The Long Take

Before anyone realized it, day nine had arrived. The crew burned the midnight oil. Chen Qi, Li Wenhua, the Yuen Brothers, and even Tsui Hark—who had come over to help—were utterly exhausted, slumping in their chairs to snatch whatever rest they could. The extras were sitting right on the ground—or rather, lying flat on the floor. Tai Chi 2 had only one grand long take left to shoot. The intersecting hutong alleys were partitioned into more than a dozen small zones, each staging a different scene. The camera would sweep across them from above, taking in the entire vista. That meant not a single mistake could be tolerated; it had to be nailed in a single take. For this single sequence, the crew had stayed up three nights running and still had not pulled it off. "Midnight snacks are here! Midnight snacks are here!" "Grab something to eat, have a drink, and get ready for another round!" The production assistants wheeled in carts. Each person received a boxed meal and soup; for those who didn't want soup, there were lemon tea and Coke to choose from. People came over in twos and threes to collect their meals, eating in silence. Chen Qi wasn't hungry and just took a bottle of Coke, sipping noisily from it as he said, "Don't lose heart. We've failed plenty of times, but we make a little progress with every take. One more push, and success is right in front of us." "I honestly had no idea you mainland filmmakers were so relentless," Tsui Hark sighed. "We don't even do takes like this in Hong Kong!" "Like Xiao Chen says, if it's a sequel, we have to bring something new to the table. We're not the type to half-ass things for the audience." Li Wenhua sounded quite proud when mentioning this. Mainland films might turn out good or bad, but their attitude was undeniably earnest. Hearing this, Tsui Hark turned to Chen Qi with a smile. "I never figured you for an 'art above all' guy?" "No, no, I'm 'attitude above all.' Besides, I don't believe in setting up a binary opposition in cinema, as if commerce and art were mortal enemies. They're the two legs of cinema—you can't walk without either. "If you can inject a bit of art into commercial films and a bit of commerce into art films, that's the pinnacle. Sadly, the vast majority of filmmakers can't do that. Failing that, making commercial films genuinely entertaining and engaging, or making art films profound and lingering, would be fine too. But sadly, most people can't manage that either. "Most people just make commercial films that are insufferably vulgar, and art films that are pretentiously unapproachable. That's utterly pointless." "I'm insufferably vulgar right now!" Tsui Hark sighed again, thinking of All the Wrong Clues (...for the Right Solution). Yuen Woo-ping laughed. "You don't know how good you have it. Cinema City's got such ferocious momentum right now—you guys have a massive future." "You guys aren't doing too badly either. If the chance comes up, let's collaborate." "Sure!" Yuen Woo-ping gladly agreed. One was at Cinema City and the other at Golden Harvest; strictly speaking, they had little opportunity to work together, yet by some stroke of fortune Chen Qi had brought them under the same roof for this brief team-up. Once everyone finished eating and rested a while, Chen Qi got to his feet. "Back to work! Back to work!" The five of them headed to their respective assigned zones to resume shooting. "Cut!" "Why didn't that gun fire?" "Cut!" "Are you crazy? How many times do I have to tell you?" After hours of grinding through repeated takes, the wee hours arrived. With everyone pushed to their absolute limit, they went for one more. "Everyone get ready!" "Three, two, one, action!" For this kind of aerial perspective, an aircraft would be needed for higher angles, while a large camera crane was required for lower ones. Crane rigs existed now, capable of reaching up to around eleven meters and supporting a camera operator, an assistant, and a lighting assistant. Great Wall owned such a rig, and Li Wenhua stepped up in person to operate the camera, returning to his old trade. Standing on the platform with his lens aimed down, a sprawling tableau of late-Qing chaos and decline slowly unfurled through the viewfinder: Across the maze of hutongs, thugs masquerading as Boxers wore sinister sneers as they tore open a woman's clothes and pinned her down, the woman weeping and struggling while screaming for her child to run; Several Qing soldiers armed with ropes and weapons moved in to arrest the thugs, who swallowed talisman water to summon spirits into their bodies, first beating to death an unlucky wretch fleeing an opium den; Nalan Yuanshu commanded with calm authority while commoners fled in panic behind him; Yang Yugan pummeled Master Jiugong (played by Ji Chunhua); The Two-Faced Bodhisattva collapsed in a pool of blood, while the Holy Mother of the Yellow Lotus vaulted onto a wall, folding fan in one hand and a red lantern in the other, glaring furiously at a squad of foreigners to avenge her junior martial sister... A sky drenched in blood, a world overrun by jackals and wolves—the Qing dynasty on the brink of collapse! The moment Li Wenhua started filming, an instinct struck him: this was the one! As the camera swept along, the conviction grew stronger and stronger, his heart hammering against his ribs, until finally, the lens came to rest on the final frame: a smoldering, burned-out opium den. "We did it!" He nearly shouted out loud. Unable to contain himself, he straightened up, grabbed his bullhorn, and bellowed, "Good!" "That's a pass!" "..." The moment the words rang out, silence fell across the set for two seconds before erupting into cheers. Three sleepless nights had not been in vain. The extras might not have held any profound devotion to the art of cinema, but when they had invested so much sweat and toil, they naturally got swept up in the emotion, instantly resonating with the moment and leaping with joy at the success. Tsui Hark smiled as well. "Whoa, shooting this scene really opened my eyes!" "Then come over to the leftists. You can film Li Lianjie every day. What's a hundred people? The level of support we get for films is beyond your wildest imagination—tanks and artillery, seas of people, thousands of charging horses, vast rivers and mountains, whatever resources you could ever need! You won't find that in Hong Kong!" Chen Qi took every chance to recruit him. Tsui Hark swallowed hard, shaking his oversized head vigorously. "Let's not talk politics, let's not talk politics!" ... Rushing against the clock, they finally finished the assignment within ten days. The group departed in a hurry. Chen Qi and Fu Chi went to see them off once again. Li Lianjie asked, "Brother Qi, when are you coming back?" "Soon for me too. Around winter, probably. I still have to head back to work on the magazine." Chen Qi suddenly remembered something and said, "Right, are you still living with the martial arts team?" "Yeah. All my affiliations are still with the team, so of course I can stay there. Do you have a nice place for me to stay?" Li Lianjie asked expectantly. "Nope, nope. Just stay put then—we're short on housing anyway," Chen Qi laughed, then turned to Li Jianqun. "Teacher Li, did the company sort out your housing?" "They said I'll be staying over at Lechunfang for now." "Oh, that works too. Bear with it for a bit." "It's no problem at all. I went and had a look—it's way better than my dorm back in school, and the courtyard is very pretty," Li Jianqun said with a smile. While shooting, she and Ji Chunhua could stay at the guesthouse, but once filming wrapped, it wouldn't do to keep freeloading there; both had to move to Lechunfang. Chen Qi planned to see the leaders at the Ministry of Culture upon returning, hoping to secure some property—even non-residential would do—so they could renovate it themselves and make do in the interim. He would need to recruit more people next year. And then quickly apply for a plot of land to build dormitories for the company, so they wouldn't have to put up with this damned housing headache anymore. "All right, time to head in!" Li Wenhua called out. Everyone got up and said their reluctant goodbyes to Chen Qi. "Be sure to come back soon!" "Brother Qi, we'll be waiting for you!" "Off you go, off you go!" Chen Qi waved his hand, feeling a bit sentimental. Eating, drinking, and having fun in Hong Kong for a few months was great fun, but in the end, it wasn't home. ... Having seen everyone off, he returned to Clear Water Bay Studio. He and Fu Chi arrived at the main administration building. Once inside the office, they shut the door, and Fu Chi asked, "It's already late October. Can Tai Chi 2 finish post-production before the Spring Festival slot?" "New Year comes early this year—New Year's Eve is in January. November, December... that leaves two and a half months..." Chen Qi shook his head and said, "Even if we could finish it, it would be an absolute rush. I don't advise pushing for the Spring Festival slot. What about the summer slot?" "The summer slot works too. In that case, let's leave the Spring Festival slot to The Shaolin Temple. Director Zhang has worked hard for two years, and he's eager to see how it turns out."