It was early 1979, the first day of work after the holidays.
At 8:00 AM, Ronald walked into the New World Pictures office building.
He immediately felt that his choice to step back from the portrait photography business was the right one. Seeing the exploitation movie posters lining the hallway, he felt a surge of energy. He couldn't wait to dive back into the work and Sometimes, rational financial planning isn't as authentic as a purely physical reaction.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, his body felt eager. Something had awakened in his veins on that high school set.
It resonated with the celluloid, impatient to expose, develop, and cut the film to his will.
He headed up to the second floor to check in with the President's assistant and get the lay of the land. Seeing Gale already busy at her desk, Ronald hurried forward.
"Hi, Gale. Happy New Year. You look fantastic."
Gale was wearing a sharp new professional suit, her Sassoon bob perfectly styled. On her desk sat three newly framed photos: a solo portrait of her, a photo of her with Jim Cameron, and the group shot of the three of them all taken by Ronald.
She beamed when she saw him. "Ronald! You're back. How was your holiday?"
"Excellent. And yours?"
They fell into an easy rhythm, catching up and trading industry gossip.
With the principal photography of Rock 'n' Roll High School completed, the crew had immediately scattered to the winds to find their next gigs. The actors had moved on to new auditions, and the camera and sound departments were already pulling cables on new sets.
The actual shooting period of a movie is violently short. Only the director is involved from the birth of prep to the death of post-production. This was the essence of Roger Corman's philosophy, filmmaking is long at the ends and short in the middle. The staggeringly expensive shooting phase must be executed with blistering speed, while the cheaper post-production editing and sound mixing can be taken at a more measured pace.
Of course, that was just the philosophy of the B-movie king. Gale mentioned that Roman Polanski had been shooting Tess in France for over six months now, and it still wasn't finished. How he was keeping the investors from pulling the plug was a mystery.
Continuing their gossip, Ronald discovered where his acquaintances had landed.
James Cameron had officially joined the Special Effects department for Roger Corman's Star Wars knock-off, now officially titled Battle Beyond the Stars. He was currently elbow-deep in plastic models and matte paintings.
P.J. Soles had booked a role in a major studio picture at Warner Bros, a $15 million comedy called Private Benjamin. She still hadn't landed a solo leading role, but she was playing a key supporting part opposite the massive star Goldie Hawn.
But the most surprising news was about Jane, the script supervisor. She had been hired to do uncredited script revisions on The Black Stallion, a highly artistic film produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope and directed by Carroll Ballard.
"Wow," Ronald sighed, leaning against Gale's desk. "How did she land a Zoetrope gig?"
Gale noticed the envy in his eyes and lowered her voice. "Jane's last name is Rosenberg."
Ronald paused, then nodded in understanding. Rosenberg, she had family connections. In Hollywood, talent gets you in the room, but who your uncle knows gets you the job.
"Anyway," Gale said, standing up. "You're here to report to the editing room today, right? I'll take you back."
Gale led Ronald down the hall and knocked on a heavy, soundproofed door. Director Allan Arkush was inside, hovering over a flatbed editing machine. Seeing Ronald, he stood up.
"Ronald, welcome to the cave."
Allan's towering height always put a bit of pressure on Ronald. "Hello, Allan. What do you need me to do? I'm ready to learn."
"Joe? Joe!" Allan called out to the back of the room. "Take Ronald and show him the ropes. Teach him how to load the picture and mag track, and show him how to sync."
Allan handed Ronald off to his co-director and resident editing guru, Joe Dante.
"Hi, Ronald. Glad you're in the cutting room. Now the real movie gets made."
Joe Dante smoothed his thinning hair and led Ronald to a heavy steel film cabinet in the corner. He pulled out several large, flat metal cans of developed 35mm film. Then, checking the camera reports, he found the corresponding rolls of audio tape.
This was the first time Ronald had seen production audio tape, known in the industry as mag film (magnetic film). It was 35mm wide, exactly like the picture film, complete with sprocket holes along the edges. But instead of images, it was coated with a brown magnetic oxide that recorded the audio.
Because both the picture film and the mag film had identical sprocket holes, they could be locked together gear-to-gear, ensuring the sound and picture stayed perfectly synchronized.
In the center of the room was a heavy metal table bolted with a device featuring multiple sprocketed wheels and a hand crank.
"This is a sync block," Joe explained. "You load the picture film onto the first gang, turn this crank, and it pulls the film through." He demonstrated, the film clicking softly over the metal teeth.
"Then, you load the mag film onto the second gang right next to it. You thread the mag film over the magnetic playback head. This way, when you turn the crank, the picture and the sound move together, locked tooth-for-tooth." Joe motioned for Ronald to take the crank.
"Try to turn the handle at exactly 24 frames per second. That's projection speed. If you crank too slow, the voices sound like Darth Vader. Too fast, they sound like chipmunks."
Ronald turned the crank. The image of the high school hallway fluttered through the viewer, and the dialogue played through a small speaker.
"Okay, stop here," Joe said.
Ronald stopped turning.
"Look at this frame in the viewer," Joe said. "It shows Jane snapping the clapperboard shut. But listen...." Joe rocked the crank back and forth slightly over the sound head. There was silence. "There's no clap sound on the mag track yet. Why?"
Ronald thought back to his time on set. "Because the sound mixer calls Speed before the camera operator calls Rolling. The audio tape starts recording a few seconds before the film starts exposing."
"Exactly," Joe beamed. "The mag film is physically longer than the picture film for this take. Your job as an assistant editor is to find the exact frame where the sticks hit on the picture, find the exact frame where the CLAP sound hits on the mag track, and lock them together."
Joe pulled a pile of tools onto the table.
"These are your best friends: a grease pencil, splicing tape, and a guillotine splicer. First, you attach ten feet of white leader tape to the head of both the picture and the mag track. You write the scene and take number on the leader."
Ronald picked up a Sharpie and wrote, R&RHS - SC 2 - TK 3.
"Then," Joe instructed, "you roll the picture to the exact frame the sticks hit. You mark it. You roll the mag track over the sound head until you hear the sharp CRACK. You mark it. You line those two marks up side-by-side in the sync block. Then, you cut off all the dead audio before the clap, splice the leader on, and roll them up together. Got it?"
Ronald nodded. He tried it. He rolled the picture, marked the visual clap with a grease pencil. He rolled the audio, found the sharp magnetic spike of the clap, and marked it. He laid them side-by-side in the teeth of the sync block.
"Perfect..... Now, the splicer."
Joe Dante slid a heavy metal guillotine splicer forward.
"Put the cut end of the film on these registration pins. Pull the splicing tape across. Pull the lever down."
CHUNK.....
Ronald picked up the film. The two pieces were joined perfectly with clear tape, the sprocket holes punched through cleanly.
"You use clear tape for the picture, and white tape for the mag track (on the non-magnetic side). Once a roll is synced, you hand it over to the editor."
Seeing that Ronald was a quick study, Joe let him practice a few more times before leaving him alone at the bench.
Allan Arkush, seeing Ronald settled into the grunt work, nodded in satisfaction. Until the dailies were fully synced, the directors couldn't actually start cutting the movie. Allan and Joe left the room to grab lunch.
Once Ronald synced a full 1000-foot reel, he handed it over to Larry, the film's senior editor. Larry took the synced reel over to the large, motorized Steenbeck flatbed editing table and began the actual creative work of assembling the scenes.
There were 25 hours of raw footage for Rock 'n' Roll High School... over 120,000 feet of film. Synchronizing it all was a gargantuan, mechanical task. Repeating the exact same physical motions hundreds of times a day was mind-numbing. If Ronald hadn't been desperate to understand the mechanics of post-production, he would have quit by lunch.
In the Golden Age of Hollywood, the grueling, meticulous job of film editing and syncing was almost exclusively done by women. They were deemed to have better fine motor skills and patience for the sewing-like precision required. In this editing room, the other two assistant editors were indeed young women.
Ronald quickly discovered he was not built for this.
Compared to the two female assistants, his hands were clumsy. He made more mistakes and was noticeably slower. The cutting room ran in three shifts, the editors slept, but the rented machines did not as they ran 24 hours a day.
Because of his slow pace, Ronald volunteered for the graveyard shift to avoid competing for table space with the faster assistants. Soon, his days and nights became completely inverted. He lived in a dark room smelling of vinegar syndrome and splicing cement.
After two weeks of continuous night shifts, his brain began to fry. During one 3:00 AM session, he accidentally spliced a mag track out of sync three times in a row, ruining a foot of dialogue.
Frustrated and exhausted, Ronald finally couldn't take it anymore. When Allan arrived in the morning, Ronald asked for a day off to reset.
After sleeping for fourteen straight hours, Ronald woke up. He needed a distraction from the endless strips of celluloid haunting his dreams so he decided to buy a television.
He walked to a second-hand appliance store on Venice Boulevard and lugged home a heavy, wood-paneled color Zenith CRT TV. He hoisted it onto the milk crates in his living room.
He plugged it in, extended the rabbit-ear antenna, and twisted the clunky dial. He could pick up the Big Three, CBS, NBC, and ABC plus the local PBS station.
Ronald sat on his worn sofa, flipping through the channels, enjoying the simple, mindless pleasure of broadcasting.
"...The unrest in Persia continues to worsen. Shah Pahlavi and his family have fled Iran by private jet, seeking exile..." an anchor intoned on ABC's World News Tonight.
Click.
"...The National Iranian Oil Company has announced a total suspension of exports. Gas prices at the pump are expected to skyrocket..." an economic correspondent warned on NBC.
Click.....
"Don't do this to me... J.R., you're a member of the Ewing family too!" a tearful woman pleaded.
It was CBS's prime-time soap opera behemoth, Dallas.
Ronald left the dial alone and settled in to watch. It was a melodrama about the feuds, betrayals, and romances of a Texas oil conglomerate.
Having spent the last two weeks staring at every single frame of a feature film, his eye had become hyper-critical. The camerawork on Dallas felt flat and uninspired, shot quickly on standard TV lighting grids. He was mostly just watching the beautiful actresses.
The plot was flamboyant and soapy, but it was engaging enough to turn his brain off. He watched until the credits rolled.
Yawning, Ronald stood up and clicked the TV off. Now that he finally owned one, he realized there wasn't much worth watching anyway.
He had to go back to the dark room tomorrow as the endless reels of film were waiting.
Authors Note:-
That's chapter 32....
Hope you guys enjoyed it...
Support with power stones and reviews.