Waking up early in the morning and sitting together on the cliffside terrace of a hilltop mansion for breakfast, the summer days in Los Angeles are not too hot, but only the early morning hours are more suitable for a little sun. Pen Fun Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

"I recently found a script, a biopic, for Julia, about a female lawyer who won hundreds of millions of dollars in civil damages for her client, the largest civil settlement in federal history. ”

Hearing Elizabeth say this, Eric looked up and said, "Erin Brockevich?"

Elizabeth looked very surprised: "How do you know?"

Julia, who was silently next to Eric, also looked up curiously.

In 1993, Erin Brockevich sued the American corporate giant on behalf of the residents of the small town of Hinckley in eastern California, accusing the other party of illegally emitting heavy metal pollutants and causing cancer to a large number of the town's residents.

However, in 1996, after three years of persistent litigation, Pacific Electric lost the case and paid $333 million to the town's residents, a hundredfold reduction from the original claim, but in fact the largest civil lawsuit in federal history.

"I happened to have seen a story about Erin Brockwich two years ago," Eric replied casually, and although the lawsuit was deliberately low-key by Pacific Electric Company and did not have a wide impact, it was still easy to see a lot of related news reports if you paid a little attention: "So, you plan to have Julia go to the Olympics?"

Elizabeth didn't doubt Eric's words, and nodded: "Yes, the Oscar judges like this type of film very much, and we have the Weinstein brothers to help." ”

Although Julia won the Oscar for Best Actress for "Uncompromising," Eric doesn't remember any other nominations and awards the film received.

With this in mind, Eric said, "Fundamentally, the topic of environmental pollution does not have a profound social impact in North America. Therefore, I think it is unlikely that the film will win other awards except for Best Actress, but with Julia, the box office is still guaranteed. ”

Compared with some developing countries, the environmental protection system in North America is very perfect, and there are actually very few behaviors that companies dare to maliciously pollute the environment, and more are accidental environmental accidents. Living in such a social environment, environmental problems are not as profound as racial problems.

"Not necessarily," Elizabeth said, "However, there is a lot of room for this character to play, at least, the possibility of Julia winning the Best Actress is still very high, if Julia gets the little golden man, you can no longer care about Julia's original money, and there is still a large amount of money to pay for the plane we ordered." ”

Eric nodded with a smile and said, "Okay, but I have exchanged that money for the shares of the Firefly Group, you are short of money, in fact, you can use these stocks as a mortgage, it would be a pity to sell them directly." ”

In order to stop Julia from being lazy, Eric took all the $30 million small treasury after Julia sold her stake in TG Films, and exchanged it for shares of the Firefly Group during the restructuring process after the Firefly Group acquired the ABC Group.

Eric naturally couldn't swallow Julia's money, he had even forgotten about it in the past few years, and the original stock was still in Julia's name, but it was managed by Firefly Investment, and in a few years, that stock should have increased in value more than three times, and according to the current market value of the Firefly Group, it was worth at least $100 million.

Due to the optimism about the development potential of the Firefly Group, as well as the fact that the Firefly Group will pay a very considerable dividend every year, since the merger of ABC Group, few investors will be willing to get rid of the shares of the Firefly Group, and the shareholding ratio of the large and small shareholders of the Firefly Group has hardly changed in recent years.

Elizabeth naturally knew how popular the Firefly Group shares were, and said, "Then we'll mortgage it to you, and I'll let Boeing ask you for the balance of the Boeing 747." ”

"Well, how much of the balance do you have left unpaid?"

Elizabeth smiled slyly and said, "We just paid a $10 million deposit. ”

"Okay," Eric nodded very cheerfully, then shook the cauldron, and said, "You can discuss this matter with Drew, she is my little butler's mother-in-law." ”

"Hmph, it's insincere. ”

Eric didn't care, Elizabeth was actually very strong, and it was impossible for him to come out with the money. In the past few years, the two daughters have invested in foreign exchange and technology stocks under his guidance, and the family funds accumulated are more than enough to pay for a Boeing 747. Eating his breakfast slowly, Eric continued to return to the topic and asked, "Who are you going to direct the script?"

"We're in contact with Martin Scorsese, you know, he's pretty good at using real-life documentary formats. ”

"Martin isn't suitable," Eric said, shaking his head, "while you're right, Martin's film feels too strong about the third-person perspective." Since it's a Julia one-man show, the style of this film should be more of a first-person perspective, you can try Steven Soderbergh. ”

"The director of 'Sex, Lies, and Tapes.'" Elizabeth asked rhetorically, and then added, "It seems that since 'Sex, Lies, and Tapes,' Soderbergh hasn't done anything great in years." ”

Eric explains: "To win the Palme d'Or at Cannes with his first feature film, Soderbergh's talent is unquestionable. Moreover, he is not as big a name as Martin, and a slightly weaker director can also give Julia more room to play. If you let Martin do it, it's going to be another standard Martin Scorsese movie, and although he is often nominated, the academy hasn't liked him very much. ”

Elizabeth was a little moved, she was still very convinced of Eric's suggestion in terms of movies, and said: "Then I'll ask Harvey to contact Soderbergh and listen to the other party's thoughts first." Speaking of which, Harvey helped him run the original "Sex, Lies, and Videotapes", otherwise he would not have won the Palme d'Or. ”

After breakfast, Eric said goodbye to his two daughters and rushed to work at Firefly Studios.

Today, the audition for "Spider-Man" continues, but the objects are only some supporting roles, and naturally Eric does not need to appear in person.

As for the several Gwen Stacy candidates identified yesterday, the crew also had to conduct a detailed analysis and evaluation of their audition tapes and other information, and the follow-up process was very trivial, and the final round of small-scale auditions had to wait at least a week or two.

After an hour-long discussion with Joss Whedon in the morning about "Iron Man," Eric went into the "Gravity" studio.

From last year's finalization of the plan to shoot "Gravity" to now, all aspects have been preparing for almost a year, and the film has decided to start filming next week.

The only twist in the plan was that Eric found that he couldn't be the cinematographer himself if he wanted to be flexible with the entire crew and keep track of all the details during the shoot, a job that ultimately had to be taken on by Nikkle Frank, who had worked with him for many years.

Eric's ambition to win the Oscars can only be adjusted temporarily, and unfortunately starts with the more difficult awards such as Best Picture and Best Director.

In the dedicated studio for Gravity, Nikkor Frank is showing Eric a difficult shot he had just set up.

After many films, Nikkor is already one of the best cinematographers in Hollywood, in fact, cinematographers are almost the same as snipers, except for some basic talents, excellent snipers are fed with bullets, and the same is true for cinematographers.

After Eric gave up the idea of working as a photographer himself, he described his shooting concept to Nikkor in detail, and when Nikkor heard about Eric's idea, he was challenged for a long time.

In the past few months, Nikkor has been largely focused on the filming of "Gravity", and he is now as proficient in the operation of the two high-precision robots from KUKA as some engineers in an automotive assembly plant, if not even better, because the robot engineers in the assembly shop usually only need to set a fixed operating program, but Nikkor needs to operate the two robots to make a kaleidoscopic action according to the needs of the camera.

In the background, the robotic arm of a professional 35mm camera is rapidly approaching the dummy on another rotating robotic arm at a high speed of nearly 50 meters per second.

However, the relative distance between the lens and the target is actually only three meters, and the camera with the high-speed operation of the robotic arm came to an abrupt halt at the place where the glass cover of the dummy helmet was only one centimeter, this scene made several other crew members on the scene a little frightened, and they realized that if they sat in the position of the dummy, and saw a cold metal robotic arm smashing the camera weighing more than ten kilograms in their faces, even if they were stunned on the spot.

Not far away, next to the console, Nikkor took the robot remote control PDA and skillfully repeated the action he had just done five times in a row, and then said to Eric, who had been staring at the monitoring screen on the desktop: "How about it? The accuracy of this KUKA machine is already millimeter-level, but I asked KUKA engineers to add two more safety measures, which can definitely ensure safety." ”

"Gravity" has a lot of shots of actors flying quickly to another target or targets approaching actors.

A camera weighing more than ten kilograms, a metal robotic arm with a thick bowl mouth, and a relative speed of 50 meters per second, if it gets out of control, Eric doesn't dare to think about the consequences at all, which is not allowed to make mistakes, not even once.

After hesitating for a moment, Eric still said: "When the time comes, let's brush it diagonally as much as possible, I really can't dodge, so I try to shoot in slow motion." ”

In slow-motion shooting, the film speed is slowed down several times, and the relative running speed can also be slowed down several times at the same time, and the high-speed relative movement effect can still be formed during normal projection. If you slow down, you'll be more insured.

"Eric, it's safer that way, but if it's a frontal close-up, it's easy to wear through the actor's facial expressions. ”

Eric thought for a moment and said, "Then we'll take a close-up of the expression and paste it on at that time, we can't take any chances." ”

"In this case, you don't need to shoot at slow speed, you can just use a dummy. ”

Eric laughed, "How does the dummy move?"

"Then a stand-in. ”

Eric still shook his head: "The stand-in is too dangerous. ”

While they were chatting, there was the sound of crisp high heels in their ears, and everyone looked for prestige, and saw Nicole Kidman, wearing a black knee-length dress and carrying a satchel, walking towards Eric.

After greeting everyone, Nicole did not shy away from hugging Eric affectionately, and then looked at the surrounding shooting props, with a little resentment in her tone, and said: "You look so powerful, you guy, but you don't ask me to play it." ”

Eric smiled and motioned for Nicole to sit down on the chair next to him, clicked the mouse to replay the shot just now, and pointed to the mechanical arm not far away, threatening, "Do you dare to act?"

Nicole put her satchel on the wide operating table, sat next to Eric, watched the replay on the screen, and looked at the mechanical arm not far away, and said, "This is too dangerous, if it hits, it will kill someone, why do you want to shoot such a dangerous shot." Moreover, where is just a dummy, if it were me, I would definitely subconsciously hide backwards, and you wouldn't be able to shoot the shot just now. ”

Nichol next to him said: "Nicole, you can't dodge, the actor's entire body is fixed on the bracket, and he still wears a one-piece helmet on his head, and only his limbs can move at will." ”

Nicole said, "Then why don't you design a device that allows the actors to get out of the way in times of danger?"

"These machines are so sophisticated that they can't be moved at will, and we've thought about using bulletproof glass for helmets, but if we do hit them, the protection won't be very effective," Nikkor said. ”

Nicole thinks about the shot just now, and knows that even if the mask glass is not broken, the consequences will be quite tragic, and it will even squeeze the actor's head off. She couldn't help but get up, looked around, and suddenly pointed to the slide track under the mechanical arm outside the light box: "Then why don't you install the slide rail on the machine inside, if there is a collision, even if the actor can't move, as long as the machine inside steps back." ”

Eric just wanted to say that the space in the light box was too small, but in a blink of an eye, he suddenly had an epiphany, got up suddenly, hugged Nicole's thin waist and kissed the girl on the lips: "You are really my little baby." ”

Although Nicole did not hide her relationship with Eric, she was suddenly kissed in front of everyone in the studio, her face was still slightly red, and she reached out to push Eric away.

Nickel also reacted at this time, the two of them have been trapped in the shackles of the thinking of photographers and directors, but Nicole easily solves the problem that has plagued them for a while from the perspective of her own actors.

The space inside the light box is indeed not large, but as long as an accident occurs, the actor rebounds backwards even twenty or thirty centimeters, which is enough for the mechanical arm to complete the emergency braking.

"Now, let's stop here in the morning, and let the prop master come over in the afternoon and we'll discuss it. Thinking of this, Eric said to Nichol with ease.

After all, if he could do it perfectly, Eric didn't want to use special effects or anything like that.

After saying hello, Eric took Nicole to the restaurant for lunch.

A few minutes later, in the luxurious dining room on the big ship, looking at a script handed over by Nicole, Eric was surprised: "You're going to rush to the Olympics too?"