在电影《加勒比海盗:黑珍珠号的诅咒》(Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl)中,约翰尼•德普(Johnny Depp)饰演的海盗船长朗姆酒喝得烂醉,倒在地上昏睡不醒,手指甲里脏兮兮的;而当他醒来后用手擦脸时,指甲却变干净了。
瑞琪•罗森(Rikki Rosen)发现了这个穿帮镜头,将其报告给一个名叫“电影挑错”(Movie Mistakes)的专门记录电影穿帮镜头的英国网站。罗森还发现,德普巡视海盗船员时,不同画面中的阳光照射方向都不一样;德普在啃一个苹果时,每个镜头中的苹果咬痕都在变化。
罗森向“电影挑错”网站报告了这部电影中293个穿帮镜头;而在另外181部电影中,她总共发现了3,695个错误之处──包括在影片《世界大战》(War of the Worlds)中,汤姆.克鲁斯(Tom Cruise)大喊“我们遭到攻击!”,这时能明显看到他货车挡风玻璃上的年检标志突然消失了。
罗森今年48岁,红色头发,正患有重感冒。她住在城市近郊,客厅里摆着沙发和宠物猫篮;一台老式索尼(Sony)电视,下面有一台Xbox游戏机;此外,还有几个茶杯、一台电脑和成排的DVD碟片。据{zx1}的统计,罗森为“电影挑错”网站做出的贡献排名第二,仅次于一个网名叫做“Hamster”的人,其报告了4,413个穿帮镜头。
“当然,电影中肯定会有这样那样的小错误。” {yt}早上,罗森蜷在沙发上说道,“毕竟人无完人,但有时候穿帮镜头一个接着一个,然后又是一个,让人感觉电影拍得不用心,错误不该如此显眼。”罗森勉强忍住咳嗽,继续说,“所以,我要给电影好好把把关。”
在每一部电影的拍摄过程中,都有专人负责挑错,这些人以前叫作“场记员”,现在叫作“剧本指导”。
他们的任务是避免电影中出现一些降低真实感的穿帮镜头,而互联网也促生了一批从事类似工作的志愿者,他们在场记挑完错后,来挑场记的错。
31岁的桑迪斯(Jon Sandys)是“电影挑错”网站的创始人。1996年,他在网上发了几个挑错的帖子,并鼓励大家多多发帖。现在,网站上已列出85,000个穿帮镜头,包括在《终结者3》(Terminator 3)中,Cessna飞机停在地面时的尾部编号为N3035C,而飞到空中后,编号却成了N3973F。
“互联网电影数据库”(IMDb)是“电影挑错”网站的巨大竞争对手,其“穿帮镜头”的页面访问量居于前列,每月有5700万访客。“脑子灵光的人总是能发现电影中的一些错误。” (IMDb的编辑西曼顿(Keith Simanton)说道。
只要点击剧本指导的姓名,就能看到一个清单,上面罗列了在该人参与的每一部电影中被发现的穿帮镜头。“他们觉得发现了别人没发现的东西,自以为很聪明。”住在纽约32岁的剧本指导沃特(Sharon Watt)说,“但我能解释自己电影中每个穿帮镜头的来由。”
举例而言,在2010年奥斯卡获奖影片《珍爱人生》(Precious)中,加布蕾•丝迪贝(Gabourey Sidibe)饰演的主角在餐馆里偷炸鸡吃,逃跑时忘了把笔记本电脑带上;而在下一幕场景中,她又有了一台笔记本电脑。
在电影剧本里,有人给了她一台新电脑,影片也严格按照剧本拍摄。“我们拍了那个镜头。”沃特说。但后来,由于制片过程中的意见分歧,沃特选择离开,另外三名剧本指导接替她的工作。在最终剪辑时,主角得到一台新电脑的镜头被删掉了。
“在拍摄过程中,最不能换的就是剧本指导,”沃特说,“拍电影就像玩一个拼图游戏,而剧本指导是{wy}拥有完整拼图图片的那个人。”
剧本指导详细记录影片中使用的道具、站位和服装。由于镜头不是按剧本顺序拍摄的,一块瘀青可能需要在早上看上去像旧伤,在下午看起来像新伤。演员在每个镜头的重拍中必须保持台词与动作的同步。这样做的目的是让后期剪辑人员能够把不同的镜头组合成为一个完整和谐的整体。
如果一个演员在某个镜头中的表现{zh0},但领口的扣子忘记扣上,剪辑人员通常会忽略这种小错误,而把演技好的镜头放入电影。
“我们并不认为看DVD的人会来来回回翻来覆去地比较每个镜头,”纽约的泰勒(Michael Taylor)说道。他原来是剧本指导,后来转为剪辑人员。
泰勒之所以这么说,是因为他不认识罗森──她呆在客厅里,用Xbox播放电影《大白鲨》(Jaws)的DVD。在影片的演职人员名单过后,镜头停留在沙滩派对中的一个小男孩身上,他后面站着一个穿长袖衬衫的男人;而在下一个镜头,那个男人的衬衫突然变成了短袖。
罗森按下遥控器的暂停键,说:“看见没有!”
罗森还是个在纽约布鲁克林区(Brooklyn)玩耍的十几岁少女时,觉得《大白鲨》是一部几乎无可挑剔的电影。“那年整整一个夏天我都不敢去游泳。”罗森说道。11年前,她搬到圣路易斯市(St. Louis)居住,她丈夫做销售工作,而她为学校读物画插图。她三个日渐长大的儿子一遍又一遍地看《大白鲨》的DVD,罗森也是如此。
她看得越多,穿帮镜头就发现得越多──整整156个,其中最糟糕的错误发生在影片末尾惊心动魄的场景之中:大白鲨正在使劲把鲨鱼专家昆特(Quint)船上的木桶给拽下来。
“看!甲板上有两个木桶。”罗森说,先按下暂停,然后又再次播放,“再看那儿,三个木桶。现在船上有两个木桶,水里有三个。然后,船上有三个,水里有两个。”
她发现的穿帮镜头越多,就越觉得这部影片其实没那么可怕。罗森把这种转变形容为“恐怖净化”。当她看的不是恐怖电影时,罗森想试着不去挑错,但在她看来,蹩脚的制片人根本不给她这种机会。
“有些人得把活儿干得漂亮点。”她嘬了一口茶,说,“我的一个儿子说:‘妈妈,你应该来干这活儿,你的眼睛尖。’”
为证明她的眼光,罗森放了一张《热情似火》(Some Like It Hot)的DVD,这部史上最强的喜剧片被IMDb挑出51个穿帮镜头。罗森几年前看过一次。
在观看过程中,她一下子就发现灵车窗户先碎掉然后又变完好的问题,棺材上有奇怪破洞的问题,沙滩椅位置变化的问题,以及玛丽莲•梦露(Marilyn Monroe)露出的胸罩吊带突然消失的问题。
然而,当沙滩上的女孩们奔向大海想去畅游时,罗森竟没有发现一个极其明显的穿帮镜头,背景里的高山显示出影片在加州拍摄,而非佛罗里达。“我没有仔细看,”罗森笑着说,“我被情节吸引住了。”
嗯,看来确实是人无完人。
英文原文:In Movies, To Err Is Human, To Nitpick Is Even More So
Johnny Depp's fingernails are dirty when he gets drunk on rum and passes out in the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.' When he wakes up and brings his hands to his face, the fingernails are clean.
Rikki Rosen caught that. She reported it to a Web site in Britain called Movie Mistakes, which does nothing but list mistakes in movies. While Mr. Depp inspects his pirate crew, the sun shines from different directions between cuts. Ms. Rosen also caught that mistake. When Mr. Depp bites into an apple, the bite mark changes shape from shot to shot. Ms. Rosen caught that one, too.
In all, she has reported 293 mistakes in the pirate movie to Movie Mistakes. She has also reported 3,695 mistakes in 181 other movies -- including the bit in 'War of the Worlds' when Tom Cruise yells 'We're under attack!' and it's obvious that the inspection sticker previously on his van's windshield is no longer there.
Ms. Rosen is a 48-year-old with red hair and a bad cold. Her inner-suburban living room contains couches and cat baskets; an old Sony television with an Xbox under it; tea cups, a computer and stacks of DVDs. At last count, she was Movie Mistake's No. 2 contributor, behind someone called 'Hamster' with 4,413.
'Sure, a movie can have mistakes,' she said, curled up on her couch one morning. 'People are imperfect. But sometimes it's just one after the other after the other. It smacks of not caring. These things should not be blatant on the screen.' Ms. Rosen suppressed a cough. 'So I look,' she said. 'I look at everything.'
All movie sets have nitpickers. They were 'script girls,' early on. Now they're 'script supervisors.'
They ward off wobbles that make movies less believable. But the Internet has stirred up a nest of similarly obsessed volunteers. They nitpick the nitpickers.
Jon Sandys, 31, founder of Movie Mistakes, posted a few gems on the Web in 1996 and asked people to send more. Now he lists 85,000, among them the Cessna in 'Terminator 3' marked 'N3035C' on the ground and 'N3973F' in the air.
At IMDb, his huge rival, 'goofs' rank in the top pages viewed by 57 million monthly visitors. 'It's smart people making connections,' says Keith Simanton, the site's editor.
Clicking the names of script supervisors leads to lists of every mistake reported for every movie they've ever worked on. 'They think they see things nobody else sees -- it makes them feel clever,' says Sharon Watt, 32, a script supervisor in New York. 'I can explain every one of my mistakes.'
Like this one: In 'Precious,' a 2010 Oscar winner, Gabourey Sidibe steals some fried chicken and runs from a restaurant leaving her notebook behind. In the next scene, she has a notebook again.
In the script, someone gives her a new notebook. The moment was filmed exactly in keeping with the script. 'We shot it,' says Ms. Watt. But disharmony arose in the production. Ms. Watt left. Three script supervisors succeeded her. In the final cut, the moment when Precious gets a new notebook is gone.
'The one person you don't want to change on a shoot is the script supervisor,' Ms. Watt says. 'A movie is like a jigsaw puzzle, and you're the only one who has the cover of the box.'
Script supervisors keep thick logs of props, locations and costumes. Scenes aren't shot in order. A bruise might have to look old in the morning and fresh in the afternoon. Actors ought to sync the same words with the same actions in each take. The idea is to give an editor film that can be spliced into a coherent whole.
Yet when a collar button is missing in an actor's finest performance, an editor will usually forget the button and go for the performance.
'We're not assuming that people who watch DVDs will keep going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth,' says Michael Taylor, a New York script supervisor turned editor.
Mr. Taylor hasn't met Rikki Rosen -- who was in her living room, feeding 'Jaws' into her Xbox. The credits fade to a close up of a boy at a beach party. Behind him is a guy in a long-sleeve shirt. In the next shot, the sleeves are short.
Ms. Rosen hit the pause button and said, 'See!'
'Jaws' was scarily flawless when she saw it as a teenager in Brooklyn. 'I didn't go swimming all summer,' Ms. Rosen says. Eleven years ago, she moved to St. Louis, where her husband is a salesman and she illustrates school materials. Her three growing sons watched a 'Jaws' DVD over and over, and so did she.
The more she watched, the more mistakes jumped out -- 156 to be exact -- and the worst of them are those yellow barrels the shark yanks off Quint's boat in the final petrifying sequence:
'Look -- two barrels on deck,' Ms. Rosen said, stopping the action and starting it again. 'But here -- three. Now two on the boat, three in water. Three on the boat, two in the water.'
The more mistakes she saw, the less scary 'Jaws' became. Ms. Rosen calls that realization 'cathartic.' When she isn't watching horror movies, Ms. Rosen tries to keep her disbelief suspended. But sloppy moviemakers, in her opinion, won't let her.
'Certain people have to do a better job,' she said, sipping tea. 'One of my sons said to me, 'Ma, you should be one of these people. You have this eye.''
To prove it, she teed up 'Some Like It Hot,' the all-time-great comedy with 51 IMDb goofs. Ms. Rosen had seen it once, years ago.
Instantly, she caught the broken (then unbroken) hearse window and the oddly leaky coffin. She got the rearranged beach chairs, and Marilyn Monroe's disappearing bra strap.
But when the girls in the band run across the sand for a swim, Ms. Rosen missed the mountainous backdrop, which reveals that the movie was shot in California, not Florida. 'I wasn't looking,' she said, letting out a laugh. 'I got carried away with the story.'
Well, nobody's perfect.
Barry Newman
原文地址:http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20100420/ahd092108.asp?source=UpFeature