Temple,
Last weekend Dean, Maurice and I met up at Dean’s place to get green-screen shots of Maurice for some of the special effects to be added to the last scene. We also went to Da-an Park to get some pickups from the last shoot that I missed due to the onslaught of the storm.
We had yet another typhoon visit us during the week, and still another lumbered north past us on its way to Japan, sucking out all the grime from the air, so the weather was better than normal this last weekend. I’d been storyboarding with a grey, rainy environment in mind, but it turned out the opposite. So much the better, as on Saturday Dean, Joshua, Azuma, Paul and I were filming at Taiping Temple, a Buddhist/Taoist temple in my neighborhood. Over 200 years old now, the temple is very colorful and extravagant, and the color stood out nicely in the afternoon sun. I often go there during walks to take pictures.
Paul and I set up the dolly tracks just outside the outer gate, which was also the site of a scooter training grounds, so we had to remove it quickly, or just leaving it there as another “obstacle” for the learners (and don’t believe the thought hadn’t occurred to me). We did dolly shots of Josh and Dean walking onto the site. The afternoon sun was causing long shadows to sweep across the courtyard, so we went into the shadow to do dialogue with Josh, Dean and Azuma, who grudgingly allowed himself to put on a police uniform (we discovered that fake cop uniforms have the stars upside down, or maybe it was just the one we rented). Azuma did a great job acting the eager young cop who wants to join the team, far better than I expected. That boy has chops.
Once the shadows were suitable, we went back out into the courtyard for another tracking shot. Then I climbed up on the temple wall, which was topped with slippery sloped tiles and, trusting in the grip of my nikes, balanced on the wall with my camera to get a high shot of Dean walking across the courtyard, panning and tilting up to reveal the whole, four-story temple above. It looked great, very grand. I’m always looking for ways to add a sense of scale and grandeur to our shoots, and I’m happy when I find ways to do it.
On Sunday, however, we had a lot more to do, as well as a lot less pleasant environment in which to do it. The whole crew, including all the “good guy” actors, including Josh, April, Maurice, Dean and Azuma, along with Paul, Darrell and myself, met up at Dean’s place for a small party of drinking coffee and watching “Family Guy” episodes. After a while we piled into cabs and headed over to the building of our friend Tony, aka “General Song” in the film. We were using a high-ceilinged unfinished room on the roof for our “Beijing conference” scene. Many pages of script to be done, all boring exposition and briefing that needed to be made interesting on screen.
We trudged up to the roof to find that the room, already musty and hot, had somehow acquired a nasty urine odor since we’d last seen it. Most of the cast and crew elected to stay outside when they weren’t needed, but I had to stay there the whole time, since time was short due to the extended nature of our little party that morning.
We got a nice tracking shot of the whole room first. Maurice’s character comes in through a “clean room” security thing that we’ll film later, so I let the exterior just blow out and exposed for the dingy interior. Easy enough to do with digital video.
The scene called for a presentation to be done on a projector screen. Dean had bought a sheet, and we tried to tape it too the wall, but the crumbly concrete wouldn’t hold, the sheet wasn’t white enough, and it was a fitted sheet so the wrinkles ruined the effect. In the end we just tore it down and projected the stuff on the wall directly. It worked fine.
We slogged through the pages of dialogue as the afternoon wore on. The room was all concrete and full of echoes, so we didn’t bother with the mic, just getting a base track for looping later on (we’re going to have to do a hell of a lot of looping on this baby; it will be like re-living the movie all over again, I think). A coupe of vents were spinning off to the side of the room, and I managed to get them in shot a couple of times, just because they’re neat and hopefully not too distracting. The smell and the dust seemed to be affecting everyone’s ability to remember their lines, and so it took a lot of time and a couple of tapes to get through. In the end, though, I got some really nice stuff, both visually and performance-wise.
We wrapped just as the sun was beginning to come in, ruining lighting continuity. I’d been steadily opening up the aperature all afternoon to maintain it, but the sunlight would have made it impossible, so although we cut it close, we managed to get everything done in time.
Although there wasn’t much climbing involved this time, I was really tired after this shoot. I think everyone was. We were all carrying everything ourselves, for one thing (if I get any more equipment I’m going to need to buy a car to carrying it around in), and then there was the bad air on set. It’s a huge chunk of script done with, though, and we’re that much closer to finishing prinicipal photography on this thing.
