Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 176
"Plop." 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 about the completion of the movie. The movie has been approved. He participated in the production of the movie and knew the heroine of the movie. Did he dream about the movie? The necessary and sufficient conditions have been satisfied?

I went to bed excitedly, but I was so excited that I didn't fall asleep after sleeping several times.Thinking of the last two times when I dreamed about movies, I fell off the bed and simply slept next to the bed, so the chance of dreaming should be higher.

Unexpectedly, apart from falling out of bed in the morning, I didn't dream 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 long hours. Editing is not a profession that can produce masterpieces just by spending time, it needs inspiration and experience accumulation."

When Walter Murray saw Ronald coming so early, he thought he was going to work overtime, nine hours a day, seven days a week, so he hurriedly stopped him.

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

"Aha, congratulations." Walter Murch hugged him, "This is a very good start. I know your ambition is to be a director, and screenwriting is actually very suitable for young people who want to enter the industry as a director."

Murch thought that Ronald might have written some low-budget movie scripts, which were picked up by small producers, but he didn't go into it.

"So you have watched the original film of Apocalypse Now these days, have you learned?"

It turns out that it is really a test for me not to teach me editing these days, but to let me watch the original material, Ronald thought.

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

"Come with me." Walter Murray opened the doors in his editing room and let Ronald follow him inside.

Ronald was very excited. Merch is finally going to teach himself the secret.

Walter asked Ronald to move two previous "Apocalypse Now" films and install them on the KEM editing machine made in West Germany.

The film and tape of this horizontal editing machine are placed flat on the editing table.Instead of standing vertically like the old Moviola editing machine.Put the film and audio tape on the film reel, pull the film through the various guide posts, and finally fix it on another film reel.

Turn on the machine, Ronald stands and presses a handle in the middle of the editing table and twists it left and right to play, stop, and fast forward and rewind.

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

Crack, Walter Murch hit the stop button.

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

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

"You look into his eyes," Walter Murch said, pointing to Martin Sheen's character on the screen.

"Eye?" Ronald picked up the control dial, fast-rewound a section of film, and then played back to the editing point at normal speed.

This time he was looking into the actor's eyes, and the scene on the screen had just passed the cut point Walter pointed out, as if Martin Sheen had blinked.

With a thought in his heart, Ronald went back and read it again.

"Have you found out? Very well." Walter Murch looked pleased.

"Is it here? It looks like he blinked as soon as you passed the cut point you chose." Ronald yelled.

"This is what I discovered when I edited Coppola's film "The Conspiracy Overheard." Walter Murch imparted his "secrets" to Ronald.

"My editing points are all selected at the moment before the character is about to blink. That morning, I just worked overtime to finish editing the film, and I discovered this pattern when I was sorting out the film in the morning.

I was walking on the streets of San Francisco, so excited that I thought I had discovered a big secret.Coincidentally, I bought a newspaper on the street to read, and an interview with director John Huston attracted me.

Houston shared my view in the interview that the blink of an eye is the end of the human mind.When a thought in a person's mind reaches its end, he blinks his eyes. "

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

"That's not right. If we record a video of people in a desert environment, we will find that their blinking frequency is the same as that in a humid environment, such as the seaside."

Ronald had a taste of Walter Murch's scientific thinking for the first time. This man didn't believe in any textbooks or other people's ready-made conclusions. Instead, he thought independently and used scientific experiments to verify his views.

"Then how can I prove your point that blinking is the end of a person's thoughts?" Ronald asked.In Walter Murch's mind, his idea that blinks are thought stops has to be scientifically tested to be believed.

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

Ronald glanced back at the window.

"Did you notice? When you turned your head wildly, you blinked."

"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.

In the process of turning the head 180 degrees from left to right, the memory picture at the beginning of the left is clear, and the picture at the end of the right is also clear, but in the middle part, Ronald's eyes are closed, and the brain has no memory.

"Look at me, and then at this machine." Walter told Ronald to turn to the nearby editing machine display.

"Strange, I didn't seem to blink in the middle of turning my head this time." Ronald discovered the subtle difference between the two turns of his head. If the turning angle is smaller, he won't blink.

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

"Yes, I learned it in my college editing class. This is what the film pioneer Mérieux discovered. If we shoot the same subject, the angle of camera rotation must be greater than 30 degrees before and after editing, otherwise there will be jumps in the picture, and the audience will feel strange. .If it exceeds 30 degrees, our brain can understand this kind of picture jump and not feel strange..."

"I see!" Ronald exclaimed.

"Our brains close our eyes and blink when we turn violently, so when the angle of rotation in the clip is greater than 30 degrees, our brains are very adaptable, because when we usually turn our heads, we close our eyes in the middle, and the brain Editing for us."

Walter Murch was delighted that young people understood 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 editing the rotating shots within 30 degrees on the screen, it doesn't match our usual experience. , the brain will feel strange."

"So it is."

"This is our usual experience, the impact on movie editing. But there is a time when our brains can freely switch and imagine images without conforming to the laws of physics, so we accept the existence of editing very much without feeling strange."

"When?" Ronald touched his head.

"There are times every day."

"Dream?" Ronald suddenly realized.

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

Ronald kept nodding his head in agreement. No one told him about such an obvious truth before, not even the professors in the editing course at New York University.

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

"Yes." Ronald felt more and more reasonable.

"People often compare movies to daydreams. In fact, there is a very profound physiological connection between the two." Walter Murch pointed to Ronald's brain and drew a circle:

"It is a very strange thing that our brains can understand movie editing. Movie editing is completely inconsistent with daily life experience. Why do we switch between front and back over-the-shoulder shots? We can understand that this is the role of the character Conversation? Have you ever seen anyone run around while talking?"

Ronald shook his head.

"We can understand movie editing because we often dream about similar camera cuts. Our brains edit while sleeping every day. We are used to dreaming, so it is effortless to understand the plot when watching a movie."

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

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

"Alas..." Walter Murray tapped Ronald's head impatiently, "Think about the logic you learned in high school, Ronald. The brain's massive processing of scene transitions is just one reason to blink, Blinking can happen for other reasons too. This is a sufficient condition, not a necessary one.

For example, we blink when we sneeze, we blink when our eyes feel dry, and we blink when we lie. None of these can be used as indicators for editing. "

"Besides, not every actor can enter the play like this. Sometimes they are really just reading their lines." Walter Murch 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 whether your selection of editing points is correct."

Ronald nodded, "But is everyone's choice of blinking time the same? For example, when watching a movie, is my blinking time the same as your blinking time? If they are the same, 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 more than 95% of people, their choice is the same, we don't need to worry about the 5% of people, just focus on the vast majority of the audience behavior will do.”

"Why is that 5% different?"

"Most of the 5% are film practitioners, and they focus on their professional related areas. For example, the lighting crew pays attention to the lighting, and the performance teacher pays attention to the performance of the actors. During the test screening, there are always some people in the industry and film critics. Always looking for flaws in your film, looking for something they can criticize.

Therefore, their attention and thinking content are different from those of ordinary audiences, so the timing of blinking is also different. "

"Actually, if we had a magic camera that could capture the blinking of a surreptitious audience without interfering with the film projection. Then we put one of these magic cameras behind the screen and filmed the audience's reaction to the film.

When we look at the camera and take pictures afterwards, we will see that if the film editing follows the law, 95% of the audience will blink at the same time.

If this magic camera can capture the reflection of the eyes of the audience when they blink, we will see that in the dark, everyone in the audience blinks at your cut point, like stars in the sky, blinking at the same time. "

Shocked by the scientific theories and artistic pictures depicted by Walter Murch, Ronald sat down in this office and began to watch the clips of "Apocalypse Now" from the beginning.

He found that each shot was arranged just right, and at the point of editing, the audience's brains also happened to be at the point of editing, and they were thinking about the next shot.

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

Ronald rubbed his face and picked up the phone, "This is Walter Murray's office."

"This is Thomas Wilhite from Walt Disney Studios, please put Mr. Murch on the phone."

(End of this chapter)