Hollywood dreams lured Chinese student Peng Wang who died in US university film shoot
- The Chapman school graduate was killed in a sand dune accident last week while volunteering on a movie for the University of Southern California
- The death has been a blow for Wang’s university friends who are raising money to help the Sichuan native’s family to come to the US to collect his body
Under the noonday sun on April 15, cinematographer Peng Wang, 29, was in the back of an all-terrain vehicle traversing California’s Imperial county sand dunes with three other filmmakers, working on a movie for the University of Southern California’s prestigious School of Cinematic Arts.
The otherworldly backdrop was the setting for a surreal short feature called Finale, about a man who journeys to his death in the desert. Wang was a third-year graduate student at Chapman University’s film school and had volunteered to help the USC crew complete its directing course project.
The team was running late and working on little sleep, having not reached their hotel until after midnight after a long drive from Los Angeles, said one crew member who declined to be named.
The crew members had just finished their first scene when the group went out to check the next location in the dunes. Minutes later, word came over the radio that the Can-Am Maverick had rolled over and Wang had been injured, the crew member said.
Despite emergency services’ efforts to resuscitate Wang, he died at the scene among the dunes, about a kilometre from the nearest road. He was wearing a helmet but not a safety harness, said Arturo Platero Jnr, a California Highway Patrol (CHP) spokesperson. An investigation, which is not criminal in nature, is under way, he said.
