Action!

A few weeks ago, a man approached me in the food hall, and asked if I would be interested in going on television. I said yes, and he took some photos of me and left me his card. This is not unusual here, foreigners here are rare enough that they are actively sought out if a TV show needs someone foreign-looking. After a while, I met the director, who liked me, so it was to go ahead. The whole thing was delayed a while due to the weather, but this weekend was quite clear and sunny, so I was to be filmed on Sunday.

I was picked up from my campus at 4:30 (in the morning!) and first taken to the Beijing Film Tourism City. It is where they film a lot of dramas, and has old-style streets and buildings mocked up for shows set in imperial times. We were only there to wait for our crew though - we would film elsewhere. My agent bought me breakfast, and we waited for a while with a growing crowd of actors looking for work.

The show I'm on is called "The First Time" and follows local businesses getting started, at least, from what I can tell. We were to film the opening credits - not sure if this will be used once or for the whole series. Eventually the vans arrived, and they took us to the first location of the day. Not for me yet - the host was ready so we had to do his bit first. We took over a newspaper stand, and the host (Wang Kai, 王凯, who is a well-known face on Chinese TV apparently) was filmed picking up papers and talking to the owner over and over from different angles for an hour and a half. The crew got their breakfast, including some (more) for me, so I was happy.

When the director was happy, everyone packed up and the host disappeared before I could get a photo with him. We then drove to a park between some office buildings for my bit. They gave me a book, in Swedish (presumably, they just went to a shop looking for books with foreign on them), and had me sit on a bench to play my character of "Friendly Foreigner (外国友人)". After getting the lighting right and perfecting my posture, I was to wave and say hi to a Chinese businessman walking past. Quite simple. We did this about five times, until about 11:30, when the cameraman and assistant directors started shouting "break! (休息)".

All the equipment was packed up and we sat around for an hour and a half eating lunch (Chinese takeaway) and talking about politics. There was too much light, apparently, so it was decided to try again later. After filming some cars driving around, we all moved to Houhai, to film a postman delivering a package to an old woman in a hutong (the old, maze-like Beijing alleys). While they did this, I was able to wander around for a bit, walk around the lake and the hutongs. It was quite warm, and they bought ice cream a few times to keep us fussy actors happy. I had expected to be done with this in the morning, but I was being looked after pretty well, so I wasn't complaining.

We finally went back to film my bit at about 4. It took a while, and a few takes for them to get across what they wanted (partly from me not understanding what they were saying, mostly because they just didn't say what was important) but eventually we got a few good ones. Then they moved the camera and tried again. We kept filming until the man with the light meter decided to stop.

They gave me a lift back to my campus, finishing this whole escapade a good 14 hours after it started. It was fun though. I asked for a copy when it's ready for TV, and I might get one. Looks like I'll be on CCTV2 for a few seconds in a month.