Wong Kar-Wai

One of the most visually entrancing filmmakers working today, Wong Kar-Wai is a man who creates films filled with dazzling images and characters with a sense of romanticism. Known for his broad ideas and unconventional techniques in the realm of filmmaking, he is an individual that refuses to play by the rules. He brings both Asian sensibility and French New Wave cinematic techniques to each of his stories. After finally making his return in 2013, with his Ip Man bio-pic The Grandmaster, it is clear that there is no other filmmaker like Wong Kar-Wai working today.

Born in Shanghai, China on July 17, 1958, Wong Kar-Wai moved to Hong Kong when he was five years-old. His mother introduced him to many different aspects of cinema ranging from the films of Hong Kong to 1960s French New Wave. After spending two years studying graphic design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic College in 1980, he enrolled in the Hong Kong Television Broadcast Limited course for production training and he learned the art of screenwriting. Kar-Wai took part in in an apprenticeship during this period which brought him to the attention of renowned Hong Kong producer Alan Tang.

Tang hired Kar-Wai to write scripts for various movies ranging from romantic-comedies to action films. Though they scripts were successful, and helped him to get a lot of work, it was clear that Kar-Wai wanted something more. Fortunately, it was Tang who ultimately gave Kar-Wai the chance to helm his first feature film.

Silent film evaluation

Coming up with the idea for our silent film was easier than we thought it would be once we realised that we had to make the narrative simple and easy to follow due to it being difficult to tell a story without using dialogue. We decided to do a modern take on a classic silent film narrative with a romance threatened by a third party. To add a comedic element to our story we replaced the classic femme fetal with Laurence as we knew it would be more difficult to make a silent film that would be taken seriously. It was easier to film than the normal films we’ve made as the necessity to over act and make the movements and expressions exaggerated made it easier for us to get our emotions across as it didn’t matter if the acting seemed forced or unnatural. I think we could’ve put more thought into the mise-en-scene as we just went out knowing what we wanted to film and not where. Us focusing too much on our narrative meant that we didn’t take into account the typical aesthetic of German expressionism such as low key lighting and the use of shadows. The editing process was fairly easy as we knew that we wanted our film to be black and white so that it looked more similar to the silent films we have looked at. We also wanted to add some dialogue using white text on a black screen as that is what they did in the classic silent films. We also added some old music that sounded like some of the music used in sunrise as our story was similar and we thought the use of non-diegetic added to the film. One problem we did have was that our camera ran out of battery before we finished filming which meant that we had to film some of the last shots on a phone which meant that the quality changed however it wasn’t too noticeable and didn’t have much of an impact on the final product.