"No, you acted very well, don't worry about forgetting your lines." Jim, a black teacher in the acting department of the Academy of Performing Arts, finally got this role with the same profession as him, and also played the role of an acting teacher in the movie.
Today is the day when the crew starts filming, and the first shot is of him commenting on Montgomery, a student who came for the admission interview.
"cut."
Alan Parker, wearing his tattered Lucky T-shirt, stopped filming.
The make-up artist came forward and wiped the sweat from the black teacher Jim's forehead. To shoot a close-up of Jim indoors, the lighting engineer used strong direct light, and several headlights roasted Jim opposite him.
"I want to say this line in a different way and do it again," the director ordered.
"recording?"
"camera?"
"start!"
"No, you acted very well..."
"cut"
"do it again."
"cut, cut, cut..."
Ronald looked at the director torturing Jim, the acting teacher, and felt a little disapproving. What is this? Is he toying with people?
"Let's do it again." Allen gestured to resume filming.
"No, you did a good job..." Watching Jim say his lines, and thinking that he had been stopped by Alan Parker more than thirty times, Ronald felt a little sympathetic to him. In the lines, Jim was praising others.
The acting was very good, and it was a real shooting scene, but I was always rejected by the director.
"cut"
Ronald saw that Jim was already showing signs of collapse. Anyone who had been rejected by the director more than thirty times in a row would definitely have psychological doubts about himself.
"Take a 5-minute break." The director also noticed that Jim was feeling a little uncomfortable and shouted to stop the progress.
Jim drank some water, adjusted his posture, and then murmured to himself, seemingly to adjust himself mentally.
"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 next to her. She would be auditioning for a dancer later.
"Confucius, a wise man from China, once said that in order to scare a group of monkeys, you must first kill a chicken." Joanna gestured for him to look at the camera.
"Let's continue shooting." The director asked everyone to prepare to start again.
"Recording, camera...start!"
Huh? Ronald discovered something unusual. The red light on the video recorder didn't light up at all. The director didn't even ask the director of photography to turn on the camera. He was just looking for excuses to deliberately mess with Jim.
"cut, cut, cut..."
Has the whole morning been spent on this shot? Ronald went back to find David da Silva, and the producer allowed the director to waste time so willfully?
If it were Roger Corman's crew, the director might have been fired by this time.
Da Silva had obviously expected all this, and looked at the progress of the crew with a smile.
Ronald was confused again.
The clumsy trick started again.
Jim couldn't bear it anymore, stood up and asked the director in a low voice: "Alan, what's going on? You asked me to say my lines more than 100 times, but the camera didn't turn on? What on earth 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 a little collapsed. Fortunately, the sound engineer on the crew was an Italian. Although he didn't speak English, he came up to Jim and gave Jim a thumbs up to indicate that he did a good job.
Jim finally relaxed and signaled that he was ready to start the next one.
"Recording, camera,...start!"
This time the camera lights were on.
"cut! Very good, this is a print."
This set of shots only had a few lines from Jim. After taking a few shots, Allen signaled for the next scene.
This was Ronald's first time watching an indoor scene filmed by a major studio. Indoor lighting was very time-consuming, and the next scene was about Montgomery, a student who came for an admissions interview. His lines were much longer.
The lighting team began to remove the light bulb, changed the angle and pointed the light at a chair on the stage, and began the long lighting process.
Under the command of director of photography Michael Seresin, the photography team began to lay rails on the ground. This was a scene that required actors to perform full emotions. After discussing with the director of photography, the director decided not to shoot the main shot, but from
The close-up shot begins.
After nearly two hours, the lighting finally signaled to the director of photography that the lights had been set. The actors sat on the stools and waited for the director of photography to measure the focus and make final adjustments to the lighting.
Movie lenses are similar to camera lenses. The wide-angle lens used to shoot the main lens is not big. But the lens used to shoot close-ups is very large.
The huge close-up shot, placed on a stand, is as tall as a person. It focuses on the actor playing Montgomery at close range. The camera is very close, almost right next to his face. It looks like a monster, trying to devour him.
.
The actor has yellow hair and looks a bit like Robespierre, the leader of the French Revolution. He was obviously afraid of the camera that was almost shining on his face. He kept repeating his lines for fear that he would make a mistake during filming.
.
The camera assistant measured the focus of the frightened actor, and the costume and hair stylist made sure that his appearance met the requirements. Allen did not give him any performance guidance, talk about the character's motivations, or talk to him about the details of the performance.
, without even looking at him.
No, how could this young actor be so frightened? Ronald felt that he couldn't understand Director Yingji's thinking at all. If he was a director from the New World, he should at least talk about drama, right?
"Recording, camera, start!"
Alan Parker ignored the actor's somewhat frightened state and started shooting the first shot directly.
"Every time I go to a party, I'm always worried that people won't like me..." the actor who plays Montgomery began to say the lines.
Ronald stood in a safe area behind the camera and watched his performance with his naked eyes. His lines were spoken fairly smoothly, but there was a hint of panic in his voice. His eyes were fixed on him as he stood behind the camera.
Jim, the black teacher in the play.
The camera slowly panned down from a still from Shakespeare's "Othello" to a full close-up of Montgomery's face.
"I have been studying in the military academy. My mother is an actress, but she is very busy and has no time to take care of me, so she asked me to go to the military academy..."
Several assistants on the camera crew, under the command of the chief pusher, pushed the camera in a controlled manner. The camera began to approach the actor at a very slow speed. In the terminology of the director of photography, this was an "extreme close-up."
If viewed through the viewfinder, the actor's face gradually changes from a red line that fills the entire viewfinder frame to larger than the viewfinder frame, with the image focusing on his panicked eyes and stuck mouth.
In the plot, Montgomery forgot the next lines.
"cut!"
"Very good, this one will be printed." Alan Parker instructed the recorder to write it down, and then said to the first assistant director: "Let's do 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 the actor's performance this time was not as good as the previous one. The fear, embarrassment, and helplessness of forgetting his words in the entrance interview were still the most fulfilling in the first one
.
I see!
Alan Parker deliberately didn't talk to the actor, and then came up and used a super huge close-up lens to face him at close range. In addition, Jim, who played the teacher before, was grabbed by Alan and filmed dozens of times to prevent him from passing.
, causing a lot of mental pressure on these young actors.
This kind of mental pressure is naturally reflected in the actors' performances, just like the mental pressure they face when participating in an entrance interview. Therefore, the emotions in the first item are very real and full.
When it came to the second item, because the first item was passed, the actor's psychological pressure was relieved to a certain extent, so naturally the emotions of the performance were not as real as the first item.
"Tsk," Ronald sighed to himself. This move was a bit interesting. It seemed that the director had been preparing for a long time. He first made excuses to punish Jim, the drama teacher, and then deliberately arranged a series of blows for the actor who played Montgomery. Then he was allowed to perform.
That's a perfect performance.
"The idiom of killing a chicken to scare a monkey is indeed true, but is this what Confucius said?"
The shooting speed started to speed up in the afternoon. Because it was the same interview location, there was no need to readjust the lighting. We only had to make slight adjustments based on the height of each actor.
The effect of killing Jim in the morning to scare the monkeys was still there, and several actors completed their performances honestly.
The actress who plays the shy Doris is Maureen Tiffey. She is very pretty, with a small nose and yellow hair. She does not look Jewish at all, but looks a bit Irish. I don’t know if it is because of her superb acting skills or because of the director’s misunderstanding.
She received extra coaching and completed the difficult crying scene in the entrance interview in one take.
"Ronnie, it's your turn next, play well." Alan Parker called Ronald with a smile. This was based on Woody Allen's suggestion and asked him to play a stupid young man who came for an interview.
After putting on makeup and costume, Ronald pretended to be a strong but simple-minded student, with his hair styled in a silly way. He took the prop in his hand - a soft-cover Romeo and Juliet novel, Ronald
De 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 at any time to give him a good talk.
Ronald was not afraid of him, adjusted his mood, opened the novel, and began to read the lines in it.
"Romeo, where are you? Deny your father and deny his name."
Ronald was shaking his legs while reading his lines, like a fool who studied sports but wanted to come to an art high school to interview for the acting department.
"If you are not willing to do that, then I will abandon my last name and I will no longer be a Kapu, Kapiu, Kaipu...what"
"Capulet." Jim, the black teacher who plays opposite him, reminds him.
"ha?"
"Reading Capulet."
"Yes, I just read it as Capulet," Ronald continued, "Soon you will no longer be a Montague, a Menta,... no, you will lift something up."