How Time Flies… and the Third Cut

How time flies! A year ago this time, we were planning our trailer shoot and preparing for our trip to China. The film has been built out in six month increments. Rae started pre-production work around July of last year. We started ...Read more

Rough Cut Completed!

We’ve reached an important milestone with the film today with the completion of the rough cut of The Qiu Jin Project: Autumn Gem !

It took me 22 hours to go from picture lock to burning the first DVD; the long delay was a result of my supreme struggle to get Final Cut to export the movie without crashing. I searched long and hard for a solution on the Creative Cow Final Cut forum, Read more

Three-Inch Golden Lotuses

At the age of four or five, a young Chinese girl growing up during the 10th and early 20th centuries would begin the process of foot binding. Her feet would be broken and bound into tight ba...Read more

Wushu ala Final Cut

This afternoon, we edited a scene from our filming of the Chinese Women’s Army at Tilden Park in Berkeley. Li Jing, who plays Qiu Jin in the documentary, is running through a hand form.

Nine takes were used to construct this scene. One tak...Read more

Editing Continues Its Inexorable Progress

We’ve been hard at work editing the film over the past two months, hence our long delay between posts. It seems once filming is done, the only “exciting” photos we have to share is us sitting in front of our computers staring at Final Cut and Aperture! So far, we have assembled nearly 50 minutes of footage for the final film. There’s still much to do, but we have a good sense for the narrative is shaping up to be.

There remains a few more pickup scenes to shoot along with recording the music and narration for...Read more

Betrayal

We’re on the home stretch for completing our principal filming and photography. This morning, we photographed our betrayal scene with Xu Xilin and a Qing Dynasty Governor. Preston and Stan did a great job posing for the camera. I’m famous for the line, “One more time,” and they both were very patient when I snapped shot after shot.

Click the link below to see the rest of the phot...Read more

Scholar Interview Photos

We had a great few weeks of traveling to Southern California and the East Coast to interview three scholars for the documentary. We met with Professor Hu Ying at UC Irvine, Professor Lingzhen Wang at Brown University, and Professor Amy Dooling at Connecticut College. We’re headed back up to the Bay Area tomorrow, and we have just a few more scenes t...Read more

On the East Coast

Rae, JP, and I took the redeye flight to Newark, NJ and Providence, Rhode Island yesterday evening. We’re on the East Coast to interview two more scholars, Lingzhen Wang of Brown University and Amy Dooling of Connecticut College. The weather in Providence is great; it actually feels like the Bay Area with sunny skies!

Tai Chi Master

This weekend in Southern California, we filmed some scenes of Qiu Jin learning and practicing martial arts with her relative. Rae’s cousin was great for the role of Qiu Jin’s Tai Chi Master relative!

In addition, we filmed our first interview with a U.S. based scholar, P...Read more

Off to SoCal and the East Coast

Rae and I are heading down to Southern California for our next round of filming and interviews for The Qiu Jin Project. We had a a very productive past three weeks filming in Berkeley, Saratoga, San Jose, and our very own Santa Clara. Next up are Irvine, San Diego, Connecticut, and Rhode Island!

Today, Tim and his friends helped us return the furniture back to the Teak House in San Jose. Our garage is lookin...Read more