as a big sister. “He is always like this–super childish. So, Yang, please don’t mind him.”
“Joshua Alba? Bullsh*t! Is he frigging kidding with me?” Although Wang Yang couldn’t help muttering in his mind, he still said that was fine. “He is your baby brother? Your baby brother is, um, very funny…” To be honest, when he first heard that he was Jessica’s boyfriend, his heart was broken.
He took a glimpse at Jessica. Was that an illusion? Was I right about that look? Why did he feel that she was a little down all out of sudden? Could it be because he didn’t show his depression about her having a boyfriend? Stop overthinking it! It may just be an illusion. Yeah, yeah, it must be an illusion, nothing else.
“Follow me; it’s too windy out here. Let’s go home! Let me show you guys my new apartment.”
Wang Yang led the way in front and Jessica followed behind. As for Joshua, he looked around curiously every step of the way and said interestedly, “Wow, I had no idea that there was a community like this in LA. It seems a little underdeveloped. Is it safe here? You know, I mean, are there any gangsters around?”
“Nope, this community is pretty safe. Don’t worry,” Wang Yang replied directly.
Joshua continued, “Well, well, although there are no gangsters around, I still couldn’t let my sister meet with a stranger alone. There are too many bad guys in the world. So here I am.” Suddenly, he sped up and caught up with Wang Yang, saying suspiciously, “I know you guys were good friends, but it’s been 9 years! Jesus Christ, I was only seven years old and I’ve already forgotten all the old days in San Francisco! Well, who the hell would know what kind of person you are now?”
“Joshua!” Hearing her brother cross the line so much, Jessica yelled at him and said angrily, “How could you say something like that?!” Then, she tuned to Wang Yang and apologized. “I’m so sorry about that; my brother is just a kid.”
“What? A kid?” Joshua said in discontent, “Jessica, you are only one year older than me.”
“Jessica, no worries. Actually, I totally agreed with Joshua.” Wang Yang shrugged and smiled at her relaxedly. It was true. He and Jessica were very close friends many years ago. After such a long time passed, nobody would know what kind of people they were now. It was natural that Jessica didn’t want to come alone, either. Her brother just spilled the truth. For whatever reason, apparently, Joshua was rather hostile to him and even wanted to “handle” him personally.
“Maybe he thinks that I want to chase Jessica?” Wang Yang thought to himself.
Before long, Wang Yang brought Jessica and her brother to his apartment. As they stepped into the room, Joshua began to make a fuss, shouting exaggeratedly, “Wow, wow, unbelievable! Such a shabby apartment! Oh, my God! If I’m delusional, I think I just saw a rat rushing over in front of me! Yang, you are gonna shoot your movie here?”
Apparently, he was making fun of the apartment, touching here and there. When he saw the model of the DV camcorder in the cardboard box on the table, he pulled it out and pretended to be a director, saying clownishly, “Shooting with this?”
“That won’t work,” Wang Yang answered seriously, refusing to play his game. “I am about to rent a DV camcorder.”
“Joshua… can you just shut your mouth?!” Jessica gritted her teeth in rage and stared at Joshua. “You are embarrassing me!”
Joshua put down the DV model and made a gesture of surrender, turning around and saying, “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up!” But he immediately added, “But I mean, seriously, this apartment is like a wreck.”
Jessica was too furious to talk, covering her face with her hands and muttering, “My God…”
“Yep, it is indeed a shabby room, so I need to renovate it. Let’s go!” Wang Yang didn’t want to make Jessica feel embarrassed, so that urged them to begin the work. He handed over the gloves, paper hat, brushes, and other tools to them and started to stir up the putty powder. The project of the wall renovation had officially started.
During the process of painting the wall, Jessica, wearing the gloves, paper hat, and jean outfit, did her job quite diligently. She almost looked like a real decoration worker.
Joshua, on the other hand, didn’t keep his mouth shut but continued his conversation, challenging Wang Yang all the time with some rude questions. He held up the brush and painted the wall randomly, asked, “Yang, do you really think there would be a distribution company that would choose a movie that you filmed? I’m just wondering how you could call the footage shot by a DV camcorder a ‘movie’? If that’s the case, our neighbor, little Mary, could shoot a movie, too. She loves walking around all day shooting with her DV camcorder. Oh, by the way, she is five years old.”
“Joshua, trust me. I know what a movie is, and I also know what home video is.” Wang Yang shrugged again and said, “Of course, it is possible that little Mary is actually shooting a movie.”
Jessica was amused by Wang Yang’s humor and said, “Joshua, Yang knows so much more about movies than you. You are just a walk-on.”
After a while, Joshua asked another question. “Yang, let’s say that your movie got published. How much money could it make? Who would spend money on a ‘thing’ that has been shot by a DV camcorder?”
“A hundred million, maybe two.” Wang Yang grinned, showing he had just made a joke. “But I am pretty confident about recovering the cost.”
“How much is your budget? I don’t know it yet,” asked Joshua, intrigued.
“Ten grand. But now there is only nine thousand and five hundred left, ’cause I bought all of these materials for wall painting.”
“Wow, ten grand? Are you sure you are not out of your mind?”