Wang Shasha and Wang Zhiting, two USTC students, act out a scene from the classic novel Dream of the Red Chamber. [Global Times]

A classic Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, has been turned into a film by students at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, Anhui Province, and it debuted this month at the school with positive reviews.

It took the students seven months and much effort to do it, and their hard work paid off, as feedback has been positive for the hour-long film.

The Dream of the Red Chamber club, a student society founded in 2002 at USTC, comprises more than 200 members who are all fans of the novel.

In September, the club staged a play based on the novel and won success. Qiu Shican, the then leader of the club, thought of shooting a film about the novel.

"A film can help record our interpretations of the novel," Qiu said.

To get funding for the project, Qiu went to the Youth League Committee at the university, which gives financial support to student societies to hold activities. Her club was granted 1,000 yuan ($146).

Qiu decided to be the director, and she invited Hou Qingchao, a mechanics senior who had won awards in the university's film competitions in her freshman year, to shoot the project.

Qiu carefully selected five chapters of the novel to shoot.

"There are too many characters in the novel, and our funds are limited. It's impossible to touch upon all the chapters," Qiu said. "These five are the most famous chapters of the novel, in which the main characters appear."

Qiu recruited seven members of the club and 13 others from the school to play the film's 20 roles.

"Students who wanted to play a role had to apply first and then be interviewed by me. I decided which roles they would play based on their appearances, personalities and the way they spoke," Qiu said.

They began to shoot interior scenes in November in a 12-square-meter room that Qiu rented near the university, and they later shot in the gardens of their university for exterior scenes.

Filming difficulties

The crew usually worked on weekends. But the busy USTC students always had classes or exams to attend on Saturdays or Sundays, which meant they often had to shoot at night.

"We often shot until 2 o'clock in the morning and sometimes we worked through the whole night and went to class the next day," Qiu said.

But the lack of money was the biggest hurdle to overcome.

The 1,000 yuan grant was used up soon after they started shooting - spent on renting the room and decorating it.

But the unity of the crew and their love for the project carried them through.

Knowing how tight money was, they decided to buy their own clothes for their roles.

Huang Haiqin, a nuclear engineering junior who played Miaoyu in the film, put up 2,000 yuan of her scholarship money to help the project.

Qiu said she needed traditional Chinese paintings to create settings for the shooting of the 29th chapter, but she had no money to spare. Then she asked Huang, a good friend, to go shopping with her.

"In the shop I joked to her that I'd forgotten to bring my purse. She paid the money without hesitation," Qiu said.

The crew had also tried to save as much money as possible. "We had no money to buy a gold lock of good quality, which was a vital decoration for Xue Baochai, another heroine in the novel.

"We bought one worth 2.6 yuan and colored it with yellow nail polish, which made the fake one shine before the camera," Qiu said.