Of course, "Ghost Shadow" is just a DV movie, and you don't need to consider complex post-production work such as dubbing and soundtrack, you just need to deal with the picture. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In fact, if Sid had filmed strictly according to the template of the original film of "Ghost Shadow", then editing would not be a difficult job. Because the complete movie is in his mind, he only needs to cut it out exactly according to the original film, and it can even reach the point of being exactly the same.

But Sid added a lot of his own ideas and inspiration from watching other horror movies during the shooting, so there were a lot more scenes and performances in the film material, which were not originally available.

How to incorporate these clips into the film and add color to the whole film, this is the part that tests Sid.

After repeated combination experiments, Sid first arranged the general sequence of scenes, and then repeatedly adjusted the key plot points.

For example, the scene where "Katie" is possessed for the first time, three full versions were filmed at that time, and Sid took out the shots that were closest to the atmosphere of the original film and put them together.

Some scenes can be placed in the front or in the back, but different arrangements will produce completely different effects, which will have different effects on the overall rhythm of the film and the emotional impact on the audience. After much consideration, Sid decided to make the three stages of "Katie's" possession in the middle the core of the film.

The changes around the heroine "Katie" make the audience feel the horror of the approaching step by step most intuitively.

After selecting and arranging all the sequences and shots of the whole film, the first step of editing is completed.

Then Sid began to work in between the scenes of day and night, adding explanatory texts. When is the first night, when is the third day, and the day and night world of the film are divided with subtitles.

Most people watch Paranormal Activity without paying much attention to the impact of the day/night storyline on the film. But in the end, the whole series of "ParanormalActivity", the alternating advancement of the two light and dark plot lines of day and night has always been an important basis for story design and film rhythm, just like the keel of a ship!

The daytime is like a bright thread in the story world, where everything seems to be normal on the surface, but the unusual small events that appear from time to time are the occasional eruptions and manifestations of hidden supernatural powers.

And at night, the hideous side of the world of "ParanormalActivity" began to slowly tear away its disguise, step by step, slowly, but firmly forcing the protagonist and the audience. Until the sense of realism created in the first half penetrates everyone's sanity and heart in one fell swoop.

After subtitling the entire film, Sid began to work on the final visual problem—the VFX. Although "Paranormal Activity" is only a $10,000 ultra-low-budget movie, to the surprise of many, it also has special effects.

Not much, but all special effects that serve as the finishing touch.

For example, after the protagonist "Mika" sprinkles flour on the bedroom door, the weird triangular footprints step on the flour and step on a row of footprints on the floor out of thin air.

Of course, in the last shot, after the heroine "Katie" goes from expressionless to weird smile, she needs to quickly turn her face into a hideous grimace with ghost eyes and fangs to end the whole film. This is also the only shot in the whole film that can be regarded as having a ghost on the front.

On the one hand, this part is because Sid is not a professional special effects artist after all, and secondly, at this point in time of 97 years, those cheap and easy-to-use visual effects software were either not invented or had poor functions, and finally forced Sid to find a second-rate computer special effects artist to help produce these special effects through Jeremy.

With all that out of the way, Sid grabbed the borrowed professional Sony headphones and took care of the final job – the sound effects.

Although "Ghost Shadow" is only a DV movie of a pseudo-documentary, it does need to deal with sound effects in a few key places, of course, most of them are similar to noise, electronic bass, muddy treble, etc., which are used to set off the supernatural atmosphere and "torture" the audience's nerves.

For example, the depressing sound effect when the ghost footprints appear, and the faint electric sound when the heroine looks at the camera at the end, etc.

Luckily, there weren't many places to work with the sound, which was much easier than VFX, so Sid only had to pick the right clips from the ready-made sound package and cut them into the film. However, after listening to more than 2,000 ghost screams and electronic sounds of various effects, Sid felt that he was about to be tortured with nervousness.

It was as if he could often hear inexplicable sounds in the house after processing the sound effects.

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Although the original "Ghost Record" is not the world's first DV movie, it is indeed the world's highest-return movie, and there is no one.

The cost of $15,000 is more than 13,000 times the return on investment in exchange for $190 million at the global box office.

Even "Blair the Witch", the highest-grossing film in the history of DV films, with a box office of 240 million (also the originator of DV movies), has a production cost of 60,000 yuan, so that its return on investment is "only" more than 4,000 times, just a fraction of "Ghost Record".

DV films, as a new form of film that appeared around the turn of the millennium, also appeared before and after several excellent films such as "Death Video" and "The Clover Files".

In essence, the core of DV movies lies in a "sense of realism". That's why DV movies are also known as pseudo-documentaries.

At the beginning, you are bored thinking that it is a hand-shot home video from nowhere, and all kinds of bizarre supernatural events in the middle of the way make you creepy, until at the end, the horror hidden in the deepest part of the story rushes towards you, scaring you to the point that your hands and feet are cold, and your soul is almost out of your body.

The reason why DV movies can achieve such a terrifying effect that far exceeds others is that the method of camouflage documentaries is implemented in all aspects of film shooting, screening, and publicity, which can be said to use propaganda as a creative tool for the director, and implement the "real horror" of the film to the end.

In particular, the first DV movie in history, "Blair the Witch", is even better.

Later, because a large number of low-budget films were crazy imitations of "Blair the Witch", but they were all shoddy follow-up works. In the end, the audience was very unappetizing, and there were no DV movies in the past ten years.

Critics and media outlets alike believe that audiences have seen through the boring pseudo-documentary tricks, and they all say that this kind of mystical film genre has no future.

But in '07, '08, and '09, there were good films like "Death Video", "The Clover Files" and "Ghost Record" to slap critics in the face.

Although everyone knows that they are "fake documentaries", everyone still happily goes to the cinema just to "scare". It can be seen that as long as the quality is excellent, DV movies are still the best way to achieve small and big.

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In mid-September of '97, the crew of "A Natural Couple" had gone to the UK for a two-month shooting, and after contacting Mr. Charles, Sid was finally relieved to learn that Lindsay was safe and sound. But it was Sid's regret that he never had the opportunity to talk to her.

On the other hand, after finally completing "Ghost Record", Sid did not rush to major film companies to promote this "future supermasterpiece" like a stunned young man.

Because he knows very well that whether it is the entertainment industry on the other side of the ocean or Hollywood in Los Angeles. The entertainment industry has always been a narrow circle of acquaintances, and without corresponding acquaintances, even if you have money, it is useless.

Sid vividly remembers that even the later glamorous and famous Lionsgate Pictures, whose owner, the Canadian banker Gustav, was a close friend of the current US President Clinton.

And with the help of His Excellency the President, Gustav spent $100 million to buy and restructure a film company in hopes of entering the American film industry.

But it's because I can't enter the "circle" of Hollywood.

In the first year of Lionsgate's existence, they had to make and sell camera equipment to make a living, because there were no directors, screenwriters, or producers, and the company was unpopular and looked like a ghost town.

Sid, as a former insider, knows that although "circles" are important, he can't be superstitious about them.

Let's take Lionsgate as an example, although later everyone said that Lionsgate specializes in bloody, rough, and unconventional personality films, but that is not the development route they determined from the beginning. They also wanted to go to the mainstream market in the beginning.

But in Hollywood, where the pyramid is stratified, even if you finally get into the "circle", you can only be at the bottom of the food chain, and the scripts, talents and other resources you can get are all left over after others have screened them several times.

And just this year they invested in a classic that is known as a master of remakes - "Lolita"!

As the saying goes, every man has a Lolita complex in his heart, and in small circles, the novel "Lolita" is still quite influential.

The earliest black-and-white version of "Lolita" was directed by the film master Stanley Kubrick in 1962, so Lionsgate was quite attentive to the remake after 30 years.

The requirements for the director were all followed, and a feature film with neither computer special effects nor celebrities was smashed at a cost of $62 million. In the end, the box office was only a miserable little more than 1 million.

Yes, you read that right, it's a million, not a million.

This box office failure directly lost Lionsgate to the point that there were almost no pants left. It also completely eliminated the idea of big-production, big-budget blockbusters, and observing Lionsgate's actions since then, it can be clearly found that they strictly control the cost to less than $30 million, and even most of the films are below $10 million.