Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 288 Insomnia and Dreams

Ronald who put down the phone was still upset, and walked around the room, trying to calm himself down.

The actors' inconsistent acting skills and emotional mismatch are full of "fast-paced" films.Thinking about it, Ronald felt so embarrassed that he wanted to call the cast and crew back to reshoot.

The mismatch of emotional intensity between the front and back of the same character is actually not the most serious problem of the film.After all, most audiences only watch the movie once, and they are not as sensitive as professionals. The plot between the actors' two appearances will also dilute this feeling of mismatch.

Thinking of a character's plot interspersed with other people's plots, Ronald felt very lucky. "Fast-paced" is a group play with multiple protagonists. In this way, each person's plot is only one-sixth of the whole movie, and it is even more difficult for the audience to find problems.

If your first film is a traditional story with one protagonist as the main character, or a romantic comedy with two protagonists playing against each other, then the wrong intensity of emotions before and after will make the audience feel obviously wrong.

Just imagine, if the whole movie was about Stacy and nerdy Mark, on the first date, Stacey was more excited than when the two first kissed, which obviously made the audience play immediately .

But now the two dating scenes between the two are interspersed and interrupted by the stories of seven or eight other characters. The audience can't see any problems after watching them in order.

The really serious mistakes happened in some scenes shot indoors.

For example, nerdy Mark and Stacy had their first date in an Italian restaurant. In order to ensure shooting efficiency, all frontal shots of Mark and frontal shots of Stacy were shot in two days.

By doing this, you can save a lot of lighting time, because each lighting takes more than two hours.

Take all Mark's shots together, and then turn the camera back to Stacy on the opposite side the next day, relight, and shoot Stacy's scene in one go.

Due to the different states of the actors in the two days, it is impossible for the actors to accurately recall and reproduce the emotions at a certain moment yesterday. When the two actors spoke to the camera respectively, their emotional intensity was not at the same level.

Editing together the dialogue shots shot in two days, and switching between the faces of the two people continuously, the audience can immediately find out the incompatibility.

And Ronald himself, since he knew the ending of the two people's story long ago, he already had a fixed image and subsequent development of the two characters in his mind, but he didn't find this mistake when editing.

After being pointed out by director Coppola, Ronald is really embarrassed about what he thinks now. The interior shots of the entire movie are full of holes from beginning to end.

Fortunately, when shooting in the department store, the director of photography Matthew used a special lighting system, so that the dialogue shots shot on the other side did not need to be re-lighted.

So fortunately, the first 10 minutes of a lot of internal scenes in the mall, the over-the-shoulder shots of the conversation between the two, were all shot on the same day.

The actor can still remember the intensity of the performance when the scene was shot just now, and this kind of emotional incompatibility is not so serious.

Otherwise, the audience would start to run away absent-mindedly as soon as the scene started.

Ronald, who couldn't think of a way, had to go to bed and sighed as soon as he lay down.

"Hey...hey..."

Half an hour later, Ronald was still tossing and turning in his mind.When filming "High School of Rock and Roll" in the new century, Jim Cameron was smarter than himself. He followed the director every day to see how the directors directed the performance. He must have noticed this problem on purpose at that time.

I have participated in various technical links and learned all kinds of professional knowledge that directors need to know when making movies.But these professional knowledge still have the opportunity to remedial learning, the director arranges and guides the performance, and the method of unifying the emotions in the later stage is not so easy to learn.

Where else can I find a director to learn on-site?

Huh?
Ronald got up from the bed at once. Didn't Coppola agree with the directors' union to send an apprentice director to follow him as a trainee?This time we must seize the opportunity and learn from behind him.

Coppola was going to shoot SE Hinton's novel, "The Outsiders." Ronald remembered that Diane Lane had given him a collection of Hinton's novels as a gift.

After squatting on the ground and rummaging through unpacked cardboard boxes for a long time, I finally found this novel.He turned it out, looked at it intently, and a youthful aura came over his face.

Half an hour later, Ronald hurriedly finished the novel and let out a sigh: "What the hell is this about?"

The plot of the novel is not complicated.

In the small town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, there are two rival teenage gangs.The "Greasers" formed by the poor children of Italian descent, and the "Greasers" formed by the rich Ansa white children (Socs, the abbreviation of Socials, the original meaning is to socialize, and it is extended to the sons who have a social life).

The young master has a car to drive and ice cream to eat.The oil head gang can only watch an old movie with a few cents out of their trouser pockets.For some ridiculous reason, the two gangs were at odds with each other, and they started fighting each other right after class.

There is an orphan named "Ponyboy" who belongs to the Oilhead Gang in the town. He has a second brother named "Sodapop" and their eldest brother is named Darry.

Ma Zai and Soda Water are not their nicknames, but their real names given by their uneducated father.Don't laugh, Oklahoma was such a backward place at the time, and the father didn't even have the ability to name his son.

After spending money to hire a middle school teacher to give my eldest brother a decent name, my father started drinking heavily, so he just randomly named his second and third children.

The novel is written with Ma Zai as the protagonist. They belong to the Youtou Gang, and a girl nicknamed "Cherry" from the Gongzi Gang is watching a movie in a drive-in theater. Ma Zai and Cherry have a communication.

After this was discovered by the Young Master Gang, taking advantage of Ma Zai and his friend Johnny being alone, they beat them up, and even drowned Johnny in the fountain.

Johnny stabbed a member of the Young Master Gang to death with a knife.With the help of Dally (not the big brother Mazi), another young man with a good background but mixed up with the oil gang, Mazai and Johnny take refuge in an abandoned church in the field.

After the church caught fire, Johnny rushed into the church to save the child, was severely burned, and died in the hospital.

Ma Zai felt that he had to obey Johnny's last words and rush out of this hopeless and introverted place.He started writing, so he wrote this "Urchin Outside the World".

Ronald turned to the back cover of the book, where it read "First Printing, April 1967".

No wonder the plot in it is so peculiar. It turned out to be Hinton's work when he was a teenager and in high school.America at that time was the America of young people in small towns.The values ​​of small-town youth are the values ​​promoted by officials and Hollywood.

Hinton belongs to the baby boom generation. At that time, many young people from small towns flocked to big cities to find jobs, and started the largest wave of urbanization in American history.

The material poverty of all kinds of young people in small towns, the world background of talking about brotherhood, and deciding the distribution of resources by force, are gradually unfamiliar to the current generation of young people.

Just a few years after the novel was published, the baby boom was officially over.The average number of children in the new generation of families has decreased significantly, and many children born in white middle-class families in the suburbs are already very far away from the jungle-like ecology of teenagers.

They are more familiar with chatting on the phone, sorted by interest in school, than by birth.Sufficient demand for fast food jobs and a relatively reduced number of school-age teenagers allow wages to rise high enough.Working hard can bridge the economic gap caused by some family backgrounds.

It is now [-], and the first generation of baby boomers is about to graduate from high school. Will these new generation of teenagers still resonate with the scene that Hinton described back then?
Anyway, this is not Ronald's concern.

According to Nisita, Coppola attaches great importance to this movie and thinks it is the girl version of "Little Gone with the Wind" and the boy version of "Little Godfather".Has the potential to be as box-office success as the "Godfather" duo was.

Maybe it was because of the blood-filled plots in the novel "Urchin Outside the World" just now, Ronald didn't feel sleepy all of a sudden.He who has always had a good sleep quality has actually suffered from insomnia.

Ronald wanted to get up and do some exercise, so that he could fall asleep after his body was exhausted.But there is no gym for him to exercise in the middle of the night, and he is a little worried about his safety when he goes out for a run in the middle of the night in Los Angeles.

Ronald inspected the equipment in the room, and suddenly found the video tape that Jane Fonda sent to him.

"Jane Fonda Rhythmic Exercise?" Ronald looked at Jane Fonda on the cover who was in excellent shape, opened the box, found the video recorder, and stuffed it in.

Several beauties in ballet training suits and leg warmers performed various stretching exercises in the training room.The camera backed up slowly and captured a beautiful woman on the far right, which was Jane Fonda.

"Are you ready for some exercise?" Jane Fonda yelled into the camera.

All the beauties answered "Yeah!"

"Let's start with the simple moves. Spread your feet a little wider than your shoulders, hold your head up, your abs tight...then start stretching your head, left...one two, back...three four, right...five six ..."

Ronald also stretched his neck in his pajamas on the floor following Jane Fonda's movements.

"one two three four."

One, two... three, four, no difficulty.Ronald felt that this was a bit simple for himself, so he picked up the remote control and fast-forwarded half an hour.

"Let's kneel down first, bring the knees together, lift one knee, let the legs be parallel to the body, one two three four, two two three four..."

This is not bad, Ronald thinks this kind of action is a bit interesting to do by himself, and it will be quite tiring after a long time.

"Then it's a stretching movement, try to separate your legs, hold your ankles with your hands, then squat down, with your knees parallel to the ground, stretch your inner thigh muscles, one two...three four..."

"Oh, Shxt, I'm sure my inner thighs will be sore tomorrow." Ronald followed the video tape for 45 minutes and finally couldn't bear it anymore. This kind of aerobic exercise is still good for women, and long-distance runners are better at it.

I am a wrestler who pays attention to explosive power, not good at it, not good at it...

"The last thing is to sort out the activities, put your hands on your ankles, keep your head down as much as possible, inhale...exhale...inhale...exhale..."

The rhythm of Jane Fonda's teaching was getting slower and slower, and Ronald felt a surge of drowsiness, so he hurriedly took a shower and jumped into bed to sleep.

"Inhale...exhale...inhale...exhale..." Lying on the bed, Ronald was still breathing according to the rhythm of Jane Fonda, slowly becoming more and more calm in his heart, as if he had reached a place where there was nothing Sleep sweetly in the living space.

In my sleep, it seemed that someone was talking to me.Ronald vaguely saw someone put a shiny round plastic object with a hole in the middle on a saucer like a teacup holder, and then pressed the button, and the teacup holder retracted with a click.

Then a screen like a computer monitor appeared in the field of vision, but with a picture of colorful blue sky, white clouds and green grass on it.With a squeak, a picture like the panel of a video recorder appeared on the screen, with playback, pause, fast forward, and so on.

With a tick, a white arrow clicked on the triangular play button, and a section of the screen jumped out.

A piece of melodious music sounded, and there was a nice male voice singing in the background.

"Seize the moment, long ago
One breath and you'll be there

so young and carefree

you will see again
That place in time is so golden. "

An old photo that seemed faded appeared on the screen. On it were six young men with oily hair. The picture was shrouded in gold like the setting sun, and the titles of the films appeared on the screen from right to left.

"The Outsiders"

"Damn, I really dreamed about it." Ronald talked in his sleep in his sleep.

Accompanied by the golden color of the setting sun, the title of the film and various cast and crew lists began to appear.But the list was white, and it was hard to see against the golden background screen. Only the last director's name occupied the entire screen. Ronald could see clearly that it was "Francis Coppola".

The opening music gradually stopped, and a boy in a hoodie and jeans walked out of the movie theater.He was chased by a group of "Gongzi Gang" driving a car and wanted to beat him.

The boy in the hoodie made a desperate escape, crossing the railway crossing and into a significantly poorer area.A few boys from the "Oil Head Gang" came out and helped the boys beat off the Gongzi Gang who were in the car.

"This is the beginning of 'Urchin'." Ronald gritted his teeth, and found out that the actors of the two oil-headed boys knew each other.One is Tom Cruise and the other is Matt Dillon.

There are two other actors who also look familiar, I don't know where they have seen each other.Which roles are they playing?
In a daze, it seemed that after playing a movie for a long time, Ronald found another acquaintance.In the drive-in episode, Matt Dillon keeps messing with a girl sitting in front of him and playing with her hair:
"How do I know if this red hair is natural? Is she the same color as your... ah... ah... eyebrows?"

Finally he pissed off the girl, who turned around and yelled, "Get your feet off my back, shut up!"

A close-up of the face was shown.It turned out to be Diane Lane!

Ronald felt that Diane's makeup had been specially processed to make her look a little older than real.

The two continued to entangle the conversation, and Ronald saw that something was wrong.

Matt Dillon and Diane Lane, the mood of the two speaking is very in tune.One sentence per person, the emotions gradually progress.Ti Lung kept upgrading his methods to provoke Diane, and Diane's reaction ranged from ignorance, to boredom, and finally broke out, and was amused by Ti Lung.

The yoke and close-ups of the two switched back and forth, and the emotional upgrades were very consistent.

Ronald wanted to go back and watch it again. How did this come about?Why is Coppola able to shoot in such a correct mood?

He tried to reach for which screen, but couldn't reach it.The picture continues to advance, and it becomes night again.

The members of the "Youtou Gang" and the "Gongzi Gang" lined up one by one, preparing to use a group fight to decide who is the righteous side.People on both sides may be good friends or teammates on the football team, but they are divided into two sides because of their origins and hairstyles.

With an order, the people on both sides rushed up to catch each other and start fighting.

Ronald was anxious. This kind of shot is easy to shoot. What he wants to see is the conversation shot just now. Why can he be emotionally shot?He wants to read the study again.

Stretching out his hand again to touch the screen, Ronald suddenly felt empty...

"what!"

He fell off the bed again.

"Mr. Coppola, how did you shoot it? Why are all the dialogue shots so emotionally unified? Did you shoot all the shots in this scene in order regardless of the cost? Or is there any special way?" Ronald Getting up from the ground, he shouted for the first time.

Well, Ronald woke up and was still in his room.It seems that I had another dream, dreaming of a few scenes from the finished film "The Urchin Outside the World".

Ronald went to the kitchen to boil water, made himself a cup of black tea in bags, and collected himself.

Call Nisita tomorrow, and then find a way to contact the original author, Ms. Hinton. I must go to the crew of "The Urchin of the World" to learn how the great director solves the problem of consistency in performance.

(End of this chapter)