Beach Quest

Searching for sand to 'Spike!'

With our debut film 'The Blood Bond' in post, team B&E and our partners at T-Films are in the early stages of prep on our next project, 'Beach Spike!'. This is a sports/action/comedy with bikini-clad beach girls learning kung fu moves to win a volleyball tournament...

If you have a film entitled 'Beach Spike!', the first thing you need to find is a beach to spike. The concept is that we create a funky Venice Beach style environment, with bodybuilders, artists and artisans, babes and Bohemians... Seeing as no such place exists on a Hong Kong beach, we have to create one.

So, one cloudy Sunday morn, I set out with clan Logan, Elizabeth, Ryan, Calvin and Kyle, along with producer Charlie Wong and director Tony Tang. We took the ferry from Stanley Pier to a remote, private headland, occupied by a seafood restaurant.

The beach is perhaps not as long or wide as we might have hoped for, but, most importantly, it has the infrastructure we need to create a funky surfside environment. Right now, all that's there is the restaurant, and the rough-hewn buildings constructed by the few hardy locals.

Ryan says he hates school and wants to start working on the film right away. I remember feeling just the same at his age; too bad my dad wasn't a film producer.

He wants to take a photo of my, so I adopt my best 'Jason Statham getting pissed' expression:

We take a bunch of reference photos for our production designer to use as a basis for our fictional resort. We're also planning to shoot interiors and some specific locales at our studio in Nanhai, so we want to be sure that everything matches.

After we finish scouting, we get lunch at the beach's sole restaurant. They'll do some good business with us during the course of the production.

Our combined location scout and family outing over, we head back to civilisation.

We're still looking for our Venice of the East beach characters and also for the usual gang of interns and others. If you're interested in working on 'Beach Spike!' in front of or behind the camera (or both!), please contact Christine Ip at christine@bxe-productions.com.