Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Mimi Rogers couldn't help it. She couldn't talk about Confucius's teachings.

American society always likes to throw some messy words at Confucius. In fact, the words of this wise man from the East were collected and published by his disciples. Anyone who cares will know if he investigates, many of the things he said were not his.

The reason why American people like to joke about "Confucius said" is because his English translation name "fuci" is pronounced as "confusion (fed)". Many specious "famous quotes" have been attributed to Confucius.

However, the words quoted by Ronald sound very ancient. They are similar to the words in the Bible. The language is similar to that of the time. It is simple and rhythmic. Mimi Rogers didn't dare to make a mistake, so she had to change the topic, stop talking about Eastern philosophy, and lead it to the teachings of Scientology to avoid making a fool of herself.

But Tom Cruise was a little interested in Confucius. He found an opportunity to ask Ronald alone:

“Is there any way through Confucius’ teachings that can improve my ability to read and understand other people’s words?”

"this?"

Ronald was speechless for a moment, so he just found a few ancient classics translated by Gu Hongming and flipped through them. Many people in Hollywood believe in philosophy and like to say seemingly profound things, memorize a few of them themselves, and show off when appropriate.

I never thought about being a life coach?

After thinking for a while, Ronald found a passage that seemed to meet Tom Cruise's requirements.

“When a man has a standard of excellence before him, only then will he have a fixed and clear purpose.

With a fixed and clear purpose, only in this way will he have peace of mind and peace of mind.

With peace of mind, only in this way can he have peace and tranquility of his soul.

Having peace and tranquility of soul, only then can he devote himself to deep and serious thought and reflection.

And only through deep, serious thought and reflection can one achieve true understanding. "

"That makes sense..." Tom Cruise snapped, clasping his hands together in admiration, "When I signed the contract with Paula, I wrote a list of all the most famous directors in Hollywood that I wanted to work with. .

I really set a standard of excellence, and then I have a direction no matter what I do in filming.

It seems that I also need to set a goal for dyslexia. "

"Um..." Ronald thought to himself, is this okay?

"Sorry, Tom, I really know too little about dyslexia to give you more guidance. In addition to Scientology, why not also talk to some other experts?"

"Hmm..." Tom Cruise nodded immediately.

But Mimi Rogers quickly came over and started chatting with Tom again. This woman is very smart and tries to occupy as much of Cruise's time as possible so that other people's impact on him will be minimized.

"Ronald... let's go to the inner room to have a chat?"

Jerry Bruckheimer came over. He and Don Simpson came to see Ronald not just to celebrate.

"Okay, I'll come as soon as I go, you can have fun here." Ronald told Diane, and went to a small room on the second floor of the room to have a secret conversation with Bruckheimer and Simpson.

"This is the Top Gun tape, the latest one."

As soon as Don Simpson pressed the remote control, a 21-inch color TV in the room was turned on, and then he put in an unlabeled video tape.

A commercial for a knock-off version of "Top Gun" appeared on television.

A fighter pilot named "Mustang" kept a Pepsi Diet Coke in the cockpit fixed to the cup holder.

To get a Coke, he did the same inverted maneuver that Tom Cruise's Lone Ranger did in the opening scene of "Top Gun," scaring off a MiG pilot. In this way, the Coke is smoothly poured into the cup under the influence of gravity.

"Hahaha, this is an advertisement shot by Kathryn Bigelow for Pepsi. She is very skilled in camera movements."

Ronald recognized it as the Daydream Company, which used the stunt model of the ground cockpit made by Cameron during the filming of Top Gun and hired Kathryn Bigelow to shoot the Pepsi commercial.

"Did they really put the advertisement at the front of the video tape?" Ronald looked at the Casio electronic watch. He didn't even play the Paramount title, it was just a minute-long advertisement.

"Yes, Paramount agreed. I will talk to you about this later. Let's watch the tape first." Don Simpson motioned for Ronald to continue watching.

"Pepsi, the choice of the new generation!"

After the commercial ended, a text appeared on the TV, warning that it was not allowed to be played in for-profit situations without permission. The background was specially made into pink, green, and blue, constantly flashing and changing.

"This is an anti-theft measure, combined with the automatic anti-theft chip of the video recorder, so that consumers cannot transcribe it themselves and show it to their friends." Bruckheimer explained the technical details.

Ronald nodded to understand that, except for the one he bought, video recorders produced before the Supreme Court's Sony v. Universal case and current American video recorders cannot rip, otherwise they will be like this warning, and the background will flicker and cannot be recorded. Watch.

"Dongdong...Dongdong..."

The familiar opening bell rang, and the opening credits of Top Gun, telling the origin of the Top Gun flight school, appeared on the TV screen. Then came the names of Tom Cruise and Ronald, the two producers, and finally in the dim sunrise, the F-14 Tomcat appeared on the deck of the Enterprise aircraft carrier.

"This frame..." Ronald turned to ask Don Simpson.

"Yes, this is the standard that Hollywood has recently explored. When transferring film to magnetic tape, the staff cut it manually." Don Simpson nodded, confirming Ronald's guess.

"So that's how it is. I wonder how the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen can be displayed on a 4:3 TV screen."

Ronald slightly solved some of the confusion.

In the early days, movies and TVs had the same aspect ratio of 4:3.

In the 1950s, after Hollywood's business was snatched away by TV stations, Hollywood companies found a widescreen solution to compete with TV.

Old films are all in 1.33:1 format, which is just right for TV. In order to persuade people to go to the cinema, Hollywood invented different widescreen formats such as 1.85:1 and 2.35:1. This widescreen has a large picture that cannot be seen on TV, attracting audiences to go to the cinema to watch truly wonderful pictures.

However, since the 1980s, with the popularity of videotapes and cable TV, many people have also begun to watch widescreen blockbusters on TV at home.

There are generally two ways to deal with the 1:85 masking widescreen on TV. Either deform the aspect ratio and force it into a 4:3 TV. Or leave a black border on the top and bottom to maintain the original aspect ratio.

However, "Top Gun" uses a 2:35:1 Panavision camera, and the anamorphic widescreen shot has a particularly large aspect ratio, which is almost equivalent to two 4:3 narrow pictures superimposed in parallel.

If the anamorphic method is used, the characters will become very ridiculously thin. Not to mention that the audience looks strange, stars like Tom Cruise will never allow themselves to become so ugly.

If the upper and lower edges are cut, the upper and lower black edges of the entire TV will occupy almost half of the frame.

This is also unbearable. TV sets are small to begin with. Most people's new TVs are about 21 inches. In some central and southern regions, the old 14-inch and 16-inch ones are still very common.

If wide black edges are left at the top and bottom, the characters will become very small and their expressions will not be clear at all.

Therefore, in this "Top Gun" videotape, Paramount seems to have taken a new approach to widescreen conversion.

When converting the film to a magnetically recorded videotape, the staff seemed to use a 4:3 frame on the screen and cut off a section of the picture on the original widescreen, so that the actors appeared on the TV without deformation.

The disadvantage of this is that the visual impact of the widescreen that the audience could enjoy originally, and the canvas that was large enough to accommodate three people's dialogue and blank space, were all cancelled.

The opening shot of the F-14 Tomcat taking off from the aircraft carrier was cut to the nose of the fighter, and the aircraft carriers on the left and right sides of the background, as well as the vast sea and sky, were all cut off.

"This will at most lose some of the widescreen visual impact, and the plot and the actors' performances are well preserved."

Don Simpson introduced to Ronald that this was the technical route he carefully selected, and after integration, the audience can still restore the plot to the greatest extent.

As for the lack of the impact of watching in the cinema, who told them not to go to the cinema?

Ronald continued to watch, and he wanted to see how the technicians would handle the shot of the Lone Ranger returning to the deck and waiting for an interview with another pilot outside the door of the aircraft carrier commander.

Here, the Lone Ranger, the Goose, and another pilot, the Jaguar, have a conversation outside the door. The three people talked side by side, and there was blank space to show the environment inside the aircraft carrier.

As a result, when it was transcribed to the videotape, the technicians did a second editing process, and when each person spoke, they cut to the front face shot of the actor. Then when the other actor answered, they cut to it.

They cut Ronald's wide-screen frontal medium shot into three frontal close-ups.

"Haha, so that's how you do it, French Open style editing." Ronald smiled and leaned back. In this way, the originally vast artistic conception became the editing style of TV dramas, which cut close-ups of characters based on the dialogue and face the big head of the actors.

This editing method was first used in a TV drama called "French Open". Every time a person spoke, he would be given a close-up shot. It was easy for the audience to understand, but some carefully arranged pictures were cut off by the 4:3 frame.

"Do you agree? We think this is the best combination of the three methods." Jerry Bruckheimer happily chimed in.

"It's good, I think it's the best way relatively." Ronald nodded in agreement with their choice.

"Very good," Don Simpson pressed the pause button. The three of them had watched this movie no less than a hundred times, and they were almost sick of it. Seeing that Ronald agreed to this treatment, they stopped the screening.

"There is one more thing. Pepsi is very satisfied with your Daydream ad. They are also proposing to jointly promote the sale of the videotape with Paramount. So... we need to change the 1% share we promised you."

"How?" Ronald crossed his legs, thinking that this was the most important purpose of the two producers looking for him today.

"It's like this, Ronald. Pepsi has a proposal. They will invest another 8 million US dollars to promote this advertisement on TV, and then add a videotape sales notice at the end of the advertisement. And Paramount promised to reduce the price of the videotape by another 6 US dollars, so..."

"Further reduce?" Ronald was a little unhappy. He was paid dividends according to the sales of the videotape. For every dollar the price was reduced, he would lose one cent.

"It's like this. Pepsi-Cola invested a lot of money this time, and Paramount also wanted to try a new pricing strategy. We asked you to come here just to see how to make up for your loss." Bruckheimer said beside him.

Anyway, "Top Gun" has been a big hit, and Ronald Lee has made a lot of money for himself and his partner Don Simpson. There is no need to deduct his already small money on the videotape.

Originally, the price of the videotape of this kind of hot-selling blockbuster in the market is generally between 80 and 100 US dollars. Some directors were unwilling to release the video version for fear of piracy. For example, Spielberg did not want his film to be sold as a videotape.

Before the release, Paramount did not know that "Top Gun" would be so popular and win the box office championship in 1986.

Originally, Paramount intended to use "Top Gun" as an experiment, using a relatively low price to see if it could get viewers who watched the videotape to buy a videotape and watch it at home instead of renting it from the video rental store for three dollars a night.

So, this time Paramount cut the price in half and set it at $38 at the beginning.

Pepsi heard the news and thought it was a good opportunity, so it asked Ronald's company to shoot a general imitation movie advertisement and reached an agreement. For each videotape sold, Pepsi subsidized consumers with $6 as the cost of watching the one-minute advertisement.

In this way, the retail price was lowered to $32.

Who knew that Top Gun would be so popular and win the annual box office championship last year?

Before the videotape was released, the marketing department of Pepsi felt that they needed to work harder. It was a great gimmick that the annual box office champion could be sold at a lower price. Don't waste this good opportunity.

After approval from the headquarters, Pepsi added another fee, subsidizing each videotape by $6. The final price was set at $26.95 by Paramount and Pepsi marketing personnel.

"Your income is divided according to the proportion of the retail price, so this price has an impact on your income. Jerry and I discussed it and raised your share a little bit, 1.1%, as compensation. In addition, we will also have a bonus if the movie wins the box office championship."

Don Simpson said it very sincerely.

The two producers have the production rights of "Top Gun". In other words, after the movie is released, whether to give more money to the main creative staff and how much to give are up to them.

The theater chain took a part of the profit, and Paramount, as a distributor, also took a part. The remaining money was not that much.

But Ronald's wonderful directing made the remaining money far exceed the average profit level of a movie.

The two producers discussed and decided to be kind to others and take out a little from the remaining money to distribute to everyone to make good friends. It would also be beneficial to cooperate in the future.

"It was reduced by 6 US dollars. The original price was 32. I lost nearly 20% of the money." Ronald felt that it was still a bit of a loss.

"Then it's 1.2%, an increase of 20% on the original basis," Don Simpson said straightforwardly, "In fact, according to the calculations of marketing experts, price reduction can stimulate sales. You are not losing money."

"How much can it increase?" Ronald was satisfied when he heard it. If he calculated it this way, he could make a little more.

It seems that the two producers made too much money, so they didn't care about this little money.

"According to the formula used by Paramount's marketing staff, the price can be reduced from more than 80 US dollars to 26.95, which can increase sales eightfold."

"Eight times so..." Ronald was about to say more, but then changed his mind, "How much was the original sales volume?"

"At a price close to 100 US dollars, only video rental stores will buy it. There are thousands of rental stores in the country. Even if each store purchases ten videotapes for turnover, it will not exceed 50,000.

If their calculations are correct, there is hope that more than 400,000 videotapes will be sold this time."

"Oh, that's good." Ronald calculated it himself, so he could still get more than 100,000 dividends. It happened that he was very poor recently, and all his money was invested in the movie "Dirty Dancing". It would be good to have some money in the account.

"Then it's settled."

Don Simpson stood up and shook hands with Ronald, and the two of them finalized the new agreement.

"Then let my lawyer go to your lawyer. Is her name Lindsay?" Bruckheimer remembered Ronald's private female lawyer.

"Yes," Ronald nodded, "I still have some questions. How did they predict eight times the sales volume? Is it based on experience or..."

"I heard that they have a scientific algorithm that uses Pepsi's national sales data and a forecasting algorithm developed by Harvard University, and the results are calculated by computer. Don't worry, you won't lose money."

Bruckheimer is more familiar with these details.

"Well, I wish us success anyway." Bruckheimer opened a bottle of red wine and poured it for everyone. Ronald picked it up and clinked glasses with the two of them.

"Here's your bonus, Ronald." Don Simpson was the more passionate of the two.

He slapped a check into Ronald's hand.

"When I saw the Saab commercial you shot, I knew we had found the right person this time! Sure enough, we all made a fortune, hahahaha..."

Don Simpson laughed wildly. He had not indulged himself in a long time due to his recent twelve-step sobriety program.

"Today's party is not interesting. I'll ask you to come with me next time. I'll find more beauties."

Don Simpson finished one thing, felt happy, put his arm around Ronald's shoulders and walked out.

Before Ronald could even read the number on the check, he was carried out of the room and came to the lobby on the second floor, where he heard Don Simpson speaking to

"Did you know? You can really make a lot of money by making movies, hahaha..."

Person shouted, "Don, Jerry, I love you."

It seems that they have all received the red envelope check from the producer, and he is the last one.

Ronald stayed for a while longer, declined Mimi Rogers' invitation to go to the Scientology Star Center, and left with Diane.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to open the door and let Diane get into the car, Ronald quickly took out the check from his pocket and took a look at it.

The first number was followed by five zeros. Although it did not exceed one million, Ronald was very satisfied. Now his daily expenses for this year were guaranteed, as long as he did not buy a big toy like a Ferrari.

Ronald turned to the other side and got into the car. He looked at the clothes Diane was wearing and saw that they were the same ones he had seen her wearing before.

"I'll take you clothes shopping," Ronald said to Diane.

"Okay, okay", Diane was very happy, grabbing Ronald's arm and leaning his head against it.

"Bud, take us to Macy's Department Store." Ronald said to little Bud sitting in front of him.

Little Bud has been running around with him during this period, which is also very hard, and has helped him deal with many daily things. As a driver, he is also a personal assistant.

This time I have a profit, so I have to give him a check and give him a vacation to go back to New York to spend time with his girlfriend.

Ronald still approves of the way Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer made a lot of money and distributed it to the main creative staff.

"Hehe", Diane grabbed her arm, closed her eyes, and laughed.

Ronald also laughed. This girl's family background was similar to his own when she was a child. Many habits are difficult to change. For example, she can still have fun buying new clothes.