Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Hi, Kevin. This scene is when Hector learns that the comet turned everyone directly exposed to red light into dust. He wants to go back home to check on his family, even though he knows that there is a high probability that they He was in trouble, but he still had a glimmer of hope..."

"Keep this glimmer of hope that nothing happened to my family." Kevin Costner came to the crew today to report that his male lead roles are relatively few, and they are concentrated in several concentrated locations such as home, department stores, and underground bases. So I came to the crew to report during the second week of filming.

Seeing Kevin nodding, Ronald continued to tell the story, "So, when he arrived at home and found that everyone was gone, he knew something was not going well. At this time, he had an emotional breakdown. At this moment Zombies came in to kill him, and he quickly switched from a state of collapse where his family was tragically killed to a state of escape..."

"Let's walk around and rehearse, don't arouse your emotions." Ronald warned and asked Kevin to start walking around. .

"Mom, Mom..." Kevin Costner walked into his house wearing a shirt and jeans. The automatic record player on the table was still playing music. The colored lights in the room were hung on the wall. Below it was "The Comet". night" words.

Hector immediately understood that his family had also celebrated the return of the comet last night, and the whole family went to see the comet. Knowing that it was inevitable, he sat on the bed and suddenly became sad.

The record player completed a cycle and started playing music again. Hector woke up from sadness. He had more important things to do, so he took a bag and put all the photos of his family in it.

"Who's there?" Kevin Costner acted as if he heard an unusual sound. He stood up, took out an automatic pistol, and loaded it with a click.

"Very good, let's storyboard it this way and give Kevin a few more full-body shots. He has a good figure. Then give him a close-up when he's sitting on the bed and feeling sad, and finally give him a medium shot when he stands up to take photos of his family. I needed that gentle gesture of him putting the family photos into the bag."

Kevin Costner is a good actor with a level of acting skills. Various emotions are stimulated by the objects in the lens, with obvious ups and downs. Perhaps because he was trained well by director Lawrence Kasdan in "The Big Chill", Ronald felt that he was quite good at performing for the camera.

Unlike the fixed seats and field of view like a drama, movie audiences actually watch the actors' performances through the lens. Therefore, body movements, language, expressions, etc., and the details of the performance must be realized in conjunction with the camera.

And this scene requires relatively abundant emotional accumulation, transformation, and release.

It can be regarded as an important scene in the middle of the movie, allowing the audience to be moved by Hector's emotions for his family, and then continue the battle against zombies.

This is a break in the zombie fighting scene. The audience needs a little soothing mood. All the performances are brought by Costner's performance alone. So Ronald first asked Kevin Costner to walk through the scene, and then prepared the storyboard based on his performance in front of the camera.

"I need some time," Kevin Costner walked into his trailer to gather his emotions. Within ten minutes, he walked out of the trailer, "I'm ready."

"!"

When Hector walked into the house, his face still had a hopeful expression, because there was nothing strange at home, as if his family had just left. He also carries a lot of hope.

Then he turned his back to the camera, saw the colored lights on the wall, and suddenly understood that his family had also gone to see the comet. The rhythm of his movements slowed down significantly, and a sad mood suddenly appeared from Costner's back.

Then there is a close-up of the face. Hector already knows the tragedy of his family in his heart, and his whole spirit is like a tire with holes, quickly deflating.

Suddenly, Hector was awakened by the music playing on the jukebox. He raised his head and saw the photos of his family on the table. He quietly wiped his eyes, took out a bag from the drawer, and began to carefully and gently put the photos of his family in it. .

"cut!"

Ronald was very satisfied. The biggest characteristic of a good actor is relaxation. Only by being very relaxed in front of the camera can he have room to express various emotions. If you feel nervous when you go up, you won't be able to perform a play that requires transitions and layers.

"Very well, let's move on to the next game."

No one applauded, everyone automatically went into preparation mode for the next performance. Save a few minutes per shot and you’ll get more shots throughout the day.

"Ronald, how was my performance?" Kevin Costner came over. He felt that there was still room for improvement in his performance and hoped to do another one.

"You know what? If I had a budget of eight million, I could shoot this scene in one day, and you have room to do whatever you want. But unfortunately I am not Lawrence Kasdan, and Atlantic is not the former United Artists, so I I’m satisfied with what you just said.”

"Oh, I wish you were Kasdan so you wouldn't cut all my scenes."

"No, it's up to you to attract female audiences to my movie. In addition to liking Regina's self-reliance as a woman, they also need a handsome man to fall in love with her to be successful." Ronald knew that Costner was a bit attracted. Jian was scared and quickly gave him a guarantee.

"In the next scene, a child actor will appear with you. I can only adapt to his state first, so you have to cheer up."

"Okay, I will cooperate with him."

The next scene is a kid acting as a zombie, breaking into Hector's house to bite him. Hector recognized the neighbor's child and couldn't bear to shoot him with a gun. After locking the door, he went out to find the car and ran back to find Regina.

According to industry insiders, the most difficult scenes to film are those involving children, animals, and water.

Ronald finally experienced the difficulty of filming children's scenes, which is that children's performances are not stable enough and unpredictable.

This time the scene is not a very demanding one, it is just pretending to be a zombie, rushing in from the door, and trying to bite Hector played by Kevin Costner.

Children's performances are irregular. They can perform very well in one scene, but for some inexplicable reason start to fail in the next scene. Sometimes they perform well, but the adult actors fail to keep up, so they can only try their best to accommodate them.

And Ronald couldn't talk about them yet. Once he said it too much, the children would either start to cry or become even more uncooperative, prolonging the filming time.

Fortunately, the producer has a child. He saw something was wrong and gave the child a piece of chocolate. After the child ate it, the scene was shot smoothly.

"He seems to be hungry. Sometimes he will give them a little candy and praise them for how good the last shot was, and he will pluck up the courage to take the next shot."

Ronald touched the head of the child actor, and the staff of the Screen Actors Guild nearby were already watching with eager eyes, waiting to come out and interrupt Ronald to continue filming on the grounds that the child was in a bad mood and not to continue filming.

"Next time, if you feel uncomfortable, just tell me, okay?" Ronald said gently to the young actor.

"This zombie makeup makes me uncomfortable." The young actor pointed to the gray-brown zombie makeup on his face.

"You know what? The next shot is a close-up, and your classmates and friends will see your terrifying look on the screen."

"Like a dinosaur?"

"Yeah, like a dinosaur."

Children's energy cycle is faster than that of adults. The young actor suddenly became energetic and entered the state quickly. The indoor scene of fighting with Costner looked quite convincing.

"Oh, little boy, what a terrible creature."

Ronald looked up and saw that it was his old acquaintance Mary Woronov, who had also arrived at the scene.

Voronov played the old-fashioned headmistress in "Rock and Roll High School", and Ronald also approached her to play Audrey White, an expert in the underground biological laboratory base, based on the prompts from the dream.

"Why are you here, Mary?"

"There are some things in my script that don't make sense, and I want to talk to you about it."

"Okay, well, when I'm done here, let's go to the trailer and talk."

After watching the scene being cleaned up, Ronald confirmed that tomorrow's scene would involve Mary Woronov coming to the mall where the two sisters were fighting zombies and rescuing them.

He went to the trailer and began chatting with Voronov about the script.

"Ronald, is there something wrong with the character of Audrey here?" Voronov came up and criticized him.

"Okay, tell me what's wrong?" Ronald couldn't keep a straight face when facing Voronov. When she was a supporting actress, he was still an assistant.

"This is a very good script, but it is not about deep human nature, but a collection of all the current fashion elements."

"Okay, then what?", Ronald nodded, indeed "Night of the Comet" combines many popular elements.

"You see, it's the Valley Girls saving the world. Now the Valley Girls' songs are popular, and the 'Uptempo' you filmed has made their accents and styles popular among middle school students across the country. And then there are zombies, since 'Dawn of the Dead' , there are a lot of zombie movies that appear.

Then there are comets. Halley's Comet is about to return to Earth. The newspaper has just reported that this return has been discovered by amateur astronomers, and everyone is talking about it. Then there's mall shopping, and gunfights. "

"I agree with these, so what?"

"So Audrey should also be a humane character with state changes. She is a biological researcher with a conscience. She can't bear to see the base find survivors as subjects for blood sampling, and she wants to save these children.

Her character also has a psychological change, and is not a symbolic villain, so her lines must be consistent with the current situation..." Mary Woronov said eloquently.

Ronald scratched his head. What Voronov said was actually good. Of course, there were some small ideas in it to get more close-ups. Ronald didn't point it out, "But your scene will be filmed tomorrow, and I don't have time to change your lines."

"I've written it for you." Voronov handed over a few pages of handwritten paper, all of which were lines she came up with that were more in line with the character's identity.

Ronald smiled and it turned out that he was indeed prepared. He browsed through it and thought it was OK, "Very good, then just follow what you wrote."

"You are a good director, Ronald." Mary Woronov was very happy that her understanding of the characters was recognized by Ronald.

"This may not be my business, but there is also a foreshadowing of Regina here. Why is it not picked up later?" Mary Woronov felt that Ronald was more open to accepting opinions, so she asked him a question.

"What foreshadowing?"

"It's this dmk. When Regina was playing a video game, a man named dmk broke Regina's record in sixth place. Why didn't the latter dmk appear?"

"This is not a foreshadowing. This is a scene I did to show Regina's independent spirit of competing and refusing to admit defeat. Combined with her tomboy-like hairstyle, the audience will immediately accept her identity."

Mary Woronov shook her head. She had made many Roger Corman-style low-budget movies and knew that the audience would remember the plot at the beginning of the movie relatively clearly. “If it wasn’t foreshadowing, there would be no need to put it in the beginning. Given a shot like this, have you ever heard of Chekhov’s Gun?”

Ronald whistled. The meaning of Chekhov's Gun is that if there is no plot echo later, don't add this plot.

"I don't have this idea of ​​foreshadowing, but since you also think there should be a foreshadowing here, I'll think about how to make it up."

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