4 Days of Deng (Lights), Kaishi (Action) and Chicken Feet

One of these days, I'm sure Andy will put up a post, but until then, let me try to fill some space and story. You know, when I started this, I thought it was a great idea to keep people posted on the goings ons of our life out here in the Big We, but we're often so busy that I've kinda let it fall to the wayside. The fact is, just like back home, we're usually busy, and it's always interesting, but it keeps me away from having a lot of extra time.
For instance, right now, Andy is sitting to my right at his computer (big surprise there) working on cuting, editing and effects on the movie we just finished filming. We're looking at a solid week of Andy attached to the computer like his conjoined idiot savant brother to meet the dead line. When we were filming, it was the same.

Zhang He and his wife and lead, Gou Yan

Zhang He, a director for CCTV hired us to put together a 30 minute short to present at an event to show the advantage of merging Chinese story telling with Western effects and technology. When we first met him, he and his partner flipped out over a short demo Andy put together of Zhongshan 1 Street, where he had figured out an easy way to give it a cartoon effect like that in A Scanner Darkly in a fraction of the time it took them to make Scanner Darkly.
After vague and difficult translations back and forth for a few weeks, they finally decided they wanted that effect on a short film that would mainly draw on music video montages showing off the singing styles of his wife, Gou Yan (whose voice really is quite nice, but the music and recording are few steps behind).

Taken at the last meeting...notice the confusion in the room.
What...huh? Oh, you mean you want? Okay, so today then.
We start today.... Right...okay.

The story they gave us was a one page hodge podge of ideas; more like stream of consciousness writing than a script, so Doc flushed it out and added some more story. Because of the last minute shooting, we were often rewriting scenes and dialogue on the spot. I might add, that by the time they had decided to go ahead with the project, we only had 4 days until Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is a big holiday here. Andy calls it Longer Stronger Christmas, and when it hits, everything pretty much shuts down. Half of the restaurants are closed, and you better have already stocked your fridge, because you're not going to the market any day soon. So we had to film all primary footage in three days, because our lead, Gou Yan, had to be done before the New Year. So for the shoot, we'd get up every morning at 8 to get hair and make up and work until midnight or later, shooting and reshooting our little short.

Doc...for some reason getting make up on his hand.

The movie is half and half Chinese and English. Yan, who plays my model, has a few English speaking lines, but primarily speaks Chinese, and I speak just about half and half while painting her in my studio and arguing with my brother while trying to save face with my model. The basic run down; I play an artist who falls in love with her model and ends up with a burden of unrequieted love and a bottle of booze. Yan runs off with my brother Mike, played by Doc (Jonathan Ems), but that too doesn't last long due to an eager mugger in a dark alley.

Shooting the film was fun and maddening. I know some Chinese, enough to get around and shoot the shit to a degree, and if left on my own, I could tell people what to do in the scene, but I'm still learning. It just so happens that the majority of my Chinese lines in the movie, I was unfamiliar with, so it was a bit jumpy. It worked out though, and now I know how to call someone a "Hun Dan"; pretty much a jerk. Being surrounded by people who only spoke Chinese really pushed me, and I learned a lot in those few days.


Andy directed the film. I don't envy him, he had to rewrite the scenes on the spot to work with the set and time, tell us where to be, what to do and when, and also get it across to a woman who had never acted before how to act, who just so happened to not know any English to boot. Sue, Doc's girlfriend, was there to translate, but I know a lot of it fell through. She knows a good deal of English, but she has no experience in film or art, so we had a lot of explaining and playing charades to get the meaning of words across.
My favorite part of filming was watching Andy at work. I used to think that Directing might not be so difficult, but seeing Andy pull it off, I think differently now. In limited space, he pulled off dozens of impressive shots, brought out the best in his actors, even with a language barrier, and was Johnny on the spot for the whole shoot. He could control the room and never come off as a jerk. People listened to him and followed his lead. As a director, the most memorable part was him breaking into a large scaffold of a thing in the park scene, scalling it and getting an angle from the top while holding himself up perfectly horizontal. Zhanghe, who is very hands on, and likes to jump into the production was really impressed and kept going on about how no one in Zhongshan had ever done anything like it before.

As close as we get the camera to zoom in.

You can't see the whole structure from here, but it's another floor taller.

We had a limited time to shoot in, and just as limited to finish post in, but as many people who know us know; this is not new to us. Unfortunately, Andy is working with a computer that's a bit under par for the job. He needs a couple more gigs of ram and a new hardrive, but we'll see what we can do. Zhanghe has become more and more excited as the production has gone on, and now wants to present the project to CCTV and get it on TV. He's also working to find us more work making commercials and wants to get governement funding to make a cartoon for TV. You never know which will sink and which will swim, but it seems he is going to be continuing to fight to get us more work and work together on film and tv.
He also wants to make me a singer out here and give me a whole "package", but that's another story. Right now, I'm working on putting together original songs with the band I work with out here, who I call the Tagalog Conspiracy, but whose real name is the Lynx.

Now for your viewing pleasure, some shots from the shoot.

Guo Yan and Jonathan Ems

A. I. Morris, monkeying for a good angle.

Jonathan and Guo Yan on the boat in the park.

From Left to right: Guo Yan, Sue, Jonathan Ems, Sienna Morris,
A. I. Morris, Lao Shi, Zhang He.

Guo Yan and Jonathan Ems in Walking Street.
On film, you cannot see me chasing them with the light.

Guo Yan and Jonathan after running from invisable water.

Unfinished painting of Guo Yan for movie.

Painting of Guo Yan that turned out more Tahitian if you ask me. Kinda Gauguin like.

More of Guo Yan

My favorite of the bunch.

Jonathan was going to surprise her with a kiss in this scene, but he's too much of a gentlemen...that and her husband was standing about ten feet away....

Jonathan eating a chicken foot. For those who want to know; Chicken feet taste like chicken, but it's mostly skin, and you have to bite it off at the joints, suck off the meat and spit out the bone. Jon was lucky as this particular restaurant has really tasty chicken feet. I once had boiled chicken feet....ugh....never boil feet.

Setting up stage direction for the mugger scene.

Guo Yan in the Store Cafe for the date scene.

Break time in between takes of the date scene.

I love this place. Store Cafe is a three story coffee shop with a pool table at the top. The store is riddled with eveything you can think of. Just about everything is cool, and the owner is awesome. He is the one who gave me my Chinese name: Zhu Yan. Zhu means really red, Yan means colorful and together, it means most beautiful woman in the world. A little flatering for my taste, but it comes from a poem, and people seem to like it. The only problem is it's a bitch to say, because I often say it Zhu Yuan, which is a market down the street, and alone, Zhu can be taken to mean "Pig". I can write it easily though.

This is the cool Owner I spoke of. He is also a well known director out here, though I cannot remember his name. I'm a horrible person.

Another great angle of Store Cafe.

Painting in the park.

This is Lao Shi, the man who wrote the original story.
They seemed to really think my painting flipping him off was classic.

A. I. Morris hard at work.

Painting in the studio. Playing a painter...it was a stretch.

I love the new set. I think I want to keep our apartment like that.

The best picture of thet set.

That's all for now. I'll post when it's finished so everyone can see it. For now, it's time to work more on post. All these pictures of me painting makes me want to paint....I think I'll finish my Jon Stewart painting now.