Heritage is something martial-arts films don't often talk about.
I'm a big fan of martial arts films, novels and radio programs.
1936 is a very important year: a golden time for martial arts, right before the Japanese invasion.
I never had a problem with genre because a genre actually is like a uniform - you put yourself into a certain uniform. But if you dress up in a police officer's uniform, it doesn't mean that you are an officer; it can mean something else.
During shooting, you have the idea, like, of this certain dress on this actress, but it's not to fit, so you have to make all of these alterations and modifications. So in a way, I build the characters with the cast, and it's sort of custom-made, the whole process, and then you have to make all of these adjustments.
I sometimes compare making a film to cooking. Some dishes need to be stewed, while others need to be fried.
Ip Man was an extraordinary man who lived during extraordinary times. He was born to a rich family when the country was still a monarchy and lived through various civil wars, revolutions, the Japanese invasion, and the establishment of the Republic.
The laboratory where we stored all our negatives went bankrupt overnight following the Asian economic crisis in 1997. So, on short notice, we had to retrieve all the materials in the middle of the night before the debtor-receiver took over the laboratory the next morning.
It is always good to work with a very regular group of people because we know how high we can fly and what are the parameters, and it becomes very enjoyable.
I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.
To me, romantic means, um, you follow your heart more than your mind. Sometimes when you're shooting a film, you have to follow your heart.
To make films, it always begins with two words: what and how. First of all, you have to find a story, or what are you going to tell? And you have to find a way to tell it visually.
It used to be when you eat, you eat with people. But instant noodles are so instant that people eat by themselves. And it's a very convenient way of eating but also a very lonely way of eating.
Because we don't have a lot of light, because we have a very low budget, we have to adjust the speed of our camera to get the effect that we want. So sometimes this is the way we work, and the result of the filming becomes a kind of a style.
In our case, we have no script. So the only people we can work with are people who have been working with us in the past, and they know we are going to do something; it's kind of a trust.
The reason it takes me so long to make a film, the reason it gets so difficult, is that I'm trying to think of every film as the last one I will ever make so it can be the best it can possibly be. I don't want to have regrets or excuses or think, 'I can do better next time.'
At film festivals, I put on my sunglasses and go to sleep because I don't want to see my films again.
