"No, you did a good job, 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 shooting, and the first shot is to film him commenting on Montgomery, a student who came for the admission interview.
"Cut."
Alan Parker, wearing his tattered Lucky T-shirt, stopped filming.
The makeup artist came forward and wiped the sweat from the black teacher Jim's forehead. To shoot a close-up shot of Jim indoors, the lighting engineer used a strong positive light, and several headlights roasted Jim on the opposite side.
"I want to say this line in a different way, 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? Are you kidding people?
"Let's do it again." Allen motioned 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 is praising others for their good acting. In the real shooting scene, he is 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.
"Rest for 5 minutes." The director also noticed that Jim was feeling a little uncomfortable and shouted to stop the progress.
Jim took a few sips of 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 asked quietly to Joanna Merlin who was waiting next to her. There will be a scene where she interviews dancers later.
"The Chinese wise man Confucius once said that in order to scare a group of monkeys, you must first kill a chicken." Joanna motioned for him to look at the camera.
"Let's continue shooting." The director asked everyone to prepare to start again.
"Recording, camera...start!"
Um? Ronald noticed something unusual. The red light on the video recorder didn't light up at all. The director didn't even let the director of photography turn on the camera, he was just looking for excuses to deliberately mess with Jim.
"Cut, Cut, Cut..."
Have you spent all morning on this lens? Ronald went back to find David da Silva, so 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 any longer, 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 said this line in more than 100 ways. 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 was doing 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! Great, this print."
In this sequence of shots, there are only a few lines from Jim. After taking a few shots, Allen signaled for the next scene.
This was Ronald's first time watching a major studio shoot an interior scene. The indoor lighting was very time-consuming, and the next scene was of Montgomery, a student coming for an admissions interview. His lines are much longer.
The lighting team began to remove the light bulbs, changed the angle and pointed the light at a chair on the stage, and began the long lighting process.
The camera crew, under the direction of director of photography Michael Seresin, began laying rails on the ground. This is a scene that requires actors to perform full emotions. After discussing with the director of photography, the director decided not to shoot the main shot, but to start shooting from a close-up shot.
After nearly two hours, the lighting finally signaled to the director of photography that the lights had been set. The actor sat on the stool and waited for the director of photography to make final adjustments to the focus and lighting.
Cinema lenses are similar to camera lenses, they are small wide-angle lenses that capture the main lens. But for close-up shots, the size is very large.
The huge close-up lens is as tall as a person on a stand. A closer look at the actor who plays Montgomery. The camera was very close again, almost right next to his face. It looked 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 the lines, for fear that he would say them wrong during filming.
The camera assistant measured the focus of the frightened actor, and the costume and hair stylist made sure his appearance met the requirements. Allen didn't give him any acting guidance, talk about the character's motivations, or talk to him about the details of the performance. He didn't even look at him.
No, what method was used to scare this young actor like this? Ronald felt that he couldn't understand Director Yingji's thinking at all. If you are a director in the New World, you must at least talk about drama, right?
"Recording, camera, start!"
Alan Parker ignored the actor's somewhat frightened state and started shooting the first line directly.
"Every time I go to a party, I'm always worried that people won't like me..." the actor who plays Montgomery begins.
Ronald stood in a safe area behind the camera, watching his performance with his naked eyes. The lines were spoken fairly smoothly, but there was a hint of panic in his voice, and his eyes were fixed on the black teacher Jim who was standing behind the camera opposite him.
The camera slowly pans down from a still from Shakespeare's "Othello" to a full close-up of Montgomery's face.
"I have been studying in the military school. 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 school..."
Several assistants on the camera crew, under the command of the chief pusher, pushed the camera in a controlled manner. The camera begins to approach the actor at a very slow speed, an "extreme close-up" in the terminology of the director of photography.
If viewed through the viewfinder, the actor's face gradually grows larger than the red line that fills the entire viewfinder frame, and the image focuses on his panicked eyes and stuck mouth.
Montgomery in the plot forgets 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 words during an entrance interview are 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 close-up shot to focus on him at close range. In addition, Jim, who had previously played the role of a teacher, was grabbed by Allen and refused to let him pass for dozens of shots, which caused 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 entrance interviews. So the emotion in the first article is 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. The director seemed to have been preparing for it for a long time. He first used an excuse to punish the drama teacher Jim, and then deliberately arranged a series of blows for the actor who played Montgomery. Only then did he perform that perfect performance.
“The idiom of killing chickens to scare monkeys is indeed true, but is this what Confucius said?”
The pace of shooting started to pick up in the afternoon. Because it was the same interview location, there was no need to readjust the lighting, just 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 delicate, with a small nose and yellow hair. She does not look Jewish at all, but looks a bit like Irish. I don’t know whether it was because of her superb acting skills or because the director gave her extra guidance, but she was able to finish the difficult crying scene in the entrance interview in one go.
"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. Holding the prop in his hand - a soft-cover Romeo and Juliet novel, Ronald 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. He adjusted his mood, opened the novel, and began to read the lines in it.
"Romeo, where are you? Deny your father, deny his name."
Ronald was shaking his legs while reading his lines, like a fool who studied physical education and wanted to audition for the acting department at an art high school.
"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 doorman,...no, nothing like that."
"It's Montague. Listen, you're reading Juliet's lines."
"Oh, Shxt." Ronald decisively turned around and hit the wall.
"Cut!" Alan Parker had to admit that this was a good performance and asked the recorder to write it down: "This is a print."
Ronald is not afraid of Allen, and this emotion just makes him live up to his role as a silly young man.
"One more thing." Allen shouted, "Ronnie, you have to act a little more stupid. You still look too smart when you read the lines."
"Cut! One more"
