We were dragged out of our beds yesterday to go to a media company somewhere close by to see a presentations on some fresh film tech they were trying to sell us. First was actually a pretty cool system which would replace need for tracking markers on the green screen by placing reflective markers on studio roof and a receiver on camera to give the tracking data. It’s sort of weird we were taken there, when in fact it should’ve been the VFX supervisor who would say if the system is usable in their workflow or not. The other stuff was either pretty obscure or seemed too much like student projects instead of actual, solid filming solutions.
In the afternoon, I had a chance to meet young, talented and surprisingly tall Chinese actor, who I spent the afternoon hours doing some audition tapes and chatting this and that. The crew were waiting to get a chance to talk with Max, but he was busy afterwards with the actor for few hours, so I decided to bail out. I was skeptical the Korean BBQ dinner we had been promised for days would actually happen tonight…
…and just as I got into a comfy position in my room, Crystal called to let me know she’s picking me up in 10 minutes. So off we were, for quite a long drive, to a great Korean BBQ restaurant. First thing, they poured us glasses full of Chinese white wine, the 55% stuff, which set the tone for the evening. We ate and drank and talked about movies, comedy (what’s the thing people in China laugh about – the answer was: stupid people), North Korea (Chinese don’t really know a lot about North Korea, since they don’t interact with them) and drinking habits. I was taught that when you say ganbei, you should finish the drink you have. It would’ve been a murder with the 55% white wine, so the production manager taught a trick: when you touch with your fingers each other’s fingers when ganbei‘ing, it’s OK if you don’t finish the drink at once.
After the dinner, we walked to a bar! That has never happened here before, so I was excited… excited to find out that bars in China are just the same as everywhere else. There was a pool table and expensive drinks and crappy music and I played a bad round of billiards, downed few more wet ones and then we were taken back home.
I must admit I had few drinks more than I expected, or then it was the white wine, but waking up the next morning was rather an unpleasant experience.
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