So why then did I go to Hong Kong? In Hong Kong, my life was changed dramatically, from being in a very social environment, to being cooped up in an apartment all day. And that was the day I decided to go to a cinema in the city. I think probably going into the cinema was a emotional experience for me, when I was at my lowest, going in allowed me to re-experience a small part of my childhood. That morning is an important one because that was the morning I saw the film “Yojimbo” by Akira Kurosawa

To see a film of such beauty, and to take that emotional experience back home, remains in my mind. From then on, I would use to go see films on my own, usually in the mornings when no one would go.

So in 1967, while I was going to US to be an engineer, I stopped to think what I really wanted to be. What kind of person did I want to be. I always wanted to live in a happy, innocent place like my childhood. So on the bus, when I was talking to a friend, he asked me what I wanted to do. After all, all of my friends had left for overseas, only I was left in Hong Kong. So the bus at the point passed the cinema, and I decided to make the cinema my life. But what can a 17 year old boy do, to get into the cinema? You have no experience, you have no contacts. How are you going to get into the industry?

At that time as well, in Hong Kong there were no film schools. So my friend told me I should go overseas to study film. But where? I did not know. On one hand, my family could not support me to go to study film, and on the other, I had no world experience at all. So I had to try and grab for a chance, any chance to study film. I was very lucky because this American college took be in, and gave me a scholarship to study. At that time, when I was studying, it was a very stressful time, because even though I had a scholarship, every year I had to top it up with another 200 US dollars, which to a student at that time was a lot of money. So every holiday, when everyone left, I had to stay behind and find a job to earn money. But I was very lucky too, because one day I wrote a paper about a New York filmmaker, and so I took the address of this filmmaker’s company and went to New York to look for work. Turns out he’d already left the company, but they hired me anyway.

My job was to develop the film, they had a division that went out to shoot documentaries, and so my job was to develop the film that they had shot that day. Next to the developing room however, was the editing suite. And in that editing suite, because they filmed in sync sound, so the editor was always matching up the magnetic sound tracks to the film. So while I was developing the film, I would always eavesdrop on whatever was being cut at that time, once I remember was a lecture. And listening to it for 2 days, listening to the editor go through the entire lecture for 2 days trying to match and sync the sound to the film, made me go a little crazy.

So one day I told him, why don’t you let me try to match the sound for you. I tried it out, and looked for a length of film that matched the words I had been listening to for 2 days, and managed to sync the sound! So after that, I got promoted to assistant editor. And then after that, I slowly became assistant cinematographer, assistant scriptwriter, etc.

But I found out later that I hadn’t graduated, so I had to resign from the company and go back to study. They told me I was an idiot, I was already working, so why go back to school? But I figured, since I had come to America to  study, I needed to get my degree. But once I went back to school, my feelings were different. Because I felt the real lessons were learned out of the classroom. Within the classroom you didn’t have the chance to test out the theories that they taught you.

At that time, when I was working in New York, I had saved some money so I did not have to work when I was in college for the last term. With all that spare time, I used to look on the college noticeboards for any activities that included filmmaking, or videography of some sort. With my experience from New York, I ended up rising in the filming hierarchy when doing these activities.

So all of this, gave me a great leg up when I went back to Hong Kong and joined TVB. So this is the first part of my life.

(To be continued...)