Anchor Point

Chapter 127 Anchor Point

Just as she was about to turn her head to look, David suddenly pulled hard on her left arm, and with a snap, she was flipped over.

"How are you feeling?" David asked, looking at the other person's still somewhat bewildered expression. "Are you feeling much better?"

Catherine immediately sat up, stretching her body backward, supporting her upper body weight with her left hand on the ground beside her, and tilting her neck back. "It seems much better. How did you do that?"

"That's too technical; you wouldn't understand even if I explained it to you."

David changed the subject, "You said you wanted to film your movie first?"

"Yes, is that okay?"

"Sure, but are you sure you can act well?"

Filming solo scenes in a concentrated manner is essentially similar to the legendary "filming multiple projects at once," both of which significantly increase the difficulty of the performance.

There are two main reasons. One is the lack of emotional continuity. Actors cannot advance their performances according to the timeline of the plot and the logic of emotional development. They need to frequently jump between different scenes and different emotional states. In this case, it is difficult to ensure the consistency and layering of the character's emotions.

Another challenge is the pressure of memorizing details. Actors need to accurately remember the character's state, appearance details, and the development of relationships at different times to avoid performance errors that contradict each other.

Therefore, the performance quality that most actors provide to the audience when they are filming multiple projects at the same time is often not ideal.

It is said that when Yang Mi first became a sensation with "Palace", she set a record of filming 11 dramas in one year. At her peak, she was traveling between 4-5 film crews at the same time, focusing on filming her individual scenes.

Sleeping only 10 hours a day for five days, and able to quickly switch between different period drama and modern roles, he is one of the few actors in the Chinese entertainment industry who adapted to this high-density, intensive filming mode relatively early.

"I—" Catherine crossed her right leg over her left, placed her right hand on her thigh near her knee, and tapped her fingers unconsciously a few times. Her tone was somewhat uncertain. "I should be able to act well."

"If you're not satisfied with the take, just call 'cut'. I don't mind if we do a few more takes. Lynn's role doesn't have many scenes, and I think I can play her well."

"Well, then we'll see how you perform."

Are there actors who can maintain a high level of performance while filming multiple projects simultaneously? Of course, there are, but they are relatively few in number.

The reason I specifically added the qualifier "mainland entertainment" when talking about Yang Mi is because Hong Kong entertainment is decades ahead in this regard.

For example, Tony Leung Ka-fai is a recognized "time management master" in the Chinese film industry. His achievements in intensively filming solo scenes and shooting multiple films at once are legendary. He relied entirely on his hard work to achieve both box office and critical success for what he considered an "impossible filming task".

During the three years from when his daughter was 0 to 3 years old, he started an "inhuman" high-intensity filming schedule, with an average sleep time of only 4.5 hours per day. He would run to 3 film crews in a single day to rush to film his individual scenes. In those three years, he produced a total of 36 films, with his highest single-year record being 13 films. As a result, he was given the nickname "Liang Shisan" in the industry.

However, that's because Hong Kong Island is small, and commuting between different film crews only takes half an hour. He uses all his fragmented time to switch locations and catch up on sleep in order to achieve this output speed; otherwise, he would easily die from overwork.

It's not just that he filmed quickly; Yang Mi filmed quickly too. The important thing is that the quality of his performances was mostly above average.

Having just finished filming the taciturn and reserved King Yisheng in "The King of Chess", he immediately took on the role of the crazy and funny Lui Kei in "92 Legendary La Rose Noire", and won his second Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor for this contrasting role.

He played the righteous Zhou Huai'an in "New Dragon Gate Inn" and then joined the cast of "The Eagle Shooting Heroes" to play the eccentric and unconventional Prince Duan. At the same time, he was also filming a solo scene in the art film "The Lover". Each of these three completely unrelated roles has become a classic in film history.

Tony Leung Ka-fai's reputation as a "chameleon actor" was largely established during this period of intensive filming. Even Chow Yun-fat commented that he was "like a chameleon, able to handle roles that I couldn't play."

"Hey, perfect timing, I'm right here," David suddenly thought of something, found a chair, "Come sit here, let's act out a scene of Bud and Lynn's intimate moment."

"Hmm, and then?"

Catherine sat down sideways, her legs together and stretched out at an angle to one side, her knees slightly bent. Her upper body, however, was turned to face David, forming a soft, twisting arc.

The left hand hangs down naturally, with the fingertips lightly resting on the knee, while the right hand is raised, the back of the hand supporting the cheek, and the index finger resting just below the cheekbone.

She briefly recalled the plot of the script, "And I remember that Lynn put her foot into Bud's arms, right?"

"Hmm, you have a good memory, which gives me more confidence in your performance when you're filming alone."

David naturally had no objection to this.

Catherine's long black dress hugged her legs, the hem draping over the chair and blending into the dark night outside.

Her bare feet were crossed on the chair's crossbar, left foot on top, right foot on the bottom, ankles lightly touching.

The instep arches in a full curve, the skin is fair and delicate, and you can almost see the pale blue veins faintly visible under the thin skin.

Her toes were long and neat, like five tiny shells lined up in a row. Her nails were trimmed neatly and cleanly, with a natural pinkish-white sheen. There was no bright nail polish, only a clear and glossy nail guard.

"The curve of your foot is so gentle," David said sincerely after holding your ankle. "Every inch feels warm and smooth."

Lacking any jagged, bony joints, the old wooden chair's paint was peeling and chipped, revealing the rough texture underneath, creating a strange contrast with her smooth feet.

"What's the point of this scene?" Catherine tilted her long, slender neck back. "It doesn't seem like I need to act out any emotions."

"This part is actually mainly to slow down the pace of the film's narrative."

David explained, "The audience will definitely not be as tense as they were before when watching this part."

In addition, it is also to deepen the impression or memory of the character Lynn left on the audience.

There are two areas in the human brain that have a great impact on memory retention: one is the visual aesthetic center, which is responsible for aesthetic perception, and the other is the risk processing center, which is responsible for crisis warning.

Ordinary special effects scenes such as explosions and car chases can only activate a single risk processing center, and viewers will have a blurred memory of these homogenized scenes after about a week.

Therefore, the core female characters in commercial films are often deliberately placed in high-risk, extreme scenarios, such as running with documents in a collapsing building, clinging tightly to ropes on a cliff edge in a downpour, or aiming a gun in a hail of bullets.

Meanwhile, the entire crew's lighting and photography teams will work in sync to ensure that even in chaotic action scenes, her facial lighting is soft and clear, and the details of her hair and makeup are fully presented.

This combination of "extreme beauty + extreme danger" will simultaneously activate the audience's aesthetic center and risk processing center. The neural signals in the two areas form a strong association memory in the hippocampus, ultimately making the memory retention time of this character 3 to 5 times longer than that of ordinary plot scenes.

For example, many viewers may have forgotten the specific plot of the movie after many years, but they can still clearly remember Mathilda's face when she knocked on Léon's door in "Léon: The Professional," and this is precisely the mechanism at work.

"Then I feel like intensive filming doesn't seem too difficult," Catherine said, regaining her confidence. "It's just a matter of doing this, and then I'll leave everything to you."

"I'm going to wash up. If you're sleepy, you should go to sleep first."

Catherine sat sideways on the edge of the bed, one hand supporting her cheek, the other tucked into her knees. She turned and smiled, revealing a set of bright white teeth. "I think you're almost awake. Goodnight, darling."

It is said that when filming sequels, in order to avoid gaps in the audience's memory of the characters from the previous work, film directors will set up a number of "memory anchors" for the core female characters in the industrialized production process. These anchors are almost imperceptible to the audience, but the brain will automatically recognize them.

These anchor points are all highly consistent details of the smile, such as a fixed lip color, a 17-degree angled fringe curl, and so on.

David discovered that Catherine also had similar anchor points in her daily life. Whenever she was sitting and talking to him, she would almost always do so in this posture: slightly turned to the side, one hand supporting her face, and her legs elegantly crossed and stretched out.

However, this is not a bad thing; on the contrary, he likes it very much.