How Wong Kar-Wai Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

INTRODUCTION

Wong Kar-Wai has long been one of my favourite directors. His filmmaking is a high energy, super visual expression that channels the spirit of characters, places and emotions in an experimental form.

With a vividly saturated palette, a balance between chaos and beauty and a heavy focus on characters deeply concerned with personal, emotional relationships, Wong’s style has become synonymous with Hong Kong cinema’s 2nd New Wave.

As I do in this series, I’ll take a look at 3 different films made by Wong Kar-Wai at 3 increasing budget levels: the low budget As Tears Go By, the medium budget In The Mood For Love, and the high budget The Grandmaster, to identify how his filmmaking progressed throughout his career.  

AS TEARS GO BY

Wong grew up in Hong Kong and after graduating got his first taste for film production work through interning at a TV network. He quickly began a career as a screenwriter, starting out in TV series and soap operas before moving up to writing film scripts. 

Not all of this work was very creatively fulfilling. 

Wong claims to have written over 50 screenplays during this time, most of which he was uncredited for. By the late 1980s he’d found a mentor in director Patrick Tam and wrote the screenplay for his film ‘Final Victory’.

It was intended to be the second installment in a trilogy of films that tracked some characters' in the underground world’s progressions from teenagers, to their 20s and their 30s. Wong imagined the first installment in the gangster film trilogy being ‘As Tears Go By’.

For some quick context, In Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s, a group of filmmakers emerged to form a movement called ‘Hong Kong New Wave’. 

Although it was more an accidental outcome than an intended movement on the part of the directors, many of them were drawn to making genre films which included fresh, experimental elements that broke away from tradition and tread the line between art, political commentary and mass entertainment.

By 1987 the film industry in Hong Kong was prospering under this movement and seeking new films from new directors to continue this run of success. Using his industry connections from his time as a screenwriter Wong became a partner in In-Gear, a newly formed independent production company with producer Alan Tang. 

He was granted considerable creative freedom to direct a film in the gangster genre - which tended to perform well financially at the time. For his directorial debut he returned to the idea of ‘As Tears Go By’.

Despite doing lots of research I wasn’t able to track down the exact budget that was green lit, but interviews establish that the budget was low by the standards of the time.

“Our intention is to make a gangster film without a hero. They are a failure. They are not successful. So they are not a big boss or a hero in the mafia world. They are just like a normal failure and how they deal with their problems. So I think already the film is not a genre film, even though it's named as a gangster film.” - Wong Kar-Wai

When it comes to writing, Wong takes an approach which breaks away from the norm. While many screenwriters start the writing process by developing a story and then slotting various characters into that story, Wong conceptualises characters as a starting point and then develops the story based on what he imagines the characters would do. 

To him stories are far less important than characters. 

As the characters come from him, the personalities of the characters cannot be separated from his own preferences. Perhaps this is why there are commonalities between many of the characters in his films.

His stories are also very influenced by locations - something we’ll return to later. In the case of As Tears Go By it’s set in an area of Kowloon in Hong Kong near to where he grew up.

When it came to directing the film he initially aimed to take inspiration from his directing mentor Patrick Tam:

“Patrick is a very organised director. He has all these storyboards and shot lists way before shooting. And he’s very precise about all of his shots. And I thought I’m going to be like Patrick or Hitchcock - everything is already decided. But then I realised the night before shooting I’m still working on the script. I tried to fix it. And I said, you know, I will wake up in the morning and will make a shot list at least. So everybody won’t be panicked. And the call time was 9:00 and I woke up at 8:00.” - Wong Kar-Wai

From this first ever day of shooting this became his de facto working style: arrive on set without much of a plan and build the film from there using the elements that presented themselves.

Wong, and his cinematographer on the project, Andrew Lau introduced many experimental visual elements into the film which Wong would continue to use throughout his later career.

As Tears Go By was photographed using interesting unconventional low angles, coloured neon lighting, a reactive handheld camera, and perhaps most notably step printing.

This technique, which became synonymous with Wong, is achieved by shooting at 12 frames per second, and then printing every frame twice. When the footage plays back at the standard 24 frames per second it therefore includes 2 printed frames of each single frame instead of 1. The result is a rough, experimental, jaring emotional effect where the audience is suspended in moments for longer and where time is distorted.

Lau photographed the film in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Wong would choose to photograph most of his later films in either this or the even squarer 1.66:1 - usually staying away from widescreen.

As Tears Go By established connections with cast and crew members that Wong would work with through the years such as actress Maggie Cheung and William Chang who worked both as an editor and as the overall art director in all of Wong’s films - doing the costumes, production design and providing an overall eye for the film’s aesthetic.

For a first film, As Tears Go By, carries remarkably similar trademarks to many of Wong’s later films, such as casting pop culture stars, experimental photography, musical motifs and a character focused, high energy story.

It was produced on a low budget by only hiring a small, core crew, containing the scope of the story, limiting the length of the production timeline, and shooting mainly on location without big set builds in lower budget locations in Hong Kong.  

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

As Tears Go By performed remarkably well at the Hong Kong box office and kick started Wong’s career. After a string of commercially and critically successful films set in contemporary time, Wong embarked on making a period drama set in the 60s - which would be a sort of spiritual and thematic successor to his earlier film Days Of Being Wild.

In his unconventional style of working, Wong started doing little segments of unauthorised shooting without a script and began writing a rough treatment for a film - a loose guideline which he used to secure funding - which acted as a skeleton for the structure of the movie. 

To sketch out the film he assembled a team of his frequent collaborators - actors, art director William Chang and the cinematographer who had shot his previous five films, Christopher Doyle.

“I feel very excited to work with a bunch of people around me and sharing the same spirit...It’s not only your idea. You have to visual the idea and you need the help or the collaboration with not only the cast but also the crew. Because I’m writing all the time it means that the film is in an organic form. It’s not fixed. I can’t write without knowing the space. I need to know where the story will happen and how the story will happen between who. I can create a story if I find an interesting space. But I cannot imagine something very abstractly on paper.” - Wong Kar-Wai

To find the right location for the film they initially scouted in Beijing but difficulties in securing permits and shooting permissions at short notice prevented this and Hong Kong was chosen as the backdrop for the story instead.

However, since many of Hong Kong’s locations had modernised since the 1960s, Wong and Doyle went in search of exterior locations which felt more correct to the period. 

In Doyle, Wong found a collaborator for whom the space a film takes place in was an integral part of the story. Together they would carefully scout and select locations which informed the themes and language of the movie.

“We decided to shoot part of In The Mood for Love in the heart of Bangkok...So what do you say? For me there is something about this wall and the sense of loneliness. There’s something about the way in which it is falling apart. There’s something about the way when I first came here the light fell on this wall so that it gave it a texture...There is a sense of loss there.” - Christopher Doyle

Unlike other Wong Kar-Wai films - which were shot with very wide angle lenses (sometimes even as wide as 6.5mm) up close, personal and chaotic - In The Mood For Love took an approach to cinematography which was more detached and formal to emphasise a feeling of loneliness that the characters were experiencing due to their failing relationships. 

Doyle shot the film with medium to longer focal lengths (often a 35 and 50mm from the looks of it), from further away, and used foreground in the majority of shots to further distance us from the characters and create a feeling of alienation, claustrophobia and separation.

“I just felt that giving one more layer of, one more level of, detachment. One more level of removal made it even more lonely. So we shot most of that sequence through here as a tracking shot. It didn’t happen because we thought it through. It happened because of this space, this light, with this particular possibility, gave us this moment.” - Christopher Doyle

Doyle photographed it on an Arriflex BL4, mainly using a dolly or sticks for slow moves or stationary frames. He likes operating himself with a fluid head such as an O’Connor 2575. He lensed the film with Zeiss glass, Super Speeds by the look of it. 

The film was captured on higher speed Kodak stocks - 500T and 800T. This created an image with plenty of grain and texture while requiring less powerful lights to be used for the numerous darker night and interior scenes. He lit the movie with lots of undiffused hard light. This creates highlights in the skin and defined lines of shadow. 

While he kept things relatively neutral colour wise, and seems to have used mainly tungsten lights for the tungsten balanced film stock, there were still moments where he gelled lights to create strong colour casts.

The costumes and overall palette from William Chang were saturated, punchy, textured and appropriate to the 60s.

Due to Wong’s method of finding the story while he shot without a script his shooting ratio - the amount of total footage he shot in relation to what made the final cut - was very high. He reportedly sometimes shot as many as 40 takes, which he used to find his vision by manipulating the camera, different performances, dialogue or thematic ideas from the actors.  

This style of changing the story as he went, by introducing new scenes and ideas on the fly meant that In The Mood For Love went over schedule and over budget. So much so that Doyle had to leave the project near the end due to another scheduling commitment. He was replaced by Taiwanese DP Mark Lee Ping-bing who maintained the same visual language to complete the film.   

Production finally wrapped after 15 months of shooting.

In The Mood For Love was therefore shot on a medium budget by maintaining a fairly small scope story, with few cast and crew members and no large set pieces. However its extremely lengthy production schedule drove up the costs. 

THE GRANDMASTER

The director’s reputation for shooting over long production periods was pushed to the extreme on The Grandmaster. The initial idea that Wong put forward was to produce a documentary on martial arts. To prepare he went to various regions of China for a year doing research. 

In 2009 he brought cinematographer Phillipe Le Sourd onto the project, without a script, to shoot material for a documentary or biopic about martial arts which was set in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. 

It developed into a martial arts drama based on the life of Ip Man which was eventually shot over a period of three years.

“Every time and every day was a discovery with him about what could be the scene. Of course he was writing every night after the shoot...But you didn't know if the scene you would shoot for 2 days, 1 week, 10 days, or 2 months.” - Phillipe Le Sourd    

His way of working opened up many possibilities which may have been impossible to see when committing words to the page or storyboarding a scene ahead of time. The locations may influence new angles, colour palettes or story ideas on the day.

However, the challenge of working like this for the cinematographer is to maintain a coherent look and continuity in lighting when the same scene may be shot years apart.

“The big challenge for me was to keep consistency...With the light I had to keep a diary every day about each shot we were shooting. One set we shot in 2009 and came back three years later...I was making notes on every shot about where I put the light, which colour I used, which light I used. Because I didn’t know if we’d finished a scene or not.” - Phillipe Le Sourd    

At times he would show a photograph as a reference and at other times he would play music on set during a take for the camera and the actors to get a sense of the correct pacing, movement and rhythm that he wanted. He’d then turn off the music and repeat the take.

Le Sourd elected to shoot on 35mm for the textural component that it provided which he felt better represented the look of the period drama. They used Arricam Studio and Lite cameras with Cooke S4 primes for their ability to reproduce slightly softened, pleasing skin tones.

For the first time the director elected to shoot this epic in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. 

They went into the project shooting on Fujifilm Eterna 250D and 500T stocks. However since the shoot lasted over three years a problem arose. Fujifilm stock was discontinued by the company. The production was tasked with sourcing what was left of the 35mm stock from around the world. In 2012, to complete the film they finished shooting the last ever can of Fujifilm Eterna Motion Picture Film.

A few select slow motion sequences during fight scenes were captured in 2K with a Phantom Flex at 1,000 frames per second. The colourist then matched this with the Fujifilm footage during the DI.

As always, in post production the director was forced to cut much of the footage they had shot and find the film in the edit by distilling the story into its most important elements.

The Grandmaster’s excessive production timeline, as well as its more difficult to photograph set pieces, fight scenes, larger crew and extensive production design meant it was Wong’s highest budget film at around $39 Million.

CONCLUSION

Wong Kar-Wai directs like a writer - changing locations, themes and character motivations as he goes. For a writer all it takes is an eraser or a simple press of a backspace key. When making a film it’s a bit more tricky.

There’s a reason that the film production pipeline works the way that it does: with a carefully planned script, schedule and budget. It’s the same reason that most of Wong’s films went over budget and took large amounts of time to shoot while he found his story during the process of making it.

For all its logistical flaws, what his unusual method does provide is a massive amount of freedom to explore creative ideas and find possibilities which may not have been imagined initially by the writer. 

His method may be unusual, but it has produced some of the most interesting and best made films of all time.