Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Ah...hahahaha..."

Aunt Karen didn't react until she saw Tom Cruise and McGillis chasing each other angrily on motorcycles on the screen. After a fierce verbal exchange, they suddenly kissed each other, and then she suddenly covered her mouth and laughed.

The feeling of the two people's happy enemies made Aunt Karen very excited. Cruise once visited her home, and she liked this young man very much. She was not very interested in the air combat scenes and the competition between pilots, but this romantic scene made her invest in it.

"Huh..."

Ronald breathed a sigh of relief. "Top Gun" is a high-concept movie. If you like it, you like it. If you don't like it, it will be difficult to like it through the progress of the story.

The young male audience started shouting as early as the first air battle.

The middle-aged men praised the various dazzling tactics of the fighters, and discussed with the people next to them the sneak attack tactics of the MiG planes flying in pairs that could not be identified on the radar, and how the Tomcat automatic wings and advanced air-to-air missiles had a technological advantage over the MiGs.

Young female audiences also began to have their eyes light up when they saw the sturdy pilots in the bathroom and the volleyball scene on the beach.

Only middle-aged female audiences began to really appreciate the movie until this part.

"Watch every move in my stupid lover game

In this endless ocean, lovers finally know no shame

Turn around and return to a secret place in your heart

Watch you turn around and say in slow motion...

Take my breath away..."

The love interlude of the Berlin band sounded in the movie for the third time.

Because the passionate scenes of the two male and female protagonists were re-shot afterwards, there was no new music specially matched for them. Ronald had to play "Take My Breath Away" several times in a row. Whenever Charlie and the Lone Ranger were alone together, this interlude would sound.

The young people around him did not feel repetitive or bored at all, and some people followed the song and hummed softly.

"Huh..."

Ronald breathed a sigh of relief again.

This time, luck was on his side again.

In order to hedge the impact of the Challenger accident, Ronald contacted the Berlin band through his agency. In the interval between their tours, he took the initiative to shoot the MV of this song for them.

More than a month before the movie was released, "Take My Breath Away" began to be played heavily on MTV. The record company and Paramount jointly funded it to be on the charts.

Perhaps it was the high quality of the song itself, or perhaps the MV shot by Ronald was very attractive, and soon "Take My Breath Away" climbed to the top of the American charts.

This was the first time that a single from the Berlin band won the top of the charts.

Ronald remembered that when shooting the MV, this MV had to be released in conjunction with "Top Gun", so the plot was similar to the movie, and some unimportant movie clips were interspersed.

Lead singer Terri Nunn (

Terri

Nunn

) wore a blue overalls, like a blue-collar worker, and filmed a solo scene in the wreckage of several planes on the outside of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The Mojave Air and Space Port is a famous aircraft graveyard, where many retired fighters, bombers, reconnaissance planes, etc. from the Navy and Air Force are parked, and there are also many old planes retired during the Vietnam War.

The band's main creators, John Crawford and Rob Brill, were not very happy.

They were determined to sing the songs they wrote, and they were very opposed to this pop-rock style song that was neither written by Berlin nor composed by Berlin.

However, the popularity of the Berlin band was limited, and they did not have the control over their works like Bruce Springsteen. Under the pressure of the record company, they had to agree to release "Take My Breath Away" as the title song in the new album.

As part of the contract, they also had to cooperate with the performance of the MV. So when Ronald was shooting the MV, he found that the two were not cooperating.

In order to shoot the MV as quickly as possible, they had to separate the shots of the short female lead singer Terri Nunn from them as much as possible. Anyway, most audiences who listen to pop music will not notice the difference between the band style and original works.

There are only six lyrics sung over and over again, and it is superficial and has no connotation. Except for Terri Nunn who sang happily, the dissatisfaction of the two creative members increased day by day.

However, as the band's first chart-topping song, they had to sing this song at every concert during the tour.

"I don't really care about that. This song is so popular, I don't care who wrote it."

Ronald's thoughts were pulled back from Terry Nunn's private complaints to him.

The movie was greatly loved by the audience. In the end, the MiG was defeated, the Lone Ranger and the Iceman made peace, and in the end the Lone Ranger chose to return to Tun's school as an instructor and reunited with Charlie.

All the stars stood up and applauded. The constant cheers and clapping and stomping of the audience made them all understand that Ronald's new film would be a big hit at the box office.

Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis and others all came on stage to accept the audience's cheers, and then began to answer questions from fans.

Some people also asked if they could really fly a fighter jet. Except for Tom Cruise who admitted that he had a pilot's license, the other actors who played pilots were vague.

Ronald was so amused. These people were in the cockpit facilities designed by Cameron, pretending to speak lines in a high-altitude air battle, which was much more like it than now.

After seeing off Spielberg, Lucas and other bigwigs, the other young actors and guests went to a nightclub in New York to hold a party to celebrate the successful premiere.

Ronald dragged behind and got into a luxury car with the two producers.

"Is Sid still insisting?" Ronald asked Simpson.

"Yes, I think we should agree with him. The audience reaction of today's premiere is a great sign of a big sale. Now the people are in high spirits. Having such a movie that allows them to vent their patriotic emotions will give a positive bonus to the box office."

"A week in advance, huh?"

Ronald skillfully took out a bottle of whiskey from the refrigerator next to him and poured a glass for each of the two producers.

"Ronald, let's do it. Memorial Day is a small schedule. We can release it nationwide a week in advance and turn this small schedule into a big schedule."

"I just think it's a bit risky."

For movie marketing, the box office in the first week is particularly important, which determines the size of the first batch of audiences. And then it depends on the word of mouth.

Sid Ganis, the distribution manager of Paramount, proposed a risky plan. In the week before Memorial Day, which was originally planned to be a small-scale weekend, the scale of the release was expanded and a full-scale attack was launched.

Opening the film in more than a thousand theaters, so that the word of mouth can arouse more than several times the audience of previous weekends to watch "Top Gun" on the big weekend of Memorial Day in the second week.

The risk here is that if the audience's word of mouth is not as good as expected, the number of viewers in the second week will be less than that of the conventional operation.

The word of mouth of a movie needs time to ferment. In the first week, the audience still chooses to watch the movie based on the marketing operation. Keeping the biggest suspense on the weekend with the largest regular audience is the conventional operation of all movies.

This is a gamble, but now that the audience reaction at the premiere has exceeded expectations, the risk of the gamble has been reduced to the lowest.

"Okay, let's take a gamble." Ronald drank the wine in one gulp.

"Sid," Bruckheimer picked up the phone in the car and called Paramount's marketing department, "The feedback from the premiere was very good, and Ronald agreed. Let's do it according to your plan."

"Okay, just wait and see!"

Sid on the other end of the phone was very happy and immediately went down to arrange it.

"In this way, our film reviews will be released next weekend." Don Simpson threw a schedule over.

"What do those sons of bitches say?" Ronald picked up the schedule on the sofa, and attached the comments of several famous film critics.

"Ebert gave it 2.5 stars out of four stars, Cisco gave it three stars, and most importantly, the average rating of the audience surveyed by eaSre for this movie was A."

Bruckheimer had seen it a long time ago, and he briefly introduced it to Ronald.

"Huh, they won't give me four stars anyway." Ronald also knew that the popcorn movie he made was not well received by film critics.

However, what he cares most about is not the film critics, but the scores of this emerging audience sampling survey company.

ea

Sre is an audience evaluation survey company founded by founder Ed Mintz. They were not satisfied with the film critics' random scoring of movies, which disrupted their own viewing choices, so they came up with the concept of creating a pure audience evaluation system.

They will not tell the producers in advance, but randomly select places and start random audience evaluation surveys on the first day of the release.

This time, Ed Mintz personally brought people to New York to do the scores for the premiere, hoping to break into Paramount and provide them with consulting services.

When the film opens next week, they will secretly appear in any state and any town in America, and then do more meticulous random sampling. The scores given at that time will be more convincing.

Ronald made a check mark on his notebook, indicating that the evaluation was also positive. He then looked at the reviews given by two Chicago film critics, who are the vanes of national audiences, especially the audiences in the Midwest and the Deep South that the two producers value.

Roger Ebert of the Sun said, "Movies like Top Gun are difficult to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so ruthless. The dogfights are definitely the most exciting aerial scenes since Clint Eastwood in Firefox. But beware of the (boring) scenes where people talk to each other."

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune praised the action scenes but criticized the romance, writing, "It's a teenage sex fantasy movie, not a movie worthy of true romance, and if you're looking for any deep value, you'll be disappointed..."

"What did Paramount do for them? The score is not high, but what I said is still a small scolding and a big help."

"Hehe, a trip voucher to Hawaii and sponsorship of the Chicago Film Critics Association's annual meeting."

"Here we are, gentlemen!"

The driver parked the car in front of the nightclub, and Ronald got out to see that it was a nightclub with more luxurious decoration than Club 54.

"Tom, Cher," a bunch of couples inside were holding hands affectionately. Ronald went up and hugged them separately.

Ronald looked around. McGillis was chatting with Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals. They were also holding hands and whispering like sisters.

Ronald felt it was not good to disturb them, so he looked for Helen. After asking, he found out that Helen was picked up by her father Gerald's special car.

Ronald smiled and sat down to find a new target.

"Ronald, your movie is very good, but there is something I don't like. He is a bit American chauvinism. He makes the audience feel that the war can be won."

Ronald looked back and saw Oliver Stone, who had just finished his first and second movies, "Salvador" and "Platoon". His unique gentle voice echoed in Ronald's ears.

"Why, do you think we can't win the cold war with the Suvil Alliance?" Ronald was a little surprised by Stone's thoughts.

"No, I mean, if there is a third world war, there will be no winners. I participated in the Vietnam War myself, and there were no winners, no winners, man..."

"To some extent, I agree with your idea."

Ronald drank a glass with him. This poor Yale student who was drafted was in the army like his deceased uncle. He was hit by a big artillery shell from the North Vietnamese in Vietnam.

The "Top Gun" Navy, flying planes to bomb others, will not feel the horror of war.

"You won't say bad things about me in the newspaper, right?" Ronald poured him another glass.

"No, but we can spread the word to each other and hype it up?"

"I like your idea, Oliver..."

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