"Cinematic montages are actions that collide with each other, not only between the cameras, but also within the cameras." This sentence was put forward by Eisenstein in the former Soviet Union in "The Form of Cinema".

The greatness of this sentence lies in the fact that it clearly points out the two important tasks of a good martial arts instructor: what kind of movements to design and what kind of movements to express.

"What kind of action to design" is to put it bluntly, it is to design the corresponding martial arts action according to the script, story background, and character surname, while "what kind of action expression is designed" mainly refers to post-production and the editing of martial arts action.

After the completion of "Jingwumen", most of the actors can rest for a few days, and then go to find other sets to continue to run for life, Bruce Lee needs to go home to reunite with his children, and Wang Xiaohu, as an assistant director, has to take film (film) to Golden Harvest headquarters to find editors to improve the post-production of the film.

At this time, the film editing work was done by professional editors with simple machines, which was far less than the computer "non-line" editing (digital editing) that Wang Xiaohu was familiar with in his previous life, so editing was a heavy and meticulous work.

Zhang Zongyao, the chief editor of Golden Harvest, looked at the poor film in Wang Xiaohu's hand and said, "That's it? ”

Wang Xiaohu nodded and said, "Yes, that's all." ”

Zhang Zongyao smiled bitterly and took over the films, and he was quite puzzled about Wang Xiaohu's position as an assistant director. Does this kid know how to make movies, a feature film often has as few as a few hundred or as many as thousands of shots. The picture part has interior and exterior scenes, as well as real scenes and built scenes. Important shots are often shot several times due to performance or technical reasons, and they need to be selected when they need to be edited. Most of the shots are long, and you have to find the most ideal editing point from them; Some of the scenes that are crossed by long and short shots are shot on several strips of film in succession, and they need to be cut into many shots during editing, and then arranged in the order of the most effective shots.

And this kid has only taken such a bit of film, if the editing effect is not ideal, it will cause the film to be reshot and delayed, then it will be a big deal! For this reason, many directors will bring a lot of film when they come to edit, in order to screen the satisfactory effect, but the film brought by Wang Xiaohu is about half less than that of other directors, so Zhang Zongyao thinks that this is a joke, and deep down he thinks that Wang Xiaohu is a layman.

Zhang Zongyao complained in his heart while turning on the editing machine: "How can Boss Zou invite such an ignorant layman to shoot a movie, damn, it seems that Lao Tzu's workload today is more than ten times higher than usual!" ”

According to the convention of editing, the first task is to process the material, that is, to connect the shots according to the logo of the film scene combined with the storyboard script, the characters' physical movements, dialogues, reactions, etc., which is a preliminary processing process, and it is often the most complex and headache for Zhang Zongyao.

But when Zhang Zongyao started to work, his thinking immediately changed 180 degrees, because most of these films are long shots, and the pictures shot are surprisingly smooth, which is simply a work in one go, whether it is the actions of the characters or the connection between the front and back, it seems to have been repeatedly scrutinized and comprehensively edited.

"This, how is this possible?" Zhang Zongyao had a strong earthquake in the depths of his heart, and he took out several sets of films for verification, and the results of the verification were all the same, all of them were long-shot combinations, and he, the chief editor of Golden Harvest, had no place to start.

"Director Wang, are you sure you're not kidding me?" Zhang Zongyao asked with a strange expression.

Wang Xiaohu touched his nose and didn't understand what he meant: "Uh, what did you just say?" Is there something wrong with the film? ”

"No, no, there's no problem with the film, I just want to ask if the film has been pre-cut and re-cut."

"First cut? Duplicate shear? What does that mean? Wang Xiaohu didn't explain.

"Oh my God, you don't even know about the first cut and the second cut!" Zhang Zongyao was completely depressed! "The first cut is to roughly sort out the order of the film first, and the second cut is to correct it on the basis of the first cut."

Wang Xiaohu shook his head and said, "No, if we had an editor, we wouldn't have come to Brother Yao for your help." ”

Zhang Zongyao threw the magnifying glass on the table and said, "Then why are these shots so smooth and coherent!" ”

Wang Xiaohu smiled and said: "Oh, what you said is this, these shots are the results of our training for a month, Brother Yao, what you see are all long shots, mainly some martial arts shots in the film, after we finished training, we shot directly, so I feel that the picture is very smooth, almost all of them are one!" ”

Zhang Zongyao looked at Wang Xiaohu speechlessly, the muscles on his face began to twitch, this guy in front of him is either a madman or a genius, who shoots martial arts action movies must rehearse first and then shoot, what a waste of time, who doesn't design actions while shooting, some difficult actions cannot be post-processed without wasting a lot of film.

"Well, then, I don't have anything to do!" Zhang Zongyao's face flushed, and he finally held back a sentence.

Wang Xiaohu said with a smile: "Why is there nothing to do, we just take long shots for martial arts actions, mainly to minimize your workload, Brother Yao, as for some literary dramas, dialogues or other narrative shots, we still need Brother Yao's help to do a good job." ”

Zhang Zongyao didn't know how to answer anymore, and nodded in a daze and said, "Oh, thank you then!" ”

When Zhang Zongyao resumed his work again, he completely understood what Wang Xiaohu meant by what he just said, indeed, all the shots involving martial arts scenes in these films are long shots, and the movements are very coherent and smooth, and he doesn't need to make the slightest change at all, it is already a perfect finished product, and what he has to do is only to connect the literary drama and martial arts drama according to the order of the script, and re-cut, improve the dialogue and lip contrast of the characters, and add the recording of the lines.

Due to the reduction of Zhang Zongyao's workload by more than 60%, the editing of the film was very smooth, and Wang Xiaohu also took this opportunity to learn film editing with Zhang Zongyao, and Zhang Zongyao naturally gave it away.

Through learning, Wang Xiaohu now finally understands that in addition to special editing methods such as "three shots" and "slow motion", there are also "overlapping editing" and "repeated editing" in film editing, and for some important fight scenes, close-ups of characters should be highlighted, and sometimes these editing methods have to be used comprehensively.