Down With the Woo

Like all hot-blooded males throughout the world, I love a good action film. I can watch Die Hard on loop and Rambo IV was balls-out mental fun, even though the plot was drivel. During the formative years in my teens when I really started to feel like I wanted to be a filmmaker, there were many filmmakers at the time that influenced my decision. Besides the obvious ones that I keep mentioning such as Scorcese, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino and P. Ramlee, there was also one Hong Kong director who's filmmaking style influenced me greatly at the time - John "slow-mo-bullet-fest" Woo.

When I saw 'A Better Tomorrow' I thought to myself, "wow, this is action". When my other film geek friend kept raving about how violent Reservoir Dogs was, I passed him 'A Better Tomorrow 2' and said, "that isn't violence. This is violence."

'The Killer' blew me away, 'Bullet in the Head' was surprisingly touching, even though it was pretty much a Chinese 'Deer Hunter', and 'Hard Boiled' cemented the fact that no one was cooler than Chow Yun Fat.

Of course, things are different now, and the whole balletic-bullet-fest that was his trademark has since been aped to oblivion and even John Woo hasn't done anything like it since 'Face/Off', the closest Hollywood came to putting out a proper Woo film before fucking it all up with 'Paycheck'.

Nowadays, action has gone in the direction of the realistic - shaky, telephoto-ed cameras a la Bourne and even when doing a death-defying act it's presented in such a way as possible via free running or some other such acrobatic feat.

But I've always wanted to shoot some Woo style stuff, just for the fun of it. I've always wanted to do an action film because, well, it's an action film. Action films are one of the few genres that really can only be presented in the medium of film. Whilst you can imagine a stage adaptation of 'Reservoir Dogs' or 'Rumble Fish' (and I have seen such adaptations, both good), it's a bit harder to imagine 'Die Hard' on stage.
Or 'Shoot Em Up'.

When I was offered to direct the second season of a local TV series focusing on doctors' love lives in a hospital, they also asked whether I could direct the last episode of season one because I may be more suited to action.

Action? In a medical drama? Yes. Below is a behind-the-scenes video I edited together from video footage on my Canon powershot G9.

I heard that a lot of doctors were pissed at the lack of realism and technical errors in the show. Well, if they were pissed at that, wait till they see this episode.

Hehehehe...

This was the first time I ever shot a 'proper' action sequence and the first time I had a pyrotechnics crew. The first shot we did was when one of the bad guys shoots at a cop and a doctor, missing and hitting a wall, blowing chunks out of it. The pyro dudes set up the charges, then we stood behind the plywood wall, about five or six feet away, watching the monitor. After rehearsing the flow a couple of times (because every squib costs money), we rolled and I called out, "Action! One! Two! Three!"

The next thing I knew, there were a couple of explosions and we were covered in plywood. Coolness.

The one thing I never anticipated though was how long it takes to shoot an action sequence. We had three to four cameras running at the same time so that we wouldn't have to reset and get reverse angles and what have you, but even then it took a while.

Step one: block out the shots so that the camera operator knows what to do and the pyro guys know where they can put their charges and hide their detonators.

Step two: whilst their setting up, rehearse the shots with the actors. The John Woo jumping sequence took the longest and I kept showing the guy, physically, how I wanted him to jump, to the point that the whole of my left side ached from constantly jumping in mid air onto a stretcher, but with every rehearsal I could see the guy was afraid of hurting himself with the jump. Sigh...

Step three: rehearse again with the pyro guys and camera operator with last minute touch ups on lights and stuff.

Step four: bang!

Each 10 to 15 second shot would take on average anywhere between one to three hours to get, and I had 15 to 18 shots in the whole sequence. And a bunch of other scenes to shoot on that day as well! Aaargghh...

In the end I think we got it all, and next week I start editing the episode. Should be interesting.

Or mental.

Or both.