MTL - Exploiting Hollywood 1980-Chapter 87 Kill the chicken to warn the monkey

   Chapter 87

   "No, you acted very well, don't worry about forgetting your lines." Jim, a black teacher in the high performance department of the Academy of Performing Arts, finally got this role with the same profession as his, and also played the role of the teacher of the performance department in the movie.

  Today is the day when the crew started, and the first shot was to film Montgomery, a student who came to interview for his comments.

  “Cut.”

  Alan Parker, wearing his tattered Lucky T-shirt, called off the shoot.

  The makeup artist stepped forward and wiped the sweat from his forehead for Jim, the black teacher. A close-up shot of Jim was shot indoors. The gaffer provided a strong positive light, and several headlights were baking Jim on the opposite side.

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

   "Recording?"

   "Camera?"

"start!"

   "No, you act very well..."

  “Cut”

"do it again."

   "Cut, Cut, Cut..."

   Ronald looked at Jim, who was tormenting his acting teacher, and felt a little disapproving. What is this? Are you kidding people?

   "Let's do it again." Allen motioned to resume shooting.

   "No, you acted very well..." Watching Jim speak his lines, and thinking that he had been stopped more than thirty times by Alan Parker, Ronald felt a little sympathetic to him. In the lines, Jim is praising others for their good performances, but he is always denied by the director in the real shooting scene.

  “Cut”

   Ronald looked at Jim's 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 took a few sips of water, adjusted his posture, and then muttered to himself, as if to adjust himself.

   "What is the director doing? I don't see anything wrong with Jim's performance? It's just a simple line to evaluate the interview students."

   Ronald quietly asked Joanna Merlin, who was waiting on the sidelines. There will be her audition for a dancer later.

   "The wise man Confucius in China once said that in order to scare a group of monkeys, a chicken must be killed first." Joanna motioned him to look at the camera.

   "We continue shooting." The director prepares everyone to start again.

   "Recording, camera...start!"

Um? Ronald noticed the anomaly, the red light on the video recorder didn't come on at all. The director didn't let the DP turn on at all, he was just looking for an excuse to prank Jim on purpose.

   "Cut, Cut, Cut..."

   Have you spent a whole morning on this lens? Ronald turned back to David Da Silva, and the producer allowed the director to waste time so willfully?

   If Roger Coleman's crew, the director might have been fired by this time.

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

   Ronald was confused again.

  Clumsy trick, started again.

Jim couldn't take it anymore, got up and asked the director in a low voice, "Alan, what the **** is going on? You asked me to say more than 100 lines, but the camera didn't turn on? What exactly do you need me to do? "

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

  Jim sat down with a bit of a breakdown. Fortunately, the recording engineer on the crew was Italian, and although he didn't speak English, he stepped forward and gave Jim a thumbs up, indicating that he did a good job.

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

   "Recording, camera, ... start!"

   The camera lights are on this time.

   "Cut! Good, this print."

   In this group of shots, there are only a few lines from Jim. After taking a few shots, Allen motioned for the next scene.

  Ronald was the first time he saw a major studio shoot an indoor scene. The interior lighting was time-consuming, and the next shot was of Montgomery, a student who came for an admissions interview. His lines are much longer.

  The lighting team began to remove the light bulbs, point the lights at a chair on the stage from a different angle, and start the long lighting process.

  The photography team began to lay rails on the ground under the command of the director of photography Michael Serresin. This is a scene that requires the actors to show full emotions. After discussing with the director of photography, the director decided not to shoot the main shot, but to start shooting from the close-up.

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

  A cine lens is similar to a camera lens, a wide-angle lens that shoots the main lens, and is not large. But for close-up shots, the volume is huge.

  The huge close-up shot is a full person tall on the stand. The actor who played Montgomery was up close. The camera is so close again, almost right next to his face. Looks like a monster trying to devour him.

  The actor has yellow hair and looks a bit like Robespierre, the leader of the Great Revolution. Obviously afraid of the camera that almost hits his face. He was still repeating his lines constantly, for fear that he would make a mistake while filming.

  The camera assistant measures the focal length of the terrified actor, and the costume and hair stylist confirms that his appearance meets the requirements. Allen didn't give him any acting direction, talk about the character's motivations, or talk to him about the details of the performance, without even looking at him.

  No, what kind of way is it to scare this young actor like this? Ronald felt that the British director's thinking, he could not understand at all. If the director of the new world, at least he has to talk about drama, right?

   "Record, camera, start!"

  Alan Parker ignored the panicked state of the actors and started the first shot directly.

   "Every time I go to a party, I'm always worried that people won't like me..." The actor who played Montgomery began his line.

   Ronald stood in a safe area behind the camera, watching his performance with the naked eye. The lines are fairly smooth, but there is a hint of panic in his voice, and his eyes are fixed on Jim, the black teacher who is standing behind the camera and playing against him.

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

   "I have been studying in the military academy. My mother is an actress, but she is very busy and has no time for me, so she let me go to the military academy..."

   Several assistants of the photography team, 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 pace, which is an "extreme close-up" in DP's terminology.

   If you look through the viewfinder, the actor's face gradually expands from the red line that fills the entire frame to the frame, focusing on his panicked eyes and jammed mouth.

   Montgomery in the plot forgot the next line.

  “Cut!”

   "Very well, this one is printed." Alan Parker instructed the on-set recorder to write down, and then said to the first assistant director: "Let's have 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 this time the actor's performance was not as good as the previous one. The fear, embarrassment, and helplessness of forgetting words in the admissions interview is still the most full of the first one.

I see!

  Alan Parker deliberately didn't speak to the actor, and then came up with a super huge close-up and faced him up close. In addition, Jim, who played the teacher before, was caught by Allen and took dozens of films, which caused a lot of mental pressure to these young actors.

   This kind of mental stress is naturally reflected in the performance of the actors, just like the mental stress they face when they participate in the entrance interview. So the emotion of the first article is very real and full.

   As for the second item, because the first item was passed, the psychological pressure of the actors was relieved to a certain extent, so the emotion of the natural acting was not as real as the first item.

   "Tsk", Ronald sighed secretly, this move is a bit interesting, the director seems to have prepared for a long time, first used an excuse to prank 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 the chicken to warn the monkey does make sense, but is this what Confucius said?"

  The shooting speed started to pick up in the afternoon. Because it is the same interview location, there is no need to re-adjust the lighting, just make some fine-tuning according to the height of each actor.

  The effect of killing a chicken and a monkey in the morning is still there, and several actors have honestly completed the performance.

  The actor who plays the shy Doris is Maureen Tiffey, she is very beautiful, with a small nose and yellow hair, not at all Jewish, to very Irish. I don't know if it's because of her superb acting skills, or because the director gave her extra guidance, and she finished the difficult entrance interview crying scene in one go.

   "Ronnie, it's up to you now, act well." Allen Parker called Ronald with a smile. According to Woody Allen's suggestion, he asked him to play a stunned young man who came for an interview.

  Applied makeup and costumes, Ronald posed as a strong, simple-minded student with a goofy hairstyle. With the props in hand - a soft-covered Romeo and Juliet novel - 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 and talk to him at any time.

   Ronald was not afraid of him, adjusted his emotions, opened the novel, and began to read the lines in it.

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

  Ronald shook his legs while reading the lines, like a fool who studied sports, but he wanted to come to the Art High School for an interview for the performance department.

   "If you don't want to do that, then I'll ditch my surname and I'll no longer be a Kapo, Kapiu, Kaipo...whatever"

   "Capulet," reminded Jim, the black teacher he played against.

"what?"

   "It is to read Capulet."

   "Yes, I just read it as Capulet," Ronald continued. "You're not a Monta right now, Menta, ... no, slam something."

   "It's Montague, listen, you read Juliet's lines."

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

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

  Ronald was not afraid of Allen, and this kind of emotion just played the role of the silly and stunned young man.

   "One more." Allen called out, "Ronnie, you have to act a little more stupid, you still seem too shrewd when you read your lines."

   "Cut! One more"

   (end of this chapter)