After six weeks, "The Lost Ark of the Covenant" has become the number one box office this week. This movie is really popular, surpassing the box office of "Superman 2" again.
Ronald thought for a long time and came up with an explanation. Many of the audience for comic book movies are comic book fans. After "Superman 2" got through the popularity of a few weeks after its release, the follow-up gradually dried up. And "The Lost Ark of the Covenant"
It is an original adventure story. Thanks to word-of-mouth word-of-mouth, more and more people are going to watch it.
As the movie continued to sell well, Spielberg's status was rising rapidly, and ET added some special effects budget.
Ronald was a little worried that as Spielberg became more and more popular with various producers, he might forget about the support he gave him.
So he took the written "Back to the Future" script evaluation, contacted Steven's assistant Catherine, and personally delivered it to his door, reminding Spielberg with his own face.
"Well... you thought very well. You concentrated a lot of scenes into the movie, and the time machine was changed from a nuclear explosion to a car using nuclear fuel. The cost of such special effects has become calculable, and nuclear explosions are simply impossible to film." Si
Pierberg read the evaluation and gave favorable comments.
"I heard that ET got Hershey's Reese's chocolate endorsement?" Ronald brought up the conversation and first flattered Steven.
"If I didn't have confidence in you, Hershey wouldn't agree to pay $1 million. I think M&M will regret it after the movie is released."
Ronald himself was also talking about brand placement advertising. He heard from the producer that ET had signed a $1 million endorsement agreement with Hershey, and he felt very envious.
I only received $5,000 from Perry's Pizza for product placement in my movie, and it was because Jennifer Jason Leigh, who had appeared in several TV series, went there to experience life as a waitress.
Burger King rejected the negotiation after reading the script. They believed that their company was not suitable to appear in a low-budget film.
He came up with the idea, but someone else took the lion's share. Ronald could only hope that the producer's efforts to find a tennis shoe brand would not be in vain.
"Very good, I'll pass it on to Zemeckis. He still wants to try to negotiate with the big studios himself." Spielberg was very busy and stood up to leave. "Your evaluation of the script is very interesting. It is practical in every aspect."
From a shooting perspective, I am really interested in going to your set to watch you make a movie."
"Thank you, Steven." Ronald achieved his goal, felt relieved, and stood up to say goodbye.
"This is Chris, the screenwriter who works at my Amblin." Spielberg pointed to a screenwriter working at the desk next to him and introduced him to Ronald. The filming was about to start, he was very busy, and he disappeared in the blink of an eye.
"Hello, my name is Chris Columbus." The screenwriter who was about the same age as Ronald came over and introduced himself. He was helping Amberlin write the script. Ronald exchanged business cards with him and said goodbye.
A few days later, the film's director of photography and art director were in place. Ronald took them all over Los Angeles to find locations.
"This is a movie theater, and opposite is Perry's Pizza and All-American Burger. What do you think?" At the Sherman Oaks Shopping Center in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Ronald held a director's viewfinder and looked at the other end of the mall.
This shopping mall has some history, and some of the decorations are beginning to look old, but it is not too shabby. It fits the sense of authenticity that Ronald is looking for.
The viewfinder is like a monocular telescope with scales for camera lenses of various focal lengths, indicating the range of images that can be seen using different lenses. Because it is light and easy to carry, Ronald Scorsese liked this very much.
one's gift.
"What kind of basic tone do you need?" The director of photography, Matthew, is an old man from Warner and is very skilled in various types of low-cost productions.
"I need a film style that is close to reality, with a 1.85 format. I need the shabby, dirty and messy scenes to be truly reflected in the film. The colors are mainly realistic tones, so people can recognize them at a glance.
It’s a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles.”
The director of photography hurriedly took out his notebook and took notes. This young director was not just a second-generation star who came to play for fun as he thought. What he said were the words of an insider, concise and direct, and he expressed what he wanted very clearly.
Unlike some directors who only say that I want a tone like "The Godfather".
If I could shoot that kind of dark tones, high contrast, top-light photography style, wouldn’t I have won the Oscar for Best Cinematography long ago?
"What kind of image texture do you want? Is the lighting more natural and soft, or more dramatic and hard?"
"Natural", Ronald understood the meaning of the director of photography. The lighting method like "The Godfather" is more dramatic. At the beginning, the old godfather played by Brando sat in the dark background, petting the cat and deciding various things.
It looks very dramatic.
"This is a youth romantic comedy with a slightly realistic undertone. It doesn't need to be too heavy and dramatic to make the audience feel relaxed. Even if there are many bad things in the plot, it should look relaxed and let them know that for the time being
The suffering will eventually pass, and the movie ends well."
"It's hard to achieve dramatic lighting. I'm going to hire a master lighting engineer. I can't just shoot it quickly with natural light." Ronald complained in his heart. Is this photographer Matthew good? He doesn't seem to be particularly powerful. But he himself
With this budget, we can only hire technicians of this level.
The budgets of large studios are all falsely reported, and there are many problems with invoices. The administrative department charges a lot of expenses to the crew, and Ronald has no intention of pursuing them. This is what everyone does now.
Ronald asked the director of photography Matthew about his background, and sure enough, he had worked in TV series and TV movies before. He had never done much filmmaking.
"So our art design also adopts a realistic style?" Art director Dan is a veteran. He also participated in the art direction of Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and took the initiative to communicate with the director.
"That's it, everything is based on the current Los Angeles public high school students, so that they will feel familiar at a glance." Ronald was quite satisfied with him.
"Let's go over there and have a look." Ronald walked around the mall to the All-American Burger and Perry's Pizza across the street. Jennifer Jason Leigh was working at the pizza shop. She wore a red headband and wore
Wearing a red and white vertical striped dress, a white bib on the outside, white socks and white sneakers.
The whole person fits perfectly with the style of Perry's pizza.
"Hey, Jennifer, bring us some pizza." Ronald sat down with the two instructors and asked Jennifer to order.
"Hello, director." Jennifer laughed happily, took out the pencil from her bib bag and started ordering. She did it very gracefully, like a student girl who works part-time in high school.
"Two copies of this, and some... Coke?" Ronald asked the two companions.
"We only have Pepsi, we'll be here soon." Jennifer walked over to place her order, and soon pizza and Pepsi were served to her.
"You look great," Ronald praised. "How's the All-American Burger business over there?"
"Very good, their business is the best here." Jennifer said.
"Jennifer, can you sign your autograph for us?" Two children had seen Jennifer's TV series, recognized her, and came up to ask for her autograph.
Ronald put down the Pepsi, took out his notebook and took notes, asking the producer to discuss advertising placement with All-American Pizza. A regional burger restaurant like this might be interested.
After the three of them finished eating the pizza, they continued to enjoy the scenery.
"This is Van Nuys High School, and I plan to put all the school scenes here." Ronald took the two of them to the old location, which was the location where "Rock and Roll High School" was filmed.
"Were the students still in school when we started shooting?" Photography director Matthew has filmed many TV series, and sometimes he went to school to shoot scenes during holidays.
"I have made an agreement with the principal. He is an old acquaintance of mine. Many students here are artistic. If they are willing to come and watch, I will just select some to do group performances."
Ronald took out the director's viewfinder again and started looking at it. The two directors looked at each other. This director, Ronald, was extremely efficient. He seemed to know all the jobs on the crew, except for makeup. You had to be careful after turning on the camera.
Such a director is generally very demanding, and no job can fool him. Fortunately, Ronald doesn't seem to have a bad temper, otherwise the crew's life would be difficult.
"The stadium here doesn't work, and the camera can't be set up. We have to find another high school football field." Ronald recorded the degree of cooperation for important scenes in a few words, "I'm going to call the producer, and we have to expand the scope.
"
"We also need to find an Italian restaurant where we can film Mark and Mike discussing how to pick up girls." Ronald crossed off another item on the list in his notebook.
…
The work at Kanjing continued, and Ronald and art director Dan continued to run around.
The director of photography, Matthew, took the camera assigned by Universal Pictures.
Next, we need to determine the film development and printing process parameters. Ronald and the photography director will try to shoot some samples to see the effect after development and printing.
Because there are many batches of film, the same brand, same model of film, if the factory date is different, will also cause color inconsistency. Therefore, generally large studios will use a batch of film with a similar factory date for shooting.
Ronald tested the camera again with Matthew, the director of photography.
Matthew was also a camera operator and was very skilled at changing films in a secret bag. He locked the latch on the film door and began to test shoot Ronald.
"What brand of camera is this? Why haven't I seen it before?" Ronald was a little surprised.
"Ultracam," Matthew replied while taking pictures, "a new brand from America. Not long after it was launched, Universal bought a batch and allocated it to us.
Generally, American film crews use more Panavision cameras. This brand of cameras is only available for rent, not for sale, and is very expensive.
Ultracam may be cheaper, so Universal Studios was impressed and bought a few units for the crew to use.
"shxt!" The next day, Ronald saw the results after the ultracam samples were developed, and angrily took Matthew to find trouble with the producer.
"Why did you give our crew these rags?" Ronald threw the developed film onto producer Lin Sen's desk. Everything was fucking exposed. This tattered film hatch was fixed with a latch.
It's light leaking.
"My dear Ronald, I'm sorry. This was assigned by the people in the technical department and our crew has a limited budget."
"It's limited in size. Your truck pulls the wood and parks it outside the office door in the morning, and then pulls it back in the evening. The cycle starts over and over again. These invoices are reimbursed by the crew's accountant.
Don’t think I don’t know, go to Gogo at night and see that stripper’s money comes from here.”
"Okay, okay, keep it down, Ronald. What do you want to do?"
"Change our camera to a Panavision or Ale's."
"That's impossible. Panavision is being rented to the crew of 'Spring City' starring Dolly Parton, and our film company in America cannot use German products like Alai."
"The camera is the most important piece of equipment and I can't compromise on it."
"This is either very useful, or it leaks a little bit. You can think of a way. The business manager I found found the owner of All-American Burger for you. He is willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for the burger restaurant to appear on the camera. You must give them their trademark.
Close-up.
We also found a sneaker manufacturer who has launched a new shoe with a checkerboard pattern and is willing to spend money on advertising.”
"No problem, I promise to give them the biggest and longest close-up!" Ronald was happy, and then said seriously, "But the money must be used for the crew!"
"Can."
"Anyway, I was going to film a related plot, so I just took it for a ride." Ronald felt happy.
"What about our camera?" Director of Photography Matthew followed Ronald around, but he didn't find a better camera, and he felt a little panicked.
"This is your first time shooting a theatrical film, Matthew." Ronald whistled, took out a roll of black tape from his bag, and threw it away, "A cinematographer must have a magic weapon, and there will be no camera malfunctions.