Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 256 Chapter 207 Setting the tone

   After six weeks, "The Lost Ark of the Covenant" has become the No. 1 box office of the week. This movie is really very popular, and it surpassed the box office of "Superman 2" again.

   Ronald thought for a long time and thought of an explanation. Many comic book movie audiences are comic fans, and "Superman 2" has gradually dried up after a few weeks of popularity after its release. And "The Lost Ark of the Covenant" is an original adventure story, spread by the audience's word of mouth, more and more people go to see it.

   As the movie continued to sell well, Spielberg's status was rapidly rising, and ET added some special effects budget.

   Ronald is a little worried that Spielberg is now more and more popular with various producers, and will he forget the things that support him.

   So he took the written "Back to the Future" script to evaluate, contacted Steven's assistant Catherine, delivered it to the door in person, and reminded Spielberg with his face.

"Well... you think very well. You have concentrated a lot of scenes in the movie. The time machine has been changed from a nuclear explosion to a car that uses nuclear fuel. The cost of such special effects has become calculable, and the nuclear explosion cannot be filmed at all." Pierberg reviewed the evaluation and gave it a good review.

   "I heard that ET got a Hershey's Reese's Chocolate endorsement?" Ronald started to flatter Steven first.

   "Hershey wouldn't have agreed to $1 million if they hadn't had faith in you. I think M&M would regret it when the movie came out."

   Ronald himself is also talking about brand placement. He heard from the producer that ET and Hershey signed a $1 million endorsement agreement, and he was very envious.

  I got $5,000 from Perry's Pizza for my own movie placement ads, and it's still because Jennifer Jason Lee, who has acted in several TV shows, went there to experience life as a waiter.

  Burger King refused to negotiate after seeing the script, arguing that their company was not suitable for a low-budget movie.

   I came up with an idea, but others took the big head. Ronald can only hope that the producers' efforts to find a tennis shoe brand will not be in vain.

"Very good, I'll pass it on to Zemeckis, he still wants to try negotiating with the big studios himself." Spielberg was very busy and got up to leave, "Your evaluation of the script is very interesting, and everything is practical. From the point of view of the shooting, I am really interested in going to your studio now to see you make a movie."

   "Thank you, Steven." Ronald reached his goal, heaved a sigh of relief, and stood up to leave.

   "This is Chris, the screenwriter working at my Amberlin." Spielberg pointed to a screenwriter who was working at the desk next to him and introduced him to Ronald. He was very busy when it was about to start up, and disappeared in a blink of an eye.

   "Hello, my name is Chris Columbus." The screenwriter who was about the same age as Ronald came to introduce himself, and he was helping Amberlin write the script. Ronald exchanged business cards with him and also left.

   After a few days, the director of photography and art direction for the film were also in place. Ronald took them all over the world to find locations in Los Angeles.

   "This is the movie theater, and the opposite is Perry's Pizza and American Burgers, what do you think?" In the Sherman Oaks shopping center in suburban Los Angeles, Ronald held the director's viewfinder and looked across the mall.

  This mall has some history, and some decorations have begun to look old, but it is not too shabby. Exactly the kind of authenticity Ronald was looking for.

  The viewfinder is like a monocular, with scales on the camera lens of various focal lengths, indicating the size of the picture that can be seen using different lenses for framing. Ronald loved this Scorsese gift because it was light and easy to carry.

   "What kind of base tone do you need?" DP Matthew is an old man at Universal, skilled in all types of low-cost productions.

"I need a film style that is close to reality, with a 1.85 format. The dilapidated and messy pictures in the picture need to be reflected in the film. The colors are mainly realistic tones, so that people can recognize it at a glance. It's a suburban middle-class neighborhood of Los Angeles."

   The director of photography hurriedly took out his notebook and wrote it down, this young director was not like a second-generation star like he thought. He speaks the words of an expert, concise and direct, and expresses what he wants very clearly.

   Unlike some directors, who will only say that I want a tone like the "Godfather".

  If I could shoot that dark tone, high contrast, top light photography style, wouldn’t I have won the Oscar for best photography sooner?

   "What kind of image quality do you need? Is the lighting more natural soft light or dramatic hard light."

"Natural", Ronald understands the meaning of the director of photography, and the lighting method like "The Godfather" is more dramatic. At the beginning, Brando played the old godfather sitting in the dark background, stroking the cat to decide various things. It looks very dramatic.

"This is a youth romantic comedy with a slightly realistic undertone, and it doesn't need to be too heavy and dramatic to make the audience feel relaxed. Even if there are many bad things in the plot, it should look light and let them know for a while The suffering will always pass, and the movie has a good ending at the end."

   "Theatrical light is hard to beat. Where can I hire an expert lighting engineer? It's not enough to finish shooting in natural light quickly." Ronald complained in his heart that this photographer, Matthew, couldn't do well. He didn't seem like he was very powerful. However, with my own budget, I would invite technicians of this level.

  The budgets of the big studios are all false, and there are many problems on the invoices. The administrative department has put a lot of expenses into the crew, and Ronald does not intend to pursue it. Now everyone is doing this.

  Ronald asked about the background of the director of photography, Matthew, and sure enough, he had made TV series and TV movies before. I've never played film movies.

   "So our art design is also based on realism?" The art director Dan is a familiar one. He also participated in the art direction of Spielberg's "Third Contact", and took the initiative to communicate with the director.

   "That's it, everything is based on the current Los Angeles public high school students, so they feel familiar at first glance." Ronald is still quite satisfied with him.

"Let's go... let's go over there and see." Ronald walked around the mall to the American Burger and Perry's Pizza opposite. Jennifer Jason Lee was working part-time at the pizza shop. She had a red headband on her head and was wearing a A dress with red and white vertical strips, a white bib around the outside, white socks and white sneakers under the feet.

   The whole thing fits perfectly with the style of Perry's Pizza.

   "Hey Jennifer, get us some pizza." Ronald sat down with the two guides and asked Jennifer to order.

   "Hello Director." Jennifer laughed happily, took out a pencil from her bib bag and started ordering. She is doing very well, like a part-time student girl in high school.

   "Two of this, and some... Coke?" Ronald asked the two companions.

  "We only have Pepsi here, come right away", Jennifer went to place the order, and soon after she brought pizza and Pepsi.

   "You look great," Ronald praised. "How's the American Burger business over there?"

   "Very well, their business is the best here," Jennifer said.

   "Jennifer, can you give us an autograph?" The two children had seen Jennifer's TV series, recognized her, and came up to ask for an autograph.

  Ronald put down his Pepsi, took out his notebook and wrote it down, and asked the producer to discuss with Burger America about the placement of advertisements. This kind of regional burger joint may be of interest.

  The three of them finished eating pizza and continued to enjoy the scenery.

   "This is Van Nuys High School, and I plan to put all the school scenes here." Ronald took the two to the old location, which was the location where "Rock and Roll High School" was filmed.

   "Are the students still in school when the camera is turned on?" Director of photography Matthew has filmed many TV dramas, and sometimes he goes to school to shoot scenes during the holidays.

   "I made an agreement with the principal. He is an old acquaintance of mine. Many students here are in the arts, and they are willing to watch it when the time comes. I just choose some for group performances."

  Ronald took out the director's viewfinder again and started to look at it. The two directors looked at each other. The director Ronald was extremely efficient, as if he could do any kind of work in the crew, except for makeup. Be careful after starting.

A director like    is generally very demanding, and no job can fool him. Fortunately, Ronald didn't seem to have a bad temper, otherwise the life of the crew would be difficult.

"The stadium here can't be done, the cameras can't be set up. We have to find another high school football field." Ronald recorded the cooperation of the important scenes in a few words, "I'm going to call the producers and have to expand the scope. "

   "Have to find an Italian restaurant where you can film Mark and Mike discussing how to pick up girls." Ronald crossed another item off the list in his notebook.

  …

   Kanjing's work continues, Ronald and art director Dan continue to run.

  Director of Photography Matthew took the camera assigned by Universal Pictures.

  The next step is to determine the processing parameters of the film. Ronald will try to shoot some samples with the director of photography and see the effect after printing.

  Because there are many batches of film, the same brand, the same type of film, if the factory time is different, it will also cause inconsistent color before and after. Therefore, in general, large studios will use a batch of films that are close to the factory time.

   Ronald and DP Matthew again test machine.

  Matthew is also a camera operator, and he is very skilled at changing film in his pocket. He locked the latch on the film bay door and began to test shots against Ronald.

   "What brand of camera are you? Why haven't I seen it?" Ronald was a little strange.

  "UltraCam", Matthew replied while taking pictures, "A new brand from America. Not long after it was launched, Universal bought a batch and just allocated it to us.

   In general, American crews use Panavision cameras a lot. Cameras of this brand are only rented but not sold, and they are very expensive.

  UltraCam may be cheaper, so it impressed Universal Studios and bought a few for the crew to use.

  "Shxt!" The next day Ronald saw the results of the dailies shot by UltraCam after printing, and angrily brought Matthew to trouble the producer.

   "Why did you give us these junk?" Ronald threw the developed film on the table of producer Lin Sen. It's all **** exposed, this tattered film hatch, held in place with a latch, is all light leaking.

   "My dear Ronald, I'm sorry. This was assigned by someone in the tech department, and we have a limited budget for the crew."

   "Limited size, your truck pulls wood and parks it outside the office door in the morning, and pulls it back in the evening, and over and over again, these invoices are reimbursed by the crew's accountant.

  Don't think I don't know, you guys go to GoGo at night and see that Stripper's money is paid here. "

   "Okay, okay, be quiet, Ronald. What do you want to do?"

   "Change our cameras to Panavision, or Alai's."

   "That's impossible, Panavision is renting to Dolly Parton's 'The Best Chicken House in Texas' crew, and our American film company can't use German stuff like Alai."

   "The camera is the most important piece of equipment and I can't compromise."

"It's not very easy to use, or it's a little bit leaky, you think about it. The business manager I found found you the owner of American Burger, and he's willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for the burger shop to appear on the scene, you have to give them their logo. Closeup.

   also found a sneaker manufacturer Vans, they have a new checkerboard pattern shoes, willing to spend money to advertise. "

   "No problem, I promise to give them the biggest and longest feature!" Ronald rejoiced, then said solemnly, "But the money must be spent on the crew!"

"Can."

   "Anyway, I was going to shoot a related plot, so I thought it was a hitchhiker." Ronald was very happy.

   "Then what about our cameras?" The director of photography, Matthew, followed Ronald around for a while, but he was a little flustered when he didn't get a better camera.

"It's your first time making a theatrical film, Matthew." Ronald whistled, took out a roll of black tape from his bag, and threw it away, "A must-have magic weapon for cinematographers, there is no camera failure. A roll of duct tape can't handle it."

   (end of this chapter)