Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 274 How did you do it?

   Ronald spent half a day watching all the footage. The sound and picture synchronization was well done, and Ronald thanked Eric and his two assistants.

   "Let's start editing, Ronald?" The two producers next to him, Lin Sen and Azov, were a little impatient.

   Ronald often paused when he was looking at the sound and picture synchronization shots, and then took out a notebook to record the number of a certain frame on the film. A film is often read over and over again by him several times, and he does not know what he is doing.

   It doesn't seem to take so long if it's just checking Eric's work.

   "Where do we start? Ronald." Eric has worked with many directors, knowing that each director has his own method, Ronald is not particularly out of the ordinary.

  Some old-school Hollywood directors have their own quirks. For example, the old director Fred Kinneman, who filmed "Noon", was particularly disgusted with the main camera.

   In addition to taking as few main shots as possible on the set, the first thing in the editing room is to throw away the film from the main shots first.

   Maybe Ronald has a similar quirk of excluding shots he doesn't like before using scissors?

"You have to wait for me, I'm going to turn these numbered positives back into negative copies and take them to a Kodak lab for printing, it's probably going to take a few hours, wait until I get the photos, and then we can start .

   After saying that, Ronald apologized to everyone, and then went off with the number in his hand.

  Lin Sen and Azov looked at each other, not sure why, Lin Sen asked the editor Eric: "What method is this, I have never seen a director do this before?"

   "It's the first time I've seen it too." Eric shrugged and replied to the two producers, "Maybe it's Ronald's habit?"

   A few people couldn't get to the point, so they went out for lunch first, and then came back when Ronald was done.

  Ronald was on the equipment on the other side of the editing room, looking for film by shot number.

   He used a noon time to select a most representative and decisive moment for each camera and each shot. For some longer shots, I also picked two or three shots.

   Then, based on these numbers, he remakes a negative at ISO 2 for each decisive moment. According to Walter Murkey's groping for the appropriate exposure time, Ronald reprinted all the shots of the lens.

   He then took the negatives and drove to a Kodak one-hour print shop where all the photos were printed. Looking at the finished film, Ronald was quite satisfied. He used the parameters given by Merzi, and the color balance and contrast of the photo were close to the effect of the film.

   By the time the two producers and a few editors returned to the editing room, Ronald had posted all the photos on the whiteboard on the wall.

   "Aha, this method is much more intuitive." Eric in the editing room couldn't help but admire the photos on the whiteboard on the wall.

"This method is really good, I have to learn it, and I can use it when I am a director in the future." Lin Sen was also very pleasantly surprised. He had directed a movie before, and he knew that when editing, he had to find his thoughts in many scenes. The one you want is a very time-consuming thing.

   Many times when you find it, the inspiration in your heart is gone. This really makes it easier to capture inspiration and make editing more efficient.

   Azov has no experience in filmmaking, but he also finds this approach intuitive. He looked at the picture of Spiccoli, after he was smoking, he took Vans shoes and hit his head desperately. The scene that I saw in the morning immediately jumped out of my mind.

   He couldn't help thinking, "This young man named Ronald has some solutions."

  Ronald is numbering each photo and transcribing the length of the shots in a table in a notebook. "Fast-paced Richmond High School" is a group drama with six protagonists. How to balance the roles of many people is the key to film editing.

   Therefore, trial and error is essential for the arrangement and combination of various lenses. In this way, using a photo to represent a shot can be easily arranged and combined.

   "I've already transcribed it, if you don't mind, you can start."

  Ronald asked the two producers, Linson and Azov, to sit next to editor Eric, and then stood behind them himself.

   "Hi Ronald, come and sit, you are the director."

  Lin Sen and Azov saw him standing, so they both stood up and offered their seats to him. It is good for a young man to respect his seniors. However, according to Hollywood rules, the producer only provides opinions on the results after editing, and cannot completely replace the director's editing instructions.

   At least not until the director's editing is bad, and the producer's approval is not passed, and the studio is stripped of the editing rights.

   "You're welcome, I'm just used to editing standing up." Ronald took two steps to the side and said, standing beside editor Eric.

He tore a piece of paper from the notebook, cut it in half, and then folded two sitting little figures. According to the length and width of the monitor of the editing machine, he calculated the size ratio of the screen to him, and the ratio was equal to the back. Shrink to the height of the villain.

Ronald folded the figure representing the female audience a little bit, making her a little shorter, then placed the two figures in front of the monitor and said to the two producers, "This is our audience, Looking at a standard screen with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the approximate distance of sitting in a prime position.

   In this way, we can refer to the approximate picture that the audience sees on the screen, and we will not fail to take care of the audience's attention diversion problem because the monitor is too small.

   "You are well prepared." Azov's heart was completely relieved, and Ronald seemed to be an expert in editing too.

   "I don't know how the editing level is?" Lin Sen looked at Ronald's performance, and was curious about the level of his actual editing.

The opening shot in the storyboard of the film happened to be the first shot of Ronald's first day of shooting. It was the Robert Romanus who entered the painting from behind the camera, then dodged two cars, ran across the road, and finally turned to him. Footage of walking towards the door of a department store.

   "The first one is better, and the actor's performance is more natural." After watching several films, editor Eric expressed his opinion.

"I also think it is, the car is driven by a stuntman, and there are certain rules. The first one Romanus' reaction is more natural, and in the next few, he knows the rules of the car, and it will have a psychological impact. Prepare, not as compact as the first one."

   Ronald pointed at Romanus' movements on the monitor. Before he noticed the coming Toyota Corolla, he had already slowed down and turned his shoulders to the left.

   "What do you think?" Ronald turned his head and asked the two producers for their opinion.

   "Yes, I also think the first one is good."

   "As you will."

   Eric saw that the two producers agreed, turned around and asked Ronald, "Where's the cut?"

   "Wait a minute." Ronald turned the turntable of the horizontal editor to rewind the film to the beginning at double speed.

   Then he turned the turntable back to normal speed and Romanus on the monitor crossed the road again.

"Crack." Ronald pressed the stop button, then he picked up a fountain pen, found the very center frame of the film on the specially vacated space in front of the editing machine, and drew it gently. A V-mark.

   "It's not bad here, just after half a second of black screen, cut into the picture inside the mall." Eric agreed.

   "I'll try again." Ronald turned the control dial again.

  Eric expressed his understanding that when the director was editing, he was often indecisive. Especially at the end is an open shot where the actors have continuous action, and there is no definite end point of the action, which makes different people feel that it should be cut here.

   Just like this shot of the scalper Mike entering the mall door, how close did the actor Romanus go to the door and put down the scissors? In fact, it can be cut, and then cut to the next shot. Where would you say it is best to cut it? Inconclusive.

  Ronald turned the film back to the beginning and started playing at 24 frames per second. When Mike, the scalper played by Romanus, bypassed the second Volkswagen Beetle and walked towards the main entrance of the mall, Ronald pressed the stop button again.

"Snapped!"

  Eric leaned forward, looked at the film in the middle, and wanted to write down the number this time. After seeing the number, he suddenly said "HolyShxt!"

   "What's the matter?" Producers Lin Sen and Azov looked over, for fear that something might go wrong with the feature film.

  Eric pointed to the gap in the middle of the editing machine. On the film in the middle, there was the V mark that Ronald drew with a water pen just now.

"How did you do it?" Eric became very curious, with twenty-four frames of film per second, one frame of film only appeared here for twenty-fourths of a second, and the probability of stopping on the same frame twice very small.

   "Is it a coincidence?" A question emerged in the hearts of the three present.

   "Is it the same frame?" Ronald asked, before rewinding the film. "It seems that I have gradually mastered the rhythm of this movie in the process of watching it in the morning."

   Ronald said, glanced at the copy of Mondrian's painting on the editing table against the wall.

  Sometimes this kind of rhythm is difficult to describe in words, but if you catch it, you catch it, and your body will replace the brain and make decisions for you with intuition.

"Snapped!"

   Ronald pressed the stop button for the third time, and his intuition did not disappoint him, and the film stopped steadily at the same frame.

   Neither producer believed Ronald could ever stop on the same grid. At the same time, they stood up and looked at the cutout exposed by the editor.

   Sure enough, under the light of the light, a small yellow V-shaped mark was placed on the very center of the film.

   The two of them looked at each other, a little disbelieving. In Universal Productions, I have never heard of anyone with such skills.

   "How did you do it?" the two asked Ronald.

   Ronald opened the thermos cup he brought, poured a cup of black tea and slowly tasted it, "I said it was intuition, do you believe it?"

  The two producers, Lin Sen and Azov, looked incredulous and did not continue to ask. Maybe this is Ronald's unique secret?

   "I seem to have heard people say that there used to be an editor who could do it." Eric seemed to remember something.

"Yes, this was taught to me by Walter Murkey from Diorama Pictures. You should have heard of him, and I didn't lie to you, it's really intuitive, otherwise it's impossible for people to react so quickly, stop a few times On the same grid." Ronald said his master's name.

   "It turned out to be him." The two producers and editor Eric suddenly realized that they had heard the name of Walter Murkey, an expert in both film editing and sound processing.

   He is an Academy Award-recognized expert in editing and sound design for Francis Coppola's two "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now"

   So they nodded and stopped asking how Ronald was able to do it. As if he could do it for granted.

  Eric had the editing assistant come over and write down the number on the square of the work feature. As a cut point for the first shot, then waiting for Ronald to give the order.

   "Let's continue." Ronald said softly.

   After a while, the two producers were very satisfied with the progress of the editing, so they left first, saying that they would see the progress tomorrow.

   Ronald smiled and continued to cut the film with Eric.

   He knew in his heart that the reason he was able to stop on the same frame several times was because he spent a lot of time in the morning looking at the shots repeatedly, and then picking the decisive frame in each shot.

   In this way, the lens grammar of the director of photography, Matthew, has been slowly implanted into his subconscious, and it is actually the subconscious that helps him make the decision of where to stop. Coupled with standing editing, you can make full use of the human intuition evolved over millions of years to achieve this effect.

  As the editing continues, his subconscious mind digests and absorbs more footage, and his own editing can be more accurate and reasonable.

   (end of this chapter)