Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1439 Why didn’t Shirley Lansing come to cause trouble?

Since the real-life and special effects shooting of "Forrest Gump" was the first large-scale implementation in a film in Hollywood history, all kinds of unexpected problems fell on Ronald's head.

Slowly modify the plan, repeatedly test, and watch the sample the next day if it does not meet the requirements, reshoot, the shooting schedule was greatly postponed. Ronald is now shooting all the shots after Lieutenant Dan broke his leg.

These shots were all performed by actor Gary Sinise himself. Because the shots of various angles have different lengths, he couldn't let a disabled person play the scene where the liquid robot was frozen and had its legs broken, as Cameron did in "Terminator 2."

For all the shots, Gary Sinise had to wrap himself in blue cloth below his knees, and then use computer special effects to delete that part in order to complete it within the limited time and budget.

However, when shooting such special effects on a large scale, many problems that had not been anticipated would arise.

For example, Ronald's original idea was to simply wrap the actor's lower leg with blue cloth, and then he would pretend to have an amputation below the knee, and then perform normally to achieve the goal. However, this idea proved to be completely unfeasible.

For example, the first amputation that appears in the film is the scene of Lieutenant Dan meeting Forrest Gump again in a hospital on the front line.

Lieutenant Dan was depressed because he didn't die on the battlefield. He didn't want to talk to anyone. A male nurse came to take care of him, bathed him, picked him up, and transferred him to another bed. Lieutenant Dan, who was once a smart and capable professional soldier, has now become a complete useless person.

During the first take, they had actor Gary Sinise stretch his legs out straight on the bed, and then had the actor who played the black nurse carry him to another bed.

The filming went smoothly. But when everyone watched the sample the next day, they found something very unnatural. This was because there were two legs on the bed, so when the nurse lifted him up, the actor had to pose unnaturally and could not ignore the existence of the two legs.

Because when a person is lying down, if he wants to straighten his calves, the force applied to his thighs and buttocks will be obviously different from when he does not need to straighten his calves. And the posture of the human body is very sensitive to the audience, even the most insensitive audience will find this shot a bit strange.

"If you shoot it this way, there's no other way. You have to think of other tricks." Ronald carefully watched this scene more than a dozen times, and finally gave orders to the special effects team helplessly.

"How about we dig a hole in the bed? This way the actor's calves can hang directly down through the hole under the bed. When the nurse picks him up, she won't feel the force on his calves." Ken Ralston, the coordinator of the special effects shooting, is the person who knows the most about both sides of the special effects shooting. He thought about it and came up with a plan.

"I don't know. I originally thought of using traditional stunt methods, such as digging a hole in the mattress and hiding his legs inside the bed, or bending his calves backwards. But I'm worried that if I do that, there will be unnatural muscle force and the audience will notice it." Ronald had no experience in this area and could only offer his own opinion.

"We have post-production special effects. We don't need to hide the actor's calves on the mattress. We just need to dig a hole. As for the hole in the bed, we can use post-production computer special effects to fill in the sheets and mattress." Ken Ralston knew the most about special effects among all the people shooting on the scene, and he knew the most about filming among all the special effects people. Ronald attached great importance to his opinions and adopted them after some discussion.

The filming after digging the hole went relatively smoothly. Actor Gary Sinise also felt that being held in this position was much more natural than when his legs were stretched out.

But when we looked at the printed samples the next day, we found something wrong. The hole in the bed restricted the actor's movements. When Gary Sinise was picked up, his two dangling legs were still in the hole.

So the black actress who played the nurse had to lift Lieutenant Dan several dozen centimeters higher before he could get his legs out of the hole. This scene made the audience very confused. Why did they have to lift him up so hard when they could have put him on another bed halfway through?
"Ah, just a little bit. It seems we need to dig a gap on the edge of the hole so that the two legs can naturally turn out from the middle." Ken Ralston slapped his head and immediately apologized to director Ronald.

The supporting actor had been tormented by them for so long, but in the end he had to reshoot because of a small flaw.

"Don't worry, this is the price you should pay for exploration. We will follow this when shooting Lieutenant Dan in other scenes." Ronald said that he didn't mind. Lieutenant Dan, who has no legs, has a lot of scenes in the second half of the film. If you don't understand it, you can't shoot it well.

"Hey, now it's finally possible."

When watching the sample film the next day, Ronald finally felt that this way of shooting was natural enough. He also summed up some experience, that 90% of this kind of special effects shooting is actually relatively simple. But the last 5% to 10% of the special effects shots are very difficult.

This is not to say that the special effects are difficult, but because the audience's eyes are very picky about special effects related to the human body. If there is anything unnatural, they will easily think it is fake and lose interest in the show.

The last 5% can only be achieved through the filming team and the special effects team. There is no better way. Fortunately, the film is a one-time production process, so it is feasible to slowly polish it with a lot of manpower.

The next scene is Lieutenant Dan challenging God during a hurricane, and from then on, he reconciled with God and found inner peace, and he also truly thanked Forrest Gump for saving his life during the Vietnam War.

He jumps from the boat into the sea and begins to swim in the calm sea, which is an outward manifestation of his inner activities. But at the same time, his two legs have to pass over the side of the boat, and then he pushes himself into the sea with his hands.

In the special effects room, facing a blue background, a section of the ship's side was created to be covered by a close-up shot. The props also sawed a gap in the ship's side to facilitate the actor's legs to pass through. Then this section of the ship's side was filled in in the later special effects.

“I didn’t expect it would be so troublesome to shoot a scene like this.”

A few days later, Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise were filming at the back door of the TV station. After Forrest Gump's talk show with John Lennon, he ran into Lieutenant Dan, whom he hadn't seen for many years, when he went out.

At this time, Lieutenant Dan was already sitting in a wheelchair. He and Forrest Gump walked through the streets of New York, and then arrived at the hotel. Lieutenant Dan asked two street prostitutes to share the room with Forrest Gump, but one of the women laughed at him and scolded Forrest Gump, who didn't understand romance, as a moron.

Lieutenant Dan was touched by the resentment in his heart about being discriminated against in his country because of his disability because of Forrest Gump being scolded, so he scolded them away.

For the entire scene, Lieutenant Dan, played by Gary Sinise, had to perform in a wheelchair. If we still wrapped his calves with blue cloth and used post-production special effects to solve the problem, the workload would become a lot.

In order to reduce his workload, Ronald found the top magicians and prop masters in Hollywood to customize a special wheelchair for Lieutenant Dan.

There is a small space under the seat cushion of this wheelchair, which allows his calves to fold backwards and then hide under the seat.

This trick was originally used by stage magicians when performing large-scale magic, and was introduced to Hollywood. However, if such a device is used for more than 10 minutes, it will have a negative impact on the health of the actors' legs.

Generally speaking, stage magic and some of the previous amputee movies only have a few seconds of footage, and Hollywood rarely attempts to film something as long as the one in Lieutenant Dan.

Therefore, the crew specially found another assistant to count down the stopwatch. Once Lieutenant Dan's continuous shooting time exceeded six minutes, he would come over to remind him to free his legs and rest for a while.

Tom Hanks also lamented that the filming of this movie was not easy. From the oldest stage magic effects to the most advanced computer special effects, it can be said that all means allowed by current technology were exhausted to produce satisfactory results.

"By the way, we've been overtime for a long time, right? Has Paramount complained about this?"

During the break in filming, Tom Hanks quietly asked Ronald. He turned his salary into an investment in the film, so he was actually one of the investors. He also felt a little troubled by the serious overtime and overbudget of the film.

"Perhaps for some reason, Shirley Lansing hasn't bothered me since she put pressure on me last time..."

Ronald didn't know why Paramount didn't come to harass him again. Anyway, if they didn't come, he wouldn't take the initiative to ask. The right thing to do was to seize the time to shoot while they were not coming.

Even so, Ronald was a little confused as to what was going on. He found Richard and asked him to find out what was going on. But there was no explanation that sounded reasonable.

When the main special effects shots of Lieutenant Dan were completed, the remaining large special effects shot was the scene when Forrest Gump represented the University of Alabama in the college football league finals.

The shooting of this scene is similar to the scene under the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., but it is more complicated.

Ronald found the University of Los Angeles Long Beach, which he had sponsored and had a small outdoor stadium for their college football team.

The stadium only has one level of spectator stands, and the Long Beach University football team is not a strong team and can only participate in low-level leagues.

For this purpose, Ronald also found several hundred extras as the audience, and asked them to occupy a section of the audience stand in turn, where they put up various slogans and cheered for the University of Alabama where Forrest Gump was studying.

After each section of the stands was filmed, the special effects team combined them into a large scene, as if a stadium with tens of thousands of people was filled.

In addition, the special effects team will copy these audiences and then use special effects to create a second-story stand on top of the first-story stand.

In America, large stadiums with two-tier stands are usually occupied by local college and professional football teams. It costs a lot of money to rent such venues to shoot football scenes.

When Ronald was filming "When Harry Met Sally", he rented the stadium of a professional baseball team in New York. Not only was it very expensive, but there were also many restrictions. Now with the convenience of computer special effects, Ronald decided to shoot slowly in this small and dilapidated football stadium at Long Beach University, trying to make the scene as good as possible.

While the filming of the football scene was in full swing, Ed Bastian, CEO of the New York Daily News Group owned by Ronald, flew from New York to see him.

"Really? How credible is your news?"

"It's very credible. My connections on Wall Street and in New York have reached many media outlets. I estimate it will be reported in the newspapers the day after tomorrow. I think it has a lot to do with you, so I flew here specially to discuss countermeasures with you..."

The news that Ed Bastian brought was that the second-generation rich Jewish man, Viacom's boss Summer Redstone, was preparing to spend a huge amount of money to acquire Paramount Group.

"No wonder even Shirley Lansing doesn't bother me anymore..."

Ronald immediately understood. Stanley Jaffe, Shirley Lansing's ally in Paramount Communications (Paramount Pictures' parent company), must have known the news. This immediately changed Paramount Pictures' logic.

Since Redstone is going to invest billions of dollars to acquire the entire group, all the projects in Paramount Pictures that are currently being filmed or have the right to film have changed from huge holes and bottomless pits that require investment to invaluable assets of the film industry.

At this time, it is not a matter of controlling the budget or limiting the shooting period. The people at the top probably want Ronald's Forrest Gump to be shot with the highest budget possible, so that they can get more asset gains when the company is acquired.

A director like Ronald with a good track record, working with a box office guarantee like Tom Hanks, is definitely a good bargaining chip for Redstone, which is why they turned a blind eye to Ronald's delays and budget overruns.

"How much do you expect the acquisition price to be?" Ronald felt that after two waves of multinational corporations acquiring Hollywood studios and foreign capital taking over Hollywood studios many years ago, it seemed that it was now the turn of media groups like Viacom to take over.

"The number I estimate is between 7 billion and 9 billion. The rumor is that Redstone will offer 7.5 billion US dollars," Ed Bastian reported a number to Ronald.

"So valuable?" Ronald was surprised. Sony also paid 46.5 billion for Columbia Pictures, plus assuming about 68.5 billion in debt, for a total valuation of billion. Panasonic also paid only billion for Universal Pictures and MCA, the parent company of the record company.

This time, Redstone's Viacom bid over $7.5 billion. Is Paramount really worth more than the previous two?

Ronald expressed some doubts. Even if the movie warehouse accumulated by Paramount Pictures over the years was added, it might not be able to compare with the two film studios previously acquired by Japanese companies.

"Is there anything we can take advantage of?" Ronald knew that Ed Bastian would not fly over for an interview just to remind him about the movie.

“Yes, I think cable networks, well-rated TV shows, and a historically large library of movies are worth very high valuations on Wall Street… and we have all of that…”