The Chicago Connection is in full production mode. We craft each scene meticulously. A scene requires several weeks of preparation and usually entails multiple days of shooting on location.
Making a movie is somewhat similar to the miracle of life, full of pain and joy, despair and triumph, it just happens at 24 frames per second.
This particular shot on the image was full of surprises. Initially we had allocated two hours in the morning to a shot of Cao Vu in the role of Little John, a minor figure in the Little Saigon criminal underworld, getting into his car and peeling off. The back alley where we were working was perfect, and Cao's petulant style of getting into the roadster was so on point that we decided to keep shooting from many more different angles than we had originally planned. Indie cinema is always a fight between the never ending creative appetite of the director versus the time and financial limitations.
The director must seek artistic austerity or run out of money and time. Fortunately we are efficient and focus only on the shots that we absolutely need, and we limit the takes to a maximum of five. After each shooting day we drop the material onto the editing line to determine what shots need to be redone or changed.