Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Pfft." Ronald rolled off the bed. He sat on the ground and scratched his head.

After getting the good news that the script was sold, Ronald felt that he should be able to dream of the film being finished. The project has been approved. He not only participated in the production of the film, but also knew the heroine of the film. Did he dream of the film? The necessary and sufficient conditions have been met?

I got into bed excitedly, but I was so excited that I slept a few times without falling asleep. Thinking of the last two times that I dreamed of a movie, I fell off the bed and simply slept next to the bed, so the probability of dreaming should be higher.

Who knows that apart from falling out of bed in the morning, I haven't dreamed of any movies.

It was really impossible to dream of a film, so Ronald simply came to the Sentinel Building early and entered the diorama company early to continue watching the film.

"Why did you come to the company so early? I don't recommend working for a long time. Editing is not a profession that can produce masterpieces by grinding time alone. It requires inspiration and accumulation of experience."

Walter Murkey saw Ronald come so early and thought he was going to work overtime, nine hours a day, seven days a week, and he stopped it immediately.

"Ah, no. I was so excited that I couldn't sleep, so I came here. My agent told me that someone was interested in the script I wrote," Ronald replied.

"Aha, congratulations." Walter Murkey hugged him. "This is a good start. I know your ambition is to be a director, and a screenwriter is actually very suitable for young people who want to be a director."

Murthy thought that Ronald might have written some low-budget screenplays that were favored by small producers, and he didn't delve into it.

"So you've been watching the original film of Apocalypse Now these days, have you learned?"

It turned out that I was not taught to edit these days, and I was allowed to watch the original footage myself, which was really a test for me, Ronald thought.

"There is some progress. I can't stop at the same grid every time, but the success rate is higher than before."

"Come with me." Walter Murkey opened his editing room and let Ronald follow.

Ronald was very excited, Merzy was finally going to teach himself the secrets.

Walter had Ronald take two previous Apocalypse Now film reels and put them on a KEM editor made in West Germany.

The film and tape of this horizontal editing machine are placed flat on the editing table.

Not vertically like the old Moviola editor. Put the film and tape on the film reel, pull the film through various guide posts, and finally fix it on another film reel.

Turning on the machine, Ronald stood and pressed a handle in the middle of the editing table and twisted it left and right to play, stop, and fast-forward and rewind.

One of the advantages of the KEM horizontal editing machine is that it is less noisy. The Moviola vertical machine operates like a sewing machine. The noise of the KEM is similar to that of a tape recorder, only a very low rustling sound.

Slap, Walter Murkey pressed the stop button.

"Here is the cut point I chose, did you find anything?"

Ronald stepped forward, stared at the display for a long time, and shook his head, "I didn't find anything."

"You watch his eyes," Walter Murkey said, pointing to Martin Sheen's character on screen.

"Eyes?" Ronald picked up the control wheel, rewinded a segment of footage, and played it to the cut point at normal speed.

This time he kept his eyes on the actor, and the on-screen image had just passed the cut point Walter had pointed out, as if Martin Sheen had blinked.

Ronald moved in his heart and went back to read it again.

"Have you found it? Very well." Walter Murkey looked delighted.

"Is that here? He seems to blink as soon as he's past your chosen cut point," Ronald yelled.

"That's what I discovered when I edited Coppola's film, "The Great Conspiracy." Walter Murkey gave Ronald his "secrets."

"My editing points are all selected at the moment before the character blinks. That morning, I just finished editing the film after working overtime, and I discovered this pattern when I was sorting the film in the morning.

I was walking down the streets of San Francisco, excited, thinking I'd discovered a big secret. Coincidentally, I bought a newspaper on the street and read an interview with the director of John Huston that attracted me.

Houston shared my view in the interview, and he believes that the blink of an eye is the end of the human mind. A person blinks when a thought in his head reaches the end. "

Ronald looked confused? "In middle school textbooks, doesn't it say that blinking is because the eyes are dry and need to be moistened?"

"This is not right. If we record a video of a person in a desert environment, we will find that their blink rate is the same as that in a humid environment, such as the seaside."

Ronald got his first taste of the scientific thinking of Walter Mersey, a man who did not believe in any textbooks or ready-made conclusions of others, but instead thought for himself and used scientific experiments to verify his views.

"Then how do I prove your point that the blink of an eye is the end of the human mind?" Ronald asked. According to Walter Murkey, his notion that the blink of an eye is the end of a thought has to be scientifically tested to be believed.

"It's easy. You look at me," Walter Murkey said to Ronald, "and then look back at the window across the room."

Ronald looked back at the window.

"Did you find it? You blinked when you twisted your head a lot."

"What?" Ronald began to shake his head from side to side. He could feel his eyes, as if the middle part had no memory during the turning process. If you had a camera filming yourself, you should be able to see that you did blink.

During the 180-degree head turn from left to right, the memory picture at the beginning on the left is clear, and the picture when it stops on the right is also clear, but in the middle part, Ronald's eyes are closed, and his brain has no memory.

"Look at me, look at the machine again." Walter directed Ronald to the nearby editor screen again.

"Strange, I didn't seem to blink in the middle of turning my head this time." Ronald found a subtle difference between the two head turnings. If the turning angle was smaller, he would not blink.

"Do you know the 30-degree angle rule in movie editing?"

"Yes, I learned it in a college editing class, which was discovered by film pioneer Mérieux, that if we shoot the same subject, the angle of the camera rotation before and after editing must be greater than 30 degrees, otherwise there will be screen jumps and the audience will find it strange . If it exceeds 30 degrees, our brains can understand the picture jump without feeling strange..."

"I see!" Ronald yelled.

"When our brain turns violently, we close our eyes and blink, so when the angle of rotation in the clip is greater than 30 degrees, our brain is very adaptable, because when we usually turn our heads, we close our eyes in the middle, and the brain will Helping us with editing."

Walter Murkey is glad young people understand his editing theory,

"If it's less than 30 degrees, we don't close our eyes, and we don't do natural editing in our brains, we see all the objects in the middle, and when we edit the rotating shots within a 30-degree angle on the screen, it doesn't match our usual experience. , the brain will feel strange."

"So it is."

"This is our usual experience and the impact on film editing. But there is a time when our brains can switch and imagine pictures freely without following the laws of physics, so we are very accepting of the existence of editing without feeling strange."

"When?" Ronald touched his head.

"There are times every day."

"Dreaming?" Ronald suddenly realized.

"Yes, dreaming is illogical. You can switch between story screens at will without paying attention to continuity. Isn't this just jump-cutting?"

Ronald kept nodding in agreement. It was so obvious that no one had told him before, not even the professor of editing at New York University.

"Dreaming is not bound by the laws of physics. We can dream that we are running on the flat ground and suddenly fly like a bird, looking at ourselves on the ground. Isn't this the flying shot in the movie?"

"Yeah." Ronald felt more and more reasonable.

"Movies are often compared to daydreams. In fact, there is a very deep physiological connection between the two." Walter Murkey pointed to Ronald's brain and drew a circle:

"Our brain can understand film editing, which is a very strange thing in itself. The editing of the film is completely inconsistent with the experience of daily life. Why switch between the front and back shots, we can understand that this is the role of the character in the Conversation? Have you ever seen someone running around while talking?"

Ronald shook his head.

"We can understand film editing because we often dream of similar cuts. Our brains edit every day while we sleep, and we're used to dreaming, so it's effortless to understand the plot while watching a movie."

"And our brain, when processing language, may use the same part, so after a sentence is finished, our brain seems to understand that the scene needs to be changed drastically, and it will blink to adapt to this change."

"Then when I edit, can't I just watch the characters blink and cut?" Ronald asked.

"Alas..." said Walter Murkey impatiently, "think of your high school logic, Ronald. The brain's massive processing of scene transitions is only one reason for blinking, and other reasons can also cause blinking. Yes. This is a sufficient condition, not a necessary condition.

For example, we blink when we sneeze, blink when we feel dry, and when we lie. These are not indicators of editing. "

"And not every actor can get in like this, sometimes they're really just reading their lines." Walter Murkey corrected Ronald's thoughts, "I mean, if the actors are really good, you You can use the method of checking the blink time to verify that you have chosen the correct cut point.”

Ronald nodded, "But is everyone's choice of blink time the same? For example, when watching a movie, is my blink time the same as your blink time? If it is the same, then I can use blinking as a standard to check your own cut point selection.”

"Your idea is very good. My experience says that the vast majority, I mean 95%+, their choices are the same, we don't need to worry about that 5%, just focus on the vast majority of the audience behavior is enough.”

"Why would that 5% be any different?"

"Most of the 5% are film practitioners, and they pay attention to their majors. For example, the lighting crew pays attention to the lighting, and the acting teacher pays attention to the actors' performances. There are always some industry insiders and film critics during the trial screening. Always look for the flaws in your film, and find something they can criticize.

Therefore, their attention is different from that of the general audience, and the content of their thinking is different, so the timing of blinking is also different. "

"Effectively, if we had a magic camera that could capture the blinking of the audience in the dark without interfering with the movie, then we would put a magic camera like this behind the screen and capture the audience's reaction while watching the movie.

After the fact, when we look at the footage from this camera, we will see that if the film editing follows the rules, 95% of the audience will blink at the same time.

If this amazing camera were able to capture the reflection of the viewer's eyes when they blinked, we would see that in the dark, each viewer blinked at the point of your edit, like the stars in the sky, twinkling at the same time. "

Overwhelmed by the scientific theories and the artistic images that Walter Murkey painted, Ronald sat down in this office and started watching the Apocalypse Now clip from scratch.

He found that each shot was arranged just right. At the editing point, the audience's brain just arrived at the editing point and was thinking about the next shot.

Immersed in new knowledge, constantly comparing his thoughts to pictures, Ronald didn't notice the passage of time. Four or five hours later, he was awakened from that state of excitement by the ringing of the phone.

Ronald rubbed his face and answered the phone, "This is Walter Murkey's office."

"I'm Thomas Wilhite from Disney Pictures, please put Mr. Murzy on the phone."