Chapter 619 Is it okay to edit like this?

  Before the sun rose, against the dark background of the aircraft carrier deck, several white steam drifted across, and the head of an F-14A slowly entered the monitor from the left of the screen.

  Music from the "Top Gun" theme slowly picks up on the soundtrack, and bells begin to ring in the background.

   "Snap", Ronald pressed the pause button, "It happens to be this grid, I think this cut is here."

  Chris and Billy glanced at Ronald. In the clips during this period of time, they have long been familiar with Ronald's unique trick of stopping at 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 editing skills to show off their old credentials. Seeing that Ronald gave the editing order, one went to mark on the editing machine, and the other went to move the next film roll to be spliced.

   "Dang...dang...dang...", the opening bell of the theme song rang one after another, and the sound of the lead guitar cut in, repeating the melody that the piano sang at the beginning.

   On the screen, several naval deck sergeants are busy in the brighter and brighter morning sun and the white steam. The nose of the second fighter also begins to cut in from the lower left of the frame.

   "Crack!" Ronald pressed pause again, "This frame is cut here."

  Piano and lead guitar, repeating the main melody more exciting. It seems that the awakened deck crew and the two fighter jets also coincided with the enhancement of the melody, and slowly appeared on the left side of the monitor.

  Both Chris and Billy found it very interesting. This is really editing the movie according to the method of editing the MV.

   It is not using images to narrate, but using images to dance with the melody. Every editing port of the screen corresponds to the punctuation of the melody. A melody in three to five seconds is edited in one cut.

  The melody of the theme song is high-spirited and uplifting, and it fits very well with the image of the rising sun and the soldiers from stillness to busyness.

  This short-shot, high-frequency editing method places high demands on the director. It turns out that the classic Hollywood construction method generally uses a master lens to capture the characters and environment in the entire scene, and first explain the location, characters, time, and logical relationship between the characters to the audience.

  Then use medium-shot over-the-shoulder shots to explain the character dialogue, and finally use close-up and close-up shots to give the reaction after hearing other characters speak.

  And Ronald's editing completely abandoned the classic Hollywood method. Starting from the beginning, the audience was first moved by the beauty of the steel behemoth aircraft carrier in the close-up and the very graceful steel eagles.

   Then in the steam that was slowly lighting up, the non-commissioned officers on the deck of the aircraft carrier appeared looming. This is completely the editing method of the MV, combining the jump cuts of the new wave of hair country, and there are many places in the middle that require the audience to use their imagination to connect them.

  Chris and Billy began to chat in a low voice again. They couldn't believe this brand-new film editing method. The MV is three to five minutes long, and the audience mainly listens to the emotion of the song. Is it feasible to use this stream-of-consciousness cutting method for movies shown in theaters?

Ronald had known for a long time that the two of them were discussing their own editing, "There is no doubt that the current audience has been influenced by the New Wave editing method for many years. The editing methods used throughout the film are uniformly used throughout the film, and the audience will never miss our story."

"But why do we always lose the rhythm when we want to imitate your cutting method?" Chris and Billy both humbly asked for advice. When Ronald was resting, they also tried to find the editing point by themselves. , but it is not as natural and smooth as Ronald's cut.

   “My teacher, Walter Murch, taught me that editing is about anticipating where the audience’s mind is going and then being there a little bit before they get there.”

   "Oh", Chris and Billy suddenly realized that they really lacked the ability to predict.

   "Hey hey..." Ronald laughed secretly in his heart. Such a theoretical statement would definitely make the editor feel that he is very good. In fact, he has only shot and edited many commercials and MVs.

  A ten-second commercial and a few minutes of MV have more time constraints than movies.

  When Ronald was filming those, how to use fast shots and editing in a limited time to piece together the audience's thinking, more than Hollywood practitioners, is this kind of repeated training.

  When can the camera jump cut and let the audience fill in the gaps in the middle. When to pave the way slowly and let the audience gradually understand the whole story, he learned from the commercials and MVs he shot.

  Take out the finished product directly and skip the intermediate training session. It was 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 do it.

  The opening episode "Danger Zone (Danger Zone, I found several singers to sing, but none of them were ideal. Famous rock singers care more about their own music style. They may sing episodes like Cindy Lauper, who just debuted, in order to perform them completely according to the filmmakers' ideas.

  So Ronald discussed with the two producers and gave Kenny Loggins, a former singer who participated in the chorus of "One World" and also had self-knowledge, who wrote the episode of the beach volleyball scene, a chance.

   Sure enough, in order to return to the popular spotlight, Kenny Loggins cooperated very well. Regardless of the hard work of his voice, he sang this episode very nervously like flying a fighter jet.

   Loggins, who had no hope at first, unexpectedly got a chance to sing the main episode.

   "Switching the song right here", Ronald commanded two editors to convert the two episodes when the tail nozzles of the two engines of the F-14A on the deck of the Enterprise emitted orange flames in sequence.

  Transform the theme song's rhythm of morning bells gradually waking up the audience to the rhythm of "Danger Zone", where the prey is about to be hunted.

  The catapult ejected the thick front landing gear of the fighter jet, and the action rhythm of the deck sergeants suddenly accelerated.

   "Start your engines,

  Listen to her roar.

  Metal under tension,

   begging you to touch.

  We head to the danger zone..."

  Kenny Loggins' hoarse voice sounded...

   Ronald squatted on the ground wearing Sony's monitor headphones.

  His eyes were fixed on the two small paper figurines he had folded on the editing table. The size ratio of them to the monitor was exactly the same as that of two adults, a man and a woman, sitting in front of the big screen.

  2.35 aspect ratio, much wider than Ronald's previous films.

  For the F-14 fighter jet under the theme song, the fire from the tail flame can only burn more than half of the screen, and the left half of the screen has a small half space to show the steam ejection of the aircraft carrier and the actions of the deck officers.

  The plane rose from the deck, and the long tail flame only covered half of the screen that Ronald imagined, and the other half was blank space.

   "Very well, the pace of the next editing should be accelerated." Ronald sat back in his seat.

   The "Danger Zone" episode was supposed to be a bit faster, and Ronald added a lot of snap shots on the USS Enterprise.

  The deck non-commissioned officers discussed together, moved the arresting wire, made a posture to allow take-off, and then danced happily after take-off.

  Ronald likes this dance very much. It was captured by the non-commissioned officer of the aircraft carrier who happened to be happy when he jumped up that day. Ronald cut him in two and used it repeatedly.

   After a second or two, the camera switches once.

  The shots on the deck are not enough, and Ronald reuses the material in many places. Finally, at the end of the song, Ronald added two three-second shots.

  One is the take-off subjective shot of "Bozo Bozo" after the incident at the San Diego Naval Base. He flew off the deck of the docked aircraft carrier, and with his superb flying skills, he rolled 360 degrees.

  The subjective camera is shot backwards, as if the aircraft carrier and the sea where it is located have turned around from the sky and changed to the sky, and the sky has changed to the location of the sea. After a short stop, it turned back.

  The second shot is the shot of the aircraft landing on the aircraft carrier.

  A shot of an F-14A landing from the air to the deck of an aircraft carrier in the sunset, and then stopped by the arresting wire.

   This was also a reshoot for "Bozo Bozo" in San Diego.

  The technical level of aircraft carrier pilots also varies. It is not easy for the F-14A to make such a standard roll.

   "Dumb" is truly elite level naval aviation.

  The daily edits continued, and Ronald was fast.

  Fang Kimmer was there when Mancuso was embarrassing the crew because of various incompatibilities during filming, and he also stood on the side of the CEO.

  Many of his scenes were deleted intentionally or unintentionally by Ronald. Anyway, the lack of one 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 who sets off his brilliance. And Tom Cruise has always stood by Ronald's side and faced various difficulties together.

  He has been accompanying Ronald to shoot various special effects shots of the cockpit on the ground, and then went to Martin Scorsese's new crew to report, and went to shoot opposite idol Paul Newman.

   In this way, the romantic scene between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis has been reserved a lot.

  Anyway, the sports car and motorcycle chase shot by the two, because Cruise himself almost had an accident, was full of emotional tension. Ronald can't use it too much.

"It's very good. Although I knew that the fast editing of the MV would have the effect of arousing the audience's emotions, I didn't expect it to be so good. After I watched it, it seemed that the adrenaline had been secreted by two percent. Hundred."

  Producer Don Simpson came to appreciate the dailies cut by Ronald, and he appreciated it very much. The fast pace fits perfectly with his idea of ​​the perfect high-concept film.

   "Have you recorded the song 'Take My Breath Away'?" Ronald didn't flatter him, and asked him for the most important episode. This is used when the hero and heroine are in love.

   "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 the other is the short version." Bruckheimer explained to Ronald, "We think each has its own advantages, and you decide which one is more suitable for the video."

  (end of this chapter)