"Who knows kung fu? We need a few people who know kung fu!"
"I do, I do!"
"I know kung fu!"
"I've practiced kung fu for several years!"
"I know Sword Technique!"
Hearing someone shouting for people skilled in kung fu, Li Boda hurried forward and shouted along with the others.
In reality, most of them didn't know any kung fu at all, but whenever someone asked who could do it, they would all jump right out.
The main point was to seize the opportunity. Whether you could actually do it or not, you grabbed the chance first. Even if your performance turned out terrible and you got yelled at, it didn't matter—what if you got lucky and managed to pull it off?
Besides, people who shouted like this were mostly bit-part extras anyway; there were no chances or close-ups for you to really showcase any martial arts.
The most likely outcome was playing some nameless thug who got beaten up. You were just there to get yelled at. You'd charge in during the shooting and get sliced down by the protagonist's or supporting actor's blade or sword, and that was pretty much it.
Sure enough, Li Boda and the others who had been selected were taken off to change into costumes—specifically, the outfits worn by minor thugs.
Li Boda randomly picked out a set that smelled the least offensive and threw it on, keeping his own sneakers on his feet.
Then, holding a prop saber and directed by the floor manager, he took his designated spot.
Although Li Boda hadn't practiced saber techniques, he had practiced Sword Technique and knew a thing or two about iron tridents, so as he casually twirled the blade in his hand, he managed to spin a rather pretty flash of steel.
Yet no one cared if Li Boda could spin a pretty blade, because Li Boda was nothing more than an extra.
After waiting for a short while, Wu Qilong, playing Borden (Xiao Shiyi Lang), made his appearance.
Looking at Wu Qilong's attire—neither completely ancient nor entirely modern—you had to admit, he had a pretty cool look to him.
In short, it screamed non-mainstream.
"Action!"
At the command, Li Boda gripped his saber and started running.
After several people were knocked down by Wu Qilong, Li Boda let out a shout, brandished the thin blade in his hand, and charged forward at a rather sluggish pace.
Wu Qilong delivered a whip kick; before it even reached him, Li Boda let out a shriek, flipped backward, and crashed to the ground.
After waiting a moment, Li Boda heard the call for "Cut."
He scrambled up from the ground, took his position where the floor manager had instructed, and waited once more.
Filming resumed.
To be honest, shooting action scenes was actually quite slow.
Dramatic scenes in television dramas were generally relatively fast to shoot; as long as the acting was passable, they could move on.
But the speed of shooting action scenes was incomparably slower than dramatic scenes.
How should I put it? Action scenes often involved a lot of close-ups.
For instance, someone would be kicked over, and the protagonist would get a clean face shot. At that point, everything had to pause while the camera locked onto the protagonist's face.
Then, after the protagonist knocked someone to the ground, sometimes the shot of that person crashing down had to be captured as well.
So things would pause again, and the camera would focus on the person who had been knocked down. You had to make sure you fell looking somewhat decent under the lens.
Consequently, a single action scene often took the better part of a day, or even longer, to complete.
And yet, Li Boda felt that the action scenes for Borden (Xiao Shiyi Lang) were filmed relatively quickly.
Back when he had taken on an extra role in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer purely for fun, the filming of those action scenes had been painfully slow.
Every single shot was chopped up and switched back and forth, requiring a pause with every single cut.
First they filmed the lead, then the supporting cast, then the person getting beaten.
And it wasn't just the filming itself; there were all sorts of other chaotic factors involved.
Props, camera angles, lighting, a whole mess of production stops. Just getting all of that arranged took the better part of a day. They would shoot a single cut, spend another half a day readjusting, and then shoot the next cut.
And that was just for individual shots, let alone an entire scene.
This was why, after trying out extra work just that once, Li Boda had found it tedious and never did it again, returning straight to university for his classes and not giving a second try a single thought for over half a year.
The main reason was simply that it was boring and uninteresting.
Yet who could have imagined that a Golden Finger thing would just pop up out of nowhere.
So Li Boda was forced to step back into the entertainment industry and continue working as an extra.
After shooting a scene for several days without seeing any opportunities arise, Li Boda simply left the crew of Borden (Xiao Shiyi Lang) and started working with other production teams.
The reason for this came down to Li Boda's Golden Finger.
Back when Li Boda was working as an extra on the crew of Ode to Gallantry, he had taken on quite a few minor parts and played many different bit roles.
However, Li Boda had only ever dreamt of the life of that specific Iron Trident Gang thug; none of the other extra roles had appeared in his dreams at all.
Therefore, Li Boda believed that for any given production, he would only ever dream of a single character. No matter how many extra roles he played, in the end, only one of them would be selected.
Thus, on the premise of having no chance to land a role with actual lines, playing a single extra was pretty much enough.
After leaving the crew of Borden (Xiao Shiyi Lang), Li Boda arrived on the set of a production called Adventures of Lucky (Wulong Chuang Qingguan) and landed the role of a prison guard.
Did this role have lines? It seemed to have lines—guessing finger-guessing games with the other guards, shouting things like "Five-leader supreme!" and "Six-six smooth!" and so on.
But there were no direct, individual lines. While certain guards got to act alongside Sun Yaowei, who played the male lead Liu Bingyi, Li Boda clearly had no such opportunity—who was he, after all, to have any fame?
So he was left playing a prison guard whose face was almost never shown clearly.
Li Boda didn't take this production very seriously either.
After all, the previous times Li Boda had triggered his Golden Finger, it had always been in Jin Yong adaptations.
With no Jin Yong dramas available to guest-star in right now, Li Boda had simply picked a random crew to make a casual cameo.
Or rather, from the very beginning, he had harbored no expectations for Adventures of Lucky.
Having made a casual cameo without striving for anything, he left as soon as it wrapped. In the future, barring any accidents, he probably wouldn't even think of this production again.
Even though several of the actresses in this show were quite pretty—Cao Ying, who played Huo Shuixian; the actress surnamed Lin who got poked with needles by the wet nurse; the actress playing Xu Pingjun; and the one playing Shangguan Feng'er—they were all quite attractive.
It was just a pity that those pretty actresses were entirely too far out of reach for someone like Li Boda, who was just an extra.
Of course, even if they hadn't been out of reach, he wouldn't have harbored any special notions.
That was mainly because of his family background. How should one describe Li Boda's native family?
Ever since he was a child, his parents had constantly brawled and even traded blows, sometimes pulling out knives when things got violent.
His mother nagged endlessly every single day, complaining that this was no good and that didn't work, followed by verbal abuse; when cursing wasn't enough, she would resort to physical violence. His father was always taciturn, silently enduring the abuse until his eyes turned red, and the moment he finally opened his mouth, the other side would immediately strike.
After years of such bickering and chaos, it all ended in a complete mess with a divorce.
Precisely because of this, Li Boda developed a deep-seated fear of women—or rather, a fear of marriage and a fear of committing to relationships.
If it were merely a simple, one-time physical transaction, Li Boda wouldn't oppose it; after all, bodily desires were completely normal at his age.
Yet the moment things moved deeper toward dating or even marriage, Li Boda couldn't help but recoil. This was the exact reason why, despite looking reasonably handsome all these years through school, he had never once been in a relationship.
So naturally, even when he saw so many beauties in the crew, at most he might indulge in one-night fantasies; the thought of making them a girlfriend or a wife never crossed his mind at all.