By far the most challenging scene in Clay Soldiers was the car chase. We had budgeted two days for this, but everyone really, really wanted to do it in one. It was a long day. I had found a reasonably untravelled road out on the flood plain between Sanchong and Xinzhuang in Taipei County. Unfortunately, later in the afternoon it becomes packed with people playing basketball, bicycling, and in general having fun. Not exactly the atmosphere we were looking for in a deadly car chase, but there was little we could do about it, save in post production.

I had rented a little blue flatbed truck from which to film, and Dean had rented Tang's car. The nicest we could afford was a new Camry, but it seemed ok. We first strapped my old motorcycle to the back of the truck and filmed Dean at speed, and then we did the interior shots for the two front-seat goons in Tang's car, as they had to leave at noon. I particularly liked the guy who played the driver. He really looks the part. In real life his name is Vincent Hsiao, and he and his company, Milifilms, were quite helpful in putting the episodes onto DVDs to send to Japan. The other goon, in the passenger seat, is an actual policeman in real life, and his name was Yang Qing-feng. I knew him from my Tai-chi Sword class, though he practiced Tui-shou, not sword. Though he looks rather too nerdy to be a goon, I felt it would be wise to have a cop on the set in case anyone came by asking about our driving around and around waving guns at each other. As it turned out, nobody cared. You just couldn't do this kind of thing in New York.

I then got some shots from the truck of Dean, Dean and the car, the car and Azuma shooting at Dean, etc. Then we did the squib shot. The squib shot was an ingenius little device Dean put together with household items to imitate a small explosive using compressed air. He found it on the Internet and figured we could do it. He even made the blood. It worked like a charm; in fact, the "blood" got everywhere, even on the camera. Fortunately I had a UV filter on to protect the lens. Azuma was a really good sport about all of this. It was a hard day for everyone, and nobody complained at all. What a crew! I needed a good crew, as I had over 60 setups to contend with, and it was a bit much to fit in my head at one time.

After the squib shot, as well as the one of Azuma throwing himself on the ground in front of the camera, we filmed some panic stops. Tony Lee, who plays Tang, was at the wheel, and he got a little too into the panic stops, at one point sliding right past the camera by a good 100 feet. The shot came out great, once Dean digitally erased the crew members standing by the side of the road.

Dean was looking frightfully red by the point, so although we filmed the ultimatum scene between Fagan and Song, we couldn't use it. We ended going out to the same spot a couple of weeks later, after Dean had finished peeling. The wind noise made things difficult for Darrell Gallant, who did the sound and music. We ended up having to re-record the dialogue in Darrell's little studio. The dubing process turned out to be much easier than I had thought it would be.

Maurice, who wasn't in thie scene, was helping on the set by driving the truck, and Norman Szabo helped with the boom mic once he actually found the place. He had been calling us all morning, claiming that he was there but couldn't see us. It turned out that he was on a completely different flood plain. I don't blame him; it took me a whole day of scouting to find the place, and that was on my motorcycle.

We filmed until sunset, but between Dean's state and the increasing numbers of funlovers getting into shots, we didn't get many usable shots later on. Another reason to go back, but not the next day. I gave everyone the next day, Sunday, off, as I needed to recuperate and I was sure they did as well.

The next scene in the film in the temple scene, which we filmed at the green-tile faced Yong-ching Temple, literally the "Always Quiet Temple". Hardly anyone ever went there to worship; and the atmosphere was completely unlike the average Taiwanese temple, which is usually a riot of worshippers and worship-related business. The Yong-ching Temple's interior hasn't been updated in many decades, and it is located just half a block away from Caves Bookstore on Zhongshan North Road. We filmed the scene in a few hours with no problems at all. The caretaker and staff kept bringing out tea for us to drink, and even offered us food. Very nice folks there. I left laden with several pieces of Buddhist literature; in fact there's still some in my bag.

The last scene in the film was filmed at Malibu Bar in the "Combat Zone". This area got its name back when US servicemen frequented the area during the Vietnam War, and to this day it's full of expatriate-oriented bars and brothels. One bar, called The Mariner, would have been perfect for the shoot, but they wanted NT$20,000, or about half a month's salary, to shoot there. Plus I think some of the waitresses might have been insane. Uh, thanks but no thanks. We went instead to the Malibu. During the shoot customers were in and out, including one fellow who kept offering to fall on his head for us. "I can do it really well," he told us. I think he must have had quite a bit of experience. For the mirror shot we brought two mirrors, one small and one large, We broke the small one, on purpose, for the shot. Maurice used my digital camera's flash to represent the gunshots. Norman Szabo held the boom mic as usual for the sound shots.

Now all I had to do was edit the shots together. I used Adobe Premiere 6.5, and was learning as I went most of the time. Premiere can be ornery at times, and sometimes I had to render bits of footage just to make them editable again. Needless to say, I would have preferred to be working on a nice Mac system, but I lack the funds for such equipment, so for now it's still my home computer with Premiere.

Dean did all of the special effects, including gun muzzle flashes, explosions, sunflares, the PDA screen, etc. with a program called Alam DV 2. He was so into doing the special effects that he would call me asking if there was anything else he could do. His efforts came out very nicely, especially matched with Darrell's soundtrack.

Darrell spent a lot of time on the soundtrack for both episodes, and I spent about 14 hours with him at his apartment out in Jingmei getting everything just right, all the while being served little culinary delights by his wife Judy. I am very happy with the end result. I'm also jealous because Darrell has so many wonderful music-making toys. Darrell uses his electric guitar to input music, while I used the keyboard the couple of times I had any input to make, as I can't play guitar. I would have been happy to bring my trumpet over to play some riffs, but Darrell didn't think it was necessary.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the film. It was a real learning experience, not just on the technical and logistical side of things, but in other areas as well. The final cut is just under 17 minutes, including front and end credits. I spent a lot of time on this film, and I'm happy with it, but now it's time to movie on.

POSTSCRIPT: Our efforts in the Lady X series gained us not only the Best Episode award, but the Best Writing and Best Depiction of Location Awards as well. Clay Soldiers won the jury prize for Best Film at the Urban Nomad Film III festival in Taipei in March of 2004. Congratulations all around!