Made in Hollywood

The long shooting process is quite torturous, and post-production is not easy. Although "Chicago" can use very few special effects, it took two weeks to edit nearly five hours of first-cut samples, Duke and The entire post-production team led by Mike Dawson has completely entered the turtle speed stage.

"Chicago" is in an era called a miracle, an era of art, an era of spending money, and an era full of ridicule.

This era is also called the "jazz age", and the jazz age of Chicago, as the entertainment capital, is full of sensuality and news hype. The entertainment industry is developed, the new and the old are rapidly alternated, and the human nature is indifferent and despicable. Reporters are afraid that the world will not be chaotic.

The final film is to show the reversal of good and evil, black and white, and the supremacy of money in the gorgeous singing and dancing and colorful light and color summary.

To make the film brilliant, fine editing is indispensable. As a musical, "Chicago" has a large number of song and dance scenes, such as tango, jazz, blues, tap... I want to be in the scheduling of various scenes Interspersed with daily narratives and song and dance performances to achieve a seamless flow, Duke and Mike Dawson need a lot of time and energy.

"The singing and dancing scenes are all expressions of the actors' inner emotions."

∧,

Standing in front of the workbench in the editing room, Duke said to Mike Dawson and several editing assistants, "So the singing and dancing scenes are mostly imagined by the heroine. I require that most of the editing points should be stepped on the beat of the sound. Starting from the emotional point of life, like live recorded music, it has a certain sense of rhythm!"

As a song and dance film, a large number of dance moves, body language, and subtle facial expressions must be combined through a reasonable lens to achieve a visual impact. The editing of this film is to highlight the expressiveness of the activity, and to clarify the nature of the entire film and even every scene and every shot.

The selection of action editing points with obvious rhythm can give the whole film a sense of jazz jump.

In addition to editing, Duke will also lead people to process the tone of the corresponding lens, so that the color and light of the lighting set during shooting can better meet the needs of the scene.

"Mike. Remove all the front shots. I request that the beginning of the film is a close-up of the heroine's eyes!"

Not to mention that this is a film invested independently by Duke. After "Independence Day", he can get the final editing rights for any directed project. At this moment, while watching Mike Dawson work with an assistant, he is talking about his own requirements. , "After that, I switched directly to the No. 47 lens, and used the dark background color to increase the color of the title'Chicago'! I want the vivid red neon image to be as dazzling as a high-hanging signal light!"

Although I got the best editing of the Golden Man. But Mike Dawson did not object, but according to Duke's requirements, skilled replacement and cutting shots.

Looking at the busy Mike Dawson and others, Duke believes that his team should also make some technological innovations. For example, digital editing has become popular in recent years, which is far more time-saving and labor-saving than traditional editing methods.

It took a whole morning for the opening paragraph of the film to be completed, and the effect of the release also met Duke's requirements. The film begins with a song and dance, from a close-up of the reporter's mouth. Cut to the dizzying stage in an instant, the background of the stage is a sharp contrast and a strong visual impact with the cold tone and the warm tone in the wine pool.

Then, after another cold and warm color change, a fantasist appeared-Roxy, the movements of Roxy, and the cheaters merged with the dance, music and lyrics on the stage, forming a very aural and visual impact.

In the beginning of the cut film. The shots have been switched quickly, with the band's performance, constantly moving on the dance floor. From the close-ups of the people's mouths counting "5, 6, and 7.8", and then shaking from the ceiling to the crowd, every shot of the camera group matches the rhythm of the background music.

Duke’s intentions are very obvious. Such fast-paced shot processing, placed at the beginning of the film, can not only introduce the environment, but also set a bright and strong rhythm for the whole film. It is for the development of subsequent events. Shaping lays a psychological foundation in the hearts of the audience, thereby mobilizing the audience's emotions and allowing them to watch with peace of mind.

If the film comes up with a slow rhythm and various costumes full of literary and artistic accent, the market prospects of "Chicago" will basically be over.

Although the professionalism of singing and dancing is limited, Duke is not inferior to any director in controlling the overall production of the film. When shooting, he fully considered the post-editing. The exaggerated and absurd character mood changes in the shots are matched with sports transitions. Use it to provide a perfect emotional editing point for post-production.

Perfect editing can realistically present the emotional changes of the characters expected by the director. The editing points are selected according to the external expressions and emotional expression processes of the characters in different situations, such as the emotions of the characters. The emphasis is on exaggerating, rendering and deepening the emotions of the characters. Portray.

The plot in which Roxy and the furniture salesman had an affair in the completed clip used this editing technique.

Velma sang and danced on the stage after killing his sister. At the same time, Roxy was jealous and envied by the stage, and wanted to seduce a liar furniture salesman to get onto the stage.

This segment is made up of two interlaced clips. When Velma sings and dances on the stage and raises her hands, the camera immediately switches to the man and woman in love, making similar actions.

This kind of lens grouping can also be said to be a sports transition. In the follow-up work, according to Duke's requirements, there are many editing techniques like this.

Duke is to use the continuity of the singing and dancing movements and the strong visual impact of the movements to match the passionate and sporty characteristics of the film.

With the deepening of the later work, Duke found that if the film wants to be more colorful, it also needs to break through the sound limitations of rhythm and better give the picture a sense of rhythm.

The lens used in the rhythm editing point is generally a lens without character language. It is based on the rhythm line of the development process of the event content, and flexibly handles the length and editing of the lens according to the emotion, atmosphere and picture modeling characteristics expressed by the content. The rhythm editing point The role of is to use the different lengths of the lens to create a unique rhythm that affects the psychological feelings of the audience-or ease and ease, or peace and stability, or intense tension.

Duke successfully used it in the scene after Roxy was imprisoned.

"Roxy was in jail for murder, hungry, cold, dark and helpless. She began to cry softly, and then she was awakened by the sound of water droplets."

Because Mike Dawson had something temporarily, Anna Prinz fought fiercely. Duke brought her to the editing room. The other party was one of his important assistants in his work. Duke was extremely patient to explain and teach some editing to her. Reason and experience.

He pointed to the monitor screen and said in detail to the deputy director, "At this time, the screen is switched to the feet of the prison guard, who are stepping on the iron walkway in the prison forcefully. The image of water droplets and the steps of warning intersect each other. It can form a rhythmic echo with the screen. Then another prisoner appeared, tapped the window sill with his finger, lit a match, and the six different prisoners took turns to make short voices. The sound recorded on the scene was already very rhythmic. The picture is also switched immediately following the sounding body."

Anna Prinz obviously knew Duke’s style very well, and immediately understood the purpose of such editing, and said, “In this way, not only can the audience have a strong rhythmic impact on the auditory sense, but also a clear sense of rhythm on the visual. So as to create a rush, tense atmosphere for this paragraph, which touches the hearts of the audience?"

"Exactly!" Duke nodded.

The assistant director is an important part of the director's control of the crew. Sophia Coppola's departure is inevitable, and it is difficult for Zach Schneider to say when he will leave. Duke also intends to train Anna Prinz.

While cutting and connecting the shots, Duke told her about the different editing logics of different scenes, "The fast-paced content of a single shot is properly combined, and a large number of excess effects can trigger the climax of the film one after another, achieving exciting goals. "

In the film, the length of the lens significantly affects the expressiveness and appeal of the picture. The primary element that constitutes the art of editing is to determine the length of a lens. A lens that is longer or shorter is decisive for the size of the picture effect. The role of.

The so-called "content tone" is a theoretical development curve of psychological appeal generated by the audience's understanding of the content of the screen and the switch lens. The picture shows a function image that is similar to a parabola, with its highest point, after which the theoretical emotional highest point is converted into a decreasing function.

The "surplus effect" is based on the editing tone. The development curve of the appeal of the atmosphere created by the rapid switching of the shots to the audience is usually called the "cutting tone", and the "surplus effect" is this curve. The corresponding value in the ordinate of.

In actual post-production, it is of course impossible for Duke to quantify the effect produced by each shot, but when the shots have accumulated to a certain number and can convey a certain narrative information, this effect can be clearly seen in the picture. .

In the next episode that Anna Prinz participated in, it was learned from Lockheed that the inmate was hanged and he was facing the beginning of the final trial, until Rossi was acquitted, a 20-minute courtroom During the trial, the switching rhythm of the shots was gradually accelerated, and the content tones were accumulated layer by layer, and finally reached the peak of a cumulative effect.

As Roxy was lost because there were no reporters to interview him, the switching between shots slowly eased, calming down the tension before.

In addition, Duke also used a part of cutting and inserting to create a circular narrative technique.

Usually, the construction of a movie scene needs a set of shots to complete, and it is impossible to be flat and straightforward in the dynamic process. It is necessary to add some modified content to make the scene creation more vivid and rich, or better Show characters, or highlight emotions and emotions.

The use of cutting and inserting techniques greatly expands the time-space relationship of the film. For example, the unfolding of the event between the two protagonists of Lockes and Velma at the beginning of the film belongs to the application of this technique.

In short, such a gorgeous and satirical song and dance film is inseparable from sophisticated post-production. (To be continued...)