Hollywood Drawing

Seeing Naomi's back disappearing around the corner, he happily returned to the second-story building and got back into the heavy post-production work.

Since Luke started working on the post, he almost never expressed his opinions without asking him. Every time, Wayne took the initiative to find him and discuss with him. Most of the time, Luke always sat silently in the corner of the room, watching him and Julia's hard work.

He always remembers that his biggest purpose in participating in this film is to learn deeply about the production process of a feature film. So he always watched silently and recorded hard.

Wayne's relationship with the crew, including the various actors, is limited to work. Unlike Luke, he is almost the butler of the crew. He participates in or helps coordinate everything, so Luke has a good relationship with everyone.

In the eyes of the entire crew, Wayne is synonymous with miser, Grandet, and Jewish capitalist. No matter what the crew does, his first requirement is always to save money and maintain quality.

But in Luke's eyes, Wayne is definitely a person who knows how to make plans and work strictly according to the plans. This is definitely not something that a miser can describe. Just like in this film, he strictly implemented all the plans he had set and ensured that all shots were shot with maximum completeness.

Luke knew the importance of planning for a director, and Wayne gave him a complete demonstration. The results were self-evident. These alone were much more useful than what he had learned from working on so many film crews after graduation.

While Luke was thinking wildly, the door of the editing room was gently pushed open. The manager here, Jennings, looked at Julia and Wayne who were working for a while, then walked over to Luke and sat down.

"Hi, Luke. I heard this is your first film? It's going great, congratulations."

Luke closed his work record book, looked at Jennings with a smile, and said:

"Thank you. Yes, to be precise, this is the first feature film directed by Wayne. He did a great job. From the time I first got the script, I really didn't expect that he could do this. Did the teacher say that? No, Wayne was really talented in some ways.”

Jennings seemed to be particularly interested in Wayne. He stared at his back and asked Luke softly:

"Your mentor thinks he has great potential? Can you talk about him? Why does your mentor think he is so talented?"

"Mr. Jennings, you seem to be particularly interested in him. You have come in and looked at him silently several times these days."

Luke didn't answer his question, but expressed his own question.

"He is a director, Luke. Directors can be said to be the dominant profession in the entire film industry. Yes, there are countless film practitioners who want to become directors every year, but few succeed. But a friend of mine thinks that he There’s hope and potential.”

"Your friend? Sorry, can I ask who it is?"

"Steve Wilson, the lighting engineer on your crew. We are old classmates, and he thinks highly of Wayne. Steve shouldn't have gone to your small crew, because of some accidents, he didn't Find another job."

Luke suddenly remembered that Wayne had a very high opinion of Steve, and even believed that Steve's professional ability far exceeded everyone else on the crew.

Jennings chatted with Luke casually, and there was no need to hide anything about it. There was no serious conflict between them, it was just his curiosity.

"Luke, the first sentence of Steve's evaluation of Wayne is: 'This is a very smart man with a clear understanding of himself.' In Steve's eyes, Wayne's choice is the failure rate of novice directors. The lowest road.”

Luke listened to his words, yes, Wayne is a person who has an absolutely clear understanding of himself, and he has been avoiding what he is not good at.

"Mr. Jennings, yes, I think he will succeed even if this film is not successful. Director is a high-risk and high-pressure job, and filming a film is itself a high-stress job. If problems occur frequently during filming, it will be enough to It drives the average person crazy.

So the directors in our impression are all a group of bad-tempered people. But in all the shots of this film, Wayne never lost his temper. He was always able to adjust his state to inspire everyone. "

Jennings smiled and listened to Luke's unstinting praise for his director. Looking at Wayne and Julia working hard in front of him, he walked out silently and closed the door gently.

Maybe Luke saw the side of Wayne's ability to work on the set, and Jennings was interested in the other side that Steve told him. According to my friends, the movie script is neat and smooth at best, and there are still many clichés and tricks.

But as the filming progressed, my friend gradually began to discover that the script was not great, but the story was full of elements that attracted the audience. For a small-budget independent film like this to successfully attract the audience's attention, it requires nothing more than beautiful women, plasma and extremely low-cost self-redemption, all of which are adequately reflected in the filming.

So these days, he has been silently observing Wayne, and has also become interested in this Jewish director. The script is old-fashioned, not very creative, but full of gimmicks to attract young people. And these gimmicks are wrapped in a light black personal style. He is indeed a smart man.

"Luke, come on, let's see the effect together."

Wayne called Luke to the front, and the three of them watched the rough cut of the film together. The film still looks very rough now, but it already has some feeling of being a finished film.

Until they were about to get off work, they had finished watching the rough cut. The total length of the film was more than 200 minutes. Wayne's plan was to start the second edit as soon as possible tomorrow and start the fine cut immediately.

In the end, the entire length will be compressed to about ninety minutes, which will definitely speed up the pace of the film and remove some unnecessary scenes. After the fine editing was completed, the film's soundtrack needed to be produced as soon as possible. Wayne just wanted to get some that fit the occasion. He didn't have the money to hire someone to do a special soundtrack.

"Wayne, we have to speed up the pace of the film. This is not an artistic film. This slow narrative pace will never work."

After reading it, Luke rarely took the initiative to give Wayne his work suggestions.

"Of course, I plan to use a lot of montage for fine editing."

He and Luke agreed that he must speed up the production of the film to attract audiences. Montage can now be regarded as a completely cinematic term. To put it bluntly, montage is to combine different scenes through picture editing and picture synthesis to create a unique movie time and space to guide the emotions and psychology of moviegoers.

The typical function of montage is to speed up the pace of the film, which is also the biggest role that Wayne chose it in a film with a simple narrative like "Happy Holiday".

He told Julia his requirements in advance and asked her to prepare. The three of them ended today's work together.

Time slowly came to Christmas, Wayne, Luke and Julia completely completed the film's editing and soundtrack. The work went smoothly, and Wayne still had hundreds of thousands of dollars left in his hand. The production was completed. The entire film lasted 96 minutes and cost a total of $1.04 million.

With the job completed, he thanked Julia. This middle-aged aunt-type editor used her superb and dedicated work standards to make Wayne's post-production work almost without any problems. In order to thank her for her efforts and to celebrate the end of the work, Wayne decided that the three of them would go out for a meal to celebrate.

What he ordered was just an ordinary French restaurant, located in the suburbs of Burbank, not far from the studio. The three of them sat together, happily clinked the champagne, and laughed to celebrate the successful completion of the work.

"Wayne, you said you were going to the Saint-Denis Film Festival?"

Julia cut the beef and chatted with him casually.

"Of course, I was able to get the invitation letter from the film festival because of my teacher's relationship. I hope to seize the opportunity and see if I can find a distribution company."

He doesn't think about it that much now. He just wants to use the film festival as a platform to showcase his films. This is a low-cost and rare opportunity for publicity.

The biggest advantage of participating in this film festival is that it saves Wayne's time and energy, as he does not have to go to distribution companies one by one to promote his films.

A group of people who will appear at any film festival are film buyers and moviegoers from major film companies. He hopes that his film will be selected by them at the film festival. He is confident in his film.

Julia took a sip of champagne, tried hard to swallow the beef in her mouth, and said:

"We all watched this film today. To be honest, I was very surprised by the completion of the production. It is very rare for a novice director to achieve this level. In my opinion, there will definitely be companies interested in your film. I believe it. My vision, Wayne!”

Of course he believed that after watching the movie today, not only Julia and the others liked it, but even Jennings, who was usually silent, very rarely spoke up to praise Wayne. Not to mention himself, he has strong confidence in what he shoots.

"Thank you! Luke, do you remember what we said? This film will definitely appear in theaters, and our name will definitely appear in the producer column and be seen by all audiences."

Luke was stunned for a moment, yes, now the only thing left to get this film into theaters is to find a distribution company. This is precisely the most difficult step. If a company is willing to distribute it, his name will really appear in a theatrical movie.

"Wayne, don't forget, there is another important job. MPAA. This film is probably rated PG13, but if we send it ourselves, with those large-scale bloody scenes you have kept, it is very likely to be classified To R-rating, the value of the movie will be drastically reduced, and you have to consider that, after all, we have no background."

Luke worriedly expressed the issue of the film's classification. He knew that Luke was absolutely right. There is a big difference between the audience groups between PG13 and R-rated, and the value of the film will also be very different.