Before the sun rose, against the dim background of the aircraft carrier deck, a few streaks of white steam drifted past, and the head of an F-14A slowly crossed into the monitor from the left side of the screen.
The music from the "Top Gun" theme song slowly played on the soundtrack, and bells began to ring in the background.
"Pa", Ronald pressed the pause button, "It happens to be this square, I think this cut will be right here."
Chris and Billy glanced at Ronald. During this period of editing, they had long been accustomed to Ronald's trick of stopping on one frame every time.
They saw this trick a few days before editing, and immediately knew that Ronald was also an expert in editing, and they no longer dared to rely on his editing skills to show off his seniority. When they saw Ronald giving the editing order,
One goes to mark the editing machine, and the other goes to move the reel of film to be spliced next.
"When...when...when...", the opening bells of the theme song rang one after another, and the sound of the lead guitar cut in, repeating the melody that the piano sang softly at the beginning.
On the screen, several navy deck officers began to work in the increasingly bright sun and the vast white steam. The nose of the second fighter also began to cut into the lower left corner of the screen.
"Bang!" Ronald pressed pause again, "This frame will be cut here."
The piano and lead guitar repeated the main melody more excitingly. It seemed that the awakened deck crew and the two fighter jets were in line with the strengthening of the melody and slowly appeared on the left side of the monitor.
Both Chris and Billy found it very interesting. This was a real editing of the movie in the same way as MV editing.
Instead of using images to tell the story, we use images to dance with the melody. Every editing port in the picture corresponds to the break of the melody. A sentence of three to five seconds of melody is edited with one knife.
The melody of the theme song is high-spirited and uplifting, and it perfectly fits the image of the sun rising and the soldiers going from stillness to getting busy.
This short-shot, high-frequency editing method places high demands on the director. It turns out that the classic Hollywood method generally uses one main lens to capture the characters and environment in the entire scene. First, the place where the story takes place, the characters
, time, and the logical relationship between several characters are first explained to the audience.
Then use a mid-shot over-the-shoulder shot to explain the character's dialogue, and finally use a close-up and close-up shot to show the reaction after hearing other characters speak.
Ronald's editing completely abandoned the classic Hollywood production methods. Starting from the beginning, the audience was first moved by the beauty of the close-up steel behemoth aircraft carrier and the very graceful steel eagles.
Then in the slowly brightening steam, the petty officers on the aircraft carrier deck loomed. This is completely the editing method of the MV, combined with the jump cuts of the new wave of the country. There are many places in the middle that require the audience to use their imagination to connect them.
stand up.
Chris and Billy started chatting quietly again. They couldn't believe this new movie editing method. The mv was three to five minutes long, and the audience mainly listened to the mood of the song. Cinema
Is it feasible for a movie to be released to use this stream-of-consciousness editing method?
Ronald had known for a long time that the two of them were discussing his own editing. "There is no doubt that today's audiences have been influenced by the new wave of editing methods for many years. Now I just put the past ten years of Hollywood in pieces."
The editing methods used throughout the film are uniformly used throughout the film, so the audience will not miss 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. When Ronald was resting, they also tried to find editing points by themselves.
, but it’s not as natural and smooth as Ronald’s cut.
“My teacher Walter Murch taught me that editing is about anticipating the direction in which the audience’s thoughts will shift, and then appearing there a little before they arrive.”
"Oh," Chris and Billy suddenly realized that they indeed lacked this ability to predict.
"Hehehehe..." Ronald chuckled in his heart. Such a theoretical statement would definitely make the editor feel that he was very powerful. In fact, he had only shot and edited many commercials and music videos.
An advertisement of more than ten seconds and an MV of several minutes have much more time constraints than a movie.
When Ronald was filming those scenes, he had more repeated training on how to use fast shots and editing to piece together the audience's thoughts in a limited time than Hollywood practitioners.
When to jump cut and let the audience fill in the gaps. When to pave the way so that the audience gradually understands the whole story. This is what he learned from the commercials and music videos he shot.
Take out the finished product directly and skip the intermediate training link. This is like a magician conjuring a rabbit directly from a hat, which really surprised the two editors.
"Get that 'Danger Zone' tape and load it up."
Ronald held his head and directed the editor to take action.
This opening interlude "Danger Zone" was sung by several singers, but none of them was ideal. A famous rock singer cares more about his own music style, maybe like Cyndi Lauper.
Only when a newly debuted singer sings an interlude can she perform it exactly according to the filmmaker's ideas.
So Ronald discussed with the two producers and gave a chance to Kenny Loggins, a has-been singer who participated in the chorus of "We Are the World" and who was also self-aware and wrote the episode of the beach volleyball scene.
Sure enough, in order to return to the popular spotlight, Kenny Loggins cooperated very well. Regardless of the hardness of his voice, he sang this interlude with the tension of flying a fighter jet.
Loggins, who had no expectations at first, unexpectedly got an opportunity to sing the main episode.
"Change the song right here," Ronald directed the two editors to switch the two interludes while the tail nozzles of the two F-14A engines on the deck of the Enterprise emitted orange-red flames in sequence.
Change the rhythm of the theme song, where the morning bell gradually wakes up the audience, to the exciting and upward rhythm of "Danger Zone", where prey is about to be hunted.
The catapult ejected the thick nose landing gear of the fighter jet, and the rhythm of the actions of the deck officers suddenly accelerated.
"Start your engines,
Listen to her roar.
Metal in a state of tension,
Begging you to touch.
We head to the danger zone..."
Kenny Loggins' husky voice sounded...
Ronald put on Sony's monitoring headphones and squatted on the ground.
His eyes were fixed on the two paper figures he had stacked on the editing table. Their size ratio to the monitor was exactly the same as that of two adults, a man and a woman, sitting in front of the big screen.
The 2.35 aspect ratio is much wider than Ronald's previous films.
The fire from the tail flames of the F-14 fighter jet under the theme song can only burn more than half of the screen. There is still a small half space in the left half of the screen to show the steam ejection of the aircraft carrier and the actions of the deck officers.
The plane rose from the deck, its long tail flames only covering half of the screen in Ronald's imagination, and the other half was blank space.
"Very good, the pace of editing will be accelerated next." Ronald sat back in his seat.
The "Danger Zone" episode was originally meant to have a faster tempo, and Ronald added a lot of shots captured aboard the USS Enterprise.
The deck officers discussed together, moved the arresting rope, made a gesture to allow takeoff, and then performed a happy twisting dance after takeoff.
Ronald particularly liked this dance. It was captured by the aircraft carrier petty officer who accidentally danced because he was happy that day. Ronald cut it into two pieces and used it repeatedly.
After a second or two, the camera will switch.
There were not enough shots on the deck, and Ronald reused material in many places. Finally, at the end of the song, Ronald added two three-second shots.
One is a subjective take-off shot of "Bozo" taken at the San Diego Naval Base afterwards. He flew off the deck of the docked aircraft carrier, and then relied on his superb flying skills to roll 360 degrees.
The subjective lens was shot from behind, as if the aircraft carrier, the sea where it was located, and the sky had turned around and moved to the sky, while the sky had changed to where the sea was. It paused for a moment and then turned back.
The second shot is of a plane landing on an aircraft carrier.
A shot of an F-14A landing on the aircraft carrier deck from the sky at sunset, and then being stopped by the arresting cable.
This was also re-shot by "Bozo" in San Diego.
The technical level of aircraft carrier pilots also varies. It is not easy for the F-14a to perform such a standard roll. When landing, it requires repeated practice to land neatly and smoothly on the ship at once.
"Idiot" is indeed the elite level of naval aviation.
The daily edits continued and Ronald was very fast.
Due to various uncooperative actions during filming, Val Kilmer was there when Mancuso made things difficult for the crew and took the CEO's side.
A lot of his scenes were deleted by Ronald intentionally or unintentionally. Anyway, missing any of these handsome scenes will not affect the progress of the plot.
What Tom Cruise needs is not a villain in the traditional sense, but a competitor to complement him. Tom Cruise has always stood by Ronald's side and faced various difficulties together.
.
He accompanied Ronald to complete the various special effects shots of the ground cockpit, and then went to report to the new crew of Martin Scorsese and film opposite his idol Paul Newman.
In this way, the romantic scenes between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis were preserved a lot.
Anyway, the chase scenes between sports cars and motorcycles shot by the two were full of emotional tension because Cruise himself almost had an accident. Ronald couldn't use it too much.
"It's very good. Although I knew that the fast editing of music videos would have such an effect of stirring up the audience's emotions, I didn't expect it to be so good. After watching it, it seemed that the secretion of adrenaline was accelerated by 2%.
Hundred."
Producer Don Simpson came to see the working samples that Ronald had cut, and he was very impressed. The fast pace was very consistent with his idea of a perfect high-concept film.
"Have you recorded the song 'Take My Breath Away'?" Ronald did not flatter him, but reached out and asked him for the most important interlude. This is the love between the hero and heroine.
used when.
"I can't make up my mind. There are two versions now. Come and listen to them together." Don Simpson put the two master tapes on the table.
Ronald plugged in the tape recorder, put on his headphones and started listening.
"This is the tall version, and that one is the short version." Bruckheimer explained to Ronald, "We think each has its own merits. It's up to you to decide which one is more suitable to match the image."