Chapter 80

A heavy silence filled the venue, and the set was no exception. All the crew members and Peter Chan and the others standing behind the monitors held their breath, completely focused. Peter Chan had imagined many possible outcomes for this scene, and he had even prepared himself for numerous retakes. After all, a long take with a substantial amount of dialogue was notoriously difficult to shoot; the actors' emotions, their lines, or even technical issues with the camera could easily necessitate a retake. Yet this filming had gone astonishingly smoothly—or rather, Peter Chan had stopped thinking of himself as the director by this point. Standing behind the monitors, Chen Ming and the others seemed to transport him back to his own youth. In truth, directors and actors were both dreamers. They used this medium to make up for some of their past regrets, though of course, they might also be creating new ones. Take Peter Chan, for instance—who could say that when he used to wash dishes in America, he had never fantasized about standing in a high-rise conference room on Wall Street, pointing at the noses of the Americans and cursing them out? He might never achieve that in reality, but film could. Anyway... he was feeling a bit immersed in the moment. And it felt pretty good.