Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Before the sun rose, against the dark background of the aircraft carrier deck, several white steam drifted by, and the head of an f-14a slowly entered the monitor from the left side of the screen.

The music for the "Top Gun" theme song played slowly on the soundtrack, and the bells began to ring in the background.

"Crack", Ronald pressed the pause button, "It just happens to be this frame, I think this knife is cut here."

Chris and Billy glanced at Ronald, who had long been surprised by Ronald's ability to stop at one frame at a time during the clip.

They saw this trick a few days before editing, and immediately knew that Ronald was also an expert in editing, and no longer dared to rely on editing skills to show old qualifications. Seeing that Ronald gave the editing instructions, one went to mark on the editor, and the other went to carry the film reel to be connected next.

"When... when... when...", the opening bells of the theme song sounded one after another, the sound of the lead guitar cut in, repeating the melody that the piano sang softly at the beginning again.

On the screen, several navy deck sergeants began to get busy in the rising sun and the white steam. The nose of the second fighter also begins to cut in from the bottom left of the screen.

"Crack!" Ronald pressed pause again, "This frame is cut here."

The piano and lead guitar make the main melody more exciting. It seemed that the awakened deck crew and the two fighter jets also matched the intensification of the melody and slowly appeared on the left side of the monitor.

Both Chris and Billy thought it was very interesting, it was really cutting the movie the way you cut the MV.

Instead of using images to narrate, I use images to dance to the melody. Each editing port on the screen corresponds to the punctuation of the melody. A melody of three to five seconds can be edited in one go.

The melody of the theme song is high-spirited, and it is also very suitable for the image of the rising sun and the soldiers from static to busy.

This short-shot, high-frequency editing method has high requirements on the director. It turns out that the classic Hollywood method generally uses a main camera to photograph the characters and environments in the entire scene, and first explain the location, characters, time, and the logical relationship between several characters to the audience.

Then use the medium shot over the shoulder to explain the character dialogue, and finally use the close-up and close-up to give the reaction after hearing other characters speak.

Ronald's editing completely abandoned the classic Hollywood method. The audience starts from the beginning, and is first caught by the close-up steel behemoth aircraft carrier,

Impressed by the beauty of the very graceful steel eagles.

Then, in the slowly lit steam, the non-commissioned officers on the deck of the aircraft carrier loomed. This is exactly the editing method of the MV, which combines the jump cuts of the new wave of the hair country. In many places, the audience needs to use their imagination to connect them.

Chris and Billy began to chat in low voices again, and when they encountered this new method of film editing, they couldn't believe it. The mv is three or five minutes long, and the audience mainly listens to the mood of the song. Movies shown in theaters also use this stream-of-consciousness cutting method. Is it feasible?

Ronald knew for a long time that the two of them were discussing their own editing, "There is no doubt that the audiences today have been edified by the new wave editing methods for many years. The editing methods used in various parts of the film are uniformly used throughout the film, so that the audience will not find our story at all.”

"But why do we always lose the rhythm when we want to imitate your cutting method?" Chris and Billy asked humbly for advice. When Ronald was resting, they also tried to find editing points by themselves. , but there is no natural smoothness where Ronald cut.

"My teacher Walter Murch taught me that editing is about anticipating where the audience's mind is going and then being there a little bit before they get there."

"Oh," Chris and Billy suddenly realized that they really lacked this ability to predict.

"Hey hey..." Ronald laughed inwardly. Such a theoretical statement would definitely make the editor feel that he is very good. In fact, he has only shot and edited a lot of commercials and music videos.

More than ten seconds of commercials and several minutes of mv, the time constraints are much more limited than the movie.

When Ronald was shooting those, he had more of this repeated training than Hollywood practitioners on how to piece together the audience's ideas in a limited time, using quick shots and editing.

When can you jump cut the shot and let the audience fill in the gaps in between. When to lay the groundwork soothingly and let the audience gradually understand the whole story, he learned from the commercials and MVs he filmed.

Just take the finished product and skip the middle training session. It was like a magician conjuring a rabbit out of a hat, which surprised the two editors a lot.

"Get that 'Danger Zone' tape and load it up."

Ronald held his head and directed the editor to do it.

The opening episode "danger zone" was sung by several singers, but none of them were ideal. Famous rock singers care more about their own musical style. They may sing interludes like singers who just debuted like Cindy Lauper back then, so that they can interpret them completely according to the ideas of the filmmakers.

So Ronald negotiated with the two producers and gave Kenny Loggins, who had participated in the "One World Family" chorus, a chance to write the episode of the beach volleyball scene.

Sure enough, in order to return to the popular spotlight, Kenny Loggins cooperated very well and sang this episode with the tension of driving a fighter jet regardless of the hard work of his voice.

Logins, who had no hope at all, unexpectedly got a chance to sing the main episode.

"Just here to switch songs," Ronald directs two editors to switch two episodes when the tail nozzles of the two F-14a engines on the deck of the Enterprise fire orange flames one after the other.

Change the rhythm of the theme song that the morning bell gradually wakes up the audience into the rhythm of "Danger Zone", which is about to hunt its prey soon.

The catapult ejected the front landing gear of the stout fighter, and the rhythm of the deck sergeants suddenly accelerated.

"Start your engine,

Hear her growl.

Metal is in a state of tension,

begging you to touch.

We're going to the danger zone..."

Kenny Loggins' hoarse voice sounded...

Ronald squatted on the ground with his Sony monitor headphones on.

His eyes were fixed on the two little paper figures that he had folded on the editing table. The size ratio of them to the monitor was exactly the ratio of two adults, one male and one female, sitting in front of the big screen.

2.35 aspect ratio, much wider than Ronald's previous films.

The f-14 fighter jet under the theme song, the fire emitted by the tail flame, can only burn to more than half of the screen, the left half of the screen, and a small half space, to show the steam ejection of the aircraft carrier and the actions of the non-commissioned officers on the deck.

The plane rose from the deck, and the long tail flame only covered half of the screen Ronald imagined, and the other half was a blank space.

"Very good, the pace of editing should be quickened." Ronald sat back in his seat.

The rhythm of the "Danger Zone" episode would have been faster, and Ronald added a lot of footage from the USS Enterprise.

The deck sergeants discussed together, carried the arresting wire, made a pose that allowed takeoff, and then happily twisted and danced after takeoff.

Ronald especially liked this dance, which was captured by the non-commissioned officer of the aircraft carrier when he jumped for joy that day. Ronald cut him into two pieces and used it repeatedly.

In a second or two, the lens switches.

There wasn't enough footage on the deck, and Ronald reused footage in many places. Finally, at the end of the song, Ronald adds two three-second shots.

One is the take-off subjective shot of "Bozo Bozo" at Naval Base San Diego after the fact. He flew away from the docked aircraft carrier deck, and then with his superb flight skills, he rolled 360 degrees.

The subjective lens is shot backwards, as if the aircraft carrier and the sea where it is located, turned around with the sky, changed to the sky, and the sky changed to the position of the sea. After a while, it turned back.

The second shot is of the aircraft landing on the aircraft carrier.

An f-14a descends from the sky to the deck of an aircraft carrier in the setting sun, before being stopped by arresting cables.

It's also a reshoot of "Bozo Bozo" in San Diego.

The technical level of aircraft carrier pilots is also high and low. It is not easy for the f-14a to roll such a standard. When landing, it is simply a smooth landing at one time, and it must be repeatedly tempered.

The "dumb" is indeed the elite level of naval aviation.

The daily clips continued, and Ronald was fast.

Fang Kilmer was there when Mancuso was embarrassing the crew because of various incoordination during filming, and he also stood on the side of the CEO.

A lot of his scenes were deleted by Ronald, intentionally or unintentionally. Anyway, one less of these handsome scenes will not affect the progress of the plot.

What Tom Cruise needs isn't a villain in the traditional sense, but a contender to complement his shrewdness. And Tom Cruise has always stood by Ronald's side and faced various difficulties together.

He has been with Ronald through the various special effects shots of the ground cockpit, and then went to report on Martin Scorsese's new crew and filmed opposite idol Paul Newman.

In this way, the romantic scenes of Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis have been preserved a lot.

Anyway, the chase shots of sports cars and motorcycles shot by the two people, because Cruise himself almost had an accident, were full of emotional tension. Ronald can't use it too much.

"Very good, although I knew that using the fast editing of the mv would have the effect of stirring the audience's emotions up and down, I didn't expect it to be so good. After I watched it, it seemed that the adrenaline was secreting 2% faster. Hundred. "

Producer Don Simpson came to see Ronald's cut working dailies, and he appreciated it. This fast pace fits perfectly with what he has in mind for a perfect high-concept movie.

"Have you recorded the song 'Take my breath away?'" Ronald didn't flatter him and asked him for the most important episode. This is used when the hero and heroine are in love.

"I can't make up my mind. There are two versions now. Come and listen." Don Simpson put the two master tapes on the table.

Ronald plugged in the recorder, put on his headphones and started to sound.

"This is the tall version, and that one is the short version." Bruckheimer explained to Ronald, "We think each has its own advantages, you decide which one is more suitable for the image."

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