8-hour superstars: our first TV filming experience
Back in May, we were contacted by TV producers from TVB, the biggest television network in Hong Kong. They were looking for stories of people from Hong Kong who live aboard in Taiwan and Mainland China. Among many others who migrated for marriage, retirement or simply looking for a slower city to live, our story stood apart.
A few days later, a team of three, including a writer and two producers, visited us to learn more about our life and our neighborhood. They were impressed by our courage and determination in quitting our day jobs to devote fully into living in our handmade dream, as well as how well we assimilate into the local community as newcomers to the city.
The three spent a few days discussing the filming direction. The rest of the crew, including a star presenter Yi Hing Ong (王貽興), arrived the week after. We were given a major segment in one episode of the 20-minutes, 10-episode series and were filmed the first, among many other interviewees in the documentary.
We were totally overwhelmed by the large filming crew who came directly from the airport to our workshop! A lot of content is required for our 15-minutes segment and they acted swiftly and professionally going through the producer's plan. To make sure the show is entertaining to watch, our interview is broken into several clips with different parts of the workshop as backdrop. We will be showing even our bedroom and kitchen, so viewers will catch a realistic glimpse of our life.
We then moved outside to film the streets of our neighborhood. As we are located away from touristic paths, we showed facets of very local ways of living to our audience. There is a fruit stall that open only on certain days of a week; a small, family owned noodle snack bar; as well as an outdoor stadium that everyone goes for jogs at any time of the day. Regardless of where we went, we were in the spotlight and were filmed by several cameras. For the first time in our life, we were superstars, with a world waiting to hear about us and our stories.
There's no way we could tell how it went until the airing date, but we hope people will see it in positive light: Apart from taking a regular 9-5 job and commuting to work five days a week, what are the other possibilities? Can we be an inspiration to someone who had a dream but was scared of living in it?
The series 香港人漂流記 (As I Drift) will premiere on Sep 1, 2014 at 10:30pm.