The second volume is full of glory and splendor in the capital, and the spirit is full of vitality in the foggy city. Chapter 210: The Little Dark Room (Part 2)
This chapter's subtitle: Who said our Master Yuan is going to make a movie?! He's clearly...
“Swish…”
Mr. Victor Fleming personally acted as the projectionist, projecting the wasted films one by one. In fact, "film" is the transliteration of film.
The only two audience members, Yuan Yanshu and Griffith, sat in a small dark room smoking cigars and cigarettes, without saying a word from beginning to end.
“Swish la la la… la!”
"Neo, they've all been released."
"Well, Well, Well..."
Because the doors and windows were closed and the curtains were drawn, the only light in the room was from the projector. Therefore, the director and the photographer could not see the expression on Master Yuan's face, and they did not know whether he was truly appreciating or mocking him.
“Crash!”
“Snap, snap, snap!”
Yuan Yan suddenly stood up, drew back the curtains and opened the window, then turned around and applauded, "Good Job! Gentlemen, you did a great job!"
He really wasn't mocking the two filmmakers. It was really good that they could produce such a film given the current technical conditions.
In fact, the biggest difficulty of this long shot lies in the three scene changes: from the village to the countryside, and then from the countryside to the road.
Of course, these three segments could be shot separately and then edited together in post-production. Griffith had tried this approach, but after watching it, even screenwriter Yuan felt that shooting them separately completely lost the shock value of the script.
It would be fine for others, but for Master Yuan and Master Griffith, who were determined to make an epic film, this could not satisfy their ambitions at all.
Of course, in later generations, computers could be used to fix the flaws and errors, but where could one find an industrial-grade computer capable of running 3DMAX in 1921?
But...
Just as the director and photographer were in bewilderment, our Master Yuan walked up to the workbench, pointed at the knives and bottles and jars, and asked curiously, "Is this what you use to edit?"
Nowadays, it's impossible to convert images into digital form and then edit them using software on a computer. It's all done manually. And this kind of editing isn't fancy at all; at its simplest, all you need is a pair of scissors and a bottle of glue.
"Yeah, Neo. That's what we rely on..."
Mr. Victor was only halfway through his words when he saw Yuan Yan suddenly take off her coat. He couldn't help but ask, "Neo, what are you going to do?"
"What should I do?" Master Yuan picked up a pair of scissors and a strip of film and said as a matter of course, "Editing, of course."
"Oh, don't worry about me, just go and do what you should do..." He waved at the two of them.
"But……"
"but……"
Of course, these two had to take care of him and immediately objected. Even if these were rubbish, they couldn't let this amateur ruin them.
Seeing that they were refusing to listen and were still trying to persuade her, Yuan Yan suddenly threw down what she was holding, stood up with a displeased look on her face and said, "There's nothing to say but, and there's nothing to say but. Gentlemen, don't forget that I'm the biggest investor!"
"Please go out."
"but……"
"But……"
As he said this, he pushed and shoved Griffith and Fleming out of the door.
"Gentlemen, please believe me..." Our Master Yuan stood in the house, his face covered in shadows, but his black eyes flashed with a strange light, which somehow made the two men unable to utter any words of dissuasion.
Yuan Yan suddenly said in a very serious tone: "Because I am the miracle!"
"Bang!"
The director wanted to raise his hand to knock on the door, but his hand did not fall on the door. Instead, he took out another cigarette and started smoking.
The photographer turned and asked, "David, what should we do?"
Griffith, smoking quietly
So the two of them waited and waited outside the door, from noon until the sun was setting.
“Squeak!”
The door finally opened, and Yuan Yan, looking full of energy, walked out.
He yawned loudly and stretched himself, then looked up at the sun in the sky, then looked down at the cigarette butts on the ground. He said to the two people outside the door, "David, Victor, so you've been waiting here all this time..."
Before the two could ask any questions, Master Yuan waved and said, "Come in, gentlemen. Please take a look at the results of my work this afternoon!"
Well, actually he didn’t do anything this afternoon, he just “thought” of doing something, and since he had plenty of time, he took a nap.
David Griffith and Victor Fleming exchanged a glance, both smiled wryly and shook their heads slightly, then reluctantly followed the Chinese man into the small dark room...
"SBH is the abbreviation for the post-production department within DreamWorks Pictures. It actually stands for Small Black House. Perhaps because early film post-production was done in small black rooms, this strange name came about.
Now if you ask anyone who knows anything about film history, he will tell you that the first stage of film development can be divided into "before DreamWorks" and "after DreamWorks".
Before DreamWorks, movies were considered crude, crude, and even vulgar. However, after DreamWorks was established, movies became a true "seventh art."
However, if you know enough about DreamWorks, this epoch-making film company, you should know that movies should actually be divided into two types: "SBH production" and "non-SBH production".
This department was so mysterious that even DreamWorks' middle-level managers didn't know its members. Its first post-production film was "Orphans of Famine," which made a sensation around the world in 1921.
I won't elaborate on the film's artistic achievements and historical significance here. What's lesser known is that the film ran into trouble during filming due to technical issues. It was at that point that the "Little Black Room" appeared. This mysterious department, or rather, the mysterious editors, solved the post-production problem of that famous long shot.
In addition to their unknown identities, we also don't know what mysterious methods they used, and no one has been able to explain it so far.
In short, this or these highly skilled editing masters spliced dozens of short shots into a long shot that no one could tell was flawless. If the cast and crew had not known that Mr. David Griffith had not completed the shooting of this long shot, then everyone would have really thought it was a real long shot.
In fact, the "magic" of "Orphan of Famine" is not just the long shot at the beginning. There are many clips with superb visual effects in the whole film, which completely exceeded the level of film technology at that time.
And all this is related to that mysterious "little black room"! "
——Excerpt from "DreamWorks' Little Black Room"
