Made In Hollywood

The long shooting process was quite torturous, and the post-production was not easy either. Although "Chicago" had very few scenes that could use special effects, after spending a full two weeks editing a nearly five-hour rough cut, the entire post-production team led by Duke and Mike Dawson completely entered a slow stage.

"Chicago" is set in an era that is called an era of miracles, an era of art, an era of extravagance, and an era full of ridicule.

This era is also called the "Jazz Age". Chicago in the Jazz Age, as the entertainment capital, was full of debauchery and news hype.

The entertainment industry was well developed, the old and the new replaced each other quickly, people were cold and mean, and journalists were eager to see chaos in the world.

The final film is to show the side of that society where good and evil are reversed, black and white are not distinguished, and money is supreme, through a combination of gorgeous singing and dancing and colorful and changing light and colors.

In order to make a film outstanding, meticulous editing is essential.

As a musical, "Chicago" contains a large number of singing and dancing scenes, including tango, JAZZ, blues, tap... In order to intersperse daily narrative and singing and dancing performances in the scheduling of various scenes to achieve a seamless flow, Duke and Mike Dawson need to devote 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 in line with the beat of the sound and follow the emotional points of the actors, just like the live recorded music, with a certain sense of rhythm!"

As a musical, a large number of dance movements, body language and subtle facial expressions must be combined through reasonable camera shots to achieve a visual impact. The editing of this film is to highlight the expressiveness of the activities and clarify the nature of the entire film, every scene and every shot.

The selection of action editing points with obvious rhythm can give the whole film a jumping feeling of jazz music.

In addition to editing, Duke also has to lead people to process the tones of the corresponding shots so that the color and light of the lighting and scenery during shooting can better fit the needs of the scene

"Mike, remove all the shots at the beginning. I want the film to start with a close-up of the heroine's eyes!"

Not to mention that this is a film Duke invested in independently. After Idependence Day, he can get the final editing rights for any directing project.

At this moment, while watching Mike Dawson working with his assistant, he said his requirements, "Then switch directly to shot 47. Darken the background color and increase the color of the title 'Chicago'! I want the bright red neon light to be as dazzling as a high-hanging signal light!"

Although he won the Best Editing Award, Mike Dawson did not object. Instead, he skillfully replaced and cut shots according to Duke's requirements.

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

It took a whole morning to complete the opening of the film. The effect was also up to Duke's requirements. The film started with a song and dance. From the close-up of the announcer's mouth, it instantly cut to the dizzying stage. The cold background of the stage and the warm tones of the wine pool formed a sharp contrast and a strong visual impact.

Then, after another transition between warm and cold colors, a dreamer, Roxy, appeared. The movements of Roxy and the lover were integrated with the dance, music, and lyrics on the stage, creating a strong auditory and visual impact.

In the beginning of the edited film, the camera keeps switching quickly, moving on the dance floor as the band plays. From the close-up of a mouth counting "5, 6, 7, 8", to the pan from the ceiling to the crowd, each shot is in line with the rhythm of the background music.

Duke's intention is very obvious. Such fast-paced shot processing, placed at the beginning of the film, not only introduces the environment, but more importantly sets a bright and intense rhythm for the whole film, laying a psychological foundation for the development of subsequent events and the shaping of characters in the audience's minds, thereby mobilizing the audience's emotions and allowing them to watch with peace of mind.

If the film started out with a slow, artistic pace and all kinds of pretense, the market prospects of "Chicago" would basically be ruined.

Although his professional skills in singing and dancing are limited, Duke is as good as any director in controlling the overall production of the film. When shooting, he fully considered the post-production editing. The exaggerated and absurd emotional changes of the characters in the shots, combined with the use of motion transitions, provided perfect emotional editing points for post-production.

Only perfect editing can realistically present the emotional changes of the characters expected by the director. Editing points should be selected according to the characters' external expressions and emotional expressions such as joy, anger, sorrow and happiness in different situations, and attention should be paid to the exaggeration, rendering and in-depth portrayal of the characters' emotions.

The finished sequence in which Roxy has an affair with the furniture salesman was edited this way.

After killing her sister, Velma sang and danced on the stage. Meanwhile, Roxy, who was under the stage, was jealous and envious, so she wanted to seduce a fraudulent furniture salesman so that she could go on stage.

This segment is made up of two interlaced events. When Wilma is singing and dancing on the stage and raising her hands, the camera immediately switches to the adulterous man and woman, making similar movements.

This kind of shot combination can also be called a motion transition. In the subsequent work, according to Duke's requirements, there will be many more editing techniques like this.

Duke wanted to use the continuity of the singing and dancing movements and the strong visual impact of the movements to match the passionate and dynamic characteristics of the entire film.

As the post-production work progressed, Duke discovered that if the film wanted to be more outstanding, it was necessary to break through the sound limitations of rhythm and give the picture a better sense of rhythm.

The shots used at rhythm editing points are generally shots 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 shots according to the emotions, atmosphere and picture modeling characteristics expressed in the content.

The role of rhythm editing points is to use different lengths of shots to create a unique rhythm that affects the audience's psychological feelings - either soothing and comfortable, or peaceful and stable, or intense and intense.

Duke successfully uses this in the scene after Roxy is put in the cell.

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

Because Mike Dawson had something urgent to do and Anna Prinz strongly fought for it, Duke brought her to the editing room. She would become one of his important assistants in his work in the future. Duke patiently explained to her and taught her some reasons and experiences of editing.

He pointed at the monitor screen and explained in detail to the assistant director, "At this time, the screen switched to the prison guard's feet, which were stepping vigorously on the iron walkway in the prison. The images of water drops and the warning footsteps intersected with each other, forming a rhythmic echo in the sound and picture. Then another prisoner appeared, tapping the windowsill with his fingers and lighting a match. Six different prisoners took turns to make short voice calls. The sound recorded on the spot was already very rhythmic, and the picture also switched closely following the sound source."

Anna Prinz obviously knew Duke's style very well and immediately understood the purpose of such editing. She said, "This way, not only can the audience hear a strong rhythmic impact, but there is also a clear sense of rhythm visually, thus creating a hurried and tense atmosphere for this segment and touching the audience's heart?"

"That's right!" Duke nodded.

The assistant director is an important part of the director's control over the crew. The departure of Sofia Coppola is inevitable, and it is difficult to say when Zack Snyder will leave. Duke also intends to train Anna Prinz.

While editing and splicing the shots, Duke explained to her the different editing logics for different scenes. "The fast-paced content and tone of a single shot can be reasonably spliced ​​together, and a large amount of residual effects can lead to the climax of the film and achieve the purpose of gripping the audience."

In a film, the length of a shot significantly affects the expressiveness and appeal of the picture. The primary element of editing art is to determine the length of a shot. A shot that is slightly longer or shorter can play a decisive role in the size of the picture effect.

The so-called "content tone" is a theoretical curve of psychological appeal development generated by the audience's understanding of the content of the picture and the switching of the lens. The graph is a function graph similar to a parabola, with its highest point. After this theoretical emotional peak, it turns into a decreasing function.

The "residual effect" is based on the editing tone. The development curve of the atmosphere created by the rapid switching of shots and its appeal to the audience is usually called the "editing tone", and the "residual effect" is the corresponding value in the vertical axis of the curve.

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

In the next segment that Anna Prinz participated in completing, the 20-minute court trial starts from the moment Roxy learns that his cellmate has been hanged and that he is facing his final trial, until Roxy is declared not guilty and released. The pace of camera switching gradually accelerates, the content and tone accumulate layer by layer, and finally reaches a peak of cumulative effect.

As Roxy became frustrated that no reporter was interviewing him, the switching between shots gradually eased, calming the previous tension.

In addition, Duke also used some cutting and splicing to create a circular narrative technique.

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

The use of split-cutting and splicing techniques has greatly expanded the film's time and space relationship. For example, the development of events between the two protagonists, Rox and Velma, at the beginning of the film is an application of this technique.

In short, such a gorgeous and ironic musical film cannot be separated from excellent post-production.

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