Two days later, Wen Jianing received a call from Director Chen informing him to participate in the TV program recording a week later.
He calmly replied, “Okay.”
The moment when he hung up, Wen Jianing also made up his mind to face this competition seriously. He would rather see this as a competition rather than an audition. It was not a show for others to see, but it was to find a way out for his future.
After he made this decision, Wen Jianing began to look for the contact information of Ke Xinhang’s family. Ke Xinhang’s physical deformity couldn’t be known to others. He didn’t want his parents to see him on TV.
However, Ke Xinhang’s existing contact information didn’t contain his parents’ contact number, nor even his brother’s.
Wen Jianing found the phone number of Ke Xinhang’s uncle, called him and asked around. Only then did he know that Ke Xinhang’s parents had passed away, and his brother had a bad relationship with him. The two people were now not in contact.
Actually, this was also a good thing, otherwise, Wen Jianing really didn’t know how to deal with Ke Xinhang’s family. The fact that Ke Xinhang had a bad relationship with his brother, was an unstable factor that made Wen Jianing feel a little uneasy.
In the evening, Wen Jianing told Su Shan about him passing the interview.
Su Shan was surprised, “Huh? Did he really like you?”
Wen Jianing couldn’t help laughing, “You aren’t so optimistic about me?”
“To be honest,” Su Shan said, “I was really not optimistic about you before.”
Just Ke Xinhang singing those niche songs with his guitar will not give enough entertainment effects no matter how beautiful his face was. Su Shan thought with such a face, if Ke Xinhang was willing to go on stage to sing Phoenix Legend’s* song, maybe he could still hit the audience.
Wen Jianing didn’t mind Su Shan saying so. He asked the bartender who was cleaning the bar for a beer and walked to the back lounge with it. Su Shan asked him what he was doing, but he didn’t say.
He walked to the rest area of the bar band, knocked on the door, put the beer on the table, and said, “Today I buying my brothers a drink.”
Wen Jianing was a kind person with a good personality and was also good at dealing with people. In the past, on the set, even he could say hello to the cleaning lady with a smile. So he had always been popular in the circle and had a good reputation.
The purpose of inviting several members of the band to drink was to ease the relationship with them and at the same time hoped to get some help in music. Now, he had no conditions to find a professional music team. He could only rely on the strength of others around him to lay some foundation for his competition.
His singing skills were weak, so he needed to work hard on music selection. He needs to choose a song suitable for his voice characteristics and modify it appropriately to ensure that he would not be eliminated in the first game.
Singing was neither his ideal nor his interest. He couldn’t and didn’t have the ability to realize this dream for Ke Xinhang. He wanted this competition to be a starting point. As for his ultimate goal, he might still want to surpass Lu Jinlang and really stood at the peak of his career.
The official program recording was a week later. For the sake of the program’s effect, all singers participating in the competition would go to the rehearsal one day in advance to go through the process.
Although there was no audition, there were nearly 70 participants in the preliminary round. The rehearsal process was very fast, and the official recording couldn’t be completed in a day.
On the day of the official recording, the backstage was even more lively. There was no makeup artist for the contestants. What needed to be recorded for the first time was their true appearance. In a sense, this talent show was a reality show in which these young people become famous overnight.
Wen Jianing was in the corner wearing headphones listening to the song he was going to sing on stage. It was a female love song. Because he had a neutral voice, only a few male songs were suitable for him. On the contrary, the female singer’s songs could give some flavour.
There was a large makeup mirror in front of him. A young girl was standing in front of the mirror, applying makeup on herself. She tossed over and over again, seemingly dissatisfied, but Wen Jianing could see that she was probably nervous.
Not far from him, a very delicate young man was playing the guitar, and his eyes drifted away from time to time.
They were a group of young people chasing their dreams. They seemed impractical and might not succeed, but they all have the courage to chase their dreams.
Except for Lu Jinlang, the judges of this competition were three famous figures in the singing world, one man and two women. The competition system was not complicated. In addition to the elimination of many people in the first game, it will focus on performance and light competition, with an appropriate number of eliminated people in each game.
The elimination system in the first game was very simple. If more than three judges of the four judges give a pass, they will pass. If only two people gave a pass, they will be put on hold. If less than two people gave a pass, the participant would be eliminated.
In fact, the overall quality of the singers was very good. Although the number of eliminated singers would not be small, the number of people who passed the test was believed to be quite large.
As for the ones that were put on hold, it would become the highlight of the first game, because each judge has a quota that could directly give a pass to an undetermined player, so among the undetermined people, only four people in total could enter the next round.
From the beginning of the competition, Wen Jianing had been quietly listening to songs in the corner of the backstage dressing room.
A director instructed the cameraman to film the waiting contestants, perhaps because he found that Wen Jianing was good-looking, and so the camera was aimed directly at his face.
Wen Jianing noticed that the camera was shooting him, so he smiled gently at the camera and waved his hand.
When he came out, the program had been recorded until the evening. After waiting for most of the day, the people were very tired and there was no quiet environment to rest. But fortunately, he was used to acting and used to this life.
As soon as he walked into the competition venue, Wen Jianing saw Lu Jinlang sitting at the judges’ table.
In fact, Wen Jianing didn’t quite understand why Lu Jinlang participated in this type of program. Lu Jinlang had never been very involved in variety and entertainment programs. Even for the movie promotions, he was absent a lot.
He now sat here today, although Lu Jinlang didn’t appear impatient, his expression was somewhat indifferent. He just glanced down at the player roster programmatically, and then raised his head to look at Wen Jianing.
Sitting next to Lu Jinlang was Xu Rujing, the first sister in the singing world. She saw Wen Jianing come out to the stage and whispered something in Lu Jinlang’s ear.
Lu Jinlang nodded but did not speak.
Wen Jianing adjusted the height of the microphone, turned his head and nodded to the band, and then the band began to play. The song he chose to sing was written for her by her ex-boyfriend who was dating the female singer at the time. It was originally a light love song. Later, at the female singer’s concert, she re-wrote the lyrics, rearranged the music, modified the song and sang it. Turning a happy song into a sad love song. The day after her concert, the media revealed that it was her ex-boyfriend’s wedding day.
What Wen Jianing sang was the sad version of the female singers who had changed lyrics and songs.
His voice was very soft. The purpose was to cover up his lack of breath and deliberately create an ethereal feeling. The re-arrangement to modify the high-pitched part was also to prevent the high-pitched voice from appearing too weak.
However, if only seen from the surface, it could be seen that he was singing passionately. It was originally a song full of emotion. Wen Jianing uses his clear voice to express the pain and helplessness separated from his lover concisely and vividly.
At the end of the song, he even closed his eyes with a little bit of deliberate crying, at the last line of the lyrics.
When the song ended, the whole studio was quiet for a moment, as if everyone had been brought into that painful mood.
The first person to speak was Xu Rujing. She asked, “Did you cry?”
Everyone thought the young person on the stage was singing and crying.
Wen Jianing opened his eyes, his eyes were clear, but there was no sign of tears in his eyes.
Xu Rujing was a little surprised. She didn’t say anything but looked at two people on her left and the right.
Lu Jinlang was the first to comment. His tone was incomprehensible, and he said, “Good acting.”
For a while, the atmosphere of the scene was a little frozen. When a singer was rated as good at acting, of course, no one thinks it was praise. Lu Jinlang was so merciless, that the audience couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed for this young man named Ke Xinhang.
Wen Jianing then responded with a slightly awkward smile.
Xu Rujing also recovered her indifference at this time. She said, “The voice is good and the feelings are in place. However, as far as singing is concerned, there is still room for improvement.”
The third judge is a female singer who returned from overseas. Her name was Wang Mei. She looked down at Ke Xinhang’s information, then looked up and said in non-standard Mandarin, “Ke Xinhang, right?”
Wen Jianing nodded.
Wang Mei smiled, raised her hand and said, “Maybe your singing skills can be improved, but I like the emotion you express in this song. Anyway, very handsome!”
A burst of applause broke out at the scene.
Wen Jianing also smiled and nodded his thanks.
The last judge was An Yongkang, a well-known male creative singer in China. He objectively analyzed the problems in Wen Jianing’s singing process, analyzed the deficiencies one by one and conveyed them to Wen Jianing.
Wen Jianing nodded and said thank you.
Among these people, except Lu Jinlang, the other three were full-time singers and didn’t act, so they have less interaction with Wen Jianing, but they were not completely unknown.
In contrast, Wen Jianing was actually more familiar with Xu Rujing than with Lu Jinlang.
But now this familiarity has become his one-sided.
The results of who passed would be announced on the spot, but the scoring results of each judge would not be specifically announced.
Wen Jianing was mentally prepared to be eliminated, but he didn’t expect his luck to be this good. Two judges gave him the green light and let him pass temporarily.
Before stepping down, Wen Jianing glanced at Lu Jinlang and felt that there was probably no hope for him. He was not expecting to take one of the remaining four precious places. Even Wang Mei, who loudly praised him for being handsome, just thought he was handsome. No one really thought he could sing well.
The author has something to say:
If there are any questions I haven’t answered, please mention them again.**
Now I have a bad memory and always forget things……..
*Phoenix Legend : is a Chinese popular music duo, consisting of female vocalist Yangwei Linghua (杨魏玲花) and male rapper Zeng Yi (曾毅). Their music blends folk music with rap and hip hop elements. In May 2012 Phoenix Legend was reported in the China Daily as having sold more than 6 million albums in China since 2005, and 10 songs from four of their albums have recorded one billion online hits.
**It seems that in jjwxc the author was making Q&A sessions for the readers.
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