Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 277 Balance Game
But if you want to please the audience, strengthen Sean Penn's role, and give him the ending of the protagonist's treatment, you must first cut out the less brilliant roles of other people.

Stacy and Linda take the stairs to the basement parking lot after cleaning out the pizzeria.The two were discussing how to take the initiative to call the handsome audio salesman. At this time, a migrant girl from another school came and asked Linda for advice.

"Linda, I'm in... high school, and Judy said I could ask you something."

"Yes, you can ask." Linda turned to Stacy and said, "I know Judy."

"My boyfriend and I think..." The girl looked down, as if asking a very embarrassing question, "We want to...uh..."

Then the girl covered her mouth with her hand and spoke in Linda's ear.

"Okay, are you an adult?"

"Yes."

"You go to something called a free clinic and tell them you're with your boyfriend on a regular basis, two or three times a week. You need those little pills."

"They won't tell my family, will they?"

"No, they won't tell your family if you're over 16."

The film on the monitor screen ran out, and the editor suggested to Ronald, "This paragraph can actually be deleted without affecting the overall follow-up story. There are 57 seconds in total.

From the perspective of everyone's story development, this scene of Stacey and Linda talking is used to explain the background story.In fact, deleting most of it will not affect the development of the plot. "

"But the existence of the free clinic is explained here, which paves the way for Stacy's unexpected pregnancy in the future." Ronald hesitated, "If I don't explain here, the concept of a free clinic suddenly appears later, will the audience find it awkward? .”

"Hahaha, Ronald, you're finally talking like a film director." Eric the editor couldn't stop laughing.

"What do you mean?"

"I have worked with many directors, and they always come up with various reasons to keep their own shots. Only you feel more like an editor to me, without a lot of emotional reluctance to cut shots. But today you finally feel like a The director thought that way."

"Hi. I'm not afraid that the audience won't understand. Not all American audiences are familiar with the concept of free clinics in California. In many conservative states in the south-central, such clinics are often vandalized, and doctors and nurses will be destroyed. Hit by someone.

Two days ago, CBS TV also reported a case in Texas where a free clinic providing contraception and abortion was burned down. "

Although the Supreme Court's "Roe v. Wade" judgment in 1973 gave women the right to be responsible for their own bodies and privacy inviolable according to the No.14 Amendment.

However, the jurisprudence of the highest judicial authority in America is not automatically effective in each state. Each state needs to make separate legislation to protect it. Some conservative states can also use other legislation to hedge.

The southern states with strong religious and conservative forces tried to pass various state laws to counteract the impact of the Roe v. Wade case. In Texas, where the Roe v. Wade case took place, ordinary teenagers are not familiar with this free Clinic concept.

"Forget it, can they understand the concept of freedom and openness in California just by relying on these fifty-odd seconds of footage?" Eric the editor said.

"That makes sense, let's cut this part out."

Ronald is no longer insisting. In fact, the name of the free clinic implies a lot.Free (Free) also means freedom in English.Moreover, although free clinics do not have medical fees, medicine and other expenses are not cheap.

They chose this name, and they also deliberately used semantic puns to evade state legislation and give women a safe haven.

You must know that in some particularly conservative places, such as areas where Catholicism prevails and conservative areas in the south-central region, women cannot even be prescribed simple contraceptives.

A doctor writes a prescription to someone's wife and it spreads throughout the town in less than half a day.Strong social pressure will make women give up any measures, and the result is to have children one after another.

It is impossible for the audience in these places to have a deep understanding of the big city of Los Angeles that they have never been to through a conversation.But the hint of a name is enough to conjure up teenage girls that Los Angeles is a place to be free with one's own body.

In terms of the efficiency of conveying stories and emotions, this [-]-second shot is actually similar to the name of a "free clinic".

Although movies are created by artists, artists must also pay attention to efficiency.It is not necessary to arrange for 1 minute if it can be passed in one second.

"Remove this part, you can write it down." Seeing that Ronald agreed, the editor ordered his assistant to record the number of this shot.

"Let's move on." Then the editor took a roll of film himself and loaded it.

The next shot, after a while, the audio sales guy doesn't ask Stacy out anymore.The distressed Stacy talked to Linda again.

"My 'stupid' mom took his call and told her I was still in high school and he never called me again. What should I do, should I go to the stereo store?"

"Don't be silly, Stacy. He's just a stereo salesman, what do you want to do? Marry him and have him kids?"

"In the future, I have to talk about myself. I'm still in high school like this, so it's not easy to pass through."

After the editor finished watching this paragraph, he said to Ronald, "Let's delete this paragraph too. Stacy was dumped by a handsome guy, and everyone can guess from the following story."

"No, this section cannot be cut." Ronald shook his head.

"The audience just saw Stacy dating a handsome guy from the audio store, and the handsome guy even sent flowers to Stacey's house. If you don't explain it, the audience will feel weird afterwards."

"But then didn't Stacy date nerdy Mark again? The audience would have guessed that she and the audio store dude didn't go on."

"Yes, that's why I want to keep this scene. If the audience agrees that Stacey is a girl who values ​​emotions more than men and women, there must be a confession here, otherwise the boldness of Stacey and the cheerleaders What's the difference between a girl and a woman? How can she justify herself when she ends up with Mark?"

"But isn't that redundant?"

"No, you, like me, have seen the story a dozen times. We all already know exactly what Stacey is like. But those who haven't read the original novel know Stacey from the screen for the first time. Tessie, they're the ones the movie wants to please.

I didn't want them to think Stacey was weird and took the interest out of the story. "

"Okay, you're the boss. It's only a little over ten seconds anyway. Just keep it."

Such trade-off decisions lasted for several days.When finally assembling the entire film, Ronald found that he had unknowingly cut about 20% of the shots.There are only 96 minutes left in the film's running time.

Ronald and the editor watched the 96-minute film in its entirety through the horizontal editing machine.

"Did you feel it? The rhythm of the appearance of the six characters is not smooth." Eric the editor took the initiative to start the conversation.

"Yes, you're right. And the performance of the actors lacks the foreshadowing of other shots, and the emotional intensity is a bit off." Ronald also agreed with the editor.

This "Bed of Proclustes" editing method is very efficient in cutting shots.The cutting time that could barely be done in 20 days was completed in two days.

But at the same time, it also brought many side effects.

An important side effect is that the appearance ratio of each character is a bit messed up.

Like nerdy Mark, who had a crush on Stacy because of his shy nature.The first date with Stacy's house was at her house. After kissing Stacy, Mark was very uncomfortable with the progress of himself and the goddess he had a crush on, and ran away from Stacy's house.

After this, it was a long time before Mark reappeared.Here's Stacy getting pregnant unexpectedly with his best friend scalper Mike.During a visit to the hospital in biology class, Stacy remembered her surgery and ran out throwing up.

Mark went up to comfort her. His gentlemanly behavior made Stacy realize that what she wanted more was a stable and mutually supportive relationship.

But for a few 10 minutes in the middle, Mark did not appear in the plot, and his sudden disappearance and appearance would make the audience forget the plot of this character.

"We have to add a little drama to Mark. Or cut out the plot between him and the scalper Mike in the early stage, and move it a little to the middle part."

Knowing exactly what Eric the editor was thinking, Ronald went to the whiteboard on the wall and started looking.

But he got nothing. The six protagonists are packed into nine 10-minute scenes, and everyone's plot is simplified to a very small point.

In front of the nerdy Mark, there was a scene where he forgot to bring his wallet on a date with Stacy and asked Mark to send the money.Later, there is a shot of learning that Mike robbed his girl and fighting with him in the locker room.

But these shots and the logic of the front and back plots are very strong, and it is impossible to cut and move a part in the middle where Mark does not appear.

"What do you think of this?" Eric watched the opening scene over and over on the editing machine, and finally found a scene where Mark was embarrassed.

This was originally the shot of explaining the role at the beginning. Mark awkwardly avoided the two girls.

"We're adding it to the middle prep and the Lincoln high school football game prep?" Ronald asked.

"Yeah, there's another shot here where Linda and Stacy are talking about Mark getting away in the middle of a date, and we're adding that as well."

Linda and Stacy on the monitor are applying face masks to themselves.

"For a boy like Mark, you have to take the initiative and take the first step," Linda said.

"I took the initiative. Not only did I take the first step, but I also took the second step and the third step." Stacey complained. "Mark doesn't like my type at all."

"Adding this segment added more than a minute. And Stacy was so heavy in those 10 minutes that we had to cut other scenes."

Editing is such a way of mobilizing the whole body.Move some weights to one side of the balance, and the rest of the balance is disrupted.Ronald and Eric, the editor, are playing this delicate balancing game.

After several days of playing with permutations and combinations in the editing room, the two finally cut out a version with a relatively balanced character and story.

Ronald moved the camera position on the whiteboard, and used a colored highlighter to make the color appear a little darker on the emotional character scene.

Then he stepped back and watched the various cards on the whiteboard form a picture.Just like Mondrian's paintings, just line segments made up of lines of various colors.

However, the color represented by the emotional intensity of the character can be dark or light, and the number of colors represented by the appearance of the character can be more or less.From the occasional appearance of light colors at the beginning of their own stories, to the dense appearance of dark colors, each character finally has its own ending.

The regularity of their appearance on more than forty cards is also evenly distributed.

The six protagonists represented by six colors, Brad, Stacy, Linda, Mark, Mike, Spiccoli, are well arranged, plus Mr. Hand, an American history teacher.

Ronald picked up an imaging camera and took a picture of the whiteboard.The Polaroid spat out the black photo. Ronald tore off the photo and shook it in the air. After a while, a photo appeared on the photo.

The colors on the whiteboard cards are arranged into a Mondrian-style modernist painting.The colors represented by each character, like musical instruments with different timbres, tell their own stories.

Bookworm Mark and crush Stacy end up as a couple.

There was Brad who was fired from the foreman job in Hamburg, and was promoted to store manager because he accidentally captured a robber.

There is a scalper named Mike who borrowed money everywhere to pay for Stacy's surgery, and was sprayed with the words "liar" on the car.

Because Linda couldn't change the "perfect boyfriend" she had imagined, she had to cry to her best friend at the ball and complained that she was dumped by her boyfriend.

There is also Stacy who finally found out that she liked Mark after getting along with several men, and the two returned to the love mode of normal high school students.

Of course, it is indispensable to fight wits with Spiccoli, and finally go to Spiccoli's house to tutor him in history, and let him go to Teacher Hande who made him graduate.

There is also the confused Spiccoli, whose car was destroyed and instead showed great power to defeat the black football star Jefferson of Lincoln High School, who was almost dumped by Brad and finally dumped Brad's girlfriend Lisa...etc. More than a dozen vivid supporting roles.

The various colors represented by the stories of these supporting roles and protagonists are scattered, and finally converged into a grand symphony in the photos.

Editor Eric also came over to look at the snapshot in Ronald's hand, "This is really a beautiful picture, I think we can connect the working films and give the producer a complete screening."

"Yeah, how long has it been?"

"The current total length is 87 minutes and 34 seconds." The editing assistant reported to Ronald with a notebook.

"Please connect the working copy." Ronald tapped the photo with his hand. The red part representing Spiccoli is still a little missing. Are you considering re-shooting some pictures?Give him an ending?

At the end of the novel, Spiccoli saves the life of the award presenter Brooke Shields who accidentally falls into the sea in a surfing competition, and wins a large bounty.Spent the money on rock band Van Halen to celebrate his birthday again, and ended up being a pauper.

"If we want to shoot these, we have to increase the budget. Let the producers see it first. If they are satisfied, we can start lobbying." Ronald thought.

(End of this chapter)