Exploiting Hollywood 1980

  Chapter 332 Don't Stop the Camera

  Tulsa itself does not have a print shop. Negatives for "Other Boys" had to be sent to Warner Bros.'s nearest laboratory in Dallas, Texas for processing.

   Every two days, the filmed negatives will be sent to the laboratory, processed into samples, and sent back. The crew will rent a movie theater in Tulsa at night to play these samples.

Due to the constraints of   , the practice of viewing samples every day has also become one every two days.

   What is on the screen today is the emotional scene of the three brothers filmed at Ma Zai's house.

   Patrick Thwaites, who plays the eldest brother, is actually thirty. It's quite convincing to play the 20-year-old eldest brother. Although he is old and has a little wrinkle on his face, he is full of male hormones and his explosiveness of anger is still very much like a young man.

   was beaten by the elder brother, the horse boy played by C. Thomas Hall, slept on the same bed with the second brother soda in the bedroom, and the two had some heartfelt words.

   This dialogue was actually filmed in two days. The first day of shooting was the talking scene of Howe's horse boy, and the second day was the talking scene of Rob Law's second brother soda pop.

  The dailies were not edited, and they swiped across the big screen. Ronald looked at the picture without synchronized dialogue, and could only understand the scene of the dialogue between the two after the final editing through his imagination.

   But sometimes, without dialogue, the audience can focus on the facial expressions of the actors.

   Ronald looked at the close-up pictures of the two actors on the screen. From the beginning to the development of emotions, the process of being stimulated by the other party, reacted, and in turn stimulated the other party, can be said to be very vivid.

   Coppola didn't have much scheduling and interference, but the two of them performed very well.

   "How did he do it?" Ronald blurted out when he saw this.

   "What?" Sitting next to Ronald was Diane Lane, and his father Bert.

   "I mean, how did Coppola make their dialogue progress so well? It was filmed in two days?" Ronald remembered that Burt had worked as an acting coach before driving a taxi, so he simply asked for advice.

   "Didn't they rehearse for two weeks? On the last day, they rehearsed every scene of the two-hour script from start to finish, in sequence, without stopping?"

  Bert looked at Ronald, but wondered why he didn't understand this.

   "Ronald, you haven't formally studied acting, have you?"

"No."

   "The continuity of the performance is solved by rehearsal.

  Especially in movie performances, every scene is cut apart. You said a word, the opposite actors may be filmed in two weeks. Therefore, the main purpose of the rehearsal before shooting is to solve the problem of scale in performance.

The non-stop rehearsal on the last day allows each character to have a deep understanding of their own play and the role they play in the whole story, so that when they are officially shooting, they can mobilize their emotional memory during the rehearsal and know that this scene should be How much emotion to give.

   When the final cut was made together, the emotions of the actors naturally matched. "

   "So it is." Ronald didn't expect the answer to be so simple. No wonder Coppola had to rehearse each scene in the order in the script during the previous rehearsal.

  The official shooting is not in order, but the rehearsal is strictly in accordance with the order of each scene.

  This allows each actor to know the trajectory of his character development, the role of each scene in the whole movie plot, and the development of the characters, so that actors can know what they are doing when they are actually filming.

   How much force should this sentence use? How sad and resentful should this crying scene be? Does this scene need to break out suddenly, or does it happen naturally? The scale and proportion of all performances are resolved during rehearsal.

   "How did you deal with this when you were a director?" Burt looked at Ronald.

   "I don't know, just shoot hard."

  Ronald doesn't know how to shoot the "fast tempo". There is no overall rehearsal plan, especially the non-stop rehearsal at the end. No wonder I am so embarrassed to see my director's play on the big screen, which makes people hide their faces and want to remake them.

   "Hollywood..." Bert muttered and stopped talking. Roger Coleman may be able to train a director to make money-making films, but he will never be able to train a master artist.

   "I still have a question. Every time they rehearse and perform, the actors are actually consuming freshness. Why are they still full of emotions when they are filming?"

   Ronald found the problem again. When directing by myself, the emotions of the first or second line are often the most natural and full. If you want to shoot the third, fifth, tenth... the actors start to get tired. They don't have the same rush of emotion that they had when they first started.

  So sometimes although the first one is flawed, but because of the wonderful performance, it will still be used.

   "Actual shooting is still different from rehearsal," Bert replied, and then moved closer to Ronald's ear, "Also, didn't you notice that Coppola was giving actors energy every day, like Diane and Dillon?"

   Ronald glanced at Diane who was sitting next to Bert. Diane hasn't spoken to Matt Dillon these days. Dillon also seemed to despise Diane and was reluctant to speak to her.

   This is to let the actor take the role in daily life.

   Ronald finally understood the purpose of Coppola's series of tricks. For example, two gang actors play tricks on Diane, such as deliberately making Diane and Dillon hate each other...

  In this way, in the drive-in theater tomorrow, when Dali played by Dillon molested Cherry played by Diane, the emotional accumulation of the two will spew out...

   "Some directors like to let actors improvise on the spot, which is also the reason." Burt came to the interest. He hadn't been a drama performance coach for a long time. It was rare for anyone to ask for advice, so he said a few more words to Ronald.

   "You know Stanislavsky, why do you study performance methods?"

"Uh, I really don't know. I don't like Methodists very much." Ronald has always had a prejudice against Methodists, believing that their methods are too involved, intruding into the private space that actors should maintain, and then taking out personal privacy Come out and show it naked to others.

   "No, that's Lee Strasbourg's rubbish. Stanislavsky was originally designed to solve the problem of actors losing the ability to infect the audience as the number of performances increases in theatrical performances."

  Bert talked about the performance system he understood.

  The interaction between people is very subtle. Based on their own life experience, the audience can quickly judge whether the actor is really emotional, or just fake laughing and crying.

  Repetition is an actor's worst enemy. Performing the same play day after day in the theater will quickly lose the actor's stereotype. The audience will never again appreciate the subtlety of the play.

  All performance systems are to solve the problem of authenticity of this performance.

"There is a way to improvise. If you say a different line from the script and do a different action, your opponent and another actor will feel the fresh stimulation and give a real reaction. .

  A good director usually tells the actors not to stop and continue to perform when an accident occurs. Often this kind of performance is the most exciting. "

  Bert was known for teaching improv when he was an acting coach.

   He and his partner once broke into Lee Strasbourg's actor studio, improvised for ten minutes, and then lied to the other party that it was a rehearsal. In the end, the decryption was made up by himself, and he laughed at the other party.

   Soon Ronald saw the surprise on the set, the excitement for the actors, and thus the extra authenticity.

  The scene that caused Diane and Dillon to not talk on set was filmed on this day, and Dali was flirting with Cherry at the drive-in.

  Dalí, played by Matt Dillon, starts by pulling up Diane's hair, then pretends to ask her if she's naturally red or dyed.

   Ronald hid in a safe area behind the camera, staring at Diane's performance.

   Sure enough, her unhappy look is very real. Not only is she disgusted with Dillon herself, but she is also very uncomfortable with Dillon's behavior of blowing on her neck. There are probably a lot of real elements to this expression.

   However, because there is still an outburst in the back, Di An still restrained her emotional expression. Now she is in a state of being bullied, unhappy and afraid to attack a little girl, very charming.

   Next, Dillon should put his feet on the back of the empty seat in front of him and continue to provoke Diane with his feet.

   Then Diane couldn't take it anymore and turned back to scold the little ruffian.

   "Hey, hey..." Matt Dillon completely let go of his hands in order to express Dalí's dashing and arrogant image, leaning only on his buttocks on the seat. With his feet elevated, he fell under the chair accidentally.

   "Hahaha..." Di An and Howl, who played the horse boy behind, burst out laughing.

   The youngest actor, Howe, looked at the camera and asked for a signal from the director whether to stop shooting.

   Ronald gestured to him in a hurry, such a good opportunity to improvise, it would be a pity if he was ruined by the action of looking at the camera.

  Dian is much more sophisticated, just glanced at the director and the camera out of the corner of the eye, and seeing that there was no signal to stop, he immediately continued to play a beautiful girl who was angry.

   Fortunately, Howl saw Ronald's gesture and "continue" mouth shape, and quickly turned his head back and continued to perform.

   "Cut!"

  Coppola came over and patted Ronald on the shoulder after this one was over. This one is fortunate that Ronald is clever, otherwise, if Howl watches the camera for a long time, there will be no room for editing the whole scene, and he can only discard it all.

   "Well done, Diane." Ronald stepped forward to congratulate Diane. She had done the best in this scene and was the youngest old actor on the set.

   "Small meaning." Dai Installed for a while, but still couldn't help giggling proudly.

   "Bravo!"

   Coppola took the lead in applauding the splendid performance at the dailies a day later. All the teenage actors know the goods and know that such coincidences are unavoidable, and they all applaud.

"I have an idea. When I shoot the fight between the two gangs, I can wear the ugly dentures I used to wear, so that when someone punches me, I can spit out the dentures when I turn my head. , it's more realistic."

  Tom Cruise was captivated by Dillon and Diane's wonderful acting skills and wanted to follow suit. He thought of a plot for his character and asked Ronald if it would make his play better.

   A little ruffian whose dentures flew out, not only the audience felt real, but also turned into an impromptu performance, allowing the actors in the opposite play to react more realistically.

   "Francis, Tom has a new idea for the next day's battle."

   Ronald took him to Coppola and let him speak his mind.

"My front teeth are fake, and I still have the cheap crowns I bought in the supermarket before, which I can put on in this scene and close-up, and the crowns are so loose that when I tilt my head too hard, it will be thrown. come out……"

   Tom Cruise sincerely hoped that Coppola would let him improvise.

   "So all your close-ups and close-ups will have to wear this ugly denture, aren't you worried about your image?"

   "I'm not worried, I'm worried that the characters are not real enough..." The young Tom Cruise was decisive.

   "Alright, let Ronald accompany you to talk to the makeup artist."

  Coppola saw that the handsome guy took the initiative to ask to be close to the role, and was also moved by his enthusiasm, and praised Tom Cruise for his dedication.

   (end of this chapter)