Exploiting Hollywood 1980

The acquisition of the cinema went very smoothly. Many cinema owners were happy to sell it when they heard that someone was willing to take it over. The bottleneck turned out to be insufficient funds and a limited design and renovation team.

Anyway, Ronald and Douglas Jr. had enough money. In the new year, Ronald will receive box office shares from two hot-selling romance films. This time, he will take out a part of it to buy the cinema first and store it, so that Thomas, the Hollywood cinema chain, can maintain the operation, and then slowly renovate it.

Putting this matter aside, Ronald's other project also fell into trouble.

That is the polar bear advertisement he made for Coca-Cola. The production progress is very unsuccessful. Van Fleet's latest estimate of the production time is much longer than the original estimate, and it may take up to 8 months to a year.

There are two main problems. The first is that the animation is all computer-generated. When the polar bear character makes some movements and moves, frame skipping will occur in the middle. Suddenly, a hand and foot movement will lose its smoothness, as if it is a clown's deliberate action in the middle.

The second problem is that the facial expression of the polar bear is not well matched with the entire computer model. When he speaks and moves his mouth, or even smiles, there is a possibility of being exposed. It's like a robot wearing a polar bear headgear. If you don't pay attention, the skeleton inside will stick out from the middle of the headgear.

Van Fleet's solution is to develop software to automatically handle these two problems. Otherwise, if you rely on manual work, I don't know when it will take to fix it.

"Has no one encountered these two problems before?" Ronald wanted to finish this matter as soon as possible, otherwise Orvis might come up with something new.

"In previous movies, there were very few scenes of purely computer-generated entities moving in the environment. I heard that only the recent Terminator sequel will have some breakthroughs."

"Hey, you said it earlier..."

Ronald took Van Fleet to Cameron's special effects studio again. His special effects director Stan Winston was rendering some of the final pictures with Cameron.

Stan Winston looked at the sketch brought by Haverette and patted his chest to assure that there was no problem. "It just so happens that our T1000 robot will also need to deal with the problem of motion coordination and facial mapping. We have developed 4 software by ourselves, which cooperate with Alias ​​and RenderMan of Industrial Light and Magic."

"Okay, after you finish here, we will work with your team on the polar bear advertisement over there." Ronald calculated that after they finish Terminator 2, and then teach the software to Van Fleet's team, and complete the Coca-Cola advertisement together, it will save at least 6 months of time compared to developing it by themselves.

"No need to wait for the holiday. After we complete this project, this team will do their own things. The people from Industrial Light and Magic will go back to the animators, modelers, and rendering engineers from other places of Industrial Light and Magic. After this film is finished, no other movie will use computer graphics to create characters out of thin air on such a large scale."

"What do you mean, you have no idea what you have created. You should keep this production team and set up a company. I guess after this Terminator sequel is released, Hollywood will have at least a dozen movies looking for you to do similar things."

"Hahahaha..." Stan Winston laughed, how could this happen? After filming the Star Wars trilogy, Industrial Light \u0026 Magic also fell into a deadlock. George Lucas had to invest in more movies and TV series to keep the company running.

The combination of traditional model special effects and computer special effects, and some fixed business. Special effects like this, which are completely generated by computers, are only operated in this way in the Terminator sequel, the T1000 liquid metal robot. This is determined by the particularity of the plot.

Just for these few minutes of special effects, their entire working group spent half a year developing software and doing a lot of experiments before finally achieving the effect. There is no other company in Hollywood willing to invest $100 million to shoot such a movie.

"We can make a bet. How about Jim and I invest in your special effects studio together?"

"If that day really comes, I will do it with you and Jim..."

"What are you talking about?" Cameron saw that they were talking heatedly and came over.

"Ronald said that after this movie is successful, many movies will use this special effect, and we should set up a company..."

"That would be great, I can make a few more movies like this, how cool is that!" Cameron certainly wanted it. But he and Stan Winston were not as optimistic as Ronald. Large-scale use of such computer special effects means super-large-scale investment. How many crazy people in Hollywood are willing to bet everything on it like Carloco?

...

Two weeks later, the special effects team that had finished Terminator 2 was reorganized and started working with Van Fleet on a Coca-Cola advertisement.

The team that had been trained in very detailed special effects on the big screen was indeed not comparable to Van Fleet, who had never used pure computer special effects. The four software they developed themselves solved the various problems faced by polar bears and greatly shortened the development and production time of special effects.

Ronald was happy to ask them to buy the licenses for these four software.

"Are you serious?" Stan Winston was stunned. Isn't it just to help?

"Of course it's true. You don't know how much those small and medium-sized production companies and advertising production companies want this kind of software. And those small production companies that make cartoons for TV stations, with these tools, they can start making TV series."

"It may take a few years before it can be used in actual production, right?" Stan Winston is an expert. He knows that such things are not very suitable for being directly put into the TV production environment.

"TV series, advertisements, music videos, whatever you want. How many production companies are looking forward to buying such a set of things, and they can increase the quotation to customers in the future."

"Is it really possible?" Stan Winston began to think about it. If there are so many customers, the annual licensing fees, software upgrade fees, and supporting hardware integration fees, if he really sets up a company, he doesn't need to do special effects himself. Just selling tools can also maintain a small team to continuously develop and take on large film projects.

"Yes, this is called selling by selling..., not fighting to support fighting. With the profits brought by these tools, you can continuously upgrade research and development and expand your scale. Just like my old friend Warren said, start snowballing from the top of the mountain."

"Your friend seems to have a good business sense. I am convinced by you. I will go find a lawyer now. Let's corporatize the team first..."

...

The two went to see Cameron who was still working overtime in the editing room. Cameron felt very happy. As long as the company was established and someone really invested in the production, it meant that he had big toys to play with again.

"This is a good idea. I didn't expect it to be played this way..." Cameron smiled and signed the authorization document. "This may be a new field. The special effects in the past were mainly based on models. Industrial Light and Magic also combined some industrial control. The future technology of this company may be special effects made by pure computer graphics. No one in Hollywood has yet to explore this field."

"Your idea is very good. I think it can be the core competitiveness of this new special effects company. Why not call it...Computer Graphics Field Company? Well, it's too complicated. Why not call it Digital Field?"

"Good name, good name." Both of them thought the name was good.

Stan Winston took the authorization documents and went to Ronald's lawyer to help set up a new company.

Ronald was hanging out in Cameron's editing room, and Cameron invited him to look at his work on the editing machine.

"Ugh..."

Ronald felt a little sick when he saw the editing machine. During this period, he had just finished editing "Other People's Money" and was in a period of disgust.

Every time he finished editing a movie, he would have such a reaction. Because the colorful world created on the screen is incompatible with the boring and repetitive real world, it causes some physiological and psychological discomfort. At this time, Ronald often does something else to distract his attention, not watching movies, not entering the editing room, and staying away from everything in the movie.

Seeing that Ronald was really uncomfortable, Cameron said to him, "Are you looking sick? I would be the same. There is coffee over there, go and pour it yourself."

"What are you doing?" Ronald saw Cameron and the editing assistant cut a frame of the picture with scissors after a section on the editing machine, and then connected it on the machine, and couldn't help but feel strange. What kind of editing method is this?

"Ha, this is my sudden inspiration, a new experimental editing method. If this method works, all directors and producers will thank me, and they will even name this editing method Cameron Editing."

"Tell me about it..." Ronald studied under Walter Murch, and he was quite concerned about new editing techniques.

"It's like this, I edited all the shots that would not affect the narrative, and the final length was still two hours and five minutes, but the distribution company TriStar Pictures insisted that I reduce it to less than two hours."

"Ah, that's right. It's like collecting the sauce on pasta. It's the most difficult to grasp the last few cuts... I often..."

Cameron interrupted him, "Listen to me, I have 5 minutes of extra film, but if I cut any part of my story, the audience will have a gap in understanding. So I suddenly had an idea, five minutes, two hours, what did you think of?"

"What?" Ronald looked confused Of course...

"Their ratio is exactly 241, the same as the number of frames per second in a movie. I have an idea to cut one frame per second, which will not affect the movie picture and narrative, and can just shorten the length by five minutes, which will not damage the content of the film and can meet the length requirements.

How many directors curse the producers every year for cutting off the very good shots they have worked hard to shoot. And how many producers curse the directors for making the movie longer to the point that the theaters are unwilling to show it.

With my Cameron editing method, the best of both worlds!"

"Wait a minute, this won't work..." Ronald didn't know whether to laugh or cry. After filming "Rock and Roll High School", Cameron went to do model special effects for Roger Corman, and he became an editing assistant. The two embarked on different development paths.

Now Cameron is the top 3 in the field of models and electromechanical special effects, and Ronald has become an expert in editing...

"How can it not work? The audience can't even notice if one frame is missing."

"You haven't been an assistant editor. I worked as one for two months, moving films and fiddling with editing machines every day. The audience will feel every frame. A good editor can stop at the same position every time he pauses. This is determined by the subconscious mind of the human brain."

"Is it impossible?" Cameron looked like, "Really? I don't believe it."

"Well, let's do some experiments on a reel of film first, and you'll know when you see it."

...

"Tear..." The last piece of editing tape specially made by Ronald Company and invented by Walter Murch stained the working film.

The assistant found a projector, put the film on the reel, and started to play it in the projection room.

"Huh?"

Cameron glanced at Ronald and was greatly surprised. Just as Ronald predicted, with this method of one frame per second, the final film could not be watched smoothly at all. Every frame that was omitted was silently shouting, you can't cut me out.

Sometimes when Schwarzenegger stretched out his hand to shoot, a frame skipping would be clearly seen, and sometimes when Linda Hamilton spoke, there would be an unnatural pause.

The most amazing thing is that one frame was cut right in the transition process. It should not have any impact. But when watching, Cameron clearly felt that the rhythm here was wrong. Even if it was a shortage of one twenty-fourth of a second, it would make the audience collectively distracted at that time.

This may not be a big deal in those shoddy small productions. But in such a carefully crafted action special effects blockbuster, any flaw in the rhythm will cause a negative box office impact.

"Okay, I give up, it really doesn't work." Cameron admitted his mistake quickly and immediately called the printing factory to send another corresponding working film.

"Hahaha, I'm not good at model special effects, but you are not good at editing technology."

"Then what should I do? There are still five minutes, I really don't know where to cut it..." Cameron thought hard.

This is different from the previous "The Abyss". The Abyss is originally super long, and it is impossible to queue for two rounds of screenings during the evening rush hour. Terminator 2 is a typical commercial blockbuster. The theater has to use a two-hour time slot to schedule an extra round of screenings during the rush hour.

A five-minute difference, plus ten minutes of cleaning and rest time, will cause the theater to lose a round of audience. Carloco will not allow such a thing to happen.

"Please show it once for me to see."

Ronald was in the screening room, watching "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" from the beginning without the final music and the opening and ending credits.

"The rhythm of this movie is really good..." Ronald praised in his heart. This movie is actually much deeper than the theme of the first one. It explores the possibility of avoiding nuclear war, the confrontation brought by the Cold War, and the prosperity brought by peace, and other human themes.

But the movie does not have any preaching elements, everything is hidden in the tense and intense storyline. It is exactly the best movie that Roger Corman said.

"I think you might as well cut this part..." Ronald said after a few minutes of silence.

"This..." Cameron was a little surprised.

The part Ronald was referring to was the scene where his buddy Michael Biehn played Kyle Reese, who died in the first film, and appeared in the dream of Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton, and persuaded her to cooperate with T800 for a peaceful future without nuclear war and robot war, and for the sake of her children.

"If there is any part that can be cut without affecting the audience's understanding, it is this part..." Ronald understood that Cameron might not know that this part could be cut. But he was still influenced by the first Terminator in his heart, and subconsciously hoped that there would be some connection between this part and the first part.

But "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is a complete independent film. The fact that the audience has not seen the first part does not affect their understanding of the second part at all. After all, eight years have passed, and it is difficult for ordinary audiences to remember the complete plot of the first part.

"Okay, just cut it..." Cameron was a little depressed. Originally, he wanted to make the two films into a big production, but Hollywood could not find a place to show a five-hour movie.

"Cheer up, your movie is unprecedented, and you will leave your name in Hollywood history. I think it may change Hollywood."