The filming went very quickly.

On this day, the heroine Xueer will finally change her hairstyle.

Loretta, played by Cher, is a dull, boring, conservative widow in the first half of the movie. She often wears all black, and her hair is a little gray. She does not dye her hair, but wears a hairstyle common to old Italian ladies.

The clothes are also very conservative, with black as the main color, and the shoes are also black boots. They don't look feminine at all.

But after a night of lovemaking with Ronnie, who was full of passion and overflowing with male hormones, her instinct as a beautiful woman awakened.

Ronnie was unwilling to let go and let Loretta and Johnny get married and stay away from each other forever.

The next morning, he expressed his thoughts and was slapped in the face by Loretta.

Ronnie, played by Nicolas Cage, still asked to continue dating Loretta, but was slapped in the face by Cher again.

"Wake up."

A moment of passion is never worth a middle-aged woman's rational thinking the next morning.

Loretta felt that she couldn't tell Johnny what happened, and she didn't think that Ronnie, who was much younger than her, could be her life partner. She wanted to wake him up and let this night be a sweet moment for the two of them.

memories.

But Ronnie was unwilling to let go, so he proposed to invite Loretta to see Puccini's opera "La Bohème".

As long as Loretta agrees to go see it with him, she agrees to let him go and attend her wedding to Johnny, as if nothing has happened.

Ronnie is confident. Going to the opera is a very formal social activity for Italians, and it can cause very dramatic emotional reactions. Some people are romantic by nature. After watching an opera, they will be so passionate that they will do things that are impossible to do normally.

Others do not have a strong reaction to opera, listening to it as ordinary classical music, and have no emotional reaction beyond daily life.

Italians, who have this kind of romantic and crazy gene in their culture, tend to belong to the former.

Although Loretta knew that this was not reliable, her female intuition still made her agree.

As an Italian, going to the opera is a big deal. Loretta saw a hair salon on the road and was attracted by it, so she went in.

This is a very interesting transformation scene. Ronald feels that in romantic love movies, there needs to be such a process, so that the less conspicuous ugly duckling becomes white with the help of friends and professionals.

swan.

Because at the beginning, the audience's impression was shaped by the protagonist's makeup and dress. This transformation process not only made the male protagonist Ronnie amazing, but more importantly, it also made the audience feel amazing.

"I have to use my own hairstylist, Ronald. And a man who does nails and makeup." After Cher arrived at the scene, she began to make many requests.

"But we need to perform here, can your hairstylist act?" Ronald was also confused about the strict requirements of celebrities on their appearance.

You can't say that Cher's demands are too much. She has already sacrificed her image and acted ugly in the first half for the sake of the artistic effect of the movie.

This transformation did not allow her to dress up beautifully according to her own preferences, and it was a pity that she had worked so hard to ask her to be the heroine. She was originally meant to be seen by some of Cher's fans.

But her request was a bit troublesome in operation.

In this scene, Loretta will be filmed dyeing her hair, perming her hair, doing her nails, trimming her eyebrows, putting on make-up, etc. A series of actions are required. Some of the hair and make-up processes must be shown in front of the film camera.

Cher must be done by a dedicated team, so the storyboarding would be very troublesome during filming.

"In this way, I will do a close-up of you, taking only the more beautiful left half of your face. The camera will only capture three-quarters of your face, and then let your official makeup studio and hairstylist take care of it, so that they only have

If your hands are in the shot, you won't ruin the shot due to nervousness.

As for other scenes, let these confirmed actors perform them. I will cut them together through post-editing."

Cher discussed with the private team and agreed with Ronald's approach.

She first returned her hair to its original black color, and then asked her favorite personal hairstylist to start steaming her hair to restore her wavy hairstyle.

Ronald and director of photography David Watkin looked on. The two were good friends in private. They exchanged glances and went out to smoke. They also complained about the star's excessive demands.

"You are very lucky. Cher has relatively few requirements among celebrities. I once filmed a romantic film, and the heroine had a bad attitude after she came. The director and I both thought something big had happened to her. Did she have to do with the actors?

The husband of a film producer had a falling out and wanted to divorce and quit the film crew.

She had been in the trailer for two hours and she still hadn't found a good condition. The director and I went up to check on the situation and see if we could still shoot that day.

As a result, the female star said that it was because her dog suddenly died last night..."

"That's what happened before you saw her." Ronald blew out the smoke. Cher made a scene on David Letterman's late night talk show, and even brought a

A little boy who was making bagels showed up and almost pissed off a bunch of Broadway supporting actors.

"Fortunately, I refused her new boyfriend to come to Toronto through MGM, otherwise our situation would be several times more difficult than it is now."

"I have been filming in Toronto for several weeks. I feel that the filming of the film is very boring. There are only a few long shots and a few close-ups, and there are no more dramatic conflicts with other characters. Until now, the dramatic conflicts that impressed me are still overwhelming.

Just two slaps to Nic Cage."

In the indoor scene of the hair salon set up in the studio, Cher was also chatting with Olympia Dukakis, who played her mother, complaining that director Ronald was not interested in her role.

"And Ronald never guided my acting skills, nor did he tell me how I should act. He always let me find my own feeling. Then he would say, you did a good job, now let's try another one.

Acting, do it again."

"That's because he respects the actor's performance. After all, the role must be performed by the actor." Olympia Dukakis curled her lips. She had opinions on Cher's acting skills and knew that she was only a supporting role compared to her.

You should bring your own personal opinions into the professional work of the crew.

Ronald is a good director who can tolerate and understand actors. After all, Cher has not made many movies. She doesn't know how difficult it is to have such a director.

Cher's two previous films were both made with famous Hollywood directors. One "Skover" was directed by Michael Nichols, who had directed "The Graduate". The other "Mask" was directed by Michael Nichols.

The director is Peter Bogdanovich.

The two directors knew that Cher's role was a weakness in her acting skills, so they often personally guided how certain scenes should be performed. If that didn't work, they would use short shots to edit Cher's performances so that they could be seen.

But on Broadway, a play has to be performed from beginning to end, without the convenience of stopping and starting another one. Cher wants to act in a play, and her acting skills need to be trained.

As a director, one thing that Ronald is particularly good at is giving the actors some room to improvise. If they can have some inspiration under the conditions that fit the situation, Ronald always has an encouraging attitude.

Acting motionlessly according to the script's lines may get you 80 or 90 points, but if you want to inspire real reactions from your opponent's actors and achieve full marks, you have to have a little bit of improvisation.

Actors are a group of very sensitive people. Ronald never criticizes them and always carefully protects the actors' self-confidence. Only when they feel comfortable can they have room for extraordinary performance.

When Cher looked at Ronald with such rigid demands, it was a reflection of her own poor acting skills.

Real actors, like them who have been working hard on Broadway for many years, can analyze the characters themselves and come up with appropriate performance methods after receiving the script. So why do they need the director to provide specific guidance?

"They say Ronald is very powerful, but I don't see it at all." Cher had some doubts about Ronald. Can this movie really be as successful as he said?

"Did we get sidetracked? No one will watch this movie after it's released, right? I can only imagine what the critics will say..."

"No..." Dukakis was angry when she said that he was very enjoyable in this movie and it will definitely be good.

"A!"

When she was finally ready, Cher's head was covered with a steaming white towel. Then her personal hairstylist uncovered the towel, and her straight long hair fell from Cher's forehead. The hairstylist plucked

She opened her hair and started combing her hairstyle.

A super close-up shot was taken of Cher's more beautiful left face. His hairstylist used a pair of tweezers to pluck out a few stray hairs one by one in the middle of Cher's eyebrows.

"Ah..." Xueer kept shouting in pain.

"Cut!"

"Very good, very good. Now let's try another way of acting. Let's try another one."

"Oh..." Xueer really had two eyebrows plucked and returned to the chair.

…

The filming continued, and except for Cher's role, everyone else's cooperation became more and more tacit.

Ronald knew that Cher's acting skills were inadequate compared with those of Dukakis and others. She could not be used as the centerpiece of the drama.

Although she is the protagonist of the movie, she is a supporting role in the dramatic conflict. The entire family is actually centered around the role of mother Rose played by Dukakis.

But he couldn't let Cher act haphazardly, so that the scenes of her and other supporting actors would appear very abrupt. If a person with average acting skills suddenly appeared in a group of veteran actors, many rhythms and subtle emotions would not be able to match.

It will ruin the whole movie.

Ronald had no choice but to separate Cher's scenes as much as possible, minimizing the scenes of her sharing the same frame with other family members, and then use editing techniques to make up for it.

"You can't do this. What are you going to do in the last scene?" David Watkin was a little worried about Ronald's handling of the scene.

"I can't help it. With the pressure of the filming cycle, I can't stop and wait for Cher to train her acting skills. I can only use whatever I can."

This kind of treatment made Cher even more suspicious of Ronald's level. She always faced the camera alone a lot. This kind of shooting method made Cher feel it was too simple.

A long shot of walking, then a medium shot, cut to a close shot, then a close-up reaction, then cut back to an over-the-shoulder shot of the conversation.

Comparing Cher with the two great directors she has worked with, Ronald's approach seems less distinctive.

Peter Bogdanovich always quotes some classic clips from film and television to guide his acting skills. Michael Nichols is good at letting people act naturally. What about Ronald? There are quite a lot of cutscenes.

"Oh..." Cher walked out of the hair salon, and two young Italian extras whistled at her. After dressing up, especially after changing into long wavy hair, high heels and a skirt

, Loretta's feminine charm finally began to shine through.

…

The shooting went by day by day and finally reached the finishing stage. This is the most important group scene in the movie. All the clues are heading towards the point of no return and must be completely solved in a big family breakfast.

In this way, no trickery can be used. Cher must be together with other people and enter the viewfinder at the same time.
To be continued...