Making Revenge of the Gweilo: A Director's Diary

By Nathan Hill

Where independent film becomes commercially viable. This behind the scenes log is packed with loads of tips, stories and advice for any budding filmmaker out there who has ever wanted to pick up a camera and shoot their own movie.

Nathan Hill shares with us his personal director’s diary, written and recorded during the pre-production and production phase of his newest feature film, “Revenge of the Gweilo”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483562834

Nathan Hill

Nathan Hill's short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, and Fiction, where he was awarded the annual Fiction Prize. A native Iowan, he now lives with his wife in Naples, Florida. He is the author of The Nix and Wellness.

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Production

PRE-PRODUCTION

The first movie I ever made was at the age of sixteen and was a short film called The Samurai. A half an hour drama about two martial arts pupils fighting over the possession of an ancient samurai statue that had been passed down as inheritance after the death of their master. The film was inspired by my love of the martial arts and the films I grew up watching, such as the Bruce Lee movies and a variety of Hong Kong action films from the late 70’s and early 80’s. I wrote the film, produced it and directed it, and played the lead villain called Master San. Included in the cast were my younger siblings Daniel and Sarah Hill. The film consisted of a group of local actors and martial artists and was shot over one week during a secondary school term break. After a solid one-week in camera edit with musical score and live sound effects the short film was completed and screened to family and friends with excellent results and confidence gained by all those involved. It became a local legend and was pirated by scores of children and families within and around the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne.

On turning seventeen and nearing the end of high school I decided to shoot a documentary for my major assessment in Media Studies. I interviewed martial arts expert Louie Iosifidis who was the Australian Middleweight Kickboxing Champion and used to open main events around town alongside Stan the Man Longinidis, the heavy weight champion. Louie’s entire house was a shrine to the martial arts and action films and his collection of trophies almost bent the shelves in his house there were so many. The documentary went for half an hour and was hosted by my good friend Mark Fong who was known for his street fighting skills in and out of school.

When I turned eighteen I had reached black belt level in Taekwondo and was competing in the state championships in full contact tournaments and had obtained a silver medal for the state. I was extremely flexible and was able to perform side splits, even balancing each foot on a chair and sitting up with arms crossed in the air. Due to this I was approached to act in my first professional short film titled The Huntsman. Shot in the CBD of Melbourne in and around Chinatown, this 10 minute short film was a VCA graduate piece for the director Brent Houghton and starred David No (one of my Taekwondo instructors) who went on to star in the Matrix sequels. I played one of the villains in a group of thugs who attack the lead and it was a great introduction to film as I got to perform stunts, including crashing through a candy glass coffee table top, doing the side splits, fighting with David and being squibbed for the first time and shot in the chest with effects by Australian legendary armourer John Fox. It screened with amazing packed crowds in cinemas around Melbourne including the State Film Theatre (formerly ACMI) and went on to become a possession in the collections of both John Woo and Peter Jackson.

The theme of martial arts movies and practise continued for me further into tertiary studies when after year twelve I was accepted into the Corporate Video and Television training course at Collingwood (NMCOT), and during major assessments acted as a martial artist in a Swatch Watch advertisement. In fact I remember there was one day I had competed in a tournament and had a black eye as a result. I came on to set one day for a commercial and they kept shooting regardless of my injury and you can still see the black eye in the clip to this day.

I dabbled in different styles of the martial arts growing up in my twenties and learnt the styles of Karate, Judo, Taekwondo, Puncha, Silat (which I studied briefly whilst on my first trip to Indonesia) and Muay Thai boxing.

I worked in video retail whenever finances were low and when I wasn’t making a movie at the time and this was a great place to obtain free movies as my thirst was unquenchable as I would watch two or three films a day for years and years on end. My uncle and Godfather David Hill was one of the first retail businessmen to open a video store during the early 1980’s and had previously been a sales representative for Thorn EMI, formerly Village Roadshow Entertainment. David gave me my first job in a movie warehouse and additional contacts in different chains that I would later work for. During this time I worked at Video Ezy Kew and met a good friend Nick Levy who was to become a feature filmmaker and he recognised my talent and cast me as the second lead in his feature debut titled Radio Samurai. We bonded as we both had multiple common interests and his father Wayne was in fact a film school lecturer at Deakin University whose own first short film was titled The Samurai! It felt like destiny.

Nick’s film Radio Samurai was a dramatic comedy in which I got to perform some martial arts and during the main climactic sequence in the film I performed my first wire stunts and in fact wore the newly titled ‘J.C’ stunt vest which had been donated by the stunt team who had recently worked with Jackie Chan on Mr Nice Guy and had been tailor made for him. Lucky for me it fit like a glove!

I enrolled at film school studies at Footscray City Films and after obtaining the two year Diploma had been cast in several short action films such as Seven at one Blow co-starring Hai Ha Le and The Impasse co-starring Carter Doyle and was reunited with John Fox again who was the armourer. I also acted and performed side splits in a short film titled Maverick’s Mechanics directed by my lifelong friend Tim Purdie. Following this I approached the State Training Board to extend the course to a four year Advanced Diploma and pioneered the course for future filmmakers. I was the first and only student in attendance during the third year, and after my friends caught on many of them re-enrolled so that I could collaborate with them again in my fourth year.

I had always tried to incorporate my martial arts knowledge and fighting expertise even in the other type of genre films I was making, for example in my first full length film The Hidden I choreographed the main fight scene between actors Daniel Rankin and Chris Robbie, and later in my feature film Model Behaviour I had a short fighting scene with fellow actor and black belt Tony Markulin. Most of my films during film school and into my early thirties were thriller and horror type movies but if ever there were a fight scene I would quickly jump in and choreograph it with delight.

In 2013 I hit it big, firstly winning the California Film Awards, then Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Melbourne International Movie Festival and finally the DV Awards in Los Angeles for best full-length film and outstanding achievement in digital video production. Momentum was gathering, Model Behaviour was released on Blu-ray and found worldwide distribution and I was popping up on the cover of magazines and online press articles in a big way. I was even listed on Wikipedia and was starting to feel like all my hard work was finally starting to pay off somewhat. I hopped on the plane to China to fulfil a lifelong dream of climbing the great wall, visiting a Chinese movie set high up in the mountains of Beijing and finally settling at the Shoalin Temple. During my time at the Temple in which I was the only white man to be seen at the venue, I was plucked out of the crowd during a martial arts display by the Shaolin monks. There were three contestants who had to try and mimic the movements of three different martial arts masters on stage. Lucky for me I picked the hardest one?! The winner would be chosen by the audience who had to clap the loudest for the contestant they thought was the most entertaining.

As I began to mimic my master his style began with a tiger form (which happens to be my animal on the Chinese calendar) and the frog, in which I had to leap in the air, and finally the scorpion. I soon realised I was a bit overweight for some of the moves and for me it had been too long making horror films back home and not enough training for some years. So instead of failing miserably in front of an audience of approx. 1000 Asians I decided very quickly to incorporate my unique style of comedy into the routine so that the moves were outrageous and over the top exaggerations of the poses and strikes the Shaolin monk was executing. The crowd loved it and I won the audience over and received my exclusive Shaolin warrior DVD as an instant prize. I made such an impression that for the rest of the day strangers were patting me on the back and a couple even asked me for an autograph. But the point of this story is not to shine light on my ego but rather to pinpoint that I was ‘inspired’. Deep in my heart I was looking for inspiration to shoot my next film, and for the first time ever had suffered from a case of writer’s block even though my previous works were doing well. Now deep down in my creative brain something was stirring, finally…and I took the idea home.

Arriving home I enrolled in Wing Chun Kung Fu and was amazed to find that William Cheung who trained with Bruce Lee himself, was still alive and teaching. I had met William years before and liked the style of Kung Fu but found it to be a little out of date with some of the more modern fighting styles and impact power of styles like Muay Thai for instance. However, it was more of a spiritual decision for me than anything else and I was preparing for my next character. I took a training package that would last me through pre production but not after. I searched through my unfinished screenplays for any signs of fighting material that might assist me in structuring the new idea and in fact had began a sequel to my earlier action film Jasper titled Jasper 2 – The Poppy Syndrome. In the sequel the character of Jasper goes further into the world of Elmore town and discovers their crime