photos from sean.

a-jay and william, originally uploaded by ✈ Sean Marc Lee 李子仁.

+more photos from production!

other updates:
wrestling with a rough cut of the film.
hoping for a picture lock by mid-february.
more updates soon!

Teaser Up!

"Passages" - Rough Teaser. from herrith sebon on Vimeo.

A teaser for what we shot in Taiwan this past summer.

CAST:
Zhi: William Chen
Yong: A-Jay Lin

CREW:
Directed/Written By: Norbert Shieh
Produced By: Jacqueline Liu, Lin Qiu, Norbert Shieh
Associate Producer: Chingya Wang
Cinematography: Sean Marc Lee
Production Coordinator: William Chen
Assistant Director: Lin Qiu
Art Director: ChingWen Hsu (Carina)
Casting Director/Assistant Camerar: ShunWen Yu (Vivian)
Sound Recordist: Jake Mumm

TECH DETAILS:
Shot with a Canon 5d Mark II with a combination of Nikon Lenses (28mm f/2, 35mm f/2, 75mm-150mm f/3.5), a Canon 50mm f/1.4, a Mamiya 80mm f/1.9 and a few more that I can't remember.

Some rough color correction was done in FCP, but otherwise sound & image have not been mixed or graded.

production cast and crew.

Yes, we are wrapped and I'm now back in the States. Sorry for the lack of updates during the shoot, will post more soon... but first cast and crew photos.

CAST
Chen Wei-Yuan as "A-ZHI"

林世杰 aka "JAY" as "A-YONG"

CREW


Vivian Yu as CASTING / 2nd A.C. / BEST P.A. EVER!

Carina Hsu as ART / PRODUCTION DESIGN

Jake Mumm as SOUND RECORDIST

Sean Marc Lee as CINEMATOGRAPHER

Lin Qiu as ASSISTANT DIRECTOR / PRODUCER

Jacqueline Liu as PRODUCER

Norbert "Lobo" Shieh as DIRECTOR

week 6: into the void.

Back from location scouting. Some pics are attached above. Flights for Sean and Lin are happening tomorrow. We pick them up and then head towards location Friday... Shooting in less than a week!

week 5: a little over one week to go.

(until we start shooting).

Four days of auditions done... onwards to callbacks and location scout 2.0 this weekend.

I'm hoping most of the places made it through ok. This picture was taken right after Morakot. The typhoon left the home opposite of the location with the roof caved in.

week 4: the tipping point.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been busy with script revisions and casting. Auditions this weekend.

At this rate, I should be heading back to the States in about a month and that scares me!

Found this bit from an interview between Gus Van Sant and Kelly Reichardt.

KR: ...I’ve become completely sold on the art of acting over the years. It’s great to be able to do nuanced things with an actor like Michelle who is really a master of her craft.I always thought it would be easier shooting with non-actors. If you love what they’re doing when they’re doing it, then it’s the greatest, but if you want to change anything—

GVS: —There’s no control.

KR: In your films, you get people at an age before they necessarily come to the idea that they want to act, and you get something special out of that.

GVS: You mean like with John Robinson in Elephant?

KR: And Gabe Nevins from Paranoid Park.

GVS: That’s just casting. I think you can do it when they’re under 20. Not when they’re 30. I was under the impression doing Elephant that you should cast the real people in the roles. So if you’re casting a plumber, you should cast a real plumber. If you’re casting a racecar driver, it should be a real racecar driver. It was a theory. I tried to do it on Last Days with rock and rollers. It was just way, way different for me. There’s something about being under a certain age, like 20; they have a lot of free time. They aren’t citizens yet... What I needed for Last Days was the 25-to-30 year-old rocker, a real rocker. Which certainly exists, but you find a real person and they’re just not interested in doing a movie at all. We tended to use our friends because they were like the characters in the story.

KR: It’s kind of impossible to have a blanket theory about casting...

BOMB Magazine Interview.

week 3: the clouds above opened up and let it out.

Some images that my Dad took of Syuejia (the city down south where we're shooting), a day after Morakot left the vicinity. Not bad compared to other places in Tainan. There was some minor damage to the locations, I'll upload a few pictures later.