The penultimate scene, which was also the most important fight sequence, was set and filmed in a sauna.
It was a night scene. At a little past eight in the evening, inside the brightly lit sauna, the crew members were rapidly making preparations.
Once everything was ready, Luk Kin-ching picked up a megaphone and shouted, "Action!"
With the snap of the clapperboard, outside the front doors, under the waving signal of a crew member, Zhang Tiancheng—his hair shaved into a clean, natural-looking buzz cut—pushed open the door and entered the sauna, holding a prop handgun.
To make the fight choreography more thrilling, Zhang Tiancheng had raised the difficulty significantly compared to the original film.
The sauna was packed with extras playing Liao Qizhi’s henchmen, numbering over thirty people.
As soon as Zhang Tiancheng stepped inside, he raised his prop gun and fired frantically.
Bang, bang, bang...
"Cut! Extras, watch your positioning!" Luk Kin-ching roared through the megaphone.
The props team quickly swapped in a new prop, and they rolled again.
Bang, bang, bang...
"Cut! Didn't you understand me? Watch your positioning!" Luk Kin-ching bellowed angrily into the megaphone.
Taking advantage of the props team resetting, Zhang Tiancheng walked behind the director's chair to review the footage just shot.
In both takes, the extras stood in their proper places while stationary, following instructions to the letter, but the moment they started moving, chaos ensued. Either they blocked his camera angle, or they collided with one another.
When filming resumed, before the prop guns had even fired, Luk Kin-ching called cut again. Several extras had risen from the sofas too early, standing up before Zhang Tiancheng had even walked through the door.
Scenes with a large crowd of extras were notoriously difficult to shoot, mainly due to two major headaches.
First, controlling the extras' movements was extremely tricky. Although the plot called for a chaotic brawl, the movement couldn't be entirely random.
During the chaos, they could neither block the protagonist's camera angle nor obstruct the shots of the other extras; otherwise, the crowd would look sparse and lack impact. At the same time, they had to maintain proper spacing to avoid crashing into each other.
Second was camera switching, which placed high demands on the cinematographer. The camera had to push in or pull back rapidly within a matter of seconds while instantly locking onto the required close-up shots.
This single fight sequence took a full seven days to complete.
Shooting a fight scene for seven days completely exceeded the production schedule, but those seven days also benefited Zhang Tiancheng immensely. He had taken his first steps in learning how to direct large-scale crowd scenes.
It further solidified his belief that practical experience was what truly elevated a director's level; the knowledge gained in those seven days far surpassed a month of studying in the system panel.
Although his director rating on the system panel remained unchanged at Level 4, Zhang Tiancheng was confident that after directing at most two more movies, he would advance to Level 5.
With the fight scene wrapped, the final scene was much simpler.
At around six in the evening, the red evening glow cast its light across the earth. On a dilapidated street in Kwun Tong, Zhang Tiancheng—his left eye covered in gauze, his face bruised all over, and handcuffs on his wrists—stood on the road accompanied by several police officers, gazing ahead at Leila Tong as she walked toward him.
Ahead, Leila Tong walked forward with her head slightly bowed. After taking two steps, following the script, she seemed to sense something and raised her head to look ahead.
Seeing Zhang Tiancheng, Leila Tong immediately stopped in her tracks, tears welling up in her eyes instantly.
A faint smile appeared on Zhang Tiancheng's face.
The two of them gazed at each other across a distance of about ten meters while the camera, mounted on a jib arm, was slowly raised under the cameraman's control.
As the camera lifted, the final frame locked in: the two figures stood at opposite ends of the screen, staring at each other. Bathed in the evening glow, they were draped in a soft reddish hue, creating an intensely aesthetic composition.
"Cut!" Luk Kin-ching shouted excitedly into the megaphone.
The props team immediately stepped forward to unlock Zhang Tiancheng's handcuffs and remove the gauze from his left eye.
Zhang Tiancheng strode behind the monitor to review the shot they had just captured.
That particular take left Zhang Tiancheng quite delighted.
There were no technical issues with the footage whatsoever, and the final framed composition even exceeded his expectations.
"Director Zhang, is everything okay?" Luk Kin-ching asked.
"No problem."
Hearing that everything was fine, Luk Kin-ching promptly handed over the megaphone.
Zhang Tiancheng took the megaphone and shouted excitedly, "I hereby announce that *The Bodyguard* has officially wrapped! Tonight at eight, at Chen's Open-Air Food Stall across from the hotel, we'll have our wrap party!"
The crew members immediately broke into cheers and applause. With the film wrapped, the remainder of their pay would soon be in their hands.
As the crew began packing up their gear, Zhang Kailin walked over to Zhang Tiancheng.
"Tiancheng, I've arranged the post-production. We'll use Edko Films' post-production studio, and the staff will be the most skilled technicians they have."
"Uncle, then we'll start post-production tomorrow."
Zhang Tiancheng had originally promised Zeng Li that he would return to Beijing for the film's post-production, but he hadn't anticipated that the fight scenes would take a bit longer than expected.
It was now early July, and Central Academy of Drama would be starting its summer break in just a few days.
During their phone call late last night, Zeng Li had mentioned that she would come to Hong Kong to find him once the break began.
Since Zeng Li was coming to see him, there was no need to head back to Beijing for post-production.
Zhang Kailin nodded. "I'm taking the film reels back to Edko Films right now. Footage isn't something you want lying around; keeping it at Edko Films is the only way to be safe."
After Zhang Kailin left, Zhang Tiancheng headed to the dressing room to take off his makeup.
Leila Tong was already in the dressing room removing her makeup. Once Zhang Tiancheng sat down and closed his eyes, the nearby makeup artist immediately stepped forward to work on his face.
Suddenly, a crisp voice rang out beside him. "Director Zhang, if you ever need an actress in the future, you can consider me. I love acting."
Hearing the clear voice coming from beside him, Zhang Tiancheng smiled. "Alright, but you need to practice your Mandarin. This film might not be able to be released in Mainland China, but my future films definitely will be. Poor Mandarin easily pulls the audience out of the movie."
Beside him, Leila Tong's face fell.
She had studied Mandarin, but it was just too difficult, and she could never quite speak it well.
"Can't you just use post-production dubbing?"
"You, if you want to make a living as an actor, you can't lower your standards for yourself. People are naturally prone to laziness; once you start, you'll just keep finding excuses for yourself."
Leila Tong was still young and didn't completely understand what Zhang Tiancheng meant. After looking blankly for a few seconds, she asked out of curiosity,
"Director Zhang, aren't you a directing major? How is your acting so good?"
The original version of *The Bodyguard* was the South Korean film *Lone Cop*. For the role of the male lead, he was mostly expressionless, requiring acting skills in only a few scenes.
Yet, in those exact scenes, the acting ability Zhang Tiancheng displayed left people like Liao Qizhi and Michael Tse utterly shocked. His explosive power and screen presence were simply too strong.
Zhang Tiancheng opened his eyes, turned to look at Leila Tong, and smiled. "I was just born with good talent. You can't learn that."
As the female lead, Leila Tong had a heavy workload, and since Zhang Tiancheng hadn't intentionally grouped her scenes together for shooting, she had been on set almost every single day for the past four months.
Having spent four months together, the two of them were as familiar with each other as could be; otherwise, she wouldn't have dared to recommend herself just now.
Zhang Tiancheng's boastful words made her roll her eyes involuntarily.
"Director, you are so narcissistic."
"Haha."
Zhang Tiancheng let out two hearty laughs, turned his head back, closed his eyes, and let the makeup artist continue tinkering with his face.
Leila Tong didn't say anything more. When she recommended herself just a moment ago, she had simply been thinking that film offers for her were currently too scarce, and putting herself forward might increase her chances of getting a movie offer in the future.
At eight in the evening, Zhang Tiancheng and Zhang Kailin arrived at Chen's Open-Air Food Stall.
The crew members had all arrived. As soon as the two of them walked in, they called the waiter over to serve the dishes and start the meal.
With the film completed, Zhang Tiancheng was in high spirits and ended up drinking a few extra glasses. When he returned to the hotel, he collapsed onto the bed and fell fast asleep, wasting even his chance to enter the system panel for study that day.
When he finally woke up, it was already past ten o'clock the next morning.
After washing up, he combined breakfast and lunch into one meal, then headed to Edko Films with Zhang Kailin.
Post-production was a tedious and complicated process.
During filming, scenes weren't shot in chronological order; instead, they were shot based on locations, actors' changing appearances, and actor availability.
Because the shooting order was completely chaotic, the recorded film reels first had to be sorted according to the narrative development, followed by a rough cut.
Once the rough cut was completed, sound mixing and rendering had to be done, along with integrating the dialogue tracks.
Although it was recorded live on set, the picture and sound were separate.
During post-production, a film required the addition of various rendered audio effects; trying to handle audio and video simultaneously would only make post-production much more difficult.
*The Bodyguard* had one extra step compared to standard Hong Kong films: they needed to hire a voice actor to dub Zhang Tiancheng.
Although Zhang Tiancheng could speak Cantonese, the Cantonese spoken in Guangdong Province was slightly different from the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong, so a local dubbing actor had to be brought in to voice his role.
After adding the sound, visual effects had to be applied.
Once all of that was done, it was still only a rough cut. Next came the fine cut, which involved trimming away flaws, pacing that dragged, or awkward plot transitions.
Following the fine cut came color grading and lighting rendering, and then the subtitles and musical score. Only when all of these steps were finished was a film's post-production truly complete.
In terms of the system panel's ratings for film editing, Zhang Tiancheng was only at Level 2 and couldn't get involved.
He gave his instructions to the editor and spent three days assisting them in organizing the film reels. After that, there wasn't much for him to do until the rough cut was finished and he could return to check the results.
After spending three days in the post-production editing room, the following morning, Zhang Tiancheng took four bodyguards and got into a rented commercial van heading for Lo Wu Control Point.