I want to be emperor

Chapter 1182 Filming

After Shi Tiancheng returned with the camera, projector and a large amount of film that he had bought at a high price, he did not rush into shooting.

Film is expensive, he can't possibly waste it!

He needs to make all preparations before shooting, such as some shooting techniques.

But these days not many people know how to make movies. The only ones who know how to take pictures are the photographers working in the morning newspapers.

To this end, he used a lot of connections and spent some money to find a photographer from the Morning News. He paid him for his work and asked him to teach him shooting techniques.

Although the other party had a high status and a respectable job, he would not refuse such a way to earn some extra money without breaking the law, and gave Shi Tiancheng some pointers during business hours.

Under the other party's guidance, and after repeatedly studying the camera operating instruction manual provided by the camera manufacturer, he finally had a basic understanding of the camera's operation and learned a lot of shooting techniques.

For example, although the picture is stable in fixed shooting, there are very few changes in the picture, and you can only simply zoom in and out of the lens. At this time, you can use motion shooting to increase the width of the picture.

He also said that a colleague from a local newspaper recently tried to use a slide rail similar to a train track to allow the camera to slide for shooting while maintaining the stability of the picture.

After hearing the news, Shi Tiancheng took action on the spot. He found a small workshop to make a wooden slide rail. After setting up the camera on it, he pushed the slide rail while shooting and actually realized the idea of ​​stable motion shooting. The pictures he captured were very good.

The other party taught him a lot of similar little tricks. After all, he was also paid to do the job, and it didn't waste his time to teach him these things. He could just talk about it and draw a schematic diagram at most.

As for whether Shi Tiancheng can learn and understand it, that is his own business.

Anyway, he has taken the money and taught, so that's it.

After preparing for half a month, Shi Tiancheng decided to try shooting a short video of a few minutes to give it a try.

The main purpose was to improve his shooting ability, and he didn't force any storyline, so he directly found the owner of a small theater, gave him a small sum of money, and asked him to allow him to shoot while they were rehearsing.

The filming went smoothly. It only took half a day to capture the scenes he wanted. Finally, he figured out how to edit them himself and finally came up with a short film of about two minutes.

The main content is a stage play. The script tells the love story of a young man who goes from a small town to a big city and meets a rich girl.

The content of the story is not important. What is important is that the stage play lasts for more than an hour, but Shi Tiancheng actually only selectively shot more than ten minutes of footage, and cut out two minutes of footage from these ten minutes, and linked the footage together through silent film subtitles, finally forming a short story.

After the film was finished, he showed it to his family, who were amazed. After watching the film, his wife said to him, "It's a very good film, much better than those documentaries in the morning newspaper, and it's very interesting!"

"Just do it boldly, I support you!"

"If you don't have enough money, just tell me. My family has saved some over the years!"

Shi Tiancheng was very happy to hear that!

"The films we have now are enough. We don't spend much money on other things either. The money in the store is enough!"

"I recently received a graduation photo order from a school. I will take group graduation photos for their students. Then I will hand out flyers to recruit some people to take photos of individuals or friends. I should be able to make a lot of money!"

Taking photos nowadays is still quite expensive, and ordinary people will not take photos unless they have nothing to do. However, most people will still take graduation photos. After all, this is an important moment in life, and taking photos to commemorate it is still necessary.

In addition, there are some group photo lists, some wedding photos of newlyweds, couple photos, etc.

Then there are some ID photos. The government is promoting the household registration photo system, which means putting photos on people’s legal documents to distinguish their identities.

Using photos is much more reliable than the simple text descriptions used before.

Therefore, local photo studios are still quite profitable.

Otherwise, Shi Tiancheng would not have the money to purchase a camera and a projector to make a movie... Just this set of equipment plus a large amount of film would cost several hundred Chu Yuan, which ordinary people cannot afford.

The experimental short film was a success, at least after there were no problems with the shooting technology, Shi Tiancheng began to prepare for the formal shooting.

After all, the experimental short film can be made by myself with two apprentice employees in the photo studio. There is no need for actors, and it can be directly shot as a stage play.

But a real movie can’t be made like this. There must be a story, then a shooting sequence must be designed, and then actors must be found.

Of course, his own funds were limited, and it was impossible for him to form a large team. In addition to the two apprentice employees in the photo studio, he hired three temporary workers to do odd jobs.

I also wrote a short story myself. The plot was simple. Considering the setting and shooting difficulty, I just made a short comedy with mainly indoor scenes. It tells the story of a young man from the countryside who came to a big city and had a series of exaggerated and funny things happen to him because of cognitive bias.

The reason for exaggeration is that today's movies have no sound... It is impossible to convey information through dialogue like in various directly performed dramas. In the absence of dialogue, we can only use some more exaggerated body language to convey information, and insert some silent films in the middle to explain and convey information.

After the short script was written, the shooting process was designed based on the script... Mainly because film was too expensive, it was impossible to shoot directly from beginning to end, so certain designs had to be used to save shooting time.

As for actors these days, there are no such things as professional movie actors, and ordinary people without acting experience are not good enough... If you ask an ordinary person to do all kinds of exaggerated and funny actions in front of the camera, with exaggerated expressions, it is actually very difficult for an ordinary person to do it.

So he found the theater where the short film had been filmed before, and found some of the actors and asked them to perform.

Of course, they all have jobs and need to rehearse and perform on a daily basis, so they can only work part-time in their spare time.

However, filming these days is not that complicated, there are no lines, and the acting skills don’t need to be too particular, because according to Shi Tiancheng’s idea... when the visual expression is limited, you have to use exaggerated body language and expressions to convey the story as much as possible, and once it becomes exaggerated, many details can actually be ignored.

Besides, the actors in these stage plays are all veteran actors who rehearse on stage every day and perform in front of hundreds of audiences. To be honest, there are a lot of similarities between stage play performances and film performances, for example, both focus on body language and exaggerated expressions... otherwise the audience can't see clearly!

After everything was ready, Shi Tiancheng finally started filming with his team.

There were many problems during the early stages of shooting, and a lot of film was wasted, mainly because it was everyone's first time making a movie. It was the first time for Shi Tiancheng, the photographer, director, and boss, as well as his several assistants who were doing odd jobs. The same was true for the actors.

There wasn't even any professional makeup or costumes, because the story was set in modern times, so the actors just wore their own clothes and performed on stage without any makeup.

Then, in order to increase the comedy effect, some actions that are obviously fake were added at a glance... For example, in order to play the scene where the protagonist first came to the big city and took the escalator, several ridiculous and exaggerated actions of the protagonist were made, and there was a fall action... When he fell, he even smashed the table...

But in actual filming, you can't let the actor fall on the table and break the real table. Shi Tiancheng realized this scene through cutting and changing the picture.

In the end, the table was destroyed in advance and then temporarily tied up with a small thin rope. When the actors fell down wearing thicker protective clothing, they directly smashed the table.

This scene looks fake, but the visual impact is still very strong after it is actually filmed.

At least people rarely see this kind of thing... Even in more realistic stage plays, there are rarely such destructive scenes, and even fewer in traditional dramas.

However, in the movie, through clever prop design as well as shooting and editing techniques, it is possible to achieve such a scene, allowing the audience to see a person falling from several meters high and smashing a table.

However, since these were all the first time he had done these things, Shi Tiancheng had to figure out a lot of them on his own, so it was very troublesome to shoot them.

Before shooting a scene, Shi Tiancheng would think hard about the shooting process and how to achieve the effect he wanted, and also ensure the safety of the shooting and save money.

There is no need to talk about the issue of shooting safety. Because of the need for exaggeration in this feature film, there are many seemingly thrilling and destructive action scenes. How to shoot such scenes safely and without getting the actors injured is actually a very particular matter.

Then save money, save film, and save shooting time, because the actors use their working time to earn extra money, so they can't give you much time to shoot.

At the same time, we have to save money on scenes and props. It is impossible to go to those big shopping malls to shoot a scene of people taking an escalator in a mall. People will kick you out directly... But you can't just build a real shopping mall directly, so you can only think of other ways, such as changing the shopping mall to another place. For the escalator scene, you can use your connections to find a place with an escalator to shoot normal scenes, and then go back to the photo studio to shoot other scenes, and finally connect them together through editing.

In short, there are many problems and it is difficult to shoot.

But after half a month I gradually got used to it and found ways to solve many problems, and the subsequent shooting became smooth.

Another half a month later, Shi Tiancheng finally finished shooting all the scenes. In order to shoot these scenes, he not only used up the film he brought back from Songjiang City, but also purchased a batch of film temporarily.

Then the cost of the scenery and props also exceeded Shi Tiancheng's previous expectations.

So when you really calculate it, the cost of shooting the entire power supply exceeded expectations.

But finally the filming was completed, and Shi Tiancheng was busy for several days, simply editing a movie of about an hour in length.

Of course, this one-hour version is not good, because many scenes are repeated and the quality of some scenes is not very good.

Later he will have to make further edits based on the story script, and it is expected to produce a 40-minute movie for broadcast.

While editing the film, he also contacted a theater whose business was not doing well.

Once a movie is made, it has to be shown to make money, and the best place to show movies is naturally the theaters.

There are actually quite a few theaters on the market, but contemporary people lack entertainment activities. There are not many entertainment activities that can be called as such, such as outings, visiting some tourist attractions; or going to watch Cuju games or other sporting events; or going to some theaters to watch performances, which include all kinds of performances, including traditional dramas, and the more popular dramas that have appeared in the last twenty years, as well as some musicals, puppet shows, and so on.

Nowadays, people actually like to watch these stage plays... Or maybe it's not because they like them, but because there is nothing else to watch...

This has also led to the fact that there are actually many theater troupes in contemporary times, but not every theater can make money, and many of them are not well managed, resulting in theaters with few audiences.

Shi Tiancheng found a theater that was not doing very well in business and discussed with the owner about renting the theater for a period of time after the daily performance hours to show movies.

This way, the theater will not be affected in making money from performances, and the theater can also earn some money from venue rental fees. Naturally, the theater owner will not refuse.

After finding a venue, Shi Tiancheng spent several days fine-tuning the film and added a silent film. To be on the safe side, and also to find another theater to play the film for a fee later, he also bought some film and a special duplicator to make a copy.

To be honest, because of the support of relevant orders from the Ministry of Ethics, the film technology and related equipment are actually relatively complete. We have corresponding equipment for shooting, copying, projection, etc.

The Chaobao Division under the Ministry of Rites even had a special "Jinling Photography Company".

The main task of the photography company is to edit and copy documentaries shot by morning newspapers around the world. The last part of the film is presented to the empire's middle and senior officials for internal viewing; the other part is used as popular science content for public welfare broadcasts.

Some documentaries that are more important and receive good feedback during public welfare broadcasts and are popular with the public may even have two or three hundred copies, and then be broadcasted in various parts of the country in rotation for public welfare broadcasts. Although the fees for public welfare broadcasts are cheap, they still cost money after all.

In other words, before Shi Tiancheng started making commercial films, the Great Chu Empire already had a fairly large industry chain for film production and broadcasting... but it was not used for commercial purposes, but rather as a means of education and for public welfare purposes.

Now, what Shi Tiancheng has to do is to make the first commercial film and then launch it into the market!

He even thought about how to contact the ethics-related institutions in Hangzhou and arrange to have his own movies shown in the Chao Bao theater for a fee.

He was very envious of the comprehensive movie broadcasting channels that this Chaobao organization possessed!