King of Hollywood

Chapter 283 - 283 11 Setting Sail

?Chapter 283: Chapter 11 Setting Sail Chapter 283: Chapter 11 Setting Sail “No, no, no, that won’t do, JoBeth, this is completely a Soviet-style auditorium, not a Chinese one,” Adrian said, shaking his head as he looked at the wide photography studio that had been cleared out, with three long hanging Five-Star Red Flags on the wall, and on another wall hung a giant portrait of Mao.

“I remember providing you with enough material; why did you end up making it like this?” he questioned his prop master. “Don’t tell me you didn’t take a close look at those things.”

“How could I not,” JoBeth said with a touch of grievance, “I’ve analyzed those materials carefully. If we set up the environment according to them, it would make Forrest Gump’s exceptionalness seem somewhat ridiculous, and you think so too.”

“Do I think so too?” Adrian wore a puzzled look. “Do I really think that?”

“Of course, it’s written right at the bottom of the third page of the memorandum, which you wrote by hand,” JoBeth had just finished speaking when Charlize, standing behind Adrian, had already handed the document over to him.

Adrian flipped to the third page and saw that it was indeed written like that. After reflecting for a moment without saying anything, he handed it back to Charlize and nodded to JoBeth: “Then let it be that way.”

The rationale that JoBeth wrote in the memorandum was very sufficient, explaining everything from the colors to the possible camera movements. Adrian had even done a detailed analysis on this basis before the shooting, without giving it too much thought at that time. But it didn’t matter anyway. If the film was going to be released in China, this segment would be cut out no matter what, so it wasn’t necessary to fuss over it too much.

Next came the official filming, but Hanks and the temporary Chinese-American actors found had to swing their rackets at air. In reality, table tennis wasn’t as sharp as conceived, so the motion trajectory could only be added in post-production. In fact, all the super table tennis that Forrest Gump played in the film was done this way.

But it didn’t mean that Hanks could randomly swing the racket around during filming. The team specifically hired a coach to design some movements based on the trajectory of table tennis. It couldn’t be said to be very sensible, but at least it looked the part.

Besides this, the other thing needed to be produced later was Forrest Gump’s participation in the iconic events, like the “desegregation” riots in Alabama, or Kennedy receiving the National College All-Stars, and Nixon awarding medals to the heroes of the Vietnam War, etc. Because Gump’s image had to be inserted into those archival black-and-white images, Hanks had to stand in front of a green or blue screen, shaking hands, and conversing with the air, as if those historical figures were standing right in front of him.

“Every time you yell action, I have to imagine many people standing around me and try hard to act as if I’m conversing with them. It’s really not easy,” Hanks mentioned during a break about this part of the shooting.

“Come on, Tommy, if you find that difficult, then Harrison and Sam must have already collapsed,” Adrian retorted. Compared to performing entirely on a blue screen based on one’s imagination, imagining within a restricted scene—for Star Wars or Jurassic Park, for instance—was obviously much more troublesome.

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