Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 277 Balance Game

   But in order to please the audience, strengthen Sean Penn's role, and give him an ending to the main character's treatment, you must first cut out the scenes where others are not so good.

   For example, Stacey and Linda take the stairs to the basement parking lot after cleaning out the pizza place. The two were discussing how to take the initiative to call the handsome audio salesman. At this time, a working girl from another school came and asked Linda for advice.

   "Linda, I'm from... high school, and Judy said I could ask you something."

   "Yes, you ask." Linda turned to Stacey and said, "I know Judy."

   "My boyfriend and I want to..." The girl looked down, as if asking a very embarrassing question, "We want to... um..."

   Then the girl covered her mouth with her hand and spoke in Linda's ear.

   "Okay, are you an adult?"

"Yes."

   "You go to something called a free clinic and tell them you're with your boyfriend on a regular basis, two or three times a week. You need those little pills."

   "They won't tell my family, will they?"

   "No, they won't tell your family if you're over sixteen."

  The film was finished on the monitor screen, and the editor suggested to Ronald, "This section can actually be deleted without affecting the overall follow-up story. There are fifty-seven seconds in total.

  From the perspective of everyone's story development, this scene of Stacey and Linda talking is used to explain the background story. In fact, deleting most of them does not affect the development of the plot. "

"But the existence of free clinics is explained here, which foreshadows Stacey's unplanned pregnancy in the future." Ronald hesitated, "If we don't explain here, and the concept of a free clinic suddenly appears later, will the audience feel abrupt? ."

   "Hahaha, Ronald, you're finally talking like a movie director." Editor Eric couldn't stop laughing.

"What's the meaning?"

"I've worked with a lot of directors, and they always come up with all kinds of reasons to keep their shots. Only you feel more like an edit to me, and don't have a lot of emotional remorse about cutting shots. But you're finally like a The director thought that way."

"Hi. I'm not afraid that the audience won't understand. Not all American audiences are familiar with the concept of free clinics in California. In many conservative states in the central and southern regions, such clinics are often vandalized, and doctors and nurses will be destroyed. people beat.

  CBS TV also reported a case in Texas two days ago. A free clinic that provided contraception and abortion was burned. "

  Although the Supreme Court's "Roev.Wade" decision in 1973 gave women the right to be responsible for their own bodies and inviolable privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.

   But the jurisprudence of the highest judicial organ in America is not automatically effective in each state, each state needs separate legislation to protect it, and some conservative states can also use other legislation to hedge.

Southern states, with strong religious and conservative forces, tried to pass various state laws to counteract the impact of Roe v. Wade. In Texas, where the Roe v. Wade case occurred, ordinary teenagers were not familiar with this free-for-all. Clinic concept.

   "Forget it, just relying on these 50 seconds of footage, can they understand the concept of California's freedom and openness?" said editor Eric.

   "That makes sense, let's cut this part out."

   Ronald is no longer insisting. In fact, the name of the free clinic implies a lot. Free (Free) also means freedom in English. Moreover, although free clinics have no medical fees, drug fees and other expenses are not cheap.

   Their name is also a deliberate use of semantic puns to evade state legislation and give women a safe haven.

  Be aware that in some particularly conservative places, such as areas where Catholicism is prevalent and conservative areas in the South Central, women cannot even prescribe simple contraceptives.

   A doctor prescribing a prescription for someone's wife will spread throughout the town in less than half a day. Strong social pressure will make women give up any measures, the result is to have children one after another.

   It is impossible for the audience in these places to have a deep understanding of the big city of Los Angeles that they have never been to through a dialogue. But a hint of a name is enough to conjure teenage girls with the idea that Los Angeles is a place that is free about their own bodies.

   This 50-second shot is actually similar to the name of a "free clinic" in terms of the efficiency of conveying stories and emotions.

  Movies are created by artists, but artists also need to pay attention to efficiency. What can be delivered in a second, there is no need to schedule a minute.

   "Remove this part, please note it down." Seeing Ronald's agreement, the editor instructed the assistant to record the number of this shot.

   "Let's continue." Then the editor took a roll of film himself and loaded it.

   In the next scene, after a while, the handsome guy in the audio sales never asked Stacey out again. A distressed Stacey spoke to Linda again.

   "My 'stupid' mom answered his call and told her that I was still in high school and he would never call me again. What should I do, go to the stereo store to find him?"

   "Don't be silly, Stacey. He's just a stereo salesman, what do you want? Marry him and have him a baby?"

   "In the future, I have to say that I am eighteen years old, so I am still in high school, and it is not easy to get through."

  The editor finished watching this section and said to Ronald, "Let's delete this section too, Stacey was dumped by the handsome guy, and everyone can guess from the later stories."

   "No, this section cannot be cut." Ronald shook his head.

   "The audience just saw Stacey dating a handsome guy from a stereo shop. The handsome guy even sent flowers to Stacey's house. If you don't explain it, the audience will find it strange later."

   "But then didn't Stacey date nerdy Mark again? Audiences would have guessed that she and the stereo shop dude didn't go on."

"Yes, that's why I want to keep this scene. If the audience wants to recognize that Stacey is a girl who values ​​emotions more than men and women, there must be an explanation here, otherwise Stacey and the cheerleaders will be bold and unrestrained. What's the difference between women? How can she justify herself when she ends up with Mark?"

   "But isn't that redundant?"

"No, you, like me, have read the story a dozen times. We all already know exactly what kind of person Stacey is. But those who haven't read the original novel, know Stacey from the screen for the first time. Tessie, they're the ones the movie wants to please.

  I don't want them to think Stacey is weirder and lessen interest in the story. "

   "Okay, you're the boss. It's only ten seconds anyway. Keep it."

   Such trade-offs continued for several days. When the entire film was finally assembled, Ronald discovered that he had unknowingly cut about 20 percent of the footage. There are only ninety-six minutes left in the length of the film.

  Ronald and the editor watched the ninety-six minutes of film completely through the horizontal editing machine.

   "Do you feel it? The rhythm of the six characters' appearances is a bit unsmooth." Editor Eric took the initiative to start the conversation.

   "Yes, you're right. And the actors' performances lacked the foreshadowing of other shots, and the intensity of the emotions was a bit off." Ronald also agreed with the editor.

   This "Proclustes' bed" style editing method is very efficient in cropping shots. In two days, the cutting time that could have been barely achieved in 20 days was completed.

   But at the same time, it also brought a lot of side effects.

  An important side effect is that the proportion of each character's appearance is a bit messy.

  For example, Mark the nerd who had a crush on Stacey because he was shy by nature. Went to Stacey's house on the first date with Stacey's house. After kissing Stacey, Mark was very uncomfortable with the progress of himself and the goddess of secret love, and ran away from Stacey's house.

   After this, it was a long time before Mark appeared again. This is Stacey, with his good friend Mike the scalper, having an unexpected pregnancy. During a visit to the hospital in biology class, Stacey remembered her surgery and ran out and vomited.

  Mark went up to comfort her. His gentlemanly behavior made Stacey realize that what she wanted more was a stable, mutually supportive relationship.

   But for dozens of minutes in between, Mark did not appear in the plot, and suddenly disappeared and appeared, which would make the audience forget the plot of this character.

   "We have to add a bit of drama to Mark. Or cut out the plot between him and the scalper Mike in the early stage, and move it a little to the middle part."

   Ronald understood exactly what the editor Eric was thinking, went to the whiteboard on the wall and started looking.

   But he got nothing, the six main characters' scenes were packed into 90 minutes of scenes, and everyone's plot was reduced to a few points.

   The nerd Mark has a date with Stacey and forgets to bring his wallet, and asks Mark to send the money. Later, it was learned that Mike robbed his girl and fought with him in the locker room.

   But these scenes and the front and back plots are very logical, and there is no way to cut and move a part where Mark does not appear in the middle.

   "How do you see this?" Eric watched the opening scene over and over on the editor, and finally found an embarrassing shot of Mark.

   This was originally the scene where the character was explained in the opening scene. Mark clumsily avoided the two girls.

   "We're adding it to the prep and Lincoln High school football prep footage?" Ronald asked.

   "Yes, there's another shot here where Linda and Stacey are talking about Mark running away in the middle of a date, we'll add that too."

  Linda and Stacey on the monitor are applying masks to themselves.

   "For a boy like Mark, you have to take the initiative and take the first step." Linda said.

   "I'm very proactive. Not only did I take the first step, but I also took the second and third steps." Stacey complained, "Mark doesn't like my type at all."

   "Adding this section adds more than a minute. And Stacey's role in these ten minutes is too heavy, and we have to cut out other scenes."

The    editing is just like this, pulling the whole body. Move the weights to one side of the scale, and the rest of the balance is disrupted. Ronald and editor Eric, the two of them are playing this delicate game of balance.

   After several days of permutations and combinations in the editing room, the two finally cut a version with relatively balanced characters and stories.

  Ronald moved the position of the camera on the whiteboard, and in the emotional role scene, he painted another line with a color highlighter to make the color appear a little darker.

   Then he took a few steps back and watched the various cards on the whiteboard make up a picture. Just like in Mondrian's paintings, it's just line segments made up of lines of various colors.

   However, the color represented by the emotional intensity of the character is dark or light, and the number of colors represented by the appearance of the character is more or less. Each character starts from the occasional appearance of light color at the beginning of his own story, to the intensive appearance of dark color, and finally has his own ending.

  The regularity of their appearance on more than 40 cards is also evenly distributed.

   Six protagonists represented by six colors, Brad, Stacey, Linda, Mark, Mike, Spiccoli, patchwork, plus an American history teacher Mr. Hand.

  Ronald picked up the imaging camera once and took a picture at the whiteboard. Polaroid spat out the black photo, Ronald tore it off, tossed it in the air, and after a while, a photo developed on the photo

   The colors on the whiteboard cards are arranged in a Mondrian-esque modernist painting. The colors represented by each character, like musical instruments with different timbres, tell their own stories.

   Mark the nerd and Stacey, who has a crush, end up as a couple.

  Brad was fired from his job as a foreman by Burgers of America, and was promoted to store manager because of an accidental capture of a robber.

  There is a scalper Mike who borrowed money from everywhere to cover Stacey's surgery expenses, and was sprayed with the word liar on the car.

  There is Linda because she couldn't make her imagined "perfect boyfriend", so she had to cry to her best friend at the dance that she was dumped by her boyfriend.

   There is also Stacey who finally found out that she liked Mark after getting along with several men, and the two returned to the normal high school love mode.

   Of course, I had to fight with Spiccoli, and finally reluctantly went to Spiccoli's house to teach him history, and let him get a yard from Mr. Hand, who let him graduate.

There is also a confused Spiccoli, whose car was destroyed but he defeated Jefferson, a black football star at Lincoln High School, almost dumped by Brad and finally dumped Brad's girlfriend Lisa... and so on. More than a dozen vivid supporting roles.

   The various colors represented by the stories of these supporting characters and protagonists are scattered and scattered, and finally converge into a grand symphony on the photo.

  Editor Eric also came over and looked at the snapshot in Ronald's hand. "It's a beautiful picture. I think we can connect the working film and give the producer a full screening."

   "Yeah, how long has it been?"

   "The total length now is eighty-seven minutes and thirty-four seconds." The editing assistant reported to Ronald with a notebook.

   "Please pick up the working copy." Ronald tapped the photo with his hand. It represents the red part of Spiccoli, which is still a bit small. Would you consider taking some additional pictures? Give him an ending?

At the end of the novel, Spiccoli saved the life of the award presenter Brooke Shields who accidentally fell into the sea in the surfing competition, and won a large bounty. And spent the money on the rock band Van Halen to celebrate his birthday, and ended up being a pauper.

   "If you want to shoot these, you have to add an additional budget, or let the producers see it first, and if they are satisfied, they can start lobbying." Ronald thought.

   (end of this chapter)