Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Ronald quickly started cleaning his nose with water, and it took him a while to clean his nostrils. No wonder the Actors Guild of America does not allow the use of smoke and heated powder for lighting. This pollution is too serious.

"Two intentional murderers, charged with manslaughter? What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese Americans killed a white man, they must Go to jail, maybe for life...There is something wrong with this country."

"Huh?" Ronald was wiping his face with a towel when he suddenly heard the Chinese guest named Lily Chen say something like this on a TV talk show.

Ronald simply walked out and sat by the bed to watch TV. What on earth was going on?

"Let's take a look at the whole story..."

It turns out that in June of this year, in the automobile city of Detroit, Chen Guoren, a Chinese young man who worked as a draftsman for a Detroit automobile company, was treated as Japanese by two white father and son during a bachelor party before his wedding at a local striptease bar. People insulted him and tried to hit him with a chair.

Chen Guoren knew martial arts and beat the white man and his son on the spot, then walked away.

A white father and son work at a Dodge factory on a production line that will lose their jobs when it is acquired by Mitsubishi Motors. The two found Chen Guoren, who worked part-time at a nearby McDonald's, and began to call him a Japanese devil who would cause white people to lose their jobs.

One of them then grabbed Chen Guoren, and the other hit Chen Guoren on the head with a baseball bat until Chen Guoren fell to the ground.

McDonald's employees took Chen Guoren to the hospital. Four days later, Chen Guoren was pronounced dead.

"The Detroit District Attorney only charged the two suspects with second-degree murder, refusing to use the citizenship law to use racial discrimination as a basis for conviction, and according to the plea bargain, the two suspects agreed to the manslaughter charge, second-degree murder. will be removed from the charge..."

"Lawyers and senior jurists across the country deny that the racial discrimination clause in the Citizenship Act can be used for this crime. Only the newly established 'American Citizens for Justice League' is willing to call for this. Dear viewers at the scene and those in front of the TV, If you have any comments to share, please..."

Ronald thought for a long time before he figured out the logical relationship. A Chinese named Chen Guoren was beaten to death by two white men thinking he was Japanese.

Then the prosecutor and the judge believed that the deceased was of Chinese descent, and the white man called him Japanese. There was no racial discrimination here, and the racial hatred clause in the Citizenship Act did not apply to the prosecution of first-degree murder, and they only agreed to prosecute him for manslaughter.

There must be a big problem here,

It seems that white people in America still do not regard Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and other people with different skin colors and hair colors as citizens from the bottom of their hearts. As a Chinese in his previous life, Ronald felt very uncomfortable.

He picked up the phone and called his accountant, Lawrence Wang.

Lawrence is also concerned about this matter. New York's Chinatown feels this matter is very unfair and wants to organize donations and relief.

Ronald asked him to donate $1,000 anonymously on his behalf to the American Citizens for Justice League, which spoke out for Chen Guoren and her son, to express his support.

When I returned to the set the next day, no one was talking about the Chen Guoren incident.

Ronald also spent a day on the set of the bar set, today filming Cynthia Rhodes' dance sequence.

Cynthia herself is a dancer, so her dance does not require a stand-in or post-editing, making it easier to process the storyboard during filming.

It’s just that her makeup and costume are really ugly. Cynthia was originally a southern belle, with blond hair, a pretty face, and a slim figure.

Wearing a black vest and shorts, with a very short hairstyle, she danced a very tough dance, with a deliberate upward shot...

Ronald felt that the beautiful woman was photographed a bit like Grace Jones, a black Jamaican singer/model who is famous for her unique (ugly) temperament.

Cynthia's strong Southern female gentleness and caressing qualities were minimized, and she was transformed into an androgynous temperament.

"Do you have to vilify the supporting actress in this way to highlight the beauty of the heroine?" Ronald touched the beard that had not been shaved for several days.

"Cut." Adrian Lane stopped after a dance. "Very good, this one will be printed."

Cynthia Rhodes came out happily, but the assistant handed over a towel to wipe off the water on her face.

Ronald saw that she still had olive oil that the makeup artist had deliberately applied on her body, like a bodybuilder, to highlight her compact muscles. This is not a sexy dance shot at all, but a curious dance of a female bodybuilder.

"Give her a bath towel." Ronald instructed, and then said to Cynthia, "Director Ryan has finished shooting this scene. Go to the dressing room and wipe off the oil. Be careful not to catch a cold."

"Thank you, Ronald." Cynthia was a little surprised by Ronald's sudden concern, and then immediately showed a cute smile, "Do you think I dance well?"

"Of course, you dance with very good rhythm and power."

"Then will I have a chance to be a heroine in the future?"

"Ha, it's hard to say. But your appearance is quite suitable for filming."

Ronald, this is not nonsense, the filming of the movie is very selective about the appearance of the actors. Although beauties with unsuitable looks are very charming in life, on the screen, the audience will feel that the actors on the flat screen are plain and unattractive.

Cynthia's face shape is the same as that of ordinary dancers, thin. There is also a small depression under the cheekbones. Such a face shape is particularly easy to cause shadows on the face when lit. The audience will feel the sculpture is three-dimensional and beautiful when watching it on the big screen.

"Really?" Cynthia is already twenty-five years old, but she was born in a family with a strong religious atmosphere in Nashville, the south, and she still has an innate sense of innocence.

"I don't need to lie to you, but whether you can be the protagonist or not depends on your luck."

After the filming ended in the evening, director Ryan, Ronald, and the two producers Don and Jerry had another task, to look at the samples.

Pittsburgh has an industrial film shooting base. Many industrial films for induction training and technical training have been filmed here for major companies. The printing laboratory is not far away, and you can see the samples taken the day before every day.

"Buzz..."

The noise of the projector slowly filled the room, and Ronald sat in the back, looking at the samples on the screen that had not yet been synchronized with audio and video.

The director is very good. Perhaps because Ronald shot and edited a feature film himself, he is now increasingly able to discover the intentions of other directors as to why they storyboard in this way.

The scene of the protagonist Alex’s dance double Ma Lin was deliberately shot like this. The rhythm of each section of the dance interlude was exactly in line with the internal rhythm of the several shots shot.

And Director Ryan didn't use dreams as reference like Ronald. He used pre-imagined editing scenes to backtrack on the shots that needed to be shot.

For example, the shot of Ma Lin sitting on a stool with her long legs stretched forward can be matched with the last part of the main song in the interlude. The previous dance music had a relatively fast tempo, but in the last few bars of the verse, the tempo gradually slowed down, preparing for the climax of the chorus.

Then there is this shot of reaching out to pull the rope to pour water, which is just the right time to catch the drum beat of the main chorus transition.

First imagine the final scene, and then shoot backwards. In this song and dance scene, it is a very indispensable creative method.

"shxt!" Director Ryan cursed in a low voice.

Ronald also discovered a problem. Several scenes of Ma Lin dancing were misleading.

The white high-illumination background on the stage is very bright when photographed from the front.

At several points, the camera captured Marlene's face during brief pauses in her dance, so that the audience could see that it was not Jennifer Beals who was dancing.

"Are you going to reshoot? Or use editing to remove these gangster scenes?" Ronald raised the issue of editing, and Ryan had a headache.

"There are too many, and these few are useless. And if we reshoot, it will be difficult to ensure that such a long dance scene will not be used again."

Ronald touched his beard again. The storyboarding method in the dream was actually similar to Ma Lin's dance. But the lighting in the dream was very dark, a low-illumination lighting method. Ma Lin's face in the lens was in shadow, so even if it was shot from the front, it wouldn't be blurry.

Because Ma Lin is always in motion, and the dance also occupies most of the audience's attention, it is difficult for the audience to spot the stand-in as long as they don't pause and look closely like a video recorder.

Ronald was reminded of Coppola's movie "Old Love, New Love". Many of the dance scenes in it were shot in low light. And he pioneered the method of having actors' faces illuminated by colored lights.

Under traditional Hollywood lighting methods, it is emphasized that the actor's skin color, especially the face, must maintain the original skin color.

But Coppola was ingenious and used red and blue lights to reflect the actor's skin color into red and blue. In this way, not only can the dance scene be photographed in low illumination without using white lights, but the color of the face can also be used. to reflect the character’s heart.

The chair wet dance in the dream is this method.

No wonder Hollywood always calls Coppola the "director's director." He always makes some experiments on the edges of the film's expression methods, trying to find a way for other directors.

Sometimes he succeeds, the audience accepts his trendy approach, and the box office is a hit, such as "Apocalypse Now"

Sometimes the movie becomes a box office bomb before the audience can accept it, such as this "Old Love, New Love".

But other directors can undoubtedly take advantage of the path he blazed and move on.

“Adrian, have you seen Francis Coppola’s ‘Love Is Old’?”

"you mean?"

"Can the white background light be changed to low illumination, so that Ma Lin's face can be immersed in the red neon light in the foreground and the blue light above. In this way, in many shots, Ma Lin's body can become a silhouette.

The audience could see the dance moves, but the illumination wasn't high enough for them to tell that the stuntman dancing so fast wasn't Beers?

And if this is the case..."

"And in this way, we can also add some mystery to this long dance scene. Later, when shooting the audience, we can unify the illumination of the stage and the audience without having to adjust the color in post-production to unify the two contrasting scenes. of illumination.”

Adrian Lane didn't need Ronald to explain, he figured out the beauty of this attention by himself, and he achieved it in one fell swoop.

“Ah, I’m really a fool, your method is right.

You know what, Ronald. You are by no means a director who only makes exploitation films. They're judging you unfairly. I think your "fast pace" is definitely not that you can't shoot with that kind of artistic feeling, but it's just that you can only shoot like this due to budget constraints.

What a pity, if your film had been carefully crafted, it would have been favored by the critics. "

"You're exaggerating. Let's redo the lighting tomorrow and reshoot Ma Lin's scene." Ronald accepted all the praise from his colleagues.

"Okay, anyway, her scene is easy to film. I'll have someone modify the background." Don Simpson answered from the side.

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