24 - 10 - 09: The Blood Bond (part 19)

Praying for peace and luck

I mentioned in an earlier blog the old show business saying that you should never work with animals or children. Today, we worked with a number of young, amateur performances, and it was a wonderful experience.

In the scene concerned, the spiritual lead at the centre of our story, the Bagwun, makes an unscheduled stop at a rural village shrine in order to pay his respects. When a young boy recognises him, a crowd soon gathers, and the Bagwun gives an impromptu teaching to the assembled villagers.

We descended on a Nanhai village, just a mile or so from the studio, in the first light of dawn. The locals welcomed us warmly, and seemed delighted at the prospect of having our strange troupe invade their homes for a day.

There's something really extraordinary about being able to walk into someone's else's community like this, and to encounter people and places that no tourist or even the most dedicated traveller would ever see. The experience off-camera easily matches anything captured on.

The 'hero' children we used just happened to live at the back of the studio, and they were just wonderful, taking direction like they'd been doing it for years.

We had booked the crane for a further day so that DP Ross Clarkson could maximise the scale of the crowd scene as we went to for a David Lean shot with the Bagwun at the centre of a growing crowd.

We had several hundred extras at our disposal, augmented by the locals and the Chinese members of the crew, and Michael was satisfied with the epic look of the shot.

From there, Ross did a handheld shot from the centre of the crowd, from the Bagwun's POV, and panned across these wonderful faces that watched in silence. It was fascinating to watch from the monitor and see the assembled visages of locals who had lived lives so far removed from our own.

After Bagwun's arrival, the father of one of the village boys greets him, then asks him how he can preach peace in a country torn by war. Originally, we had planned to cast the role locally, bu we soon realised that the complexity of the dialogue would make this impossible.

Michael suggested that we use Ocean Hou, Phoenix and I's Tai Chi teacher and my good friend. Ocean had never acted before, and I was concerned about him having the first real speaking role in the film.

True to form, Ocean rose to the occasion and, having worked with Michael prior to the shoot, performed wonderfully well.

Leading lady Phoenix Chou gamely showed up to be basically a face in the crowd as Deva listens to her master's voice.

Our villainess, Emma Pei, now returned from her trip to Mauritius, came out to visit the set, accompanied by Ping, Lily and our main man Seth Scher, all from our partner company, Fundamental Films.

As we'd about wrapped at the village, I accompanied the Fundamental team back to the studio, where Emma was scheduled to begin stunt training with our action directors Louis Fan and Ken Yip.

Once the main unit returned, we moved into the hotel suite set to shoot the reverse angle of the scene filmed the night before, with Deva (Phoenix Chou) talking to her teacher. Ye was kind enough to come into the studio to read his dialogue from off camera for Phoenix to react to.

As ever, Michael got great work out of Phoenix, and the scene was wrapped quicker than anticipated.

Today will remain a special one for me, as I feel that, from the villagers, I got a true glimse into the heart of the real Chinese people, and I know the rest of the western cast and crew felt the same.

Next : Girlfight practice, plus funny shots part two!