Exploiting Hollywood 1980

  Mimi Rogers couldn't do anything about it, she couldn't get in on the teachings of Confucius at all.

  America society always likes to pass some messy words to Confucius. In fact, the speeches of this wise man in the East were collected by his disciples and published. Anyone with a heart will find out that many of the words were not from him.

  The reason why the American people like to use "Confucius said" as a joke is because his English translation is "fucius", which sounds like "fused". Many specious "famous words" have been put on the head of Confucius.

   However, the words quoted by Ronald sound very old-fashioned. They are similar to the words in the "Bible", and the language is similar to that in the "Bible", which is simple and full of rhythm. Mimi Rogers didn't dare to make a mistake, so he changed the subject, stopped talking about oriental philosophy, and led to the teachings of Scientology, so as to avoid embarrassment.

   On the other hand, Tom Cruise was a little interested in Confucius. He took a chance and asked Ronald alone:

   "Is there any way to increase my ability to read and understand other people's words in the teachings of Confucius?"

"this?"

   Ronald was at a loss for words, so he just found a few ancient classics translated by Gu Hongming and flipped through them casually. Many people in Hollywood are philosophical, and they like to say some seemingly profound things.

  I didn't even think about being a life mentor?

   After thinking for a while, Ronald found a passage that seemed to meet Tom Cruise's request.

   "When a man has a standard of excellence before him, only then will he have a fixed and definite purpose.

   With a fixed and definite purpose, only then will he have peace and tranquility of mind.

  With peace of mind, only then can he have peace and tranquility of soul.

   has the peace and tranquility of the soul, and only then can he devote himself to deep, serious thinking and reflection.

   And only through deep, serious thinking and reflection can one gain true understanding. "

   "That makes sense..." Tom Cruise snapped and clasped his hands together in admiration, "When I signed Paula, I wrote a list to work with all the most famous directors in Hollywood.

   does establish a standard of excellence, and then I have a direction in whatever I do in filming.

   It seems that I have to set a target for dyslexia. "

   "Uh..." Ronald thought to himself, that's okay too?

   "Sorry, Tom, I really don't know enough about dyslexia to give you more guidance. Would you like to talk to some other experts besides Scientology?"

   "Mmmm..." Tom Cruise nodded immediately.

   But Mimi Rogers quickly leaned over and started chatting with Tom again. This woman is smart and tries to make herself as much of Cruise's time as possible, so that the influence of other people on him will be compressed to a minimum.

   "Ronald...Let's go inside and talk?"

   Jerry Bruckheimer came over, he and Don Simpson came to Ronald, not just to celebrate.

   "Okay, I'll come when I go, you're here to play." Ronald explained to Diane, and with Bruckheimer and Simpson, went to a small house on the second floor of the room to talk secretly.

   "This is the videotape of Top Gun, the latest recording."

  Don Simpson pressed the remote, a 21-inch color TV in the room was turned on, and he put an unlabeled video into the VCR below.

   An advertisement for a copycat version of the "Top Gun" plot appeared on TV.

  A fighter pilot named "Mustang" had a Pepsi Diet Coke in the cockpit that was fastened to the cup holder.

   In order to drink Coke, he did a reverse flight like the lone ranger played by Tom Cruise in the opening scene of "Top Gun", scaring away the MiG pilot. In this way, the cola was poured into the cup smoothly under the action of gravity.

   "Ha ha ha, this is an advertisement shot by Catherine Bigelow for Pepsi. It's still very skillful to move the camera."

  Ronald recognized it as Daydream, which used the stunt model of the ground cockpit that Cameron made during the filming of Top Gun, and hired Catherine Bigelow to shoot the Pepsi commercial.

   "Did they really put the commercial at the top of the videotape?" Ronald looked at the Casio digital watch, and he didn't even put the Paramount title, just a minute-long commercial.

   "Yes, Paramount agreed. I'll talk to you about this later. Watch the video first." Don Simpson motioned for Ronald to continue watching.

   "Pepsi, the choice of the new generation!"

After the    advertisement ended, a piece of text appeared on the TV, warning that it should not be played on for-profit occasions without permission, and the background was specially made of pink, green, and blue, and kept flashing and changing.

   "This is an anti-theft measure, combined with the automatic anti-theft chip of the video recorder, so that consumers cannot transcribe a copy and show it to friends." Bruckheimer explained the technical details.

Ronald nodded to understand that, except for the one he bought, VCRs produced before the Supreme Court's Sony v. Universal case, and now America's VCRs, can't be ripped, otherwise, like this warning, the background flickering can't be ripped. watch.

   "Dongdong... Dongdong..."

   The familiar bell rang at the beginning, and the title of Top Gun, telling the origin of TopGun flight school, appeared on the TV screen. Then there was Tom Cruise, Ronald, the names of the two producers, and finally, in the dim sunrise, the F-14 Tomcat appeared on the deck of the USS Enterprise.

   "This frame..." Ronald turned to Don Simpson.

   "Yes, this is the standard that Hollywood has recently explored. During telecine, it is cut by hand by the staff." Don Simpson nodded, confirming Ronald's guess.

   "It turned out to be like this. I thought, how can a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen be displayed on a 4:3 TV screen."

   Ronald cleared his doubts a little.

   In the earliest days, movies, like televisions, had an aspect ratio of 4:3.

  In the 1950s, after Hollywood's business was robbed of more than half of the TV station, Hollywood companies found a solution for the wide screen to fight TV.

  The old movies are all in 1.33:1 format, which is just right on the TV. In order to persuade everyone to go to the cinema, Hollywood invented 1.85:1, 2.35:1, etc., different widescreen formats. This wide screen has a large format not seen on TV sets, attracting audiences to the cinema to see truly wonderful pictures.

   But since the 1980s, with the popularization of video tapes and cable TV, many people have also started watching widescreen blockbusters on their TV sets at home.

   The 1:85 boxer-type widescreen generally has two ways to deal with it on the TV, or distort the aspect ratio and force it into the 4:3 TV. Either leave a black border at the top and bottom to keep the original aspect ratio.

   But "Top Gun" uses a 2:35:1 Panavision camera to shoot an anamorphic widescreen with a particularly large aspect ratio, almost equivalent to two 4:3 narrow-frame images superimposed in parallel.

  If the deformation method is used, the characters will become ridiculously thin. Don't tell the audience to look weird, a star like Tom Cruise would never allow himself to be that ugly.

  If the upper and lower edges are cut, then the upper and lower black edges of the entire TV will occupy almost half of the frame.

   This is also intolerable. TVs are inherently small, and most of the new TVs at home are about 21 inches. In some central and southern regions, the old-fashioned 14-inch and 16-inch are still very common.

  Leaving a wide black border up and down, the characters will become very small, and the expressions cannot be seen at all.

   So, in this "Top Gun" video, Paramount seems to have taken a new approach to the widescreen conversion.

  When converting the film into a magnetically recorded video tape, the staff seemed to use a 4:3 frame on the screen to buckle a segment of the original widescreen, so that the actors appeared on the TV without distortion.

The disadvantage of    is that the visual impact brought by the wide screen that the audience can enjoy, and the canvas that is enough to accommodate three people's dialogue and blank space have been cancelled.

   In the opening shot of the F-14 Tomcat taking off on the aircraft carrier, only the nose of the fighter was cut off, the aircraft carrier on the left and right sides in the background, and the vast sea and sky were all cut off.

   "In this way, at most some of the wide-screen visual impact is lost, and the plot and actors' performances are well preserved."

  Don Simpson introduced to Ronald, this is his carefully selected technical route, and the audience can restore the plot to the greatest extent.

   As for the missing impact of watching in the cinema, who made them not go to the cinema?

  Ronald continued to watch, he looked like he was watching the footage of the Lone Ranger returning to the deck, and another pilot, waiting for an interview outside the door of the aircraft carrier commander, what the technicians would do.

  Here, the lone ranger, the two of them, and the other pilot, the jaguar, have a conversation outside the door. The three people are talking side by side, and there is a blank space to express the internal environment of the aircraft carrier.

When the    result was transcribed into a videotape, the technicians did a second editing process. When everyone spoke, they cut to the frontal face of the actor. Then when the other actor answers, cut to it.

   They took Ronald's wide-screen frontal medium shot alive and cut it into three frontal close-ups.

"Hahaha, so that's what you guys did, French-style editing." Ronald smiled and leaned back. With this, the originally vast artistic conception became the big head facing the actors in the TV series. According to the dialogue People close-up in clip style.

   This editing method was first used in a TV series called "French Open". Every time a person spoke, he was given a close-up shot. It is easy for the audience to understand, but some of the carefully arranged pictures are cut off by the 4:3 frame.

   "You agree? We think this is the best combination of the three methods." Jerry Bruckheimer happily helped.

   "Very good, I also think it's the best way." Ronald nodded in agreement with their choice.

   "Fine," Don Simpson hit the pause button. All three of them have seen this movie no less than a hundred times, and they almost vomited. Seeing Ronald agreed to do this, the show stopped.

   "One more thing, Pepsi is very satisfied with your daydream advertising work, and they also proposed to jointly promote the sale of video tapes with Paramount, so... We promised you that the 1% share will be changed."

   "How did it change?" Ronald crossed his legs, thinking that this was the most important purpose of the two producers looking for him today.

"That's right, Ronald. Pepsi has a proposal, they'll spend another eight million dollars to promote the ad on TV, and then add a video tape at the end of the ad. Paramount agreed to sell the video again. $6 off the price, so..."

   "Still lower?" Ronald was a little unhappy. I pay dividends based on the sales of the videotape, and I lose a penny for every dollar I lower the price.

"That's right, Pepsi has invested a lot of money this time, and Paramount also wants to try a new pricing strategy. We came to you, just to see how to make up for your losses." Bruckheimer said beside one sentence.

  Anyway, "Top Gun" has sold out, and Ronald Lee has made money for himself and his partner Don Simpson. There was no need to undercut his already small money on the videotape.

   Originally on the market, the price of the videotape of this kind of hot blockbuster is generally between 80-100 US dollars. There are also some directors who are reluctant to release the videotape version at all, for fear of piracy. For example, Spielberg does not want his films to be made into videotapes and sold.

Before the release of   , Paramount didn't know about "Top Gun", but it would sing along and win the box office championship in 1986.

Originally, Paramount was intending to use "Top Gun" as an experiment, using a relatively low price, to see if it could make the audience watching the video, instead of renting it from a video rental store for three dollars a night, but to buy one. Go home and see for yourself.

  So, this time Paramount cut the price in half, and it was priced at $38 at the beginning.

   Pepsi, who heard the news, thought it was a good opportunity, so he asked Ronald's company to shoot an advertisement that usually imitates movies, and reached an agreement. For every videotape sold, PepsiCo subsidizes consumers $6 for the cost of watching that one-minute ad.

   In this way, the retail price was driven down to $32.

   Who knew that Top Gun sang all the way, and actually won the annual box office champion last year.

   Pepsi's marketing department felt that it would have to work harder before the videotape was released. The annual box office champion could sell at a lower price, which is a very remarkable gimmick. Don't waste this great opportunity.

   After approval by the headquarters, Pepsi added another fee, subsidizing another $6 per videotape, and the final price was set at $26.95 by the marketing staff of Paramount and PepsiCo.

"Your income is divided according to the proportion of the retail price, so this price has an impact on your income. I discussed with Jerry and increased the share for you by 1.1% as compensation. In addition. , the movie won the box office championship, and we have a bonus."

  Don Simpson is sincere.

  The two producer partners of them have the production rights of "Top Gun". That is to say, after the movie is released, they can decide whether to give more money to the creators, and how much to share.

  The theater chain took a part of Lilan, and Paramount, as a publisher, also took a part, and the remaining money was not so much.

   But Ronald's wonderful director made the remaining money well above the average profitability of a movie.

   After negotiating, the two producers still have to be kind to people, and distribute a little from the rest to everyone, so as to form a good relationship and cooperate in the future, it will also be beneficial.

   "It's down $6, the original price is 32, but I lost nearly 20% of my money." Ronald felt that it was still a bit of a loss.

   "That's 1.2%, up 20% from the original." Don Simpson was very happy. "Actually, according to the calculations of marketing experts, lowering the price can stimulate sales. You are not a loss."

   "How much can it increase?" When Ronald heard it, he was satisfied. If he did this, he could earn a little more.

   It seems that the two producers are earning so much that they don't care about this small amount of money.

   "According to the formula calculated by Paramount's marketers, the price can be reduced from more than 80 US dollars to 26.95, which can increase sales by eight times."

   "Eight times as much..." Ronald just wanted to say more, but then he thought, "How many original sales were there?"

   "At a price close to $100, only video rental shops will buy them. There are thousands of rental shops across the country. Even if each of them buys ten video tapes for turnover, it will not exceed the scale of 50,000.

  If they're right, hopefully 400,000 videotapes have been sold this time around. "

   "Oh, that's not bad." Ronald did the math himself, so that he could still get more than 100,000 dividends. It happened that I was very poor recently, and I invested all my money in the movie "Spicy Dance". It's good to have some money.

   "That's it."

  Don Simpson stood up and shook hands with Ronald, and the two had sealed a new agreement.

   "Let my lawyer go to your lawyer when it's down. It's Lindsay, right?" Bruckheimer remembered Ronald's personal female lawyer.

  "Yes", Ronald nodded, "I still have some doubts, how did they predict eight times the sales? Is this based on experience or..."

   "I heard that they have a set of scientific algorithms, using Pepsi's national sales data, and then a set of forecasting algorithms developed by Harvard University to calculate the results with a computer. Don't worry, you won't make less money."

   Bruckheimer knew these details well.

   "Okay, anyway, I wish us success." Bruckheimer poured a bottle of red wine for everyone, Ronald picked it up, and clinked glasses with the two of them.

   "Here's your bonus, Ronald." Don Simpson was the more passionate of the duo.

   He took a check and slapped it into Ronald's hand.

   "When I saw your Saab commercial, I knew that this time we found the right person! Sure enough, we all made a fortune, hahahaha..."

  Don Simpson laughed wildly, recently he hadn't indulged himself for a long time because of the Twelve Steps.

   "Today's party is not interesting. Next time I ask you to come with me, I will find more beautiful women."

  Don Simpson finished one thing, was in a good mood, and walked out with his arms around Ronald's shoulders.

   Ronald was carried out of the room before he could read the numbers on the check, and when he came to the lobby on the second floor, he heard Don Simpson shouting to the following:

   "You know what? Making movies can really make a lot of money, ahahaha..."

   Tom Cruise and others below also applauded, whistled, and someone shouted at Don Simpson, "Don, Jerry, I love you guys."

   It seems that they have already received the red envelope check from the producer, and they are the last one.

   Ronald stayed for a while longer, turned down the idea of ​​Mimi Rogers inviting him to the Scientology Center for Stars, and left with Diane.

   Taking advantage of the gap in the door to let Diane get in the car, Ronald quickly took a check out of his pocket and glanced at it.

   starts with a number, followed by five 0s. Although it is not over a million, Ronald is very satisfied. This year’s daily expenses are guaranteed, as long as he doesn’t buy any big toys like Ferrari.

  Ronald turned to the other side and got in the car, looking at the clothes Diane was wearing, which he had seen her wear before.

   "I'll take you to buy clothes," Ronald said to Diane.

   "Okay, okay," Diane was very happy, grabbing Ronald's arm and leaning his head on it.

   "Bud, take us to Macy's." Ronald said to the little Bud who was sitting in front of him.

   Little Bud has been running around with him all this time, and it is also very hard, and he has helped himself with a lot of daily things. When he is a driver, he is also a personal assistant.

   This time, he has a check, and he has to give him a check, and then give him a holiday to go back to New York to accompany his girlfriend.

  Ronald still approves of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who have made a lot of money and distributed it to the main creators.

   "Hee hee", Diane grabbed his arm, closed his eyes, and laughed.

   Ronald also laughed. This girl had a similar family background as her when she was a child, and many habits were difficult to change. For example, shopping for new clothes could also make her happy.