Chapter 038 At least the power of five or six scenes
Early September, a dock in Yau Ma Tei.
Li Zicheng (Zhou Runfa), who was wearing a torn suit, was smoking a cigarette in one hand and holding a watermelon knife wrapped in an old newspaper in the other hand. He walked out of a row of low-rise buildings. People and cars were passing by on the pier, and Li Zicheng's slightly curly hair was fluttering in the sea breeze.
While walking, he said to the side in front of him, "Diaomao, hurry up!"
Ding Qing (Wan Ziliang), a short-haired boy, ran out holding up his pants and walked side by side with Li Zicheng, "I'm sorry, I urinate frequently when I'm nervous. I'm sure it's fine. It's really strange."
Then the two of them moved forward at a small pace while the fish pens, sweepers, and porters on both sides of the pier were doing their own things. As soon as Ah Cheng continued to smoke a few puffs of cigarette, Ding Qing turned around and ran away awkwardly, "Wait a minute.
I’ll come back after I pee.”
Li Zicheng was so angry that he almost dropped his cigarette and shouted, but Ding Qing ran further and further away.
…………
After a while, Zhao Donghuai, who was sitting behind the viewfinder, said loudly, "Click, passed! Finished!"
Shooting started in mid-July and is now being completed in early September. This is because Zhao Donghuai has almost all the scripts in his mind.
Compared with many Hong Kong films of this era, this New World was shot slowly, not to mention that the crew was still finishing the filming, and post-production editing, dubbing, soundtrack, etc. also took time.
This made Director Zhao sigh with emotion. He has at least five or six scenes of power.
He has been so busy that only a few hundred thousand of the 5 million filming cost have been spent. The good news is that he went to the mainland for the second time to trade the waste paper shipped back from A Mei's house.
Received 6 million Hong Kong dollars from several paper mills in Jinhai, Shandong, and Northern Hebei provinces.
At that time, after adding the film crew's one million yuan in funds, I still had more than 4 million yuan in hand.
I have money in my hand and I don’t feel panic.
More than 4 million. After finishing the work on the crew and finishing the editing of the sample film, he plans to take the time to buy a big house to live in before the release, buy a few cars, and affiliate it to his Zhaoshi International Trading.
This is only 1983, and the current housing prices in Hong Kong are still at a low point.
You basically won’t lose money buying a house.
In 1983 and 1984, the average house price in Kowloon fell to 500 to 610 square feet, but in 1987 it rose to an average price of more than 800 square feet. By that time, the price in Kowloon Tong and Tsim Sha Tsui had already exceeded 1,000.
A thousand feet equals tens of thousands of square meters.
By 1990, the average price was already 1,510 square feet. Yau Tsim Mong and Kowloon Tong would only soar towards the 2,000 square foot mark. The more the era of fierce house price boom, the higher the increase in the best prosperous areas.
Amazing, exceeding the average increase.
Following Zhao Xueyan's words, the crew behind the scenes breathed a sigh of relief, called it a day, shut down the machines, etc.
Wan Ziliang, who played the role of a man who frequently urinates, and Ah Fa and others immediately cheered.
Zhao Donghuai honked the loudspeaker and said, "We have been busy together for nearly two months. During this time, I believe you all have a good idea of the quality of the films our crew has shot. I won't say more. The wedding banquet will be held in the evening. If you can come,
Come all."
"When the editing is over, I wish myself a box office hit, and I also hope that everyone can use this experience to take their careers to a higher level!"
As the words swept the audience, the cheers from the crew near the pier became even louder.
Yes, we have been working together for nearly two months, and we have both day and night scenes, even though this is not the digital age.
This is the age of film. Basically, you can only know how the things you shot are after the rolls of film are developed. It can still be understood by professionals. For the audience, they have to wait until the editing is finished and the dubbing and soundtrack are completed before they can enjoy it.<
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But whether a crew is good or bad, and the quality of the things they shoot, everyone has a weighing scale in their minds.
Amidst the cheers, many people ran to Zhao Donghuai and bid him farewell warmly.
This is also a short farewell, everyone goes back to clean up and see you again at the end of the banquet.
Zhou Runfa walked over in a torn suit, rubbed his messy hair, and said with a smile, "Director, we will definitely be a hit at the box office, we will!"
Wan Ziliang also nodded excitedly, "I estimate that after the film is released, my image as a big brother with frequent urination will become famous all over Hong Kong, haha~"
One of the two protagonists has been in the industry for six years, and the other has been in the industry for ten years. They have an idea of how the movie will be.
Zhao Donghuai also laughed, "If you want to be stereotyped as Brother Pi, it can only mean that your acting skills still need to be improved. Okay, call it a day! See you tonight!"
The ordinary crew members are calling it a day, but he is still busy as a director.
In the evening, we had a casual closing banquet, then took rolls of film to the Clearwater Bay studio. Clearwater Bay was the largest studio of Shaw Brothers, with two to three thousand people working here at its peak.
There are more than a dozen studios and there is no spare one. They are much bigger than Jiahe. The Jiahe studio located on Ax Hill Road only has four filming areas ABCD.
Similarly, here at Shaw Brothers, there are professional office areas for post-production, development, editing, recording, etc., and they are handed over to the printing agency for printing first, and he left four bodyguards and left.
………………
A few days later.
Director Zhao returned to the Clear Water Bay set and started editing.
Film editing is also a top priority, almost frame by frame, a little bit of dubbing, color grading, editing, etc. The specific process is to hang the printed copy on the editing table, turn the shaft, and hold it again and again.
The scissors click, click, click, very delicately.
In mainland China in the 21st century, the comparison between the sample films shot by most directors and the edited results is about ten to one.
For example, if you shoot a thousand shots and finally select a hundred and edit them together to form a 90-minute movie, 90% of the footage will be discarded.
You can imagine how difficult it is to make a choice.
The torture for the director and editor is not small. You have to read all the materials from beginning to end and have a clear idea of them before you know which shots to discard and which to keep.
Anyone who has difficulty choosing will probably be tortured by editing, and if the editing is not good... a good film can also become a bad one! Editing is called the third degree of creation.
Many editors are like art directors. The film is still in preparation and is about to start production. Their understanding of the entire story line must be closely followed by the director.
But for a famous director like Jiang Wen, it is not uncommon for the lens ratio to be fifty to one between the prototype and the finished film. In this era, there was also a magical director named Lao Wang, who understood everything.
The typical representative is Hollywood's Kingdom of Heaven. There is a director's cut version and a theatrical version. The gap is so big that it's hard to say.
Editor, Zhao Donghuai hired Mai Zishan, who was also famous in later generations, but the ones he worked with most were Xu Ke, A Chinese Ghost Story Part 2 and 3, Qingxia version of The Invincible, Jet Li's version of Once Upon a Time in China 2345, Double Dragon Club
, Fengyun and so on.
There are a lot of masterpieces.
In the mid-1980s, he hung out with Lao Xu and became one of Director Xu's signature subordinates.
Zhao Donghuai's comparison of the sample footage taken with the final finished product that he wants to edit, the lens ratio is only two to one, which may not be enough.
Don’t think that movies of this proportion are too rare. In the Hong Kong movies of the 1980s, for example, Fatty Scene was shot in more than a week, and in two or three weeks. In order to pursue speed, some shots were clearly shot.
Ignore it.
Do you think those fast shooters can pursue the ten-to-one editing ratio that most normal directors have? The films created by fast shooters can be considered normal.
In the studio, Mai Zishan re-watched all the finished films and compared them with the storyboards he had seen several times before. He shook his head with emotion, "Director Zhao, if editing was as simple as yours, then my job would be much easier.
."
The samples were compared to the number of shots at a ratio of one to one, and the storyboard script was also perfected.