'SOLIID' SHOOTS IN STYLE

On location in HK and China for a French SF actioner

Regular readers will have followed the various challenges we've faced shooting my directorial debut Snowblade. After all the pressure, its been a pleasure to take a break from the director's chair for a couple of weeks to produce scenes for an SF actioner, F. Manga's 'SOLIID', on location in Hong Kong and at our studios in Nanhai.

I was introduced to the project by my old friend Seydina Balde (that's him on the right in the photo above). Seydina is the five times world karate champion. Through him, I met the maverick French director F Manga, whosed brain child 'SOLIID' is.

We shot scenes on various locations in Hong Kong at various locations in Hung Hom, Sheung Wan and Aberdeen Harbour before relocating to my home studio at Ace in Nanhai. The films lead players are Seydina himself...

And the mercurial blonde fury Sabine Crossen, who, like most of the population of New Zealand, appeared in 'Lord of the Rings' (she played an elf).

We also brought in some terrifically talented local actors, including the ubiquitous Andrew Ng and my good friend, the gentle giant Soren Robinson. Our in-house SFX make-up expert Rayni He applied some terrific zombie make-up to the already imposing Soren.

We also had my friends, Guangzhou-based AJ Richardi (an action movie maniac making his action movie debut!) and Danny Salay (who lives in near-by Fatshan). They played leather-clad alien enforcers. (And both shaved their heads for their roles! Thanks, guys...)

Production designer Carey Rothman outdid himself on the SF props for the film, with my favourite being the space gun put together by Ace's props and construction king Master Li.

It was an arduous shoot, getting so much material in the can over a short time, but the Anglo/Aussie-Sino-Franco cooperation went surprisingly smoothly.

This is F's project, not mine, so I don't want to give too much away regarding plot and characters. I'll post some more behind the scenes info and images on our shoot here and on the B&E site, and you can look forward to seeing this instant cult SF classic in due course.

My thanks also to French lady producer Fabienne Malek for all her help with the production, and for documenting the behind the scenes mayhem.