Chapter 513: Pre-Production Of [Shaolin Soccer]

[China]

The wooden benches along the southern wall of the training hall in Huairou were full of energy.

Jackie Chan sat on the edge of the bench with his ankles crossed.

A towel was slung casually around his neck, catching the beads of sweat that still dripped from his temple after an hour of morning footwork drills.

Across him is the four thousand square meters of hangar space.

Thump-crack.

A football exploded off the instep of a twenty two year old wushu champion from Henan.

The boy had launched himself three feet into the air, twisting his hips mid-flight into an inverted corkscrew before his laces connected with the ball.

The strike whistled across the gym, slamming into the netting with a sound like a small gunshot, shaking the steel scaffolding behind the goal.

Jackie smiled.

He didn’t need to check his watch to know what time it was back in California. Over there, the sun was just rising.

After flying back from Los Angeles three months ago, Jackie hadn’t lingered in the usual celebrity circles.

He signed the contracts with LIE Studios, and caught the first direct flight back across the ocean.

While the Hollywood trades were busy running headlines about LIE Studios taking on the world with the success of [Train To Catch], Jackie had quietly rolled up his sleeves and gone to work in the dust.

Officially, the industry called this phase pre-production.

Jackie, however, would never dare call what he was doing ’creative’.

Whenever he talked with his old friends in Hong Kong; men who had spent decades directing classic kung fu cinema, they would ask him–

"Jackie, what is the story like? How are you staging the gags? Who is choreographing the matches?"

And Jackie would just wave his hands, take another bite of whatever dim sum was on the table, and laugh.

Jackie would simply wave his hands, take another bite of dim sum, and laugh. "I am not doing any of that. The kid in America is handling everything. If I touch the script, I will only ruin it."

Jackie wasn’t being humble, but realistic.

To direct something as utterly unhinged, visually audacious, and narratively brilliant as [Shaolin Soccer], you had to possess a mind that was half-madman and half-architect.

Jackie had done many films in his regional language.

He understood comedy and physical rhythm, knowing exactly how to time a ladder falling on an antagonist’s head to the nearest tenth of a second.

But combining pure northern and southern Shaolin martial disciplines with modern, high-stakes association football.

...and grounding it inside a sweeping, heartbreaking tale of downtrodden brothers reclaiming their dignity through sports?

That wasn’t just a kung fu movie, but a new visual language.

Jackie realized just how far ahead Regal was the night he finally sat down in a private screening theater in Kowloon to watch [Train To Catch].

He had gone in expecting a slick, fast-paced American zombie thriller with good makeup and expensive practical sets.

What he walked out of two hours later was something that had left him sitting in the velvet seat in total silence while the credits rolled, his chest aching with a raw weight he hadn’t felt from an action movie in twenty years.

The craft was undeniable.

The way Regal moved the camera down those narrow train corridors, the suffocating practical lighting, the bone crunching impact of the stunt choreography, it was phenomenal.

But what had truly grabbed Jackie by the throat was the heart.

When Rock held that door shut with his bare hands, veins bulging against his neck, screaming for his pregnant wife to keep running while the horde crushed his ribs...

Jackie had found himself lost in the world.

And during the final act, watching Keanu Reeves standing on the back of that locomotive, hallucinating the birth of his daughter while the infection slowly clouded his eyes.

Jackie had actually wept into his sleeve.

In the dark theater, Jackie had caught himself thinking: If I had played the father... A working-class brawler. How would I have taken that bite?

That was the mark of a true master director.

A great director can make any passionate artist again like a hungry rookie.

Ever since that screening, Jackie had stopped treating [Shaolin Soccer] as just another high-budget international co-production.

It had become a personal mission.

Because Regal was handling the gargantuan task of world-building, visual effects pipelines, and the master script, Jackie had dedicated himself entirely to the physical foundation of the production:

The locations, surprisingly, had been the simplest part of the work.

Usually, foreign directors coming to China were an absolute nightmare to work with.

They would arrive with vague, romantic notions of ’ancient mystique,’ demand to shoot in locations that were either culturally sensitive or logistically impossible, and spend months whining about municipal bureaucracy.

Regal had done none of that.

When Regal sent over the preliminary scouting decks during their weekly video calls, Jackie had nearly dropped his reading glasses.

Regal had mapped out every single set piece with clarity: the exact dimensions needed for the run-down courtyards where the brothers lived in poverty.

...and the scale of the stadium needed for the final national championship match.

All Jackie had to do was provide the keys.

In China, securing permits for a multi million dollar film that involved shut-down city streets, historical monastery courtyards, and fifty thousand seat sports arenas would typically take months of bureaucratic banquets, endless paperwork, and regulatory dead ends.

However, Jackie had cleared all sixteen primary locations in under three weeks.

He had personally contacted the municipal cultural bureaus in Guangdong and Shanghai, met with regional sports commissions over afternoon tea, and promised that LIE Studios would leave every stadium in better condition than they found it.

When Jackie Chan looked a provincial sports minister in the eye and guaranteed the safety of the turf, doors opened overnight.

However, then came the biggest task he had to overcome.

And it was to find the men who could actually perform the impossible.

Across the gym, a shrill whistle echoed through the cavernous space.

"No, no! Stop! Stop the wire! Ting! Ting!"

Jackie looked over, his mouth twitching into an amused grin.

Standing by the primary counter-weighted wire rig near the center of the court was Gavin.

The young American assistant director.

He was wearing cargo shorts, LIE Studios crew t-shirt.

A clipboard was tucked under his arm, two walkie-talkies were clipped to his belt, and his hair was sticking up in three different directions from humidity and stress.

Gavin had arrived in China three weeks ago, flying directly from the final post-production pickups of [Train To Catch] in Los Angeles.

Regal had assigned him as the first assistant director for [Shaolin Soccer], tasking him with supervising the pre-rigging tests and integrating LIE Studios’ digital pre-vis standards with the local Chinese stunt teams.

Gavin was brilliant, sharp eyed, and completely dedicated.

Yet, he was also entirely, hopelessly illiterate in Mandarin.

"Hear me out Xiao Zhang!"

Gavin was shouting, gesturing wildly with a half-rolled tube of blueprint paper.

He pointed at the ceiling pulley, then pointed at his own hip, then kicked his leg out into an awkward imitation of a front crane kick–

"It feels like the tension’s too tight! When he rotates, the harness needs to give him a little... maybe around two inches of slack before he strikes the ball? If you yank him at the apex, he might as well flip onto his neck! Are you gonna make him do a backflip into the goalpost? Do you understand? Slack! Song... 点! Looser!"

The veteran stunt rigger from the JC Stunt Team, stared at Gavin with an expression of bewilderment.

The rigger looked down at Gavin’s hand gestures, then looked up at the young wushu performer dangling thirty feet in the air from two steel aircraft cables, and slowly turned his head toward Jackie with a helpless shrug.

"Big Brother..." the rigger called out in heavy Cantonese. "What is the foreigner flapping his wings about? Does he want more salt in his lunch box?"

The entire stunt crew dissolved into muffled snickers.

Jackie let out a chuckle.

He stood up, and ambled over to the wire rig with his hands tucked loosely into the pockets of his track pants.

"Gavin." Jackie called out in his unmistakable English accent, clapping the young American on the shoulder with enough force to make him stumble half a step. "Relax, relax! You look like you’re about to have a stroke, my friend. Breathe!"

Gavin spun around, looking at Jackie like a drowning sailor spotting a rescue cutter. "Jackie, thank God. I am trying to tell the team that the digital camera rig we’re using for the ’Iron Leg’ bicycle kick has an eight millimeter focal sweep. If the wire doesn’t drop the stunt double precisely sixty centimeters before the ball impacts, the actor’s face will be out of the anamorphic depth of field.

"I tried using the translation app on my phone, but it translated ’wire tension’ into ’the angry rope of the sky pig,’ and now everyone thinks I am threatening their livestock."

Jackie threw his head back and roared with laughter.

"The angry rope of the sky pig!" Jackie repeated, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye before turning to the veteran rigger.

In smooth Cantonese, Jackie rattled off the technical notes: "Uncle Long, give the harness half a meter of slack on the three-count. The lens the Americans are using has a narrow focus. If you pull him too early, the camera only captures his chin."

Uncle Long’s eyes cleared instantly. He nodded vigorously, tapping the tension gauge with a wrench. "Understood, Big Brother! Tell the kid to stop clucking like a chicken."

"He says he understands completely and he loves your enthusiasm." Jackie translated smoothly to Gavin with an entirely straight face.

Gavin let out a sigh, rubbing his face with both hands. "Man... I swear, if Mr. Regal doesn’t get here soon, I am going to end up communicating entirely through dance. How does he do it? Regal doesn’t even have an accent when he speaks Mandarin! He talks to the local bureau chiefs like he grew up in Chaoyang district!"

"Regal is a monster." Jackie said, smiling fondly as he looked out across the busy gym floor. "Some people are born with five brains, Gavin, but Regal might as well have ten. He writes books, directs movies, and speaks... How many languages again? I don’t even know the count. And I wonder when he sleeps. We’re just normal human beings trying to keep up with him."

You are also not normal. Gavin screamed internally. How the heck are you pulling off those stunts?

On the other hand, Jackie turned back toward the center of the training hall, his eyes sweeping over the thirty young men gathered on the turf.

Over the past three months, Jackie had screened over two hundred performers from across the nation to build this pool.

He had personally visited the provincial sports academies in Shandong, the traditional martial arts schools clustered around the foot of Mount Song in Dengfeng, the Beijing Opera acrobatics troupes, and even semi-professional third-tier soccer clubs across the south.

He had tested them relentlessly.

If someone was a world-class martial artist but had two left feet and couldn’t trap a ball, Jackie sent him home with travel money and a pat on the back.

If he was a brilliant collegiate striker who panicked the moment he was strapped into an aerial wire harness twenty feet off the deck, Jackie cut him from the roster.

To make [Shaolin Soccer] work, the actors couldn’t just rely on digital effects.

Regal had made that abundantly clear during their very first script meeting: the CGI must only enhance what the human body is genuinely attempting to do.

Every single one of these thirty finalists was marvelously talented.

There was a nineteen year old gymnast who could perform six consecutive stationary backflips without touching his hands to the floor.

A heavyweight traditional iron-body practitioner who could shatter concrete pavers across his shins; and a skinny, lightning fast wing half from Guangzhou who could dribble through three defenders while balancing a teacup on his shoulder.

For the last four weeks, Jackie had run them through a grueling, combined curriculum: four hours of Shaolin forms in the morning, three hours of soccer drills in the afternoon, and two hours of wire-rig acrobatics under the JC Stunt Team before dinner.

Everyday, they were bruised, exhausted, and hungry.

And every single one of them was waiting for one man to arrive.

Jackie pulled a sheet from the pocket of his track jacket, reviewing the thirty headshots and stats pinned to the board.

"Regal said he will land in Beijing by Tuesday?" Jackie asked, glancing sideways at Gavin.

"Tuesday afternoon," Gavin confirmed, checking the digital production calendar on his tablet. "The Deathly Hallows launch in London and New York wrapped up forty-eight hours ago. And he had a few other things to take care of, but once those are done, he’ll board the LIE corporate jet in Los Angeles tomorrow morning."

Jackie shook his head in awe before turning toward the thirty young performers who had finished their drills and now stood at attention along the sideline, their chests heaving as they watched the master of action cinema with respectful attention.

He raised his chin, his voice booming across the four thousand square meters of the hangar with that effortless, commanding presence that had defined Chinese cinema for half a century:

"Listen up, boys!" Jackie shouted. "Rest for ten minutes!"

The thirty young athletes straightened their backs, shouting in unison: "Yes, Big Brother!"

Jackie pointed a finger toward the doors at the far end of the hangar.

"In five days, the director will arrive from America." Jackie told them, his eyes gleaming with pride and fierce expectation. "He doesn’t care who your father is, or which martial arts school gave you a medal, and how many followers you have on social media. Out of the thirty of you, only six will be selected."

The room went dead silent.

You could hear the hum of the ceiling fans and the drip of condensation hitting the floor.

"If you want to be on that screen." Jackie said softly, his voice carrying the immovable weight. "...you better show him something that cannot be faked. Trust me, being part of the Director Seraphsail movie is going to be your biggest honour.

Jackie turned back toward his bench and sat down.

....

[To be continued...]

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