Volume 2: The crown and the hat are all over the capital, and the spirit is full of energy and enter the foggy city Chapter 208: Long Shot (Part 2)
Subtitle of this chapter: For the sake of art, hold on!
"Although the box office revenues of countries around the world have been rising steadily since the beginning of the new century, and the film industry has entered a period of rapid development, we American filmmakers should note that a very bad trend has recently emerged in Hollywood.
Those young actors, known as "Fresh Meat", can become popular idols and movie stars just by virtue of their beautiful faces, E-cup breasts and eight-pack abs. They completely ignore the pursuit of film art and do not even have the basic skills of dialogue.
Cutouts, stand-ins, and dubbing have become their essential means of filming movies. These "actors" are simply an insult to the title of actors.
No wonder our Hollywood counterparts have been beaten badly by our Chinese counterparts across the ocean in recent years .
Let us remember the greatest actress in Hollywood history - Ms. Lillian Gish.
This film artist, who spanned the three eras of silent films, sound films and color films, always maintained the greatest passion for film art throughout her film career.
In order to film "Orphans of Famine", she went on a very strict diet, reducing her weight from over 100 pounds to over 60 pounds, and fainted on the set several times.
When Ms. Gish's "good friend" Mr. Neo Yuan, who is also the screenwriter of the film, saw this scene, he couldn't help but shed tears. He lodged a strong protest to the film's director, Mr. David Griffith, demanding that this cruel practice that harmed the actors' health be stopped.
However, Ms. Gish said to Mr. Yuan, "Dear, I can handle it. I value my art more than my body!"
——Excerpt from Variety magazine article
"Ouch, I haven't eaten in a long long... time. I'm almost starving. Do you have anything to eat?"
Our Master Yuan took out a handkerchief and wiped the dust off the face of "the greatest actress in Hollywood history" lovingly, saying, "Lillian, I don't have anything to eat. But..."
He then said in a firm tone: "For the sake of this movie and for the sake of film art, you must hold on!"
"Neo, why are you here?"
"David, I'm here to visit Lillian..."
Seeing the great director coming over to greet her, Yuan Yan threw the "lover lady" he came to visit to the ground, stood up, shook hands with the great director and said, "By the way, take a look at the filming progress of "Orphan of Famine" so that we can arrange the next step of distribution."
At this moment, the "Father of Movies" had two big dark circles under his eyes, a circle of blisters at the corners of his mouth, and his weed-like hair was much thinner. He looked not only haggard but also ten years older. He sighed deeply, turned around and pointed at the village and said with a wry smile: "Neo, I think you have seen that we haven't even finished shooting the first shot yet!"
As we all know, long shots and montage are the two major forms of film expression.
The montage school appeared in the mid-1920s, in the Soviet Union. Its representative work is the Battleship Potemkin, which is located on the "Odessa Steps".
According to what I have heard, the long shot school came 30 years later, until the 1950s when the famous French scholar André Bazin (1918-1996) proposed the "photographic ontology". He believed that only the long shot could preserve the objective space-time continuity and have the full ability to coordinate the internal organization of the shot.
This gentleman is the famous founder of the "Cahiers du Cinema School", and is known as the "Father of the New Wave in Film", "The Spiritual Father", "Aristotle of Film"... However, this master of film theory never made a film in his life.
A big part of the reason for this is that compared to montage, long shots place much higher demands on directors, actors, photographers and behind-the-scenes technicians.
Montage can really be created as long as you know how to cut film.
Long shots not only require very high camera movements, but also strong on-site scheduling capabilities, which is why they have become the most common means of showing off one's skills for later film directors.
The difficulty of long shots of large scenes is even higher. If a director can shoot such long shots with dozens or even hundreds of people, then he will definitely leave his name in the hall of film art.
Griffith has shot not only small scenes with dozens of people, but also large scenes with tens of thousands of people.
Remember when he filmed "The Unity of the Party" in 1916, he used 15,000 extras to realistically recreate the Persian army that destroyed Babylon?
But short shots are completely different from long shots. In a long shot, if a minor supporting character 's expression is not in place, the shot will be wasted.
At this time, other actors and staff also gathered around.
Regardless of whether they knew Master Yuan or not, everyone greeted him enthusiastically...
Some people who don't understand the market are still asking: "Hey man, who is this Chink?"
Hearing this question , the "guy" looked at him with disdain and said, "What Chink? He is the screenwriter and one of the investors of this movie, Neo Yuan!"
"Neo Yuan... Hey man, is he the novelist that the newspaper said even Einstein admired?"
"Of course it's him... Hey, where are you going?"
"Hey man, get his autograph!"
When a person meets a celebrity alone, he or she may be a little reserved, but when a group of people are together, the atmosphere becomes lively.
So our Master Yuan was caught in the sea of people. Fortunately, the great director David Griffith had a lot of prestige and he picked up a megaphone and shouted a few words, finally dispersing the crowd.
Of course, the filming could not be completed for the time being, and it was almost noon, so Griffith simply asked everyone to have lunch early...
"Miss Ava Chandler, um, you are now Miss Hunter, and you have lost weight..."
"You are so good..."
"Oh, you are Lillian's sister Dorothy..."
"You are so good..."
"Hello, Miss Mary Dietrich..."
"You are so good..."
"Hello, Miss Pearl White..."
"You are so good..."
"Hello, Miss Louise Brusco..."
"You are so good..."
Yuan Yanshu finally met the main actresses of "Orphans of Famine". Except for the younger sister of "Lord Justice" and Miss Chandler, the older sister of "Lord Strength", who were originally unknown, the others were all well-known stars in later generations, and they were all beauties with their own charming features, of course, they were still little beauties now...
However, Master Yuan, who was immersed in the crowd of beauties, had no lustful thoughts at this time. It was not that his level suddenly improved and he really became a "master", nor was it that there was a problem with his hormone secretion and he really became a "eunuch".
It’s just that you can’t tell how beautiful these little beauties are, but you can tell how thin they are.
More importantly, they were too lazy to pay attention to this handsome Chinese gentleman, and were happily eating a beautiful American apple...
