Advertisement
Advertisement

It's a long haul for co-productions

Arthur Jones

Hengdian

It's day 23 of the 30-day Iron Road shoot, and at the vast Hengdian Studios in the rural hinterland of Zhejiang province Canadian producer Raymond Massey is looking nervous.

We are watching a crucial scene in which two of the central characters come to blows, and the sound of thunder is rumbling in the distance, threatening to spoil the take. Except that it isn't thunder; it's workers on the adjacent sound stage moving scenery. And this isn't the first time noisy neighbours have interrupted the proceedings.

'I lost it one day,' recalls Massey, talking quietly between takes. 'I walked onto one of the other [noisy] sets and screamed at them, 'I have Peter O'Toole on the set over here and this is completely unacceptable ...' I just totally lost it. They were standing there terrified, wondering who was this lunatic screaming at them. But I felt a lot better.'

Filming on Iron Road - the first feature film shot under the China-Canada co-production agreement in close to two decades - is still on schedule, but it's hardly been a walk in the park. This vast hangar of a sound stage, in which designers have constructed a replica of a 19th-century Rocky Mountain log cabin, is anything but sound-proof. It's not just the neighbouring sets: the whole studio is right next to a noisy thoroughfare that buzzes with traffic all day. Nor is noise pollution the only problem: the paint that production staff used on some of the scenery turned out to be toxic and gave many of the crew headaches that lasted for days.

And though O'Toole - who was nominated for an Oscar this year for his turn in Venus - wrapped a couple of weeks ago, Sam Neill, the other major star in Iron Road, is sick today, holed up in his hotel suite with a bad back and stomach ache.

It's a list of production hiccups that could easily have made Massey regret his decision to shoot Iron Road in China. But nothing could be further from the truth. 'There's things about filming in this country that amaze me, and I'm loving it,' he says.

First on the list of the advantages is the reduced daily costs, which Massey estimates at about one-tenth of Canadian rates - crucial on a film like Iron Road that features a well-known cast and exotic locations but a budget of just US$10 million.

Savings aren't the only bright spot. The happy-looking crew - led by director David Wu (previously John Woo Yu-sum's editor, and before that a Hong Kong television comedian) - seem to have a real sense of mission.

That stems partly from the story and background of the film: Iron Road was inspired by the little-known history of the Chinese labourers who helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway, the east-west line completed in 1885 which opened up the country to rapid development. The role of Chinese workers in the construction of the American railroad system has long been known; but the contribution of Irish, Chinese and native labourers who sweated, starved and died in their tens of thousands to complete the Canadian equivalent has long been excluded from official versions of the project's history.

Inspired by an opera of the same name by Chan Ka-ning and Mark Brownell, the film tells the story of a young Chinese woman called Little Tiger, who travels from southern China in the 1880s to find work on the construction of the trans-Canadian railway. She ends up falling in love with the privileged son of her railroad tycoon boss.

The story attracted a stellar cast including not just O'Toole and Neill, but Canadian actors Luke MacFarlane (Kinsey), Kenneth Mitchell (CSI: Miami) and Ian Tracey (Da Vinci's Inquest), and Hong Kong star Tony Leung Ka-fai (The Lover). Iron Road also marks the English-language debut of rising Chinese star Sun Li (Fearless), who plays Little Tiger. She was accompanied on the set by a full-time English tutor, who honed her accent to make it clear enough for international audiences to understand. 'She is one of the most focused actors I've ever seen,' Massey says.

Tracey, whose resume includes dozens of TV series back in Canada, plays a 'larcenist accountant', and feels fortunate to have had the chance to take part in a China-based shoot. 'There are some great things here,' he says. 'Lots of shooting from the hip. David Wu, the director, knows exactly what he is doing. We are shooting so quickly it feels like TV - very fast-paced.'

Anne Tait, another of the film's producers, who first optioned the rights to the story seven years ago, remembers pitching the idea to Canadian broadcaster CBC. 'The executive there said, 'I've been waiting ever since I took this job for some independent producer to come in and say they want to do

this story'.'

In the end, joint Sino-Canadian financing was found, making the film one of the first of a new wave of English-language features made partly with Chinese money. The unique arrangement, involving two Chinese partners, means that two versions of the project - a four-hour miniseries for CBC and a shorter theatrical cut - will play in different territories worldwide. The fact that this is a treaty production means the film is effectively guaranteed release on the mainland, where it will be treated as a local film, dodging the quota imposed on foreign cinema imports.

All of which makes Iron Road (which wrapped shooting early last month back in Canada) a great model for foreign productions looking to shoot - and distribute - in China.

Post