As posted on my 'design practice' blog, I have decided to work on a series of 5 idents for a season of films that feature Hong Kong actor Stephen Chow. One of the main reasons why I've decided to work on this genre was because of the difference in comedy styles in comparison to british and american films that are tagged under the same genre; his work's are quite unique and may not be understood by an international audience.
The majority of Chow's films particularly with the earlier stuff were targeted towards a more local audience, as the jokes are often centred around events and issues that circulate Hong Kong. This is probably the reason why the majority of his work has been kept within Asia, where it has been a influence on the film industry, society and culture. At the end of the day, I have grown up watching Chow's films and wanted to work on something that would be quite new and different for everyone else. I guess it also adds to the reality of the brief, where I somehow have to sustain an audience's attention on a series of films that may initially seem quite weird and bizarre.
Background information://
Stephen Chow's career started off working on temporary roles on one of Hong Kong's major tv broadcasting company; TVB in the early 80's. Throughout his career he has been involved with over 30 films as either an actor, producer, screen writer or director. Almost all of his films are comedies of some sort and he rarely plays a serious character throughout.
Some of his more well known titles include://
- Fight back to school (1991)
- God of gamblers (1991)
- Royal tramp (1992)
- Flirting scholar (1993)
- Six million dollar man (1995)
- Forbidden city cop (1996)
- Shaolin soccer (2001)
- Kung Fu Hustle ( 2004)
- CJ7 (2008)
Sample clips showing the type of films, style of humour and the tone of voice of films that feature Stephen Chow://
Trailer for the God of Cookery ( 1996)://
Clip of a selected part of God of Cookery://
Scene from King of Comedy (1998)
No subtitles unfortunately but for those who want to know, this is basically a scene where Chow's character is auditioning for a chance to play the main actor of a film://
Clip from Kung Fu Hustle (2004)://
DUBBED clip from Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Clip from Shaolin Soccer, directed and featuring Chow himself as the main character, this demonstrates Chow's humour in his work, where he often exaggerates things to the limit.
Personally, I really don't like it when a movie is dubbed. Not only does it often make it sound quite forced, it loses the original film's tone of voice. As i speak cantonese fluently, Chow's films are not a problem for me, but reading the subtitles itself can sometimes be quite entertaining, because they're either translated inaccurately or they will be altered to fit into the audience's taste. This is probably an area that I'd look into - subtitles, i'd probably try to incorporate this is some way if possible into my ideas://
Rather funny but maybe not so relevent clip. This is basically a Shaolin Soccer tribute://
Clip from SixMillion Dollar Man (1995)
Bit of a random part of the film, which won't really make much sense, but worth watching to get an idea of the type of humour he incorporates. ( Excuse the 2 overlapping audio)://
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