Ronald had no good news for Niceta, but Niceta had bad news for him.
"Ronald, when are you going to Hawaii? Next Monday? Okay, Walter Murch called me. MJ has encountered a serious problem and wants you or Coppola to mediate over the weekend."
"Can you let Frances go? I'm busy filming right now."
"Coppola is also busy with his new movie 'Peggy Sue is Getting Married', and MJ is more familiar with you, so I'll try to get him to come and watch it as well."
"Okay, okay." Ronald thought of his daydream of being a producer and participating in this big production worth more than 20 million. But together with Lucas and Coppola, the three of them made a lot of money together.
It's a sum of money from Disney. It's also professional ethics to solve problems like this.
"What's wrong?" Ronald came to the shooting scene. Walter Murch was drinking honey water made by his wife next to the camera, his eyes dull.
"MJ refuses to come out."
"Refuse to come out of the locker room? What did you do to offend him?" Ronald looked inside and saw that MJ's current level of celebrity was not comparable to that of any movie star.
Since he organized the benefit performance for disaster relief in Africa, his reputation has grown and he feels like he is becoming a saint.
"It's my problem. It was my first time to shoot a 3D movie and I made a mistake in editing."
"How else can you go wrong with editing?"
It turned out that Walter Murch was very cautious. When he shot 3D for the first time, he developed and printed the film on the same day. After editing, he used the negative to develop a version. Before the shooting was completed, he made a half-minute sample.
Try this stereoscopic movie camera for the first time.
Because there was a problem with this sample video, Murch asked to reshoot the scene of MJ moonwalking, which made America's most popular star unhappy. He hid in the dressing room and made a phone call, ignoring Murch.
This situation has been going on for a day. Ronald watched it for a while and thought to himself that maybe it wasn't so bad. After all, MJ didn't refuse to shoot, he still came to the scene.
“What’s wrong with the editing?”
Murch took Ronald to watch the film. He played the 2D version first and found that everything was normal. MJ's dance steps have become more mature and are now more flexible.
And then there’s the 3D version…
"Um?"
Ronald, who was wearing red and blue stereoscopic glasses, saw a stereoscopic picture of MJ on the screen. He was doing his best moonwalk. He was wearing a white suit and a top hat, but the funny thing was that his
The moonwalk was not coherent at all, it was intermittent in the middle, as if I stepped on a switch and kept shaking.
"What's going on?" Ronald took off his glasses, and two double images appeared on the screen, but the shaking was gone. Putting on his glasses, MJ began to sift through the screen again.
"You know, our brain has a mechanism called persistence of vision, which can automatically synthesize 24 frames per second into a continuous action.
For 2D images, our brains can supplement the action by themselves. For 3D images, it seems that our brains have to spend more resources to carefully align the boundaries of the two images in order to see the three-dimensional illusion.
The brain needs more energy to supplement those moving images. Therefore, our brain seems to be down at this moment, unable to keep up with the 24 frames per second action, and there are too many details that need to be supplemented to depict.
So I asked Disney engineers to increase the shooting frame rate to 60 frames per second. In this way, our brains are provided with more than twice the picture details every second without spending too much energy.
I just made up my mind. So it’s normal.
Look at this section, I found MJ’s backup dancer to film it, everything is normal.”
"I understand." Ronald saw that there were no technical problems here, so he stood up and went to solve the problem of MJ's star playing big over there.
"Dangdang..." Ronald knocked on the door in MJ's dressing room, "Ready in five minutes."
No one answered.
"I'm Ronald, MJ. Is there anything we need to do?"
"Bang, the door is opened." MJ's manager, Frank Dario, walked out.
"Ronald, let's go outside and talk."
At a glance, MJ was on the phone and saw Ronald waving as well.
"It seems there is no big problem, it's just a problem with the treatment." Ronald and Dario walked to the outside room together.
"Ronald, MJ is a sensitive artist and we have to be patient with him. Any suggestion that there is a problem with his performance will put him in a bad mood."
"There is absolutely no such thing. All errors were caused by Disney's cameras. After our experienced Mochi adjustments, the errors have been completely corrected. MJ's great dance will be displayed accurately and three-dimensionally on Disney
In front of an audience in Paradise.”
"Okay then, you and I come here, MJ is on the phone with his good friend Paul McCartney of the Beatles, and when he finishes, we can start."
Ronald was brought into MJ's lounge. He nodded to MJ and absentmindedly thought about his movie shooting. Dario went over and repeated Ronald's words in MJ's other ear.
MJ nodded, while still talking to McCartney from The Beatles, "Paul, you all seem to be veterans who understand the record industry very well. Although I have sold some records, I am still a newbie. Can you give me some advice?"
?"
While talking on the phone, MJ glanced at Ronald. Very good, he also surrendered, he was the boss on the set.
Seeing Ronald sitting in the corner thinking about things and constantly taking out a pen to write something in his notebook, he felt very happy. MJ smiled slightly, raised his hand to Dario, and motioned for him to bring a piece of paper and pen.
.
"Yeah, listen, the most important thing is not to lose the copyright of your own songs. We made a mistake during the Beatles era and the copyright was taken away by the record company. Now we are trying to find a way to buy it back." Phone call
Paul McCartney in the movie was very proud that the most popular person in the record industry came here specifically to consult him.
"Really? How much do you have to spend to buy back the copyright of your songs?" MJ said as he wrote a line of words with a pen on the paper Dario brought.
"Thirty million dollars."
"Thirty million dollars? Oh, that's a lot of money."
"Yeah, don't make the same mistake we made, Michael."
"Okay, thank you."
MJ hung up the phone, walked quietly behind Ronald, and gently placed the piece of paper on Ronald's back.
Ronald felt someone touch him lightly from behind. He turned around and saw that it was MJ and his manager Dario.
"Michael, what, are you done?"
"Hehehe..." MJ was wearing performance clothes, covering his mouth with his hand, and laughed secretly.
Seeing that he was smiling innocently, Ronald smiled back, "Michael, I apologize for Disney's machine error. You are the best performer. Walt is ready and can use the most realistic technical means.
Leave your heroic appearance to more audiences."
MJ nodded, still snickering.
"When you're ready, just call me and I'll get them ready."
"Hehehe", MJ smiled even more happily, and he touched Ronald's back again.
Ronald touched back and found the piece of paper. He took it off and looked at it. There was a line written on it, "Kick my ass."
"Hahaha..." Dario laughed at the right time, making Ronald laugh too.
MJ is really childlike and likes to play tricks like those ten-year-old kids play. Ronald thought to himself.
"You have to sign it for me and I will keep it, otherwise I will forget who is going to kick my ass in the future." Ronald picked up the paper and teased MJ.
"Good idea", MJ picked up the pen, added "To Ronald" in the front, and signed his name, Michael Jackson, in the back.
Ronald folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
"Wait a minute, I'll make a call."
MJ was having fun, so he picked up the phone and called his agent, "Hey, Paul's bid is 30 million U.S. dollars. You can double that and buy the Beatles rights in a package. For 60 million U.S. dollars,
From now on, if Paul McCartney sings his own songs, he will have to pay me royalties, hehe."
"Ronald, should I have an entrance speech?" MJ asked Ronald again with a smile.
Ronald was very surprised when he heard MJ speak.
Why does this mj look like a child at one moment, and a cold and mature businessman at another. The two identities switch smoothly, just like Peter Pan in the fairy tale. On the one hand, he is childish, but on the other hand, he has super powers that ordinary people cannot match.
"Captain Io, please come here. Your spaceship will set sail soon." Ronald's face remained unchanged, and he spoke the lines he liked to hear in conjunction with MJ.
"yeah!"
"Where should I look?" MJ came to the shooting location. He was familiar with all his dances. All he wanted to ask was which direction the camera should look.
"cut!"
Go through it again.
Walter Murch was shocked. When he became a director, MJ was not so cooperative. Did Ronald have some magic? Or did he know how to make an artist like MJ happy?
"When you go to Hawaii in the future, how should I deal with him?" Murch also understood that MJ was deliberately showing off to let everyone know who has the final say on the set. He wanted to learn from Ronald and find someone to deal with him.
The star's approach.
"If you do this, knock on the door and ask him to come out from the beginning, once every half hour, fifteen minutes, and five minutes. You must respect him.
Also, if he still takes too long, just say this, 'Please come to Captain Io, your spaceship will set sail soon.'" Ronald whispered in Murch's ear.
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, if you want to finish the filming successfully, you have to do this."
"All right."
On Monday, Ronald and the crew arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. The crew was flying to Hawaii to shoot the plot in Okinawa. On the Hawaiian island of Oahu, there is a windward beach, which is similar to the scenery in Okinawa.
"Ronald, let me introduce to you. This is the famous screenwriter Oliver Stone."
Agents Niceta and Richard also came to the airport to see him off. As entrusted by others, they stopped Ronald at the airport and introduced him to another famous screenwriter who was about to fly to the Philippines.
"Hello, Mr. Stone." Ronald shook hands with him nonchalantly and was about to run away. This old boy wrote "Year of the Dragon" in such a weird way, maybe he was also discriminating against Chinese Americans.
"Ronald, would you like to chat?"
Oliver Stone saw Ronald about to leave, and quickly stopped him and asked him to come aside to talk.
"Let me get straight to the point. There is a bit of misunderstanding between us. I asked Mr. Ovitz from CAA to explain it to you."
"We have never interacted with each other, but I like your script of Conan the Barbarian very much. I am just curious, why did you write the Chinese in Year of the Dragon like that?" Ronald asked the crew members to leave first, and sat down by himself.
Have a chat with Stone.
"That's what I'm saying, it wasn't mine. I signed it, but Cimino, you know his, all his plays, he's going to disparage and take the credit for himself. If not
If you come out to refute him this time, I'm afraid I will be implicated as well.
In fact, I just hated the Vietnam War. They drafted me, a Yale college student, and sent me to the Vietnam battlefield to be an infantryman. I almost died on the battlefield. My classmate, George Jr., the eldest son of the current deputy commander, was able to go to the National Army.
The Guard flies the plane."
"So you are a real Vietnam War veteran, not like that fake Cimino." Ronald respected veterans quite a bit, and he also knew Cimino's virtue, so he couldn't help but believe Stone's words.
"He really is a 'lucky son'", the famous song of the band R.
“Some people are born to wave the flag
The colors of the flag are red, white and blue." Ronald thought of his father and Aunt Karen's husband Steve, who were both infantrymen who went into battle.
"Hahaha, yes." Stone also picked up the lyrics.
“Some people are born with silver spoons in their hands
Lord, they will help themselves."
The two looked at each other and smiled. They were both ordinary people, at least middle-class.
"Ronald, I am currently preparing to make a movie 'Platoon'. I wrote it myself. My producer Hemdale is only willing to provide three million for the production cost, and Orion will make up the other six hundred."
Wan. Now we are looking for ways to reduce costs."
"Hey, two companies again, this number again, this is their old routine." Ronald understood as soon as he heard it, wasn't this the same routine that Cameron used when filming "Terminator".
"Today's new directors have already started making movies with a budget of 6 million." Ronald thought to himself that fortunately he became a director relatively early and still had the opportunity to make a splash with a production budget of 2 to 3 million.
"Actually, this is my second movie. My first directorial work, 'El Salvador,' was just filmed in Mexico. Do you have any experience in saving money that you can share?"
Oliver Stone was not afraid to learn from Ronald, who was much younger than him.
"I have nothing to teach you, Oliver. It's just that it's extremely difficult to shoot a movie like this in the jungles of the Philippines. You have to be careful not to do what Coppola did with Apocalypse Now.
Also, you'd better pick some new actors, who are willing to endure hardships in order to stand out and shoot for more than ten hours a day without complaining." Ronald thought of the two older men on his crew, who were newbies who were easy to train.
"What about Emilio Estevez? I heard he doesn't have much acting right now?"
"Um..." Ronald thought of the grudge between himself and Emilio. It seemed that no one had revealed it. Maybe Stone didn't know about it.
"He's more difficult to deal with, you know what I mean, right?"
"Understood, I have to find someone obedient." Stone crossed out Emilio's name. "What about his brother? Charlie Sheen? Martin's son can all act."
"He seems pretty good." Ronald felt that he couldn't beat everyone to death with a stick.
"I also need a supporting character who looks like a villain but has a kind heart. This can give the audience a reverse feeling."
"Let me see," Ronald simply took the casting list prepared by Stone, "I have seen Willem Dafoe act before, and he is very good at playing the villain."
"And this Forest Whitaker," Ronald pointed to another person's name, "This black actor played my fast-paced debut. He is very obedient and looks very much like a big football player."
"That's all. I haven't worked with anyone else, and I don't know their performance on set." Ronald finished his coffee and was about to leave. His flight had already been called on the radio.
"Thank you very much. We will talk more if we have the opportunity. Now there are not many people in Hollywood who are willing to make controversial subjects like the Vietnam War."
"Okay", Ronald carried his bag, caught up with Richard who was still waiting for him, and walked towards the boarding gate.
"Passengers please note that the flight to Hawaii is boarding. Business class passenger Ronald Lee is requested to board the plane as soon as possible."
"Antonia, what's wrong with you? Our plane to London is about to board."
"Oh, ah...I'll come." Antonia Franceschi, with the New York City Ballet, was about to fly to London for a season performance. She suddenly heard Ronald's name being called on the radio.
I got up, and there were ripples in my heart.
"I wonder what movie he is going to Hawaii to film now?"