Production
Upon graduation from the Beijing Film Academy in 1989, Wang was initially assigned to the state-run Fujian Film Studio. Rather than beginning his tenure there, Wang decided to stay in Beijing in an effort to create an independent film. This process lasted nearly a year and ultimately collapsed when Wang failed to obtain proper financing. As a result, he began working at Fujian, writing screenplays that would never be made. His tenure at the Fujian Film Studio would be equally brief, however, and by 1992, Wang had returned to Beijing determined to make it on his own.
In the beginning, Wang, along with actor Liu Xiaodong and classmate Zhang Yuan attempted an extremely small-scale production that would eventually collapse. The effort, though a failure, galvanized Wang to begin again with The Days. Due to an extremely low budget, the production would prove to be arduous. The actors and crew, mostly Wang's friends, donated both time and money to the film. Equipment was rented and usually obsolete. Even obtaining film was a trial, as Wang and cinemtographer Liu Jie were forced to travel to the manufacturer in Baoding to personally request film stock.
Logistically, the film was also a difficult process as all the actors and crew had normal jobs. As a result, filming could only take place two days a week, on the weekends. Equipment would be rented on Friday and returned on Monday, the process repeating each week.
Read more about this topic: The Days (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)