Filming Chinese TV Drama “Marry to the West” with lead actress Wei Ren

I recently flew back to Beijing, China to work on a feature film tentatively titled 《盗墓笔记》 “The Lost Tomb”. We are in pre-production at the moment. As fate would have it, a good friend of mine, Wei Ren was also in Beijing filming a Chinese TV drama called《洋嫁》 “Marry to the West” . She is one of the lead characters and her character is entangled in all kinds drama. “Marry to the West” filmed in the US and in China. She recommended me to the director for a scene they were shooting. Wei and I had worked together on my short film “Retrieval” which was also shot in Beijing and where she also played one of the leads.

For “Marry to the West” we ended up shooting a dramatic scene where I have to deliver some news to her. Even though the scene was very serious, it was super fun filming with a friend on set. Even though it’s “work” it really makes it feel like you are just having a good time and spending an afternoon with your friends.

The filming pace of Chinese TV shows is very fast. We knocked out the scenes very quickly. It was fun to be a part of the production. We had lunch with the director and the rest of the cast and then I headed back to Tong Zhou which is where our pre-production office is in Beijing.