Christian Lee, the producer, helps out on set

"We wanted something that would speak to a new generation of Chinese," he felt. Something that would be cool to them and relevant to their lives, and yet, "engage the audience in a search for a truth, and perhaps to question humanity."

Slam's storyline, as Christian admits, is nothing new. It's a solid, universal story of fighting the odds and living the dream. But what is new is that it's the first basketball movie that has China and Chinese society as context.

However, they had first to get financing. Christian had to write a business plan for the first time in his life and, together with a powerpoint presentation, knock on doors. Soon, they found a Sino-American joint venture company that had previously produced and marketed Chinese films. The company expressed interest in funding the making of Slam and handling the worldwide marketing.

"They seemed like straight shooters," Christian said, describing how the guys they met were forthright and to the point. Contract negotiations began.

With spirits high, the team moved into casting and pre-production. Then, as Christian was to learn, "Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Just a week before the final contract was to be signed, the film investment company's phones were disconnected. Jonathan and Christian soon discovered that the company had folded entirely, the Chinese partner having embezzled all its money!

They scrambled to find alternative means of support, eventually raising it privately from family and friends. The project would in the end cost nearly S$1 million.

Despite this near death experience, they pushed ahead.

Casting would be a major preoccupation. Getting known actors was out of the question. Besides the cost, in the Chinese film industry, "name" actors would not audition. They might send in a video, but otherwise expect things to be wrapped up over a chat or a meal.

So the two of them scoured over 100 schools and looked at thousands of students to find their actors. "It was difficult because we were trying to find actors who could play basketball, or basketball players who could act," Christian recalled. Eventually, they found a number of TV actors, whom they had to train every weekend for 6 months in basketball. The boys had to learn to execute over 200 basketball plays that were needed for the film.

The antagonists were played by real basketball players. These four guys knew their moves on court, but they had to be intensively coached through acting workshops and through interpreters. Jonathan and Christian didn't know how well they succeeded until the shoot.

"That's when those bullies really came alive," Christian recalled with wonderment. "Even Jonathan and I felt intimidated."

Not unusual with many film projects, some of the original casting didn't work out. Originally, one of the protagonists was supposed to be an overweight oafish guy, and Jonathan and Christian thought they had found one from the auditions. However, they later realised that this candidate didn't seem prepared to exert himself during preparation and training and so a switch had to be made.

Another change related to the role of the mother of the main character. The actress played it rather over-the-top, and in the end the entire character was cut out.

The actual filming period took 38 days in the summer with temperatures reaching 40 degrees, a decision that Christian now looks back on with some amazement. This was one of the triggers for more heart-stopping drama coming to the set.

As Christian described it in an email to me,

What happened with the gangsters (for lack of a better word) took place towards the end of our production when we shot the final basketball competition. We had rented a large warehouse, and set up the cage basketball set for that final scene. We needed a large group of extras, and most of them [turned out to be] hoodlums.

Conditions were rather poor with there being no air conditioning in this warehouse, and us shooting in August. We had plenty of water, but we didn't have air con, just big electric fans to circulate the air. At one point, these hoodlums (gangsters) rallied together all the extras, and decided to ask for more money. Instead of coming to us in a civil manner, they just started yelling at everyone to vacate the warehouse. Then they picked up sticks, and violently made everyone leave. When everyone was out, they chained up the gate to the warehouse. That's when they made their demand for more money, for all the extras. When we refused and tried to resume shooting by going to break their chain and lock, that's when the knives came out. We backed down, and started to negotiate how much more we had to pay them. We lost a full day of shooting from this episode.

And still it wasn't the last of it.

Another time where production came to a complete standstill, was once again at this bloody warehouse. All these difficulties seemed to come right at the end, just when we thought we were out of the woods. This time, it was the crew who went on strike. They refused to work without an increase in their pay. It seemed they took note of what happened with the extras, and saw weakness in their foreign bosses. At this stage, time was absolutely about money. We could not afford to lose shoot days, and we needed to get out of that warehouse, so we had to take the lesser of two evils. We settled, and got the darn film wrapped. It put a very awful taste in everyone's mouth, especially Jonathan's. Some of the people he thought he could trust sold him out completely.

 
I haven't seen the film yet, so it's not for me to say how good it is, but I would most certainly want to see the result, just to appreciate the audacity of the venture and the tenacity that saw it through. I think it helps to know the trials and tribulations involved in making a film like this, so that we can better appreciate these two guys' dream come true.

© Yawning Bread