Exploiting Hollywood 1980

  Chapter 349 Something went wrong with this country

   Ronald quickly began to rinse his nose with water, and it took a while to clean his nostrils. No wonder the Screen Actors Guild in America doesn't allow the use of cigarettes and heated fragrant powder for lighting, the pollution is too serious.

"Two wilful murderers charged with manslaughter? What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white man, they must Going to prison, maybe a lifetime in prison, there is something wrong with this country."

   "Huh?" Ronald was wiping his face with a towel when he suddenly heard the words of the Chinese guest named Lily Chen in the talk show of the TV show.

   Ronald simply came out and sat by the bed watching TV. What happened?

   "Let's look at the whole thing..."

It turned out that in June of this year, in Detroit, the Motor City, a young Chinese man, Chen Guoren, who worked as a draftsman for the Detroit Auto Company, was in a local striptease bar and had a bachelor party before marriage, and was regarded by two white fathers and sons as Dongying He was insulted and swung up a chair to beat him.

   Chen Guoren knew martial arts, knocked down the white father and son on the spot, and then walked away.

   White father and son working at the Dodge factory on a production line that will lose their jobs because of the acquisition by Mitsubishi Motors. The two found Chen Guoren, a part-timer at a nearby McDonald's, and began to scold him as a ghost, causing the white man to lose his job.

   One of them grabbed Chen Guoren, and the other hit Chen Guoren in the head with a baseball bat until Chen Guoren fell to the ground.

   McDonald's employees sent Chen Guoren to the hospital. Four days later, Chen Guoren was pronounced dead.

"The Detroit District Attorney charged only two suspects with second-degree murder, refused to use citizenship law as a basis for racial discrimination, and under plea bargaining, the two suspects agreed to manslaughter, and the second-degree murder charge would Removed from charges..."

"Lawyers and senior jurists across the country deny that the racial discrimination clause in the Citizenship Act can be used for this crime, and only the newly formed 'American Citizens' Justice League' is willing to call for this. All live audiences and TV audiences, If you have any comments to express, please…”

   Ronald thought for a long time before he understood the logic inside. A Chinese named Chen Guoren was beaten to death by two white men as Japanese.

  Then the prosecution and the judge believed that the deceased was Chinese, and the whites called it Japanese. There was no racial discrimination here, and the racial hatred clause in the Citizenship Act would not be used to prosecute first-degree murder, but only agreed to use manslaughter to prosecute.

   There must be a big problem here. It seems that white Americans in America still do not treat Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people with different skin and hair colors as citizens. As a Chinese in a previous life, Ronald felt very uncomfortable.

   He picked up the phone and called his accountant, Lawrence Wang.

  Lawrence is also concerned about this matter. Chinatown in New York feels this matter is very unfair and wants to organize donations and relief.

   Ronald asked him to anonymously donate $1,000 to the "American Citizens' Justice League", which advocated for Chen Guoren's mother and son, to show his support.

   Back on the set the next day, no one was talking about the Chen Guoren incident.

  Ronald still spent a day on the set of the bar set, and today was filming a Cynthia Rhodes dance scene.

  Cynthia herself is a dancer, so her dance does not need a stand-in or post-editing, and it is easier to deal with the scene when shooting.

   is that her makeup and clothes are really ugly. Cynthia was originally a southern beauty, with blond hair, a good face, and a slender figure.

   Put on a black vest and shorts, combed a very short hairstyle, danced a very rigid dance, and deliberately shot the camera upward...

  Ronald thought it was a bit like the black Jamaican singer/model Grace Jones, known for her unique (ugly) temperament.

   minimizes Cynthia's strong southern feminine tenderness, and turns her into an androgynous temperament.

   "Do you have to smear the supporting actress so much to highlight the beauty of the heroine?" Ronald touched the beard that he hadn't shaved for a few days.

   "Cut." Adrian Lane stopped after a dance. "Very good, this one is printed."

  Cynthia Rhodes came off the stage happily, took the towel handed by the assistant, and wiped the water off her face.

  Ronald saw that she also had olive oil on her body that the makeup artist had deliberately applied, like a bodybuilder, to accentuate her tight muscles. This is not a **** dance at all, but a dance of a curious female bodybuilder.

   "Give her a bath towel." Ronald instructed, and then said to Cynthia, "Director Ryan has finished filming this scene, so hurry up and wipe off the oil in the locker room. Be careful not to catch a cold."

  "Thank you, Ronald", Cynthia was suddenly concerned by Ronald, a little surprised, and then immediately showed a cute smile, "Do you think I dance well?"

   "Of course, you dance very well and with strength."

   "Then will I have a chance to be the heroine in the future?"

   "Ha, it's hard to say. But your appearance is quite suitable for filming."

  Ronald This is not nonsense, the filming is very picky about the appearance of the actors. Beautiful women who don't look suitable, although very charming in life, but on the screen, the audience will feel that the actors on the flat screen are plain and unbeautiful.

  Cynthia's face shape is the same as that of ordinary dancers, which is relatively thin. There is also a small depression below the cheekbones. This kind of face shape is particularly easy to cause shadows on the face. When viewing on the big screen, the audience will feel full of sculptural three-dimensionality and beauty.

   "Really?" Cynthia is twenty-five years old, but she was born in a family with a strong religious atmosphere in Nashville in the south, and she still has a natural sense of innocence.

   "I don't have to lie to you, but whether you can be the protagonist or not depends on your luck."

  After the shooting at night, director Ryan, and Ronald, two producers Don and Jerry, had another task, watching samples.

   Pittsburgh has an industrial film shooting base, where a lot of industrial films for induction training and technical training have been filmed for major companies. The printing factory is not far away, and every day you can see the samples taken the previous day.

   "Om..."

  The noise of the projector slowly filled the room, and Ronald sat in the back, watching the unsynchronized dailies on the screen.

  The director is very good. Perhaps because Ronald shot and edited a feature film himself, he is now increasingly able to see why other directors are splitting the way they do.

  The scene of Ma Lin, the dance double of the protagonist Alex, was deliberately shot like this. That dance interlude, the rhythm of each bar, was right in line with the internal beats of several shots.

   And director Ryan is not like Ronald, who can use dreams for reference. He is equivalent to using pre-imagined editing pictures, and then backtracking the shots that need to be shot.

   For example, the shot of Ma Lin sitting on a stool with her two long legs stretched forward is just right to match the last part of the verse in the episode. The rhythm of the previous dance music was relatively fast, and the rhythm of the music gradually slowed down in the last few bars of the verse, ready to pick up the climax of the chorus.

   Then there’s this shot of reaching for the rope to pour the water, just in time for the main chorus-converted drum beat.

  Imagine the final picture first, and then shoot backwards. In this song and dance scene, it is a very essential creative method.

   "Shxt!" Director Ryan scolded in a low voice.

   Ronald also found the problem. Several scenes of Ma Lin dancing were worn out.

  The white high-light background on the stage is bright when shot from the front.

   There are several places where the camera captures Marlene's face as she dances briefly, so that the audience can see that it's not Jennifer Beals dancing.

   "Are you going to reshoot? Or use editing to get rid of these gangsters?" Ronald raised the problem of editing, and Ryan had a headache.

   "There are too many, and these lines are useless. And if you remake it, it's hard to guarantee that you won't wear it again for such a long dance scene."

  Ronald touched his beard again. The way of storytelling in the dream is actually similar to Marlene's dance. But the light in the dream is very dark, which is a low-light lighting method. In the lens, Marlene's face is in the shadow, and even if it is photographed from the front, it will not be worn.

  Because Ma Lin has been exercising and dancing has occupied most of the audience's attention, as long as it is not paused and discriminated carefully like a video recorder, it is difficult for the audience to find the stand-in.

  Ronald remembered the Coppola Street movie "Old Love, New Love", many of the dance scenes in it were done in low light. And he pioneered a way to have actors' faces illuminated by colored lights.

   Under the traditional Hollywood lighting method, the actor's skin color should be emphasized, especially the face should keep the original skin color.

But Coppola was ingenious, and let the red and blue lights reflect the actor's skin to red and blue, so that not only can the dance scene be photographed in low light, without the use of white lights, but also the color of the face can be used. to reflect the character's heart.

   The wet dance on the chair in the dream is the method used.

   No wonder Hollywood always calls Coppola "the director's director". He's always experimenting on the fringes of the film's approach, trying to find a way for other directors.

   Sometimes he succeeds, the audience accepts his trendy approach, and the box office is a big hit, like "Apocalypse Now"

   Sometimes the audience can't accept it, and it becomes a box office bomb, such as this "Old Love and New Love".

   But other directors could no doubt take advantage of the path he waded and move on.

   "Adrian, have you seen Francis Coppola's 'Old Love'?"

"what do you mean?"

   "Can you change the light on the white background to low light, so that Marlene's face is immersed in the red neon light in the foreground and the blue light above. In this way, Marlene's body can become a silhouette in many shots.

  The audience can see the dance moves, but the lighting is not enough for them to tell that the fast-moving stuntman is not Bills?

   And then…”

"And in this way, we can also add some mysterious color to this long dance drama. When shooting the audience later, we can unify the illumination of the stage and the audience, and we don't need to color grading in the later stage to unify the two scenes with great contrast. illuminance.”

  Adrian Lane didn't need Ronald to explain, he wanted to understand the beauty of this attention, and he did it with one stone.

   "Ah, I'm really an idiot, you're right.

   You know what, Ronald. You are by no means a director who can only make exploitative films. Their evaluation of you is unfair. I see your 'fast-paced', it's definitely not that you can't shoot that artistic feeling, but the budget is limited and you can only shoot like this.

  What a pity, if your film can be carefully crafted, it will be favored by film critics. "

   "You're overrated. Let's re-light the scene tomorrow and make up for Marlene's scene." Ronald took all the praise from his peers.

   "Okay, anyway, her scenes are easy to film, so I'll let someone change the background." Don Simpson answered from the side.

   (end of this chapter)