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kodak.com
presents
Peter Pau, Acadamy Award Winning Cinematographer
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"
March 24, 2001
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Leslee:
What parts of the movie were filmed in China? And was it difficult to get permission from the government?
Peter Pau:
The Chinese government has a very strong censorship of all films. But I don't think "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as a period film will have the difficulties of censorship in China. We are not talking about modern day politics or freeing Tibet. Those are sensitive issues now to the Chinese government. We were able to shoot in five provinces in China. We started in the west, then to Anhui province, where we shot the yellow mountain and Yu's house. Then we went to the bamboo forest, which is in the province of Jiangsu, near Shanghai. Then we went to Hebei, which is where Beijing is, and then a five-hour drive from Beijing to Chengde, for the temple scene and the exterior of the houses. We went back to Beijing for the studio work.
Thaddeus:
What was it like not knowing what your were going to shoot until the day of the scene?
Peter Pau:
That is difficult for me, because most of the action scenes happened at night, so I had to prepare myself with more lighting angles in order to shoot the pure moonlight scenes. I did not have any available practical lights, like lanterns or fire or houses nearby for the location. We were shooting in the wilderness and the rooftops in the middle of the night, with no other light source than moonlight. So I had to maintain the film's look as dramatically as possible. Also, we were trying to avoid the usual strong backlight for the film, more like a 45-degree angle for the moonlight. It is very difficult job for me to do when we are not planning. But as a cinematographer in Honk Kong, we kind of get used to the directors with no planning at all, so we have to remain very flexible for ourselves, and we have to prepare more industrial cranes in order to get the 18Ks up for the moonlight.
Hannah:
I was blown away at the speed of the fights. Did anyone get hurt during filming? Did you ever have to speed up or slow down any of the action sequences? If so, how did you do that?
Peter Pau:
That's a good question! Michelle Yeoh did get hurt in the beginning filming of the action sequences. It was a pure accident, not wire work that hurt her. It was because the weather was cold and she hadn't warmed up enough before she did the scene, so she hurt her knees. That required surgery. But nobody else was hurt during filming because Yuen Wo Ping, the action choreographer, was doing wire work for most of his career. So the stand person, who is pulling the wires, is watching the actors all the time so if anything happens, they will release the wire and let the actor come down safely. Ang Lee doesn't like the fast speed, so we had to make sure the action didn't look funny. I proposed mainly shooting at 24 frames per second, and we were able to go up to 22 frames per second. On the post-production, we did do 10 shots of speed variation during a take, but the number is very minimal compared to the action sequence. We were doing basically the actual high speed.
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