One of the very first action projects I ever did was a short film called ‘Street Life’.At the time, I had only been studying action for a year or two, and I wanted to do it mainly as a chance to learn from the experience of working in front of a camera.
Despite the fact that I was a total novice when I made it (and believe me, it showed in my acting) it actually got quite a lot of hits on youtube, and seemed to be fairly popular. (Enough in fact that I decided to follow-up with another short one –Street life part 1 immediately after that.)
The more I trained in action however, and the better I got at it, the more I came to realize just how much I still had to learn at the time, and a few years ago, the idea of redoing it began to creep into my thoughts. At the same time though, other projects -namely ones that helped pay the rent- always seemed to take precedence, and the time just never quite seemed right to get to it.
Last year however, I was contacted about co-producing a feature film, and I thought that this was good reason to finally move ahead with the project – not as an experiment in action or acting, (as the first one was) but as one in production. I saw it as a chance to see just how well I can actually ‘activate’ my social network, put together teams of people, and orchestrate them all towards a singular end. Furthermore, despite my 4 years of training in Katana action, I’d yet to really have the chance to do it for the camera, so I thought it represented a good chance to bridge that disparity as well.
The project itself was set to be about a 15 minute film that would follow the same basic premise of the ‘street life’ film albeit in a much more complete story with (hopefully) much much better action, music, camera-work, and emotional impact. Originally, I wanted to do it with the same opposing actor, but after months of unsuccessful attempts at trying to contact him, I’d finally given up on the idea when one of the actors from the feature film, Lance Masa contacted me to tell me he would be in town for the holidays.
As Lance is bilingual, and accomplished action player and actor, and not too much smaller than I am (a serious problem for me out here) I thought he would be
great for the role. I asked him if he’d be up for it, and despite the tight time frame, he agreed.
The two weeks before filming was a fury of buying materials, creating props, developing choreography, storyboarding, script modifications, and a myriad of other things.
As is always the case in Tokyo, the biggest issue was location. As one of the tightest cities in the world (some bars literally don’t even have seats- only standing room) filming inside in most places is usually impossible, and given the Japanese propencity for order and regularity actually getting permission to film -sometimes even when you have major backing- is about as easy as sticking a wet noodle in a key hole.
Despite that though, I finally managed to find a place the day before we were set to start filming. It was on the edge of a construction site along the banks of the Tamagawa river, and according to the weather forecast, it was supposed to be sunny and warm the next day. Beyond that, as our main filming day was on a national holiday, there would be no one around. Logistically, it seemed perfect… and it would have been…had the weather been cooperative.
Instead of being warm and sunny, it was overcast, and freezing. It was cold to the point that the director had to borrow gloves to stop his hands from shaking while operating the camera. Although it was tough on all of us there, the actress I brought in, Sumie, had it the worst. She was wearing nothing but a skimpy TINY little sleeveless dress with an open back, fishnets, and high heels. Granted we bundled her up as very best we could in between takes, but she was still freezing, and our hearts went out to her.
( When we filmed the short film Yassy it was equally freezing on that day as well, but having a $40,000 budget, at least we had the benefit of massive outdoor heaters that you could run to in between takes.) Sumie remained an incredible trooper though and got through half the day, but eventually we had to stop and send her home for fear of her health.
This left myself and Masa to complete all of the action sequences in about a half a day. At least in our case, as we were doing action, we were moving so it was easier to warm up. We got through most of it, but eventually we just ran out of sunlight, and had to go back on the next (non-rainy) day available.
We came back the following Wednesday, (the last day we had before Masa had to leave Japan) and most of the morning was spent trying to obtain permission to finish filming. Finally, through some act of God we managed to pull it off, but by the time we had, the wind had picked up. It was sunnier (and warmer) that day, but with no buildings running along the course of the river, the wind down on the banks where we were shooting was twice as strong. It was nearly impossible to make any good sound recordings, and it felt like a sub-zero wind tunnel.
It was truly the coldest I’d ever been, and the fact that I was recovering from bacterial pneumonia (I think?) didn’t help. Still we managed to get through it, and get some good footage out of it.
The director said it reminded him of the filming of Apocaplyse Now. Apparently the weather and conditions were so bad for that film that what was supposed to be a 6 week shoot turned into 16 months. (Francis Ford Coppola actually lost 100 lbs in the process and Martin Sheen had a heart attack. )
As it stands right now, the project is in editing. Masa has since returned to LA, Sumie has since warmed up, and now the fate of the project rests in the very capable hands of the director, Jorge. Because some elements we had to create and/or figure out on the fly, certain scenes need may need to be reshot, and if so, hopefully we will still have time to make it out to the location one more time before Jorge has to go. (He is also leaving Japan at the end of the month to return to Holland). As Masa is no longer in the country, the prospect of having to reshoot any scenes requiring him may present some interesting dilemmas, but thus far, as a team, we’ve found a way around every issue we’ve had to face, and I’m sure we will get around that as well.
I’m still undecided on what kind of a letter grade I would give myself for my first attempt as a producer, but I guess the final product (and it’s popularity) will be the real gauge of that. In the end, if nothing else, I can say that I got what I came for- a learning experience. And it was an incredible one at that. Although admittedly, I still have a lot to learn, I did get a feel for exactly what kind of things need to be done, the kind of time frames that can be worked with, and what kind of factors need to be taken into account from pre- all the way through post-production. I found that elements such as lighting, sound, WEATHER, logistics of transporting props, location, equipment choices (note: Panasonic tapes tend to GO BLANK after filming! - not fun) WEATHER, scheduling of staff, and WEATHER, must all be carefully considered throughout the entire process. Did I mention weather?
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