Versatile Superstar: Rise In Hollywood - Chapter 172

‘There’s a lot of people here.’

Aiden thought, looking over at the crowd in front of him. A lot of people were passing him by.

Some distance away, there were some street performers performing for a small group of people that was crowding in front of them. There were a lot of musicians here.

No one seemed to recognise him in the busy streets.

It was because Aiden was wearing a mask that covered his mouth and nose. Only his eyes were visible. On his back, there was a backpack, containing a small speaker.

It was obvious that he was here to do a street show.

“You think the trick would work?.”

Wade asked, next to him. In his hand, there was a cup of coffee that he was holding.

“Probably. At least I have faith in it.”

“That’s good enough. Get ready.”

Aiden nodded and saw that the staff that they had come with had already prepared the mic. Picking up his guitar from the van, he took his position and got ready to sing.

Some people who were passing by gave him looks but no one stopped, thinking of him as another street performer.

‘Let’s go.’

He thought and took out his mask. Then, his fingers started strumming the chords of his guitar.

A silver light slowly started to come out of him as the melody intertwined with his voice.

“Please tell me if this is an illusion.”

“Why am I still finding the reason?”

“Oh, am I just searching for something that isn’t there?”

“Reaching my hand out to nowhere.”

***

‘Okay, I have bought everything. Eggs, bread, flour, toilet paper, dog food…’

A woman was checking up on the list written on her phone. It was the list of the items she needed to buy today for her home and she was just cross checking it on her way home, in case she had forgotten anything.

“Mom, you forgot to buy me pizza.”

Next to her, a small 10 year old kid tugged at her dress.

“I didn’t forget. You are not getting any.”

“But why? Pizza is so tasty.”

“You eat enough of it whenever your father watches his game.”

She snorted and her kid puffed up his cheeks, clearly disliking her mom not buying him pizza. He was about to start another argument with her when his attention suddenly got taken away by a melody.

He tilted his head in the direction where the music was coming from.

A voice soon followed it and the kid widened his eyes, very shocked by it.

It was a very soft and melodious voice. Even his mother noticed it and thought that it was a pretty good tune and she seemed to have heard the song somewhere. As she knew the street well, she thought that it was just another one of the street performances.

But her kid was already entranced.

“Mom, it’s fine if you can’t buy me pizza. Let’s go watch whoever is singing.”

“Huh? It’s already late, you know.”

“Just five minutes is enough.”

The mother got in a dilemma hearing that. She wanted to say no but the song was actually good. Other people around her also seemed to be walking towards the music, wanting to know who was singing in such a good voice.

In the end, she sighed.

“Okay, let’s go see it.”

She held her kid’s hand and brought him to the spot where a lot of people were already gathered. The crowd gathered was way more than other musicians and a lot of people were whispering to each other.

Even some of the musicians who were performing in the distance were staring.

“Hey, isn’t he that guy?”

“Yeah, he looks exactly like that. I didn’t know he could sing.”

“No, he could sing. I saw him in X-Star and he was too good. His latest songs are awesome.”

“I loved him in [Searching for the One]. Do you think he’s a playboy in real life too? I think so.”

“Right, he’s very handsome.”

“There’s a camera crew there. Is he shooting a music video?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then, what’s he doing here?”

“Let me shoot a video and post it on social media. It would blow up.”

Listening to these comments, both the mother and kid got more curious. They tried to move through the crowd and after a minute, finally reached a spot where they were able to see the face of the musician.

Instantly, the mother was able to recognise him.

‘I think I have seen him before. Ah, yes! This song. It got viral a few months ago right. This guy is the singer of it. What’s he doing here?’

As questions arose in her mind, she noticed that her son was already fully engrossed in the song. Glancing at Aiden who had his eyes closed, she also focused more on his singing.

“Can I still believe in a better tomorrow?”

“I’m trapped in between the darkness of your sorrow.”

“Take my hand, let’s go find ourselves in the dark.”

“Running away from the sharks.”

As Aiden sang, the mother and son felt like the words were directly affecting their hearts. She had heard the song before but the live singing had an effect that a studio album didn’t.

At least Aiden’s voice was like that his live singing was way better than his studio one.

It was because the audience would be able to feel the emotions at a very personal level. The effect was way more in a song like ‘Lost in the Sky’ which was a beautiful melody that asked a lot of questions about life.

Everyone that was listening to the song was already immersed in it and a few people were making videos. It was then that someone tapped the shoulder of the mother.

“Excuse me.”

“Huh? Yeah?” She looked at the young girl in front of her.

“Please take it.”

The young girl gave her a pamphlet and left. In her hands, there were more pamphlets that she was distributing. If one noticed, they would see more people doing the same.

‘What’s this.’

The mother looked at the pamphlet and saw that it looked like the poster of a musician’s show.

[Come catch Arthur Reeves perform at your local theatre and know how he composed his hit track ‘Lost in the Sky’ through watching his journey.]

Those were the words written on the pamphlet and they confused her a lot. Arthur Reeves? Who was he?

When she turned the pamphlet over, she realised what was going on.

‘It’s a movie poster. They are promoting a movie here.’

There was the poster of [30 days of Happiness] on the other side, clearing away all the confusion in the mother’s mind. At that moment, her kid tugged at her dress.

“Mom, what’s that?”

“It’s a movie poster.” She replied.

“What type of movie?”

“I think it’s a musical. It looks like that.”

“Will there be songs like the one that guy is playing?”

“Ah, yes.”

The kid brightened up instantly after hearing that. With hopeful eyes, he opened his mouth.

“Can we go watch the movie then?” He said. “Please, it’s been a while. The last time we went was for that pirate movie.”

His mother thought about his words for a few seconds and glanced at Aiden and the poster.

‘It doesn’t look bad. It says here that it won an award.’

“Okay, let’s go to watch it.”

She finally said and a big smile blossomed on the face of the kid.

***

It didn’t take long for Aiden’s street performance to spread into social media as a lot of people uploaded videos of him online. Because of that, people who were nearby got to know that Aiden was doing a street performance and quickly went to watch it.

After every song, Aiden would talk to the crowd, ask about them and hand out selfies and autographs.

This friendly behaviour made a lot of them feel like that they should go and see the movie Aiden was promoting.

After all, the songs were good, Aiden’s acting talent was proven and the movie was not going to be bad if it had won an award.

This was the desired effect Aiden wanted to create.

He knew that just doing social media marketing and going on talk shows would only get generic reactions.

They needed to make people interested in the movie some other way and there was no better way than the lead actor himself performing and asking people to go see his movie if they could.

It was a great way to make people relate to him and get better favorability.

At the same time, it was going to work on creating a wave on social media too. As people posted videos and selfies with Aiden, they got a lot of clicks.

One of the reasons behind it was yesterday’s episode of [Searching for the One]. Aiden was still trending on social media for it.

Eternal life movies also helped fan the flames as their Marketing team quickly promoted the videos and selfies in order to make it gain even more publicity. The camera crew that had come with Aiden sent them the recordings and even without editing it, they uploaded it on the social media handles.

The reason they didn’t edit it was because they wanted to show more raw footage.

In the end, in just a few hours, it was very successful as more and more posts came about it.

One more thing Aiddn did was to not stay at one place. As soon as he saw too many people gathering, he left to perform on another street.

But this was really just the start.

This marketing campaign was not just for New York. Eternal life movies just wanted to see the reactions at first and after finding out that they were super positive, they quickly began the second part of the plan.

It was to give a street performance in every major city in America.

….