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 210: The Little Dark Room (Part 2)
Subtitle of this chapter: Who said our Master Yuan is going to make a movie?! He is obviously...
“Swish…”
Mr. Victor Fleming personally acted as a projectionist and projected 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, and did not say 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, so the director and the photographer couldn't see the expression on Master Yuan's face, and didn't know whether he was really praising or mocking.
“Crash!”
“Snap, snap, snap!”
Yuan Yan stood up, drew aside the curtains and opened the window, then turned around and applauded, "Good Job! Gentlemen, you did a great job!"
He really wasn't mocking these two filmmakers. It was really good that they could achieve such a result 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 can be shot separately and then edited together in post-production. Griffith did try this approach, but after watching it, even screenwriter Yuan felt that shooting them separately completely lost the shocking power of the script.
It was fine for other people, 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 can be used to correct the flaws and errors, but where can one find an industrial- grade computer that can run 3DMAX in 1921?
But...
Just as the director and the photographer were in doubt, our Master Yuan walked to the workbench, pointed at the knives and bottles and jars, and asked curiously: "Are these what you use to edit?"
It is impossible to convert images into digital and then edit them with software on a computer these days. It is all done manually. And this kind of editing is not fancy at all. At its simplest, it only requires a pair of scissors and a bottle of super glue.
"Yeah, Neo. That's what we rely on..."
Mr. Victor had only said half of 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 piece 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 layman ruin them.
Seeing that they didn't listen to her and wanted to persuade her again, Yuan Yan suddenly threw down the things in her hands unhappily, stood up with an unhappy face and said: "There is no but, and there is no but. Gentlemen, don't forget that I am 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 room, his face covered in shadow, 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 till 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, and said to the two people outside the door: "David, Victor, so you have been waiting here..."
Without waiting for the two to ask questions, our Master Yuan waved and said, "Gentlemen, come in. 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 looked at each other, smiled bitterly and shook their heads slightly, and followed the Chinese man into the small dark room helplessly...
"SBH is the abbreviation for the post-production department within DreamWorks Films, which is actually the abbreviation of Small Black House. Perhaps it is because the post-production of early movies was done in a small black house, so it got this strange name.
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 crude, crude, and even vulgar. But after DreamWorks was established, movies became the real "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 the middle-level managers of DreamWorks did not know its members. Its first film to be post-produced was "Orphans of Famine", which made a sensation around the world in 1921.
I don’t need to elaborate on the artistic achievements and historical significance of this film. What is less known is that the film ran into trouble due to technical reasons during the filming process. At that time, the "Little Black Room" appeared. This mysterious department or mysterious editors solved the post-production of the 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 stitched together dozens of short shots into a long shot that no one could tell was flawed. If the cast and crew hadn't known that Mr. David Griffith hadn't finished shooting this long shot, everyone would have really thought it was a real long shot.
In fact, the "magical" aspect 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"
