Chapter 509: A Minor Issue

Chapter 509: Chapter 509: A Minor Issue

After finalizing the platform partnership with 20th Century Fox, all the cumbersome affairs for the first season of "The Voice," such as subsequent broadcasting, copyright alignment, promotional coordination, and contract details, finally settled.

Irene did not spend too much energy entangling herself in the subsequent minor business coordination, but instead handed over the wrap-up work of the entire variety show project and platform cooperation alignment entirely to Violet Taylor at the very first moment.

As a core operator whom she personally promoted and trained throughout the entire process, Violet followed Irene in handling a full season of the variety show competition, and knew the program’s tone, copyright details, commercial layout, and cooperative bottom line like the back of her hand.

She was meticulous, reliable in her actions, and extremely strong in execution. She excelled at handling cumbersome business coordination and process implementation, and was entirely capable of standing on her own.

Irene only retained the final decision-making power and the final IP review right, while entrusting all other implementation, bilateral legal coordination, schedule coordination, promotional scheduling, and popularity maintenance to Violet for overall coordination.

Because after that, Irene had to prepare to start the final preparations before the new movie started filming.

All preliminary work had entered the final sprint stage, with only a few days left until official filming began, leaving no room for any procrastination or distraction.

Among all detailed arrangements for filming preparation, actor schedule coordination was crucial, especially the scene arrangement for Henry Cavill, who came to help.

Although he had not yet been officially confirmed as the new James Bond, as a candidate, he still needed to clear out enough time for a series of in-depth auditions and character intensive training.

After all, as a top global classic IP, 007 had a rigorous and complex preparation process. Once it officially entered the docking breakthrough period, Henry would completely have no extra gaps to intersperse other film and television shooting work.

To free up sufficient, complete, and undisturbed time for Henry to delve deeply into the 007 role coordination, while maximizing the shooting progress of the new movie and avoiding delays in the overall filming and wrapping schedules, she immediately decided to uniformly front-load all of Henry Cavill’s scenes in this film for shooting.

As long as it involved shooting content concerning Henry, everything would be prioritized, shot centrally, and wrapped up all at once, leaving no trouble for subsequent reshoots or interspersed shooting.

Even if it disrupted the original step-by-step shooting script order, reconstructed the entire shooting schedule, re-coordinated the rest schedule of the entire crew staff, and re-dispatched scenes and props, it was still necessary to prioritize the guarantee of his schedule closed-loop.

The crew’s production team worked overtime into the night, re-sorted the script, split all character scenes, marked scene locations, and counted the number of shots, spending two days polishing a completely new shooting schedule.

The new version of the schedule prioritized all scenes related to Henry Cavill, and then interspersed the lens shooting of the remaining female lead, supporting roles, and extras, balancing efficiency and plot coherence to minimize schedule risks to the greatest extent.

After the schedule was finalized, it was printed into booklets at the first instance and distributed to every actor, creator, and staff member, clearly marking daily shooting scenes, attendance personnel, lens content, makeup and styling time, and precautions, so that the entire crew could unify their rhythm and promote preparation work synchronously.

After the schedule was confirmed to be correct and all crew members were in place, the new movie officially entered the location shooting stage.

As a theatrical movie focusing on urban light luxury fashion texture, different from traditional assembly-line urban sweet romance themes like "Mean Girls" and "Legally Blonde" that Irene had previously directed, the core tone of the entire film was rooted in the high-end fashion atmosphere of the New York Metropolis, focusing on the dressing aesthetics, living texture, and temperament style of urban elites.

The film’s lens had extremely high aesthetic requirements for styling, dressing, makeup, and scenes. Clothing was not only character packaging, but also an intuitive manifestation of the character’s persona, temperament, social class, and personality, serving as the core skeleton supporting the high-end feel of the entire film.

Irene was very clear about the shooting core of this fashion movie, which was the exquisiteness and high-end feel that could be seen on everyone.

Therefore, before the location shooting started, Irene personally stepped in to review the complete set of makeup and styling, clothing matching, accessory details, and makeup hairstyles of all actors one by one, strictly prohibiting the styling team from improvising blindly.

This was also the first time Irene had spent so much thought on actors’ makeup and styling.

From clothing cuts, fabric textures, color matching, and style positioning, down to every detail of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, hair accessories, bags, and sunglasses, she would review them one by one, strictly controlling the visual aesthetics of every single shot.

The location selection for the exterior shooting on the first day of filming was set on the streets of Fifth Avenue in the center of Manhattan, New York.

This was the most bustling, fashionable, and densely populated core district in the United States, lined with skyscrapers, luxury brand shops, and transparent, high-end streetscapes.

It naturally carried the fashion atmosphere of urban elites, perfectly fitting the high-end urban tone of the film, and was the optimal exterior location personally led and finalized by Irene after scouting scenes and layer-by-layer screening.

On the early morning of the shooting day, the entire crew arrived at the site in advance to set up temporary camera positions, arrange photography equipment, debug lighting and sound collection, place props and sets, and demarcate the shooting area.

The makeup and styling team worked through the night to complete the actors’ makeup and styling, and the complete set of light luxury fashion attire was exquisite and complete.

Female lead Anne Hathaway wore a minimalist light luxury suit skirt with sharp tailoring; the cut was high-end, the fabric was draping and smooth, and the color was clean. Her natural temperament was superb and well-suited to the character persona.

Once all camera positions, lighting, and sound collection were adjusted into place, the crew officially started filming.

As a popular check-in holy land and core tourist district, Fifth Avenue in Manhattan had an extremely massive pedestrian flow during the day.

Even though the crew reported in advance, demarcated exclusive shooting areas, and arranged security personnel to set up barricades and maintain order, it still could not stop the enthusiastic crowds of onlookers and tourists.

As the machine started and the lens activated, passing pedestrians on the street stopped one after another, curiously looking towards the crew’s shooting area.

More and more tourists, passersby, and shopping citizens gathered to watch, forming layers outside the barricades with densely packed heads moving around. The sounds of whispered discussions, photo check-ins, and whispers grew increasingly numerous.

At first, it was just sporadic minor movements that had not yet affected the shooting progress.

However, as the crowd of onlookers continued to grow and the gathering range kept expanding, many passersby could not help taking out their phones to shoot, cheering quietly, and talking to each other. The noisy human voices gradually penetrated the shooting area, severely interfering with on-site sound collection.

At the same time, some passersby walked around casually, peered about, or even strayed into the edge of the lens, directly causing the shooting footage to reveal flaws and the sound collection noise to be overly heavy.

"Cut!"

The first exterior shot was invalidated after two consecutive NGs.

The cinematography director frowned and called a stop to the filming, reporting the on-site situation helplessly:

"Irene, there are too many onlookers, and environmental noise cannot be avoided. Passersby move around frequently, and shots repeatedly reveal flaws. The screen purity and sound collection quality do not meet the standards, and this shot cannot be made into a finished piece."

The on-site staff instantly fell into a passive position, with many showing difficult expressions.

For exterior shooting in urban public blocks, the biggest difficulty was that the pedestrian flow and environment were uncontrollable. Once too many onlookers gathered, filming could basically not proceed normally.

When conventional film crews encountered this situation, they could either only suspend shooting and wait for the crowd to disperse, or repeatedly gamble on luck to reshoot, which greatly wasted shooting time, consumed crew costs, and slowed down the overall progress.