20-11-09 - The Blood Bond Saga (part 44)

Girlfight concluded, and good-bye to Emma

Having recovered from the hallway to hell, we focussed today on shooting out our beloved Emma Pei. Emma has modelling jobs lined up in Beijing and Africa, and so we need to get our remaining scenes with her in the can today.

Trouper that she is, I think Emma would be happy to shoot a whole week more for us. Though today is technically a night shoot, she's fine with coming in during daylight for an exterior shot (filmed in the village behind the studio) where Guang Di and her henchman Brando (Ridwan) take out a police lieutenant (Lawrence Lai) and one of our prospective blood donors.

Ridwan's been just great. Even though he has a proper job in Guangzhou, he seems to have put his life on hold to work on the film. Besides playing a role, he's been acting as gun wrangler, dialogue writer, phone charger, morale raiser... Next time we shoot here, I'm definitely hiring him to work with us in a more formal capacity.

Note to all you movie crazed wannabes: Often the job you take is equal to the job you make, or "Ask not what the movie can do for you, ask what you can do for the movie..."

Once this scene is wrapped, we move inside to continue the duel between the heroic Deva (Phoenix Chou) and evil Guang Di (Emma Pei).

Though Phoenix has limited experience of movie martial arts (and Emma none!), the girls are doing most of their own fighting. Usually, to reduce the time and risk, you have an actor fight a stunt double, then the other actor fight the other stunt double, and then cut the two together.

One of our earlier Deva choices and her handlers were very concerned about their girl doing her own action. Would she be injured? Was she insured for a million dollars?

With these two beauties, we have to hold them back from doing too much, and that's the attitude you want and need for an action star.

The duel takes place inside a hospital conference room, and stunt coordinator Ken Yip ensures that we use every inch of it, and various office items as improved weapons.

In this scene, we take Phoenix's character, Deva, right to the edge, where she's almost at the point where she could break her vows and kill someone. Lucky for us we found an actress as focussed as she is physical!

My only concern is that the end of the girl fight cut will together with the end of the one between Tremayne and Lompoc, which (in film terms) is happening simultaneously in the ICU outside.

As our time with Emma is running out, Ken focusses on getting her shots. We'll have to come back to get some pick ups of Phoenix.

We have to move into the corridor (of doom!) to show Emma blasting away alongside her comrade in arms, the rebel leader Lompoc (Simon Yam). (Simon Yam has already left, so Michael reads his lines off camera for Emma.)

And, with that, it was sayonara to Pei Bei. Thanks, angel! You've been better than the best.

Next : Saturday night at Jesse's Bar