Tourist vs Expat - Fight Videos part 1
I know I said “next week” in the last post and that was two weeks ago but I got caught up filming a short film with some friends. The shoot lasted over 12 hours on Saturday and I was just too wiped on Sunday to finish this post. Sorry about that but the short film is gonna be worth it.
I’m going to post about one set of videos a day all week. So let’s jump into it. I’ve done quite a few now so here’s some background on them.
Tourist vs. Expat
The first two tourist vs expat videos were the first short films we filmed. I’d posted something on WeChat asking if anybody wanted to film and Dan was down so we started working on the choreography and story for what would become ‘The Map.’ We figured the area by the old roller coaster in the 1979 area would be cool so we scouted the area and picked a spot. We had no idea what we were doing with ‘The Map.’ It holds a special place in my heart but you can tell we didn’t know what was going on. Even between the open hand beginning and weapon based end it’s obvious. We filmed them over two days and after the first day, when we looked at the footage, we realized that we needed a couple of moves to overlap between takes so we had something to cut on. So the end looks better than the beginning. We also had no fight sounds in ‘The Map.’ It somehow didn’t even occur to us. I did add them in the director’s cut (air quotes) though. So much to learn.
‘The Café’ sort of proceeded right from ‘The Map.’ We had originally planned three fights with the first two being about the map and the café so we could jump right into the second one. It went pretty much the same as ‘The Map’ did. We met up on the weekend to work on the choreography until we had it finished, then we kept meeting up to practice it until it was good. It took a little while because we got slowed down by summer vacation when I left to travel a bit. Then we had to catch ourselves back up after I got back. One thing we wanted to try to a do was a comedic Jackie Chan stye bit where we used some background objects which is where the part where we’re fighting over the coffee cup came from. It’s not as good as we hoped (although nothing ever is) but I think it was a pretty good first attempt. Another great thing that came from ‘The Café’ was that I met SJ. I’d seen him around at events in the city before but after Dan, Max, and I finished filming SJ came to Jazzgarden for a show or practice with Dan and we got to talking.
‘The Tree’ was a little more rushed than the first two. After ‘The Café’ Dan and I decided to do more than three Tourist vs Expat videos so we needed to think of a new story for the third one. We decided to film it outside Max’s bar, 622 BeerWarehouse, because the location was convenient and once we saw the spiky tree we knew we had to work it into the story. Originally ‘The Tree’ was going to be super campy, poking fun at kung fu flicks and anime by yelling out the name of ridiculous attacks. Eventually we decided that was a little too over the top and scrapped it. We had been practicing for a month or two and planned to practice for maybe another month but when COVID hit we decided to film it ASAP before we couldn’t. We were afraid we’d get locked in and not be able to do anything so we decided to film it earlier than initially planned. Luckily we’d done enough practice that it still came out well.
Although all three were a blast to make, ‘The Map’ was really what we needed to get started, even though it’s definitely not as good. I feel like ‘The Café’ and ‘The Tree’ were huge steps up. The story was more interesting, the comedy was better, the choreography was tighter. I feel like we learned a lot in a short amount of time. We had more planned too but Dan isn’t in China right now so the series is on hold for the time being.
Next week I’ll talk about the videos I did with the Wuxing Stunt Team, which was a much less successful endeavor than Tourist vs Expat was.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.