Chapter 524 (1/2)

“If I connect the line here and press record….”

When Sora moved back, the ŀȧptop screen switched. It was showing a live feed of the camera. Aram stood in front of the camera in curiosity.

“Can you see me?”

“Yep.”

Maru pressed the record buŧŧon which was on the lower left of the video editing program. The recording began and a window popped up that said it was recording. They recorded for about a minute before playing back the video.

“Oh! It’s me.”

It played back everything without skipping from when Aram waved her hand to when Daemyung spoke.

“But the sound is echoing.”

“Don’t worry about that. The graduate seonbae gave us this.”

Sora connected a directional microphone covered with soft fur at the top of the camera. It seemed that she had learned how to use the camera properly from that person.

“Everyone. Walk in front of the camera and say something.”

The juniors walked past the camera one by one. The ones that liked to stand on stage showed some things off, while the others just awkwardly said their names before walking past.

Maru tried playing back the recorded footage. The sound of the wind, the background echoing noise, as well as the voices of the people talking behind the camera were mostly removed. The microphone was pretty good.

“He also gave us this,” said Sora as she opened a long bag that she brought.

“Then we’ll leave for now. Do you guys have practice tomorrow too?” asked Ando.

“We do. We’re going to finish at one since it’s Sunday,” Daemyung replied.

“We’ll be here around 12. We do want to watch your practice as well. Of course, that’s if you guys are okay with it. Will that be okay?”

“An audience is always welcome. Having people around helps during practice as well.”

The film production club left the hall. After the messy atmosphere died down, the acting club started a read-through. Since they hadn’t decided on roles yet, they split into three groups of ten to practice.

“How was the script? Not from a technical perspective, just the content,” Maru asked.

After thinking about it, Daemyung replied,

“It does feel rather common, but it wasn’t that bad.”

“I guess it’s not that uncommon.”

Maru leaned against the wall. Daemyung stood next to him. Maru watched his juniors do the read-through for a while before speaking,

“They weren’t that close when I saw them just a while ago, but they looked like they were on really close terms today. Even Ando, who said that he had no intentions of shooting any film, became eager to do it.”

“Looks like that Sora girl managed to persuade him well. She was full of energy.”

“If there's a person like that nearby. It’s one of two things. Either it’s really exhausting, or you become crazy with that person.”

“He didn’t look crazy though.”

Daemyung burst out into a small laughter.

“Maru, has it been decided that the main character will be you?”

“Well, I’m not sure. They just said that they wanted to scout me, but I don’t think I’ve heard them say that I’ll be the main character. Also, it doesn’t matter if I’m the main character or not. What’s important is that I get to talk to the director. I should get to talk to her a lot when we film it. Since neither of us is knowledgeable, I hope I can gain something from this.”

“You are a regular character in a drama and yet you say that you don’t know anything. What does that make me?”

“Well, I’ll have to ask them tomorrow. Since holding an audition does require extra time and effort on their part, I do have to tell them that it might be even more tiring.”

“Don’t you have any thoughts about doing it?”

“I have my hands full just preparing my script and studying. These days, the writer gives me a lot of homework. He told me to analyze the script for the movie Chinatown, and it’s so hard.”

Daemyung stood up.

“Group 1, stand in front of the camera! After we shoot group 1’s read-through, group 2 and group 3 will come up afterwards. Let’s have a monitoring time where we tell each other their good points and bad points. I’m also going to show this to instructor Miso, so watch out for your pronunciation. You know that this isn’t reading lines from a textbook, right?”

Daemyung clapped and started moving.

* * *

He left his house after eating a slice of apple and a handful of cereal with milk. His mother worried about him, asking him if that was enough. Maru said that he was okay. Since he was controlling his weight, he was avoiding oily and salty foods as much as possible. It wasn’t that he had gained weight or something. He thought that he had a suitable weight, but he decided to try this out as a test. He currently weighed 68 kilograms. He was planning to bring it down to 63 kilograms, and then go back again.

He smelled something very tempting from the toast shop. He stared for a while before walking to the school. Intentionally losing weight definitely wasn’t easy.

It was like a life-long homework. Before he went inside the school, he visited the supermarket to buy some drinks and snacks. There were over thirty high school students with good appetites. The sheer money required for eating was definitely a little heavy for a student to bear. This was why Maru bought the snacks most of the time. Daemyung told him that he’d pay him later, but how much pocket money would a student get? Oh, he did receive some from Dowook, since he was pretty well-off.

Sunday morning. Although it was quiet on the 1st to 4th floors, the 5th floor was noisy. He could hear the voices of his club members through the closed door to the hall. Maru quietly opened the door and went inside. He saw the club members doing some warmups.

“Hello!”

Maru waved his hand when he heard the shout. He put down the food he brought before doing some warmups as well. Recently, the baseball club no longer used the hall on the 5th floor. He didn’t know what happened, but he was thankful since it meant that the acting club could use it without worrying.

“Line up. Let’s do a read-through. We’re going to do it standing up today. Also, you can look at the script if you want, but try to memorize as much as possible.”

The juniors, who were divided into three groups, started going over the lines. The thirty of them showed different levels of skill. There were some that seemed to have memorized the lines already and said everything from memory, and some that memorized most of it and just looked at it from time to time. Memorizing lines was the basics of acting. Since that was just pure repetitive labor, more time investment meant more memorization, and it showed. There were seven people who had memorized the entire thing completely, and there were ten who couldn’t take their eyes off the script. Although it was a short period of time, there were clear differences showing up among the kids already.

Maru also looked at the script while leaning against the wall. Although he wasn’t participating, he wanted to get the basics down at least. He thought about the emotions of the characters as he went through the lines and said them out loud.