Huayu: I really am a genuine top star.

Chapter 120 A burst of laughter erupted in the classroom.

Someone in the audience burst out laughing.

Shen Li, sitting in the back row, became somewhat interested. This Professor Mu's lectures were like his mother telling stories, every sentence was full of hooks, far superior to the monotonous lullabies of Marxist philosophy classes.

Mu Yuan continued, drawing a few simple sketches on the blackboard with the chalk in his hand... a locomotive, a group of people, and a few lines representing the tracks:

"On December 28, 1895, in the basement of the Grand Café at 14 Rue des Capucines, Paris, the Lumière brothers screened their first batch of films, one of which was called 'Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.'"

The runtime is... fifty seconds. There's only one shot, set up on the platform, showing a train approaching from a distance, getting closer and closer, until it finally stops. It's that simple.

He paused, turned around, and his eyes swept across the entire audience: "Guess what the audience's reaction was?"

A girl from the broadcasting department in the back row chimed in, "Clapping?"

Mu Yuan smirked: "Clapping? They ran away in fear."

The whole class paused for a moment, then burst into laughter. Shen Li laughed too… Scared them away? What kind of audience is this?

Mu Yuan and the others' laughter subsided, and he continued:

"It's not an exaggeration. The audience at the time had never seen moving images before. When the train on the screen rushed towards them, they thought they were going to be hit and killed."

People in the back screamed and scrambled back, while those in the front crawled under their chairs. An elderly woman was so frightened she had a heart attack and had to be carried out.

The laughter grew louder. Yang Yi laughed so hard he was slumped over the table, his shoulders shaking.

Mu Yuan's expression turned serious:

"You think it's funny? Let me tell you, it's not funny at all. This group of viewers is the first people in human history to 'watch a movie.' They haven't even learned the action of 'watching' yet."

Your eyes have been trained by tens of thousands of movies and hundreds of thousands of short videos. You know what a close-up is, what editing is, and what slow motion is.

But they... knew nothing. They were truly seeing moving images for the 'first time'.

The laughter in the classroom gradually subsided.

Shen Li sat up straight. That's an interesting point...it's the first time watching a movie, and the eyes haven't been trained in any predictable formulas.

Mu Yuan walked to the edge of the podium, placed his hands on the lectern, leaned forward slightly, and lowered his voice:

"This is the first question I want to talk about today... The essence of film is not the story, not the performance, not the special effects."

It's about "seeing." What to shoot in a shot, how to shoot it, from which angle, how long to shoot—these choices... that's the director's "seeing." And the first thing you acting students need to learn is to understand the director's "seeing."

Shen Li listened intently.

Understanding the director's "seeing"... that's a very insightful statement.

He recalled the "character observation exercise" from the last acting class, where Teacher Yan asked him to observe Lan Xiu, not only her movements but also her "blank spaces." It seemed to be the same principle as what Mu Yuan had mentioned.

Just then, I caught a glimpse of a boy diagonally opposite me in the front row. He was nodding his head like a chick pecking at rice, having a deep conversation with the Duke of Zhou (a figure in Chinese mythology associated with dreams).

His neck kept swaying forward, and every time it looked like it was about to hit the back of the seat in front of him, it would suddenly bounce back and then continue to sway down.

The rhythm and cadence were like they were on springs. The two classmates next to me were so trying not to laugh that their faces turned purple.

Mu Yuan had obviously seen it too. He stopped lecturing, adjusted his reading glasses, and fixed his gaze on the boy who was "pecking at rice".

The whole class followed his gaze and fell silent instantly. Everyone was waiting... waiting to see how this "Master of Extinction" would unleash his fury.

Mu Yuan paused for three seconds, then slowly said, "That student... yes, the one in the third row, wearing a blue hoodie, the one who's struggling against gravity."

Someone in the classroom couldn't help but laugh.

The boy next to him nudged him with his elbow. The boy sprang up, exclaimed "Ah!", his eyes glazed over, a trickle of liquid still clinging to the corner of his mouth. He instinctively wiped his mouth, then stammered, "Here! Here! I'm here!"

The whole class burst into laughter. Shen Li laughed so hard she slapped her thigh.

Mu Yuan stared at him expressionlessly, and only after he was fully awake did he slowly speak: "Classmate, were you dodging a train in your dream just now?"

The laughter erupted even louder.

The boy's face turned as red as a pig's liver, and he stammered, "No...no, teacher, I...I wasn't asleep..."

"Not asleep?" Mu Yuan raised an eyebrow. "Then tell me, why did the audience run away when the Lumière brothers were showing movies in the basement of the café?"

The boy's brain was clearly still booting up; the CPU fan was whirring, but the screen was still black.

He opened his mouth, then suddenly a thought struck him, and he blurted out, "Because...because the coffee shop...is haunted?"

The whole class burst into laughter. Jing Yang was laughing so hard he was pounding the table, Yang Yi had tears in his eyes, and even Yun Yiyi, who had been keeping a cold face in the corner, covered her mouth with the back of her hand, her shoulders trembling slightly.

Mu Yuan's lips twitched, as if he was trying hard to suppress something. He pushed up his reading glasses, his voice still steady, but every word carried a hint of sarcasm:

"Haunted?...That makes sense. A train coming out of a wall, what else could it be but a ghost? Dude, with your brain, it's a shame you're not studying acting. You could even make up a horror movie without a script."

The boy wished he could bury his head in the table.

Mu Yuan didn't pursue the matter further and turned back to continue his lecture.

But Shen Li noticed that when he turned around, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

This seemingly serious old scholar actually quite enjoys these unexpected "shows" in class.

He won't expose you or deduct points, he'll just casually make a couple of sarcastic remarks. After he's done, you'll feel ashamed and embarrassed, which is worse than being scolded.

Shen Li mentally added another label to Mu Yuan:

They have a sharp tongue but aren't cruel; they're good at educating people through insults. After insulting you, they still make you feel like they're right—in short, the "being sold out but still helping the seller count the money" type of mentor.

Mu Yuan turned around and wrote a few lines on the blackboard... Griffith, Eisenstein, montage. His handwriting was slender and strong, just like him, exuding the integrity of an old-school scholar.

"Montage." Mu Yuan turned around and adjusted his reading glasses.

"The original meaning of this word is 'assembly.' In film, it refers to the assembly of shots. When two shots are cut together, it's not one plus one equals two, but one plus one equals three, five, or ten."

Those sharp eyes swept across the classroom, then suddenly stopped.

Shen Li followed Teacher Mu's gaze and glanced over... It was a guy wearing glasses in the third row diagonally in front of her, near the aisle.

The guy was still looking down, the light from his phone screen reflecting off his glasses, flashing like a firefly come to life.

Mu Yuan put down the chalk, dusted off his hands, walked to the edge of the podium, and said calmly, "That student, the one in the third row by the aisle, the one whose glasses light up on their own."

The classroom erupted in laughter.