Hong Kong Cinemagic - Interview with Big Brother Chen Kuan Tai


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		Interview with Big Brother Chen Kuan Tai

	Hong Kong cinema	1/1 - Page 5

	Info

Author(s) :

King-Wei Chu

Date :

1/5/2006

Type(s) :

Interview

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Notes

Interview conducted on the phone by King-Wei Chu, May 2006.

Special thanks to Chen Kuan Tai for his patience.

Thanks extended to File Ip.

Additional translation by Charlene J. Woo

HKCinemagic : The current situation in HK is poor do you think it will be better?

Chen Kuan Tai : First, time has changed, technology has improved. The HK movie industry is controlled by a small portion of people, I think. This small portion also controls the media, always emphasizing who is the big star. I think it affects certain actors because if the media doesn't write about you, no matter if you did well or not, it doesn't have the promotional effect. It's a little group that controls the movie industry and they are overemphasizing who gets how many millions doing a movie. Working in production, there is piracy and the copyrights are not sold at a high price.

HKCinemagic : What do you think about mainland co-productions?

Chen Kuan Tai : Mainland has a bigger market. The VCD and DVDs are cheaper. The pirated copies come out before the release of the movie. I think it affects the box office. I'm not too optimistic about a big good change. Now, my friends in China watch Western movies. They don't go to cinemas but they will buy the DVDs.

HKCinemagic : Anything else to add?

Chen Kuan Tai : About the movies' fate, it's really hard to say because most of the actors don't know about production. When they think they're popular, they raise their salary, making it harder to produce good movies. Since I work on films for so long, I know how many per cent of the budget is on actors and how many per cent is on production. Now, other companies' balance is involved with the actors' fees. More than half of it is on the actors' pay so it affects the quality of the production. You can see that there is no quality.

HKCinemagic : It's the same in Hollywood …

Chen Kuan Tai : In Hollywood , it's a larger market there and the actors can sell. HK actors cannot sell but all the money is on the actors. I still think that quality is here.

There is the situation where Korean movies are well-made. They have big companies supporting movies and the country is supporting their movies all along, regardless of the production budget, to make quality movies. Their movies go to Southeast Asia , mainland, HK territories and their movies give me the impression of surpassing HK and mainland, especially action movies.

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