Chapter 50

Simon pushed his Hollywood Reporter to Katherine and said with a smile, "the guy who made the decision to put Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep together to make a romantic comedy is a genius."

Catherine, listening to Simon's sarcastic tone, imagines the scene of Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep talking about love, but also feels a little funny.

Curious, Katherine simply pulls the newspaper in front of her and finds that Simon has just read a news about Paramount Pictures' upcoming release of "heartfire" movie video.

"Heartfire" is a romantic comedy starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, which is released this summer. The film invested $20 million, but only recovered $25 million at the box office. In order to get the money back as soon as possible, paramount plans to release the video at the end of November.

After a brief comment on heartfire, this article in Hollywood Reporter mainly discusses the issue of movie window period, which is concerned by the industry.

After browsing the news, Katherine found that the mark Simon had just made was only on a person's name mentioned casually in the article.

This is Nora Efron, the writer of heartfire.

Looking up again, Catherine said curiously, "Simon, what's wrong with Nora Efron?"

Simon finished the rest of the milk, put down his glass and said, "I saw the film review of heartfire a few months ago, and I'm very interested in the plot of this film. So, if there is an opportunity in the future, maybe we can cooperate with each other. "

For Nora Efron, maybe not too many people know. But when it comes to sleepless in Seattle, it must be familiar.

Nora Efron is the director and screenwriter of sleepless in Seattle.

Of course, the film hasn't appeared yet. Moreover, among Nora Efron's works, Simon's favorite is not "sleepless in Seattle", but another less well-known film called "when Harry meets Sally".

Simon has always thought that when Harry meets Sally should be the pinnacle of Nora Efron's romance.

Just as "when Harry meets Sally" is about to be released in recent years, Simon just thought about whether he would have a chance to cut off the film, so he made a mark on Nora Efron's name.

However, this kind of thought obviously has no way to explain to Catherine, then casually teased a sentence.

Anyway, it's a bit of a mess for Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep to make love movies.

Judging from the main creative lineup, this is obviously another CAA package project.

Catherine could feel Simon's reservation, but she didn't ask. In fact, she quite agrees with Janet's point of view. The little boy in front of her has a lot of unknown secrets in his mind.

Thinking of Janet, I can't help thinking about what happened in the bedroom last night. I glanced at Simon who had finished breakfast. Suddenly, the woman's mood was a little disorganized. She quickly lowered her eyes, picked up a knife and fork and pretended to deal with a fried egg.

Simon packed the dishes and said to the woman with her head down, "Catherine, take your time. I'll go to fox first."

Katherine gave a hum, noticed Simon's action, and said, "Simon, I'll clean it up later. Anyway, well, there's Jane's

Simon nodded with a smile and said, "good."

So Simon still took his cutlery to the kitchen sink before he came out.

Catherine saw Simon leave the restaurant, thought about it, put down her knife and fork, and followed him out.

It's already November. Although it's Los Angeles in spring, the weather is a bit cold.

Simon takes off his coat from the hanger. Catherine takes it naturally, unfolds it and helps Simon put it on. He also puts out his hand to tidy up the rolled up collar. Simon smiles and lets the woman do it. At last, he picks up his bag and puts it on his shoulder. He looks at Katherine in her Burgundy turtleneck and says, "good bye, then."

Catherine felt Simon's tentative eyes, but Janet's bright eyes suddenly appeared in her mind. She stepped back a little, pretended to check whether Simon's clothes were wrong, and laughed as if nothing had happened, saying: "goodbye."

Simon nodded and left the house.

In order to ensure more abundant later period time as far as possible, Simon's basic work rhythm in this month is shooting films on weekdays, rough cutting samples on weekends, straightening out various shooting plans at night, and taking time to write some soundtracks.

Two thirds of the shooting of "Lola Run" has been completed, and all the shots from the beginning of the film to Lola's first run have been finished. Simon's work in the past few weekends has focused on the rough cutting of the first run.

The development of film editing is basically a small cycle from "non-linear editing" to "linear editing" and then to "non-linear editing".

The earliest film editing was directed against film.

The editor can eliminate, reduce and replace the film at will, so it belongs to non-linear editing.However, the workload of the original nonlinear editing is not generally large.

According to 10 hours of lens material, the cumulative length of all films in a movie is 20 kilometers instead of meters. You can imagine how complicated the whole process of editing a film from dozens of kilometers of film would be.

Then, the appearance of linear editing finally liberated the editor from the film encirclement of tens of kilometers.

The principle of linear editing is to record the film shot content to the tape, and then transcribe the material on the tape to another tape according to the editing scheme.

This editing method greatly reduces the workload of editors, and belongs to the WYSIWYG mode, which can monitor the editing results at any time, so it is quickly popularized.

However, the disadvantages of linear editing are also obvious. The editor can only edit the pictures on the tape in a linear order. A little more flexible operation can only insert and replace the pictures on the tape for the same time. However, if you want to delete, reduce and replace the non equal length shot, it is impossible.

In fact, this mode is similar to music tape. If a person presses the record button and howls twice, he can replace his own voice. However, this song is still five minutes in five minutes. If he wants to make it four and a half minutes, he can only rearrange and record it again.

After linear editing, more advanced nonlinear editing appeared in the late 1980s.

By transcribing the film image into digital image, the nonlinear operation similar to the original manual editing can be performed on the editing software.

It has to be said that in the film age, whether it is the original manual editing, or later linear editing, or even digital non-linear editing, it is just a kind of editing means. After finishing the editing, soundtrack and other post process of a movie, it is necessary to manually edit the original film according to the film production results, so as to get the film copy that can be shown in the cinema.

Now in 1986, digital non-linear editing has just sprouted, and the technology is far from mature. Simon can only carry out the later stage of "Lola Run" on the linear editing machine.

Simon hired an assistant on his first weekend to familiarize him with the linear editing machine in Fox Studios. He has been working alone for several weeks.

No matter what age, editing is a very patient and lonely career.

Fox's linear editing equipment is charged by the hour, and Simon is not willing to waste time.

When I got to Fox Studios, I sat down in front of the editing desk, looked at the two old CRT monitors in front of me, and listened to the clattering of the machines. It was already a morning before I knew it.

It wasn't until the staff reminded him that Simon recovered from his focused work and remembered that he had an appointment with the reporter of the Los Angeles Times for an interview at noon yesterday.

Peter Butler has been waiting for a while. He says sorry. Simon doesn't take him into the cinema, but selects a restaurant on the street outside.

As they sat down in the dining room and ordered lunch, Peter Butler opened a tape recorder and put it on the table. With a natural familiarity, he said, "so, are you still working on the weekend?"

"Yes," Simon nodded, "don't you?"

Peter Butler said with a smile: "it seems that we have one thing in common. It's good."

Simon also smiles: "well, Peter, why are you interested in me? Compared with the Los Angeles Times, I'm just a nobody, right

Peter Butler shrugged and said, "in fact, I'm a nobody in the Los Angeles Times. The interview with Spielberg must have nothing to do with me. "

"I understand that's another thing in common."

"It's a pity we don't have any wine, or we can have a drink," Peter Butler continued with a smile. "But Simon, to be fair, I don't think you're a nobody at all."

Simon just smiles.

Peter butler went on, too, "I've done some research on you in advance. You should have come to Los Angeles in June, and then, as a newcomer, you were unexpectedly signed by Jonathan Friedman, vice president of wma, and became the only screenwriter client under each other's name. Then, wma broke out the infighting incident, which is still related to you. Then, the incident that happened in Santa Monica at the end of July was rarely discussed in the newspapers, but as far as I know, only the Los Angeles Times suppressed two reports trying to explore the incident. In addition, your $200000 screenwriter contract with Fox pictures, Simon, even if you only count the screenwriter union members, the average annual salary of Hollywood screenwriters is less than $20000. And then, less than half a year into Hollywood, you've started directing your first movie, "Lola Run.". What's more surprising is that several Hollywood celebrities, Brian De Palma, David giller and Robert Redford, all said they would be named executive producers of the film, which is very rare in Hollywood. So, Simon, you can't be a nobody in any way. Small people can't do these things. "