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From Entry to Exit

Pete Spurrier's production diary recounts the events which led to the making of Exit/Strategy

Hong Kong is a land of movie making. Canto film stars are local heroes and camera crews are such a fixture on the streets that commuters scarcely bat an eyelid. But who makes English-language films in Hong Kong? Only the brave few…

I knew Jyrki from acting with him in several Chinese movies and TV dramas, and we also shared sets on Ultraviolet, a major US production which took place in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

He sent me a DVD out of the blue one day in early 2004; he had made a film about a new arrival's experience of Kowloon. Great - except I didn't have a DVD player. I was still making my way through hundreds of prehistoric Hong Kong VCDs I had piled up at home. So we agreed to meet up at Chemical Suzy, a bar in Tsim Sha Tsui which had a projector, and viewed the film there. It was a great looking production, and I was impressed with Jyrki's camera skills. It was amazing to see what could be accomplished with digital video and a few friends.

From this meeting grew the idea for Exit/Strategy. We would create an English-language action drama filmed entirely in Hong Kong. I would create the story, while he would handle the camerawork. But making a movie requires the help of a lot of people, all with different skills. We had a lot of preparation to do.

Doing the Groundwork 

First off, we met up with Gary from the band Whole Nine Yards. A professional musician, Gary had also had a part on Ultraviolet. He agreed to compose an original score for the movie and source sound effects, and also lend us the use of his studio for dialogue recording. We were in business!

I spent a few weeks in May and June working on the script. The story was to take place in a dystopian city of the near future, cut off from the outside world due to a virus which had ravaged the globe three years earlier. SARS was an inspiration. The visual theme was dark and foreboding - perfectly suited to the gritty back streets and rooftops of urban Kowloon.

At the same time, Jyrki and I held a series of casting sessions in Pacific Coffee on Hollywood Road. Over lattes and brownies, we interviewed friends, actors, friends of actors, and friends of actors' friends. Some of the candidates slotted into the roles like they were made for them. Gradually we built up an idea of who would be acting in Exit/Strategy. Clinton, Cyndi and Gene would take the lead roles - and I would play the villain.

The crew was coming into shape too. We needed people who could handle lighting, sound, make-up and fight co-ordination. And we found them. Erika met up with the cast to do colour tests. Rick and Danilo conducted twilight martial arts training sessions for the actors in Kowloon Park.

So far we had assembled an incredibly multinational bunch of people for this project. Our team members came from five continents. The only things we all had in common were that we lived in Hong Kong and were excited about movies.

Before we could start, we also needed to identify the locations for filming. Jyrki and I spent days wandering the city, looking for the perfect places to shoot each scene. We came across some amazing locales - particularly the former Kai Tak airport, mothballed since the opening of Chek Lap Kok but accessible by climbing over a closed flyover; an abandoned seminary on Lamma Island, hidden by bamboo jungle, with tall ceilings and lots of natural light; and the battered rooftop of Chungking Mansions - an apocalyptic scene if ever there was one.

By mid-June we were ready to roll: script, actors, crew, equipment and locations were all in place. We held a kick-off party at my flat -- subsequently renamed the producer's penthouse -- to celebrate the start of production.

Let the Mayhem Begin 

The first day of filming was the 25th of June. It was hot - very hot. Hot in a heatstroke-inducing kind of way. And not only hot, but humid to the point where it was hard to breathe. In short, it was a typical summer's day in Hong Kong; not the sort of time you want to be carrying heavy equipment or wearing winter-wardrobe leather jackets.

We were shooting in a section of the old Kai Tak airport compound, keeping an eye out for security guards. Rivulets of perspiration were kept in check by stage make-up. Each time a take was done, we had to rush the actors into the shade, loosen their costumes and cool them down. Body fluids were evaporating at dangerous speed for cast and crew alike and we ran out of water early on. It was a tough day, but everyone persevered and we got the scenes successfully in the can.

The next shoot saw us filming chase scenes in TST. Guns and streams of fake blood, along with Doug's smoke bombs, meant we were guaranteed a crowd of eager onlookers. The multicultural nature of our crew meant that most spectators assumed we were making a Hollywood production, and we didn't disappoint them by denying it. At least this location in the middle of the city meant we could run to air-conditioned 7-Eleven shops inbetween takes, and let off steam beside the cold drinks cabinets!

For the next two weeks, we shot all over Hong Kong. Some locations were indoors and those were easier. But one rooftop scene took three shoots to get right - temperature had hit 37 degrees, humidity had reached the end of the scale at 98%, and despite being sixteen storeys above street level there was no hint of a breeze. I had the unfortunate honour of wearing a full-length leather coat for a scene which involved running up a ladder - twenty times. We couldn't drink water fast enough to replace the fluid lost in sweat, and at times it was a struggle to stay conscious, let alone remember lines of dialogue.

The story required the city to look mostly empty. Obviously Kowloon is pretty well full to capacity, so filming was a daily challenge of camera angles and timing. Location hunting was an important consideration. One afternoon, we simply closed off a Mongkok side street for the duration of our shoot, apologetically asking pedestrians to go another way. Hongkongers are used to this happening, and obliged without missing a beat.

One location had to be the direct opposite of all the others. It had to be bright, modern and stylish. The management of Le Meridien Cyberport helped us out here by allowing the use of their Prompt restaurant. We shot three scenes there in unaccustomed cool comfort, finishing just as the chefs needed to take the kitchens back for the evening.

Fighting Talk 

Three scenes which were the most fun to film were the ones involving fights and shoot-outs. We used a dockyard in Sai Ying Pun, some old granite steps in a demolition area behind Wan Chai, and a stormwater channel running down the hillside above Quarry Bay. The actors put in an incredible amount of effort - and despite all the gunshot wounds, nobody got hurt too badly. Well, unless you count the mosquito bites.

Once shooting was complete, we needed to record the actors' dialogue. Any efforts to record voices on the scene were rendered useless by the levels of background noise (anyone who knows Hong Kong will understand). And our attempts to use radio microphones were interrupted by the communications of Kowloon taxi drivers! So we all made visits to Gary's recording studio for this stage of production.

In the meantime, Tim took a series of still photos for our promotional poster, and Laura translated the script into Chinese for the subtitles.

When Jyrki was done with the film editing, Gary moved on to finalizing the soundtrack. The music had to bind the movie together with the same pace as the storyline - and it did that superbly. The final stage was to sync the video and audio together, burn the DVDs, and get them ready to send out to film festivals.

The end result is that there is a movie entitled Exit/Strategy. My thanks go out to everybody who had a hand in it.

What did we learn? First, that anything is possible if you have an idea and some can-do people. Second, that you don't need big bucks to make it happen. And third - if you are going to shoot a movie outdoors in Hong Kong - take our advice. Wait for September.