There were many suggestions, too many in light of the tight schedule we had given ourselves, and the changes we were making in the script took us in circles, so at one point we had to put the brakes on the script development so that we could come up with a schedule. We allotted the month of May for shooting, leaving June 1st to June 18th, the deadline, for editing and post-production.

Along the way, however, the series ran into some problems, mainly that of people dropping out. We offered to help the executive producers out of their predicament by stretching our project over two episodes, and they agreed. Now we were doing episodes 4 and 5.

We had all assumed that Dean, who had acted in commercials, plays, and our previous practice piece Alphadogah, would play the lead role of Agent Graham Fagan. But there was a problem in that the script called for Fagan to speak Chinese, and Dean, despite having lived in Taiwan for several years, doesn't speak Chinese. So I recorded the lines on his computer for him to practice and mimic as best he could. Our friend Maurice Harrington, also a veteran stage actor, was eager to play the role of Lady X's right-hand man, Raoul Bunt (Chris came up with these great names, by the way), and Dolly Deng, whom I met when we did A Man for All Seasons, would be perfect for the role of Song Mei-hui, femme fatale extrordinaire. Our lighting was provided by Da Shan, or "Big Mountain", the big brother of our friend Xiao Shan, or "Little Mountain". Often Norman Szabo showed up on set to help with the boom microphone, a task he was particularly suited to due to his impressive height. Also, I had held the boom mic for him on his film "The Big Cheese". Dean also played the lead role in that. Dean's played the lead role in a lot of things, come to think of it.

Our basic cast assembled, we then turned to the task of shooting. First off the bat was the opening scene, to be filmed at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, at night. Rain delayed shooting a couple of times, and I was worried that we wouldn't be allowed to film there. It turned out that nobody seemed to even notice our presence, and we filmed the scene without a hitch. Of course. Da Shan couldn't stretch out his extension cords long enough to film the Cadillac limousine we had rented for Lady X to arrive in, so we used the light from Maurice's scooter instead. I had set the Panasonic AG-DVX100 DV camera to 1/24 in 24p mode and opened up the iris to let in as much light as possible. It worked fine.

The shot of Dean rolling down the steps was actually filmed next to the theater next to the old Science museum on Nanhai Road. We had to wait until the place was clear of children watching before we could do it, and Dean was wearing Rollerblade pads under his tux. We saved this shot for last in case anything happened that we couldn't explain, continuity-wise.

Next was the antique shop. The real owner of the Chao-yang Antique shop on Jinan Road in Taipei, where we had chosen to film, was a very old man who couldn't walk very well, so we got the elderly father of a friend to play Old Guo, the shopowner in the film. The shop itself was beautiful, made even more so by Da Shan's brilliant lighting, but moving around inside amongth the real antiques was a bit harrowing, especially with all of our equipment. I think some of our stuff is still there, but I couldn't say exactly where. The place is chockablock.

We had one shot with Dean coming in the shop and calling out to the shopowner, Mr. Wu. As we were filming this, unbeknownst to me as I had the camera pointed the other way, Mr. Wu and his family were eating dinner behind me. Every time Dean walked in and said "Hey, old-timer!" in Taiwanese, the owner would stop his meal and look up in confusion.

When it came time for Mr. Lee to perform, he made sure we knew that he had acting experience, even if it was on a stage half a century ago. Not exactly one for keeping his opinion to himself, Mr. Lee corrected our pronunciation, grammar, and just about everything else during his bit save for actual camerawork. Mr. Lee was a mainlander, while Mr. Wu as Taiwanese, and I got the feeling they were avoiding each other, even though they couldn't have been too far apart in terms of age. The owner's middle-aged daughter ran the store, while his Indonesian caregiver took care of him during the day.

We used small Terracotta soldier replicas as props in this film. The things were surprisingly hard to find, particularly as there had been a large exhibit a couple of years back. Thankfully the museum of history was still selling the easily-crumbled replicas for NT$250 each. We got five. We also sawed an old Chinese coin (a fake one, of course. At least I hope it was fake) in half with a hacksaw for Old Guo to put together.

I would have liked to show more of the shop, and I did shoot quite a bit of extra footage consisting of close-ups of various pieces, but it turned out that not only were they not necessary, but we also simply didn't have time for them.

Next up was the night market. I had originally planned to shoot this scene at the Shilin Night Market, but the vegetable market near Dean's house was dirtier, louder, and generally more chaotic, so we decided to go there. We pushed through the main street and eventually found a stretch of relatively lightly travelled road in which to film the shot with Fagan and Song talking and walking. I walked backwards with the camera in front of the actors, Maurice holding the boom mic and simultaneously watching out for traffic. We had a few close calls with cars and scooters, but it turned out ok eventually. I was hard pressed to walk backwards fast enough to keep the actors from running into me and still keep the camera trained on the actors, and I overshot a couple of times. Fortunately for us not too many people stared into the camera. At one point Maurice and I waited at a Dou-hua stand for almost half an hour while Dean and Dolly went to find a pin to hold up her hair. It turned out that they had found themselves a barber who tied up her hair in an intricate knot we would have no hope of reproducing in the rest of the film.

We filmed this thing during the SARS epidemic in Taiwan, so many of the shoppers in the scene are wearing face masks. Some of the vendors apparently even thought that we were doing a piece on SARS, though how a Canadian guy in a tuxedo and a Taiwanese woman in a Qipao could figure into a news story on SARS is beyond me. "There's no SARS in Taiwan!" the vendors shouted as we passed. We just nodded and smiled.

Dean and I went back another night without Dolly to get pickup shots of various night market scenes, as well as Dean walking against the stream of people and motorcycles running through the market. At one point a guy saw us filming and ran out to be in the picture. He was crushed when we stopped right before we got to him. Oddly enough, it was very difficult to get anyone to agree to let us shoot them chopping things. Vendor after vendor refused to let us film them chopping the heads of fish, foul, etc. Finally we got some woman chopping duck, which was the shot we used.

Our next scene was the fight scene in the alley. I had originally been poking around dark old alleyways up near Ti-hua street, which is one of the oldest parts of Taipei. Unable to find anything not crowded with tourists, I went north to the very end of the street, where rows of ancient, abandoned buildings line the streets. Not only did it look perfect, but a solitary streetlamp lit the scene for us. The area was frequented by gangsters and the remnants of old families. A sign posted on the alley warned litterers that the gods were watching and retribution would come to those who litter. Another sign said "No pissing or shitting in this alley". You could tell they had a real problem with this; at one point an old man evacuated his bowels in the empty lot right next door.