Hong Kong film producer Nansun Shi and American film producer Michael J Werner sat down with Ray Yeung, the Hong Kong film director best known for Suk Suk (2019), for a roundtable discussion on producing films in Asia

The evening dialogue on September 9, 2021, the first day of The Timeless Stories of Hong Kong Cinema presented by Jaeger-LeCoultre and Golden Scene Cinema, covered the topic “Producers’ Roundtable”. Hong Kong film producer Nansun Shi and American film producer Michael J Werner sat down with Ray Yeung, the Hong Kong film director best known for Suk Suk (2019), for an intimate conversation on their career and producing films in Asia.

Watch the highlights from "The Producers' Roundtable" below:

Shi, who has produced blockbusters for decades, explained that a producer’s main role is “trying to help directors accomplish what they want to do”. She said that there are many challenges to her job, including finding the right director and scriptwriter for the story, putting the crew together, financing the film production, making sure the team is on budget, and taking care of the cast and crew’s needs—even if that means finding toilet paper in a desert.

One of her most useful approaches to decision-making comes from an unlikely source: the flow chart used in her statistics and computer science degree. “You ask a question. If yes, go here; if no, go there, and you exhaust all the possibilities, which is very much like making a film [when you] think of all the possibilities and address them in a very scientific way, because shooting can be very chaotic,” she says.

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Photo 1 of 4 Photo: Affa Chan/Tatler Hong Kong
Photo 2 of 4 Michael J Werner (Photo: Affa Chan/Tatler Hong Kong)
Photo 3 of 4 Nansun Shi (Photo: Affa Chan/Tatler Hong Kong)
Photo 4 of 4 Ray Yeung (Photo: Affa Chan/Tatler Hong Kong)

It is also essential that producers are flexible and able to adapt to changes in the industry. Werner, who came to China in the 1980s and spent time representing Chinese films overseas, says, “Fanboys, collectors, they would go out and buy Chinese language cinema, Hong Kong cinema, certain directors [on DVD]; that’s all disappeared. “It’s a much more difficult playing field now.”

Shi further recalls that the filmmaking industry in Hong Kong was shaken up by a generation of film students who returned to Hong Kong after studying overseas, including her ex-husband Tsui Hark. Their western, innovative approach to filmmaking would forge a path for the Hong Kong New Wave that began in the 1970s. She advised young filmmakers today to “familiarise yourself with every aspect of being on set—editing, dialogue, music—so that you really are on top of everything”.

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