Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"No, you acted very well, don't worry about forgetting the lines." Jim, a black teacher in the acting department of the performing arts college, finally got the role with the same profession as him, and also played the teacher of the acting department in the movie.

Today is the day when the crew starts filming, and the first shot is to shoot him commenting on Montgomery, a student who came for an admission interview.

"Cut."

Alan Parker, wearing his tattered lucky T-shirt, stopped filming.

The makeup artist came forward and wiped the sweat from the forehead of the black teacher Jim. Indoor close-up of Jim, the lighting engineer matched a strong positive light, and several headlights baked Jim opposite.

"I want to say this line in a different way, do it again." The director ordered.

"Recording?"

"Camera?"

"Start!"

"No, you acted very well..."

"Cut"

"Do it again."

"Cut, Cut, Cut..."

Ronald looked at the director torturing the acting teacher Jim, and felt a little disapproving in his heart. What is this? Are you playing people for fun?

"Let's do it again." Allen signaled to resume filming.

"No, you acted very well..." Watching Jim saying the lines, Ronald felt a little sympathetic when he thought about how he had been stopped by Allen Parker more than 30 times. In the lines, Jim was praising others for their good acting, but in the real shooting scene, he was always denied by the director.

"Cut"

Ronald saw that Jim was already showing some signs of collapse. Anyone who was denied by the director more than 30 times in a row would definitely doubt himself psychologically.

"Take a 5-minute break." The director also saw that Jim was a little uncomfortable and stopped the progress.

Jim drank a few sips of water, adjusted his posture, and then muttered to himself, as if to adjust himself psychologically.

"What is the director doing? I can't see where Jim's acting is wrong? It's just a simple line, evaluating the interview students."

Ronald quietly asked Joanna Merlin, who was waiting on the side. She will have a scene of interviewing dancers later.

"Confucius, a wise man in China, once said that in order to scare a group of monkeys, you must first kill a chicken." Joanna signaled him to look at the camera.

"Let's continue filming." The director asked everyone to prepare to start again.

"Record, camera... start!"

Hmm? Ronald found something unusual. The red light on the recorder was not on at all. The director did not ask the director of photography to start the camera at all. He was just looking for an excuse to deliberately make trouble for Jim.

"Cut, Cut, Cut..."

Will the whole morning be spent on this shot? Ronald went back to find David Da Silva. Did the producer allow the director to waste time so willfully?

If it was Roger Corman's crew, the director might have been fired by now.

Da Silva obviously expected all this and watched the progress of the crew with a smile.

Ronald was confused again.

The clumsy trick started again.

Jim couldn't bear it any longer, so he stood up and whispered to the director: "Alan, what's going on? You asked me to say the lines more than 100 times, but the camera didn't turn on? What exactly do you need me to do?"

Alan smiled and said to Jim: "Jim, don't worry. You said this line in more than 100 ways. You will be fine. You are a good actor. Don't deny yourself."

Jim sat down a little collapsed. Fortunately, the sound engineer of the crew was an Italian. Although he didn't speak English, he came up and gave Jim a thumbs up, indicating that he did a good job.

Jim finally relaxed and indicated that he was ready to start the next one.

"Recording, camera,... start!"

This time the camera light was on.

"Cut! Very good, print this one."

This set of shots only had a few lines from Jim. After shooting a few takes, Alan signaled to go to the next one.

It was the first time for Ronald to see a big studio shoot an indoor scene. The indoor lighting was very time-consuming. The next scene was shot with Montgomery, a student who came for an admission interview. His lines were much longer.

The lighting team began to remove the light bulbs, change the angle of the light to a chair on the stage, and began the long lighting process.

Under the direction of the director of photography Michael Seresin, the camera crew began to lay rails on the ground. This is a scene that requires the actors to perform full emotions. After discussing with the director of photography, the director decided not to shoot the main shot, but to start with close-up shots.

After nearly two hours, the lighting finally signaled to the director of photography that the light had been set up. The actor sat on the stool and waited for the director of photography to measure the focal length and make the final adjustments to the light.

Movie lenses are similar to camera lenses. The wide-angle lens for shooting the main shot is not big. But the lens for shooting close-ups is very large.

The huge close-up shot is as tall as a person when placed on the bracket. It is aimed at the actor who plays Montgomery at a close distance. The lens is very close, almost next to his face. It looks like a monster that wants to devour him.

The actor has blond hair and looks a bit like Robespierre, the leader of the French Revolution. He is obviously afraid of the lens that is almost in his face. He was still repeating his lines, fearing that he might say them wrong during filming.

The camera assistant measured the focal length for the frightened actor, and the costume and hairstylists confirmed that his appearance met the requirements. Allen did not give him any guidance on the performance, talk about the character's motivation, or explain the details of the performance to him, and did not even look at him.

No, what method was used to scare this young actor like this? Ronald felt that he couldn't understand Director Yingji's thinking at all. If you are a director in the New World, you must at least talk about drama, right?

"Recording, camera, start!"

Alan Parker ignored the actor's somewhat frightened state and started shooting the first line directly.

"Every time I go to a party, I'm always worried that people won't like me..." the actor who plays Montgomery begins.

Ronald stood in a safe area behind the camera, watching his performance with his naked eyes. The lines were spoken fairly smoothly, but there was a hint of panic in his voice, and his eyes were fixed on the black teacher Jim who was standing behind the camera opposite him.

The camera slowly pans down from a still from Shakespeare's "Othello" to a full close-up of Montgomery's face.

"I have been studying in the military school. My mother is an actress, but she is very busy and has no time to take care of me, so she asked me to go to the military school..."

Several assistants on the camera crew, under the command of the chief pusher, pushed the camera in a controlled manner. The camera begins to approach the actor at a very slow speed, an "extreme close-up" in the terminology of the director of photography.

If viewed through the viewfinder, the actor's face gradually grows larger than the red line that fills the entire viewfinder frame, and the image focuses on his panicked eyes and stuck mouth.

Montgomery in the plot forgets the next lines.

"Cut!"

"Very good, this one will be printed." Alan Parker instructed the recorder to write it down, and then said to the first assistant director: "Let's do another one."

"Every time I go to a party, I'm always worried that people won't like me..."

Huh? Even Ronald, who was far away, felt that the actor's performance this time was not as good as the previous one. The fear, embarrassment, and helplessness of forgetting words during an entrance interview are still the most fulfilling in the first one.

I see!

Alan Parker deliberately didn't talk to the actor, and then came up and used a super close-up shot to focus on him at close range. In addition, Jim, who had previously played the role of a teacher, was grabbed by Allen and refused to let him pass for dozens of shots, which caused a lot of mental pressure on these young actors.

This kind of mental pressure is naturally reflected in the actors' performances, just like the mental pressure they face when participating in admission interviews. So the emotion in the first article is very real and full.

When it came to the second item, because the first item was passed, the actor's psychological pressure was relieved to a certain extent, so naturally the emotions of the performance were not as real as the first item.

"Tsk," Ronald sighed to himself. This move was a bit interesting. The director seemed to have been preparing for it for a long time. He first used an excuse to punish the drama teacher Jim, and then deliberately arranged a series of blows for the actor who played Montgomery. Only then did he perform that perfect performance.

“The idiom of killing chickens to scare monkeys does make sense, but is this what Confucius said?”

The pace of shooting started to pick up in the afternoon. Because it was the same interview location, there was no need to readjust the lighting, just make slight adjustments based on the height of each actor.

The effect of killing Jim in the morning to scare the monkeys was still there, and several actors completed their performances honestly.

The actress who plays the shy Doris is Maureen Tiffey. She is very delicate, with a small nose and yellow hair. She does not look Jewish at all, but looks a bit like Irish. I don’t know whether it was because of her superb acting skills or because the director gave her extra guidance, but she was able to finish the difficult crying scene in the entrance interview in one go.

"Ronnie, it's your turn next, play well." Alan Parker called Ronald with a smile. This was based on Woody Allen's suggestion and asked him to play a stupid young man who came for an interview.

After putting on makeup and costume, Ronald pretended to be a strong but simple-minded student, with his hair styled in a silly way. Holding the prop in his hand - a soft-cover copy of Romeo and Juliet, Ronald stood on the interview stage.

"Recording, camera,...start!" Allen called the start, found the director's chair and sat down with a serious expression, watching Ronald start his performance, ready to stop at any time to give him a good talk.

Ronald was not afraid of him, adjusted his mood, opened it, and began to read the lines inside.

"Romeo, where are you? Deny your father, deny his name."

Ronald was shaking his legs while reading his lines, like a fool who studied physical education and wanted to audition for the acting department at an art high school.

"If you are not willing to do that, then I will abandon my last name and I will no longer be a Kapu, Kapiu, Kaipu...what"

"Capulet." Jim, the black teacher who plays opposite him, reminds him.

"ha?"

"Reading Capulet."

"Yes, I just read it as Capulet," Ronald continued, "Soon you will no longer be a Montague, a doorman,...no, you will lift something up."

"It's Montague. Listen, you're reading Juliet's lines."

"Oh, Shxt." Ronald decisively turned around and hit the wall.

"Cut!" Alan Parker had to admit that this was a good performance and asked the recorder to write it down: "This is a print."

Ronald is not afraid of Allen, and this emotion just makes him live up to his role as a silly young man.

"One more thing." Allen shouted, "Ronnie, you have to act a little more stupid. You still look too smart when you read the lines."

"Cut! One more"