Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Saab is a car brand in the Nordic country Sweden. The company was originally a Swedish defense supplier, a manufacturer of fighter jets for the Swedish Air Force.

In 1969, Saab's automotive division merged with another Swedish automaker, Scandinavian Motors, to form Saab Motors. In 1978, relying on the new Saab 900, the best-selling model, it successfully became one of the top car manufacturers in Europe.

People in this Nordic country are known for their punctuality, commitment to commitment, and a love of simple design. That's how Ronald met two of Saab's marketing managers in CAA's offices. Speak with a little Scandinavian accent and plan out all the points of your interview with Ronald in advance.

"Mr. Ronald Lee, you may be wondering, why do we want to ask you to shoot the advertisement of the new Saab900 model for us?" The male of the two managers said straight to the point.

"To be honest, I'm a little weird, I didn't expect my name to be known by my friends in faraway Sweden, which makes me proud."

"Actually, you were recommended by our dealer in the United States. He sent us the chewing gum commercial you shot before." The male manager got up and took a folder out of his briefcase and spread it out on the On the table.

"Oh, yes." Ronald saw a printout of the moment Elizabeth Shue jumped off the uneven bars in her gymnastics suit.

"It's this ad that got us interested in you. We don't like the idea of ​​those ad agencies on Madison Street in New York, who take a simple thing and make it too complicated."

Ronald raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

Seeing that her colleague was always arguing with reason, the female manager hurriedly concluded the conversation:

"Ronald, on the first day we arrived in America, we saw your new movie 'Night of the Comet' in the cinema, which gave us a lot of confidence, in that movie you took the heroine Regina on a ride The motorcycles, the driving shots, it's poetic and very powerful. That's what we need, and you can make a really good TV commercial for us."

"You mean the shot of Regina hitting the road, galloping down the empty street? That's really Ronald's original idea, very shocking beauty." Richard met Sabo's people and said that they invited Ronaldo The reason for the shooting of Nader hastily began to tout.

The female manager loves the footage of Regina driving and nods in agreement.

Ronald patted Richard, telling him to stop talking too much.

"May I ask what kind of car commercials you want to shoot? I just know you don't like the American way of advertising. Do you have any ideas?" Ronald asked.

"Our idea is very simple, this time the new model is Saab 900Turbo, with a new turbocharged engine, we want to show this sense of power, we want to use another flagship product of the Saab Group to set off the new car's appearance Surging power."

"Excuse my ignorance, what is another product of Saab Group?"

The two Saab managers smiled at each other and took out another image.

"It's our Saab 37 Thor jet fighter from Saab Defense."

Ronald took the image, which was a beautiful fighter jet, with air intakes on both sides of the nose cockpit, and a triangular tail. Of particular interest, there are a pair of smaller wings above the air intakes on either side of the cockpit.

"This is the canard, which is the exclusive symbol of the Swedish Air Force Saab fighter." The male manager enthusiastically introduced to Ronald, "With these small wings, the Thor fighter can climb faster and rush to super At the speed of sound, it can also take off and land quickly on short runways like the American Navy aircraft.

"

"Compare Saab's car with a jet fighter?" Ronald was taken aback, how does this compare? The speed of the fighter jet is so fast that it is difficult for the camera to capture, and there is no reference in the sky to see the power of the engine. The car can reflect his horsepower from various angles.

"Then what do you think? From what angle do you want to compare the two?"

"That's what you need to consider, Ronald. We have great confidence in you that we will see a satisfactory solution."

"It looks like they are very optimistic about you." Richard said to Ronald, who was sitting on the sofa, sending off the two Saab managers.

Ronald has already started to study with the information they brought.

"Oh? How can you see it?"

"Isn't that the greatest affirmation to you that they have left so many agencies in London and New York and finally found you to realize the idea? And they also promised to send you a car with turbo and fuel as long as the contract was signed. The latest Saab 900Turbo with jetting capability.”

"It's not easy." Ronald took some pictures of Saab's new model and handed it to Richard. You see, with the car on the ground, there are a lot of ways to shoot his horsepower. But how do jet fighters perform? "

Ronald took a photo of Saab 37 in his hand, and slid quickly from left to right, "Woo..." It flew past, and the camera took less than a second at most.

"That's what you should think about, Ronald." Richard also imitated the manager's statement.

"So it's not easy to earn money." Ronald thought for a while, "You have to find me, has Hollywood ever made a movie, or a military documentaries. Then look for it, you can see the real jets there. Fighter flight."

"It's on me." Richard was very happy, this was the first time he had found business for Ronald.

The next afternoon, Richard was taken to Ronald's apartment with a load of footage.

"Here are two recent films about jet fighter jets, and here are some documentaries from the Air Force and the Navy. These are some older propeller fighter jets fighting."

Richard divided the tapes into three stacks. "I thought maybe you could refer to them all."

"So there are only two movies showing jet fighters?" Ronald frowned. It seems that jet fighters are not easy to shoot, unlike the old-fashioned propeller aircraft air combat, Hollywood is too much.

"Yes, a 'Firefox' directed and starred by Clint Eastwood. The whole movie cost 21 million dollars, and 20 million was spent on the special effects of the air combat."

"Oh?" Ronald took Firefox first and put it into the VCR.

There were all sorts of scenes of Eastwood being handsome on TV, and then he got into a weird fighter jet, which was produced by the Soviet Union and could only be activated in Russian, and he was flying in the air. Dogfighting Russian pilots who came to intercept.

"Is that all there is?" Ronald saw the trailer for "Firefox," a few minutes of footage with only a handful of two fighter jets dogfighting.

"Yeah, it's a bad box office, so Warner Bros. isn't going to put out a tape."

And then there's "The Last Countdown". Ronald switched.

This video tape is also only a few minutes' trailer, and it is even more exaggerated. The story is that the "Nimitz" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, on a routine mission in 1981, passed through a wormhole and traveled to 1990s. Forty-one years, the day before Pearl Harbor.

A total of 5,000 navy soldiers and many jet fighters also crossed over with the aircraft carrier.

Seeing that this was a good opportunity to beat the Eastern Ying people at Pearl Harbor, the commander ordered fighter jets equipped with the latest radar to take off and shot down the Eastern Ying people's Zero fighter with air-to-air missiles.

Soon, the trailer is over. Ronald found that there were quite a few stars in the movie, including Martin Sheen and Kirk Douglas.

"I feel like this is a real shot?" Ronald saw in the trailer, there were some shots of jet fighters taking off and landing on the aircraft carrier. The color grading of these shots is noticeably different from the rest of the film. It wasn't a batch or even a brand of film.

"Yes, I asked Martin's agent, and he said that this part of the footage was provided by the Navy and turned out to be a news documentary filmed by the Navy."

"Well, interesting."

With the remote in hand, Ronald kept moving forward and backward between the shots of the aircraft taking off and landing the aircraft carrier. Then rewind it again.

"Here are some more, do you need to see?" Richard asked, picking up the other tapes.

"No, I think these shots have given me enough inspiration." Ronald muttered.

He pressed the pause button, then picked up the drawing board and pencil, and started sketching against the camera on the TV.

"So, that's what I thought, the storyboard effect of the shoot." After another day, Ronald saw the two Saab managers again.

He handed the storyboard of the pencil sketch he had drawn to the other party.

Then pick up the pen and explain to them the idea on another, larger sketch, spread out.

"I understand what you're thinking, and I think it's a brilliant idea to compare a turbojet in a jet with a turbo in a Saab.

What you want to compare and show is the strong power of the two engines, so that you can give consumers a strong impression that if you build an airplane to build a car, the power must be very good. "

The two managers nodded slightly, Ronald's summary could be said to hit the nail on the head.

"But the difficulty with the jet engine was that it was so fast. I looked at all the footage of the jet fighter I could find, and it was difficult to capture more than a second unless there was a camera on another plane next to it. fighter footage.

So... I moved the point of comparison from the air to the ground. "

"On the ground?" the female manager asked.

"Yes", Ronald pointed to one of the drawings, "I pulled the Saab 900Turbo car to the airport runway of the Saab 37 Thor fighter jet. So that both are on the ground, we can easily express the two fast and powerful.

You think, a car can compete on the track with a jet fighter, and they all belong to Saab! "

"Wanderford!" The two managers were very satisfied with Ronald's method of realizing the idea, "We will report your design to the headquarters. If the headquarters is also satisfied, we will invite you to the Swedish Saab headquarters and the Swedish Air Force to the scene. Check out the filming location.”