Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 331 Sequential Rehearsal
"Let's relax and do physical relaxation. Today I'm going to teach you an ancient oriental relaxation technique, Tai Chi."

After breakfast every morning, there is a morning class for these young actors to relax.When actors are rehearsing or performing, if they cannot relax their bodies, it will be difficult for them to burst out their emotions.

But generally everyone uses stretching exercises or yoga to relax the body, and some veteran actors even drink a few sips of wine to relax. It is rare to see Coppola practicing oriental mysterious relaxation techniques.

Coppola is a famous director in America.Poor teenage actors have no idea what oriental mystic relaxation has to do with the characters they're rehearsing for, but since Coppola says it, everyone has to do it.

The TV in the rehearsal room played Tai Chi teaching videos, and a thin Chinese actor began to teach Tai Chi in English.

"Forget your movement, it doesn't matter, remember the state of your body. Raise your hands, inhale, exhale..."

Chinese actors in ancient costumes began to introduce how to practice Tai Chi on TV.

"Several people are missing on both sides." Tom Cruise leaned over and whispered to Ronald.

"Let's continue practicing and wait for them to take the bait." Ronald nodded, and exchanged colors with Tom and Rob.

"Ronald, you are doing very well. Do you know Tai Chi? You can come to the front and teach everyone." Coppola saw that Ronald's Tai Chi movements are better than others, so he simply asked him to come to the front to lead the exercises .

The screen of the TV is too small, even the actors can't see clearly, it feels much better to have a real person lead the fuck.

"Tai Chi is very easy, everyone look at my hand shape." Ronald didn't know why his movements were quite standard.

"Relax your body, let's imagine together with me." Ronald held his hands flat in front of his chest. "I have a big watermelon, which is big and round." He made a Tai Chi gesture, holding the ball in front of his chest.

"Hey, hey..." Two groups of young male actors ran in and were glared at by Coppola, so they had to follow everyone to practice.

Ronald saw the two leaders at a glance.

One is Emilio Estevez (Emilio Estevez), who plays the role of "Two-Bites" in the oilhead gang, and is the eldest son of the famous movie star Martin Sheen.

The other is Leif Garrett, who plays Bob, a young singer and movie star. He is called "double threat" (meaning he can sing and act) in the industry.

Ronald knew what was in his mind, ignored them, and separated the posture of holding the ball, and a wild horse split his mane, "Cut the big watermelon into two pieces, give you one piece, and give him the other piece."

"Hahaha..." Diane Lane laughed so hard that she covered her stomach and was out of breath.

She saw the palm of Emilio Estevez's outstretched watermelon turn black.

When Emilio took a look at her, his face turned red and he clenched his hands into fists.She was going to play tricks on Diane again, but Diane's doorknob painted her with black paint.

"Hahaha..." Some people saw Emilio's black hands, and some in front thought that Diane was amused by Ronald's saying that he cut the watermelon, so they also laughed together.

"Okay, Ronald, come down, you continue." Coppola also smiled, and called Ronald aside.

"You know I made them go to the game to play a prank?"

"I guessed it, but Cherry is a hot girl, and Diane needs to fight back."

Sure enough, it was Coppola's idea to let two groups of actors compete to play pranks on Diane.

Ronald continued, "Smearing honey on the toilet seat has a sense of humor, writing bitch on the mirror has bad imagination and bad taste, and spilling red paint on the bed is terrorist. You should announce before One wave wins."

"Fuck, Emilio the little Axxhole." Coppola also cursed, and he knew who was leading it.Martin's oldest son lacked a sense of humor and was less relaxed than his younger brother Charlie.

It can be seen from the attitudes of the two towards their stage names on the set of "Apocalypse Now".Emilio was rigid and insisted on keeping the Estevez family's true Latino surname.Charlie, on the other hand, is more flexible, inheriting his father's stage name Xin to make his debut is a bit cheap, and there is no burden.

A small turmoil passed quickly, and Diane did not tell her father Bert about the prank. Young actors tended to shift their attention to new things, and they were quickly absorbed by Coppola's video rehearsal.

During the two-week rehearsal time, the actors rehearsed almost all the scenes from beginning to end.Ronald also filmed all the rehearsals with a Sony BetaCam.

Unlike formal filming, the rehearsal process is carried out in the order of the script, and each scene is carried out from beginning to end.Except no lighting, no make-up.

Every night, Ronald watched rehearsal tapes with Coppola and the trainee director.Analyze what the actors did well and what did not, and continue to improve the next day.

As time passed, Ronald felt that the actors' cooperation was getting better and better.Because it is rehearsed progressively according to the script, the story and characters are fully developed, and the actors' understanding of the characters is getting better and better.

Ronald now fully understands why Coppola has to rehearse all the actors in advance. This method can make them more natural when they are officially performing, and make the audience convincing and moving.

"As expected of a great director", the trainee female director also praised.

"you are right."

Ronald didn't fully understand the trainee director's words from a technical point of view. This kind of practice of rehearsing for a long time in advance is not a director of Coppola's level, so it is difficult to calm down the scene.Many actors have schedules, so they won't come to waste two weeks of rehearsal.

Of course, most of the actors are newcomers under [-], and they don't have the capital to play big names, which is also an important reason.Except for Patrick Switz, who played the horse boy, the others didn't even have a manager or a stand-in to take care of life on the set.

It was very monotonous during the rehearsal.Coppola tried his best to let the actors relax and have something to do, so as not to get bored because of too much concentration, and always try to keep them in a state of being happy and engaged in creation.

Ronald has been on the sidelines, and he admires Coppola's ability to control the actor's mentality and emotions.

Every time the actors are too tense, he will show everyone a movie, or play some games, and take a short vacation to let the actors relax.

After two weeks of rehearsals, the actors were a little tired, and Coppola booked a movie theater in Tulsa in time to show a new movie "Rocky III".

The opponent that Stallone knocked down with heavy punches on the screen this time was the black star "Mr. T" with a very special image. A-Team)" in the character, an absolute beast.

Rocky's opponent in the first two films, Apollo, took over the coach Rocky's coach after his death, and trained Rocky.

In the end, the scene where Rocky beat Mr. T violently made all the boys stand up and shout, leaving behind the tiredness of two weeks of rehearsal for a while, and began to look forward to playing like Stallone in the official shooting.

Ronald has learned a lot about this little technique of mobilizing the actors' emotions and helping the shooting. He feels that Coppola is very concerned about mobilizing the actors' state.No wonder the actors in his movies can always play very well.

"Let's have a ping pong game, everyone relax, and the official shooting will start tomorrow."

After watching the movie, Coppola saw that it was still early, so he carried the ping-pong table in the hotel to the open-air yard and let the boys start playing.

"Ralph, you come to play too." C. Thomas Hall, who played the main character "Mad Boy", was only 16 years old. Fu Mazio often hang out together, looking for the feeling of close friends.Now he also came to play with La Mazio.

Ralph Mazio was good friends with C. Thomas Hall in the movie, but they didn't quite get along.Mazio thought about reciting his lines all day long, trying to figure out his acting skills.Hauer spends his days thinking about playing and being lazy.

"No, I still need to read the script."

"Oh, Come On, don't be so boring. Today is the last day off."

"Okay", Mazio was right after thinking about it, put down the script, and started playing ping-pong with Hall.

None of the boys had played table tennis much, but none of them wanted to admit defeat, and soon they started a group arena match, and they automatically stepped down if they lost.

Diane and Michelle Meylink, who plays her best friend, also watched the boys compete, which intensified the rivalry among the actors.

After going back and forth, the oil head gang gradually gained the upper hand. Emilio Estevez later learned that the black paint was Ronald's idea, and he always hated Ronald for making him look ugly. Finally, when he got the racket , issued a challenge to Ronald.

"Hey, Ronald. Do you dare to come and play with us? None of those young masters are opponents."

"You guys play." Ronald didn't want to disturb Coppola's arrangement. This was a tactic he deliberately designed to provoke the competitive psychology of the two groups of actors.

"Aren't you afraid? Or do you think you're not at the same level as our technology?"

"Your skills are indeed not at the same level as mine." Ronald thought to himself, but he just smiled and turned to leave.

"Loser!" Seeing that Ronald didn't dare, Emilio scolded Ronald as a loser.

"Hey, Ronald, let them see how good you are." Diane couldn't take it anymore, came over and took Tom Cruise's racket, and handed it to Ronald, "You won't, you really won't Let's fight? Do you want me to fight for you?"

Ronald looked at Diane, and Tom and Rob, who were booing together, took the racket.

"Hey, don't you even know how to hold a racket?" Emilio saw that Ronald was holding the racket straight with his thumb and index finger. "I'll let you serve first." He threw the ping-pong ball over and swung it Said to Ronald in a pose that he thought he was handsome.

"Look carefully, I will serve you a forehand." Ronald raised his hand and served, and Emilio caught it.

Emilio Estevez didn't understand what was going on, picked up the ping pong ball and slammed it hard against the racket, sending the ball back.

Ronald kept his body still, stretched out his backhand to block, and the ping pong ball bounced back quickly and urgently.Emilio didn't pick up again.

Just like that, Ronald pushed the ball from the left and smashed it from the right. Standing in front of the table without moving his feet, he hit Emilio with a strange racket grip until he could only pick up the ball.

"Shxt", Emilio was beaten and threw the racket on the table and stopped playing.

"You guys play, I have something else to do." Ronald also put the racket on the table, clapped his hands and left.

Leaving Tom Cruise behind, Rob Lowe and others looked at each other in blank dismay. What the hell is this special style of play?

Soon it was time for the official shooting, and Ronald came to the scene early to see what secrets Coppola had.

When he himself watched "Fast-paced Richmond High School", he always felt that the emotions of the actors before and after the performance were out of sync.

Because of the lighting, the scenes where the two actors' dialogues are edited together may actually be shot at different times, even weeks apart.

For example, in today's dialogue scene between Ma Zai and his second brother soda pop, it took more than three hours to carefully set up the lighting for C Thomas Hall, focusing on the shot of Ma Zai talking with his second brother at home.

Then tomorrow, I will re-light on Rob Laub, focusing on the dialogue shot of the soda pop on the opposite side.

How to keep the dialogue shots and emotions of the two actors in perfect harmony after editing together?

What Ronald wants to know most is the details of these directing performances. A great director like Coppola must have his own tricks, right?

"Cut!" Coppola called to stop the shoot, and exchanged ideas with the director of photography.

"It's coming, let's see how the great director guides the performance and emotional scale of the actors." Ronald is full of expectations, such opportunities don't come often.He didn't even dare to blink.

"Very good, this one is good, print it." Coppola nodded with satisfaction, "Let's take another one."

"Cut!"

After taking a few more shots, Coppola still felt that the first two were better, so he asked the scene clerk to write down the number of shots to be processed by the final laboratory.

"next."

Ronald stood up in shock, why did he pass?No re-directed acting part?
Could it be that Coppola is so sure that tomorrow Rob Lowe's soda pop, performance intensity and emotion will all be in perfect harmony with today's C. Thomas Hall's horse boy?
(End of this chapter)