河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

It was a busy week. I have been filming a television series 「隨時候命」 about the Hong Kong Government Flying Service (GFS) 政府飛行服務隊 and we actually get to sit in real helicopters like the one shown here. Even though I'm a senior pilot in the series, I don't actually get to fly. We filmed the flying scenes inside the GFS hangar using green backdrops for what we in the industry call chroma-key where they'll later replace the green background with actual sky. GFS's helicopters are incredibly nice pieces of engineering. The technology and materials used to build those copters is awe-inspiring.

I've just returned from another rehearsal for "Perfume" 香水(which by the way is now being advertised with huge posters in many of the Hong Kong MTR stations). Five days away from the premier performance and we continue to improve our performances and the play as a whole.

That's the interesting thing about plays. Because you're working on the same thing every day, the dialog gets out of the way very early on and you become familiar with the 'life' within the dialog. The life can be intepreted in many ways and it's not uncommon for the intepretation to change with every rehearsal, or even while the play is actually running.

I'm currently sitting in studio 15 at TVB City. We've just had dinner and we're ready to continue filming tonight's scenes of 阿旺新傅.

Tonight's filming typifies some of the most difficult moments for an actor. The set is a fashion show involving six or seven primary actors, several supporting actors and more than thirty extras. To complicate things further, the fashion show involves twenty different sets of clothes. We've been filming for three hours and we've only filmed six sets of clothes with fourteen sets to go. It's going to be a long night.

This is a photo of Thomas Lui and myself. Thomas is the chief pastry chef at the Marriot Hotel. He's a great guy and incredibly talented when it comes to pastry and chocolate. Every cake and chocolate creation you see in the show was made by Thomas, with great attention to detail. He loves his work and he never settles for less than perfect.

Most actors dream of being in the movies. For years, television was considered inferior to movies and actors were classed accordingly. Of course, with soap operas such as Days of our Lives and Daily Hospital, this classification was understandable. These however were not the kind of television productions that we're seeing today, at least from the good ol' USA.

The television episodics now coming out of Hollywood and Canada are superb. The acting, scripts, directing, camera, special affects; it's all amazing and easily challenges anything you'll in the cinema. In fact, I believe that some of the current television series would beat today's movies in a face-off.

I've been filming 刑事情報科 at TVB over the last four weeks or so. Before we began filming the series, there was much enthusiasm and a meeting with the head script writer to ensure that we all knew what direction the series was taking and how we were to act our parts. The idea for the series was relatively new and we were pretty excited about it.

Unfortunately, one of TVB's annoyances popped up for this series; late scripts. For almost every shooting so far, we've received our scripts via fax on the day before shooting. For me personally, this is just enough time to get familiar with the dialog and be able to play the part reasonably ok. It is not enough time to fully understand what might be going on within the scene and within the dialog, and then being able to make decisions about alternate methods of acting the scene.

I'm beginning to understand how people with MP3 players that cannot play Apple's FairPlay-protected music files feel, but from a different angle.

In my previous article Hope for a better Asian film/television industry, I stated that we need online stores from which to buy and download Asian-made television and movie content, all without virtual geographic boundaries and all without prejudice or bias to the producers of that content. Only then would the real market emerge, enabling countless talented people in Hong Kong and Asia to do their stuff and create excellent content for the world to enjoy. Two other conditions though were protection of the content to prevent casual piracy and iPod compatibility. The answer to these two conditions was obviously Apple's FairPlay.

TVB's 潮爆大狀 is on. From memory, it was filmed late last year. My part is very limited but if you'd like to leave a comment about the series, you can do so here ;-)

I've just finished filming 刑事情報科 at TVB. My role was a police inspector in a special branch of the police force which specialises in getting information about suspects. There were several groups in our department. My group was responsible for tracking people and getting photographs of their activities. Overall, the story was pretty good.

It's been a while since I've posted any articles here, but you can be sure that I'm still here, and you can be absolutely sure that I've read every one of your comments, even if I haven't responded. And I appreciate the comments. Even if it's not obvious, your comments are important to me and provide an important source of support.

In the time I've 'been away', I've filmed a new series at TVB. The name of the series is 寫意人生 and I'll talk more about that in a later article. It was a pretty busy part, including two sessions of five nights of continuous studio filming involving nine to eleven hours of filming each night.

I'm back in Hong Kong, back home with my wife and our kids. It's great to be back although the trip back was a little sudden and rushed.

Before going to L.A., I was filming 寫意人生 at TVB. Because filming took longer than previously hoped, I had to delay my trip to L.A. until September 16. Furthermore, TVB had another series planned for which I would need to be back in Hong Kong by October 16 or earlier if possible. This placed strict limits on the time I could spend in L.A., but the trip was important to me; improving my singing technique is always on my mind; so I worked around the limitations as well as I could and left for L.A.

My time in L.A. with my teacher was fabulous. My teacher and I clicked immediately, as if we'd known each other for a lifetime and my learning was significant.

It will be a busy week with "They're Playing Our Song" rehearsals every day, TVB dubbing tonight, TVB filming on Tuesday night and Wednesday night, and a special appearance at the Mongrel Adogtion function at the City University on Friday.

But the weekend was a break and a welcome one.

Sunday morning, noting the wonderful weather and hearing the sounds of the local white wagtails (just one pair) which I have not yet been able to photograph, I grabbed my camera and went outside. As I left our gate, I noticed the flicker of a bird on a nearby flowering bush. As I walked over, the bird saw me and left but the sunlight was perfect and the bird or other birds were sure to return if I sat still. So for the next hour and a half, I knelt as steadily as I could in front of the flowering bush. Nothing came!

During "They're Playing Our Song" rehearsals, Henry spent a lot of time talking to Sompor, explaining the character to her, extracting the acting talent from inside her and helping her to be the best she could be. It was worth the effort. Sompor was great on stage.

I'm eager to share a similar experience. If you're a director who sees potential in my acting abilities and would be willing to spend time working with me to help me be the best I can be for the production, please send me an email; <gregory at hokwokwing dot hk>. I'm interested as an actor and possibly co-investor in two areas: quality movies, and Broadway musical stage productions; English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

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I might be going overseas for three months. I'm waiting for confirmation. I hope it happens but it's out of my control. The departure date though, if confirmed, is January 1 which doesn't give me much time to prepare. It's not the packing that I'm concerned with. It's making sure that everything at home is in working order, that our pet supplies are sufficient and that we have enough medicine for them, that our computers and my MacBook Pro are running well, that I have all the computer programs that I might need while away, that my camera and lenses are in great condition, that I have everything that I might need, that… You get the idea.

Twenty years ago, I was working as an English tutor in the 育成 tutorial centre in Causeway Bay when one day, one of the teachers working with me told me of a poster at her school searching for a Cantonese-speaking Caucasian to act for a TVB series. I called the number she gave me and a Pakistani agent answered the phone. I was very unsure of my chances because at the time, I had absolutely no acting training or experience of any kind save for a few extra roles in high school plays. The agent however was reassuring, and encouraged me to go to the interview. He was reassuring because he could find no one else. I was his only chance.

A little over a year ago, I ran into 發哥 and was subsequently given a photograph of myself taken by this amazing man. It was in fact a chance encounter. 發哥 had not planned it, nor had I, but the encounter happened, and just as he was about to leave, it suddenly occurred to 發哥 to ask me if I'd teach English. If it was anyone else, I'd have immediately replied no, but this was 發哥 and I instead answered yes.

Perhaps it was pre-destined that 發哥 would not be able to contact me multiple times in his earnest attempt to deliver the photo to me. Perhaps this repeated failure to locate me kept me on his mind, so much so that when he needed an English coach to help him with his dubbing work on the new The Children of Huang Shi movie, he thought of me and tried to contact me yet once again. For the first time in 4 months, I was able to answer the phone and we spoke.

In January, having just left TVB, I found myself working with Mr Chow Yun Fat 發哥 as his personal dialect coach, flying business class to a small city called Durango located in Mexico where we lived and worked for just over two months working on the Fox production Dragonball. It was quite an experience but not much fun (acceptable, taken that this was a working trip rather than a pleasure trip).

Most people, at least here in Hong Kong, have the impression that working for a Hollywood film production company is fun, or at least much more pleasurable than working for a Hong Kong film production company. The perception is that the work is not hectic or rushed, the working hours are shorter (and that hotel standard food will be provided). The perception is wrong.

With Dragonball being my first Hollywood production, I was not entirely prepared for the calibre of the crew. They were quite extraordinary.

The director

James Wong was the director. I watched him carefully. I wanted to see how Hollywood directors interacted with their cast. At TVB, our directors had (past tense because I'm no longer there ;-) very little time to discuss our scenes in detail with us. There was virtually no sharing or exchange of ideas. We simply arrived on set whereupon the director would glance at the set, decide where and how we would move during the scene (what we refer to as "blocking") and then run us through the scene. At TVB, most scenes were 'rehearsed' in mere minutes.

After nine months of research, selection, editing and education in Final Cut, my first showreel is finally ready. I hope you enjoy it.

Note. It's entirely in Cantonese except for two scenes in English, and one scene in Mandarin.

My Showreel

Hello people. It has been a long long time, but I'm still around. Just needed to let you know that. Things are interesting, and getting more interesting. Last week, I was in New York helping a group of people to develop and fine tune a Broadway play. It was extremely challenging and tiring but very satisfying. It's not possible to say whether I'll be invited to perform in the public release of this play, but there is a chance nonetheless....