Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 609 The wedding gift to Cameron

   "When are you going to have your wedding?" Ronald saw Cameron and Gail coming to dinner together, hugged each other sweetly, and asked the date of their wedding.

   "What do you say?" Cameron smiled at Gale in his arms. He still had a beard and was wearing a shirt and jeans. Dressed up as a truck driver.

  "I want to get the blessing of my parents", Gail cut a short ear-length hair, with two diamond earrings, looking more capable and sexy.

"Oh, let's chat while we eat." Ronald felt that he had said the wrong thing. Gail's parents were not satisfied with her marrying Cameron. Maybe her father was reluctant to pay for the wedding. To do your own wedding.

   "It doesn't matter, as long as I can be with Jim, I will produce, he will direct, and I will be satisfied with life." Gale saw Ronald's embarrassment and took the initiative to speak up.

"What projects do you have now?" Ronald hadn't had dinner with two friends for a long time. "The Terminator" made Cameron famous. Everyone knew that this guy could shoot spectacular special effects at a cheap cost. Movie director.

   "We just submitted the script for 'Alien 2', and the Screenwriters Guild will go on strike soon."

   "Huh?" Ronald was busy with director work and didn't know about the strike, "How long will it last?"

   "I heard it will take at least two weeks."

   "Will you guys get this item?" Ronald asked as he cut the steak.

"Fox's new chairman, Barry Diller, estimated that the movie would cost $35 million, and he wanted us to go. But we thought it would be a little over $15 million, and we wanted to find He discussed it once."

   "There is an instance of Terminator, he should believe you." Ronald forked a piece of beef, and the fully cooked taste was very good. There's a fad in Los Angeles right now to make steaks on the spot as sashimi in Japanese meals, and only cook them medium rare. Ronald wasn't too impressed with this kind of cutting corners.

   "I always feel very tired negotiating with the executives of these big studios, what can you do?" Gale drank some red wine and learned from Ronald.

"If there's one thing I've learned lately, it's to stick with your mind when dealing with studios. Those executive-level figures are busy, not filmmakers, and are often subject to the last and Interference with the thoughts of the people they communicate with. As long as you stick to your ideas and then make sense, they will gradually be influenced by you.

   You need to know that when these people look at people, it largely depends on whether you are confident. If you are confident, then they will feel that you fully understand what you are saying and tend to agree with you. "

   Ronald said some of his own views, such high-level executives often have multiple projects going on at the same time, and dealing with them, maintaining self-confidence is the best strategy.

  Cameron listened thoughtfully beside him.

  After dinner, they went to Ronald's office and started showing Ronald's footage of the fighter jets on the aircraft carrier.

   "It's interesting, are you going to take a shot in the cockpit?" Cameron got closer and looked at the details carefully.

   "Not only in the cockpit, but also a movie camera mounted on the camera gun in the pod on the outside of the fighter, so that you can shoot a pilot-like main perspective shot." Ronald explained his thoughts to Cameron.

   "Look at this canopy." Cameron said, pointing to the new bubble-style canopy of the F-14A taking off from the aircraft carrier, "Look at the reflection."

   On the glass of the cockpit cover, there was a reflection of the setting sun.

   "Oops", Ronald stroked the beard on his chin, "I have a main character who dare not take off, what should I do?"

  Fang Kilmer's fear of heights is very serious. Both the subjective perspective and the perspective in the cabin inevitably capture the blue sky and white clouds and objects in the cabin reflected on the cockpit glass of the Tomcat fighter jet.

  How can I get this reflection effect if I set the scene on the ground?

   Besides, the high-altitude shots should be unified with the scene-setting shots, so that when the audience sees the two clips together, they will not see the reaction of "this seems to be fake", which is very damaging to the viewing experience.

   "You should do two systems on the ground", Cameron gave Ronald a schematic drawing on white paper.

"You need a front-end projection system to project the images shot in the air onto the screen behind the cockpit set on the ground, making people mistakenly believe that it was shot at a high altitude. The traditional rear-end projection method is relatively fake, this Kubrick The front projection of the invention is more realistic and credible in perspective.”

Cameron pointed to the cockpit cover he drew on the paper, "The key to reproducing that reflection is to add a second projection here. Reflect the material on the glass of the cockpit cover synchronously, so that as long as your cockpit and Like a fighter jet, it is free in three axes, and the cockpit cover will show the same effect as a real shot, capturing the reflected scenery inside and outside the cockpit."

   Ronald nodded, pointed to the cockpit and asked, "How should I build this cockpit with three degrees of freedom on the ground?"

"The easiest way is to build a big ring, so that your cockpit can slide and rotate on this big ring, and then the cockpit itself can also rotate around its own axis. As for the third degree of freedom, you can put the camera in a rotating system and add it through the rotation of the camera. That way you don’t cost too much.”

   "How much would it cost if you got someone to build the system?" Ronald asked.

   "I can keep costs under $200,000."

   "You make a budget, no more than $350,000..." Ronald said.

   "Ronnie, Gale and I are still busy with Alien 2."

"It doesn't matter, you are responsible for the construction, and then recommend me a few suitable operators." Ronald waved his hand. He already understood Cameron's thinking. Free use of a friend's creativity.

   "Excess profit, just treat it as a wedding gift for you and Gale in advance."

   The next day, Ronald came to the two producers with the drawings of the stunt cockpit. Hearing that it was the idea of ​​the director of "Terminator", the two shouted that it was cheap, and immediately signed a check to buy Cameron's services.

   "Can you get your friends to help us shoot the whole thing?" Don Simpson likes Cameron's creative solutions.

   "He was spotted by Barry Diller and may want to make a sequel to Alien. He wrote the script." Ronald said he had no choice.

   The two producers exclaimed that it was a pity.

   Soon, a ground cockpit shooting mechanism will be built, and it is expected to be successfully debugged in a few weeks for Ronald to shoot.

"Ronnie, have you ever thought about the special effects of the aircraft's air combat?" Cameron came to help supervise the initial model building. Before building the real system, a small ring model must be built to verify the usability of the design. .

   "Tsk, that's what I'm worried about too." Ronald said to his friends, "The navy has promised us the real shot target of two air-to-air missiles, as well as the dispatch of the F-14A and F-5S fighter jets.

   But what I am most worried about is whether the special effects of the enemy plane being hit by a missile and exploding in the air and crashing can be consistent with the actual shot.

   And the shot of the lone ranger and the goose, stalling into a horizontal spiral, I'm not very sure that the pilot can do this kind of stunt, and our camera plane can take usable shots. "

  Horizontal spiral is a very easy crash situation in which the plane spins in the air after it loses the speed in the horizontal direction. Whether pilots can use the F-14A for such dangerous maneuvers, the Navy has not yet had a clear response.

   And even if you can use the Tomcat fighter to take real shots, it is difficult to find a plane that is slow enough to take a wonderful shot of the horizontal spiral in close range.

   "You'd better make a backup, Ronnie. Can't rely entirely on live shots from the air."

   "I know, how long does it take to complete such a model stunt?" Ronald asked Cameron, the stunt model expert.

   "If I were to do it, it might take at least three to six months before and after the design, production, debugging, modification, and re-production to meet your requirements." Cameron said a number.

   "Tsk", Ronald thought it was too long.

   "But there are suitable companies on the market, you can ask."

"Who?"

   "Lucas' ILM, don't you think the dogfight of fighter jets is very similar to the X-Wing Fighter vs. Tie Fighter in Star Wars?"

   "His, yes."

  In the evening, Ronald dialed the Skywalker Ranch home phone number that George Lucas had given him.

   "Mr. Lucas, I'm Ronald. I have some special effects shots of fighter dogfights, missile attacks, and crashes to be shot. I wonder if your ILM can accept foreign commissions recently?"

  Industrial Light & Magic, as a stunt benchmark in the industry, has always been the focus of the Hollywood Seven. However, Lucas has limited production capacity and can only give priority to his own special effects research, and a few friends such as Spielberg’s film special effects business.

   "No problem, I'll take over any business now, you can come here when you find time." Lucas agreed immediately, not afraid of running out of time for business.

   Ronald was a big surprise, and it was different from the legends in the industry.

   "I'm short of money right now, so I desperately need ILM's business income," Lucas explained.

   Ronald was moved, he thought Lucas was joking, how could he be short of money. Maybe it was because he was afraid that he would be embarrassed by his favor, so he said that on purpose.

   "By the way, I happened to ask you something. Ronald, you have directed many young actresses."

   "Yes, that's right." Ronald said respectfully.

   "Which one do you think has better acting skills? Or you can see live performances."

   "A lot", Ronald laughed, he has indeed directed many actresses with good acting skills. There are Phoebe Cates, who is the heroine in several of Spielberg's films, Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is suitable for tragedy, and Diane Lane, who is the closest to him. Coppola's favorite and used heroine many times.

   "No no, I don't want that kind of general acting skills, I want a heroine with outstanding imagination who can fall in love with the air."

   "Love in the air?"

"Yes, I'm in talks with Universal about a project that will feature an actress and a stunt animal. So it's got to be good acting, but also to be able to show love against a blue screen or a stunt model. It doesn't have to be sexy. , but a little bit of playfulness, preferably a little bit of rock, because the heroine is the lead singer of a rock band."

   "You can try Diane, Diane Lane. I filmed her as a rocker, and Francis liked her." Ronald recommended Diane right away.

   "Very well, I remember her, any more?"

   "Phoebe Cates is good too."

   "Steve recommended her. But I'm going to do a full audition and pick the best one." Lucas's ambitions are big.

   "Um..." Ronald racked his brains and thought about it, in addition to the actresses he had directed, there were two other actresses he knew well.

   "There was an actress who played 'Footloose', she was a cellist herself and sang, Lori Singer"

   "I know her," Lucas took her name down.

   "And one more, I did her Burger King commercial, and she's probably the most talented actress I've ever seen."

   "Is that the sweet girl from your karate movie?"

   "It's not Elizabeth Shue, she went to Harvard. I'm talking about Leigh Thompson, who recently did 'Back to the Future' and should be in post-production."

   "Okay, thank you, Ronald. Your recommendation is very valuable. I'll call them from Industrial Light and Magic, you can just go to them directly."

   (end of this chapter)