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Director Peter Chan and Actress Lydia Bai on the Technical and Political Challenges Behind China’s Oscar Submission ‘Leap’

by Ricardo Gallegos

China's 2021 International Oscar submission could be described as a tribute to the history of their National Women's Volleyball team. In “”, director Peter Chan goes through over four decades of success to portray the key achievements of the team, recreating historical matches and even using Olympic Gold medalists in the cast.

The film earned approximately $8.2 million on its opening day in China and defeated Disney's big budget blockbuster, “Mulan”. This was no fluke. “Leap” is a very patriotic film that, in its first half, highlights the importance of their women's volleyball team during the early years of the Chinese economic reform. The players had to overcome deficient training conditions, tough training practices and a lack of experience in the international stage. It's an underdog story boasted by impressive production qualities and faithful recreation of the biggest games in the team's history. It also had a very important feature: legendary player, coach and the main subject of the film, Lang Ping, was played by her own daughter, who played volleyball at college level in the US, but had no acting experience.

“When Peter reached out to me, I had no acting background and I just found out about the movie being about my mom,” said Lydia Bai in the press conference. “Not only was acting a challenge for me, but at the beginning it was very fun doing research about my mom's youth. I've only known about her achievements, but I've never actually seen her play. I had no idea how much I would learn from it.”

Casting Lydia was a big risk for the production of Leap.  “Lang Ping is a national hero in China to the extent that you would not believe”, said director in the press conference. “We thought casting her daughter was our only option because there was nobody else who could get the essence of Lang Ping.”

After losing 30 pound to look like her mother in her 20s, Lydia played the role with conviction and proved that the decision to cast her was the right one. “ I think she had something to prove to her mother,” said Chan. “I remember there was a line that almost made me tear up. When we were doing all the scenes of her practicing, there was one where I thought she should cry. I told her what to do, but she told me: ‘My mother would not cry here. She would actually walk out'. As a director I was really blessed.”

To prepare for the role, Lydia extensively studied footage of her mother. “I watched a lot of my mom's previous games and that was so fun,” said the actress. “I also looked at how she interacted with her teammates in-between points and how she also celebrated because, I remember when we were first filming some volleyball scenes, our producer said: ‘Lydia, you celebrate too much like an American. You are smiling way too much. You are way too excited. Tone it down.' So that made me realize I needed to go back and watch footage.”

But directing Lydia was the least of Chan's worries. By having to nail such historical moments for the country in a short amount of time, the pressure was on for him.

“A mandate was that I couldn't make a movie longer than two and a half hours. I tried splitting it in two films, but between distribution and investors, it was impossible. We had to make one film with the span of 40 years,” said Chan.

But it was even more difficult navigating the political landscape to deliver a truthful product about China's history.

“The first half of the film is more about how China wanted to be reengaged with the world and be seen by the world because it was the beginning of the open door policy, and somehow volleyball was at the forefront of charging on to let the world see what China is capable of. It's easier for kids in that generation to have a very patriotic and collective mentality”, explained the director.

Even though Chan was supported by China's film ministry, he encountered some barriers to create an honest film. 

“As a filmmaker I have to navigate the waters of trying to tell the truth of what really happened versus dealing with the politics of China and certain amounts of censorship,” said the director. “I was trying to portray the movie as honestly as I could. There were controversies about the first half being about collectivism and the second one about why you play volleyball. Some may not play for their country, but for themselves which is something that is very hard to procclaim in China today.”

Another challenge for Chan was shooting the numerous volleyball scenes, all based in real matches. “We shot three scenes of volleyball,” he said. “The first one took six days to shoot. Then we decided we couldn't keep doing that because it would take forever and we can't capture the essence of volleyball that way.”

Chan and his team decided to use more cameras to shoot the 1981 World Cup clash against the powerful Japanese team. Both teams of actors had to study the footage of the real game and try to play similarly. 

“The beginning and the end have to be exactly the same with what happened, and in the middle you just have to let them play because you can't control where the ball goes. As good as they are, they can't magically recreate the game.”, said Chan. “It was a blast for us. I invited all my friends on set because it was like watching a real game, they were playing for real.”

The trickiest game to shoot was the Rio Olympics Quarter-finals clash against Brazil. Chan casted real volleyball Chinese and Brazilian players, including some that played the real game in 2016.

“They were doing the same thing that they've done before. But it was impossible for them to recreate the scene hit by hit. We knew that we had to do it the same way that we did with the game with Japan. However, we only had three days so we hired six more cameras,” explained Chan. These cameramen came from the CCTV Sports channel and knew how to shoot volleyball, which boosted the production of these scenes. “So, we were shooting with 12 cameras and the girls played like 17 hours a day for three days. All the National Team players told me they didn't know it was that difficult to make a movie because when they play their games or practice, it's only like 2 or 4 hours a day. But here, they were playing 17 hours on set as if it was a real competition.”

This was verified by Lydia, who had a tough time during the volleyball scenes.

“I thought that the volleyball scenes would be easier because I'm a player but they were definitely not,” said Lydia. “I had to put a 100% of effort in every shot because I couldn't let my mom down, I knew that if I held back a little bit, she would immediately know. Other than that, it was extremely natural and it took me back to being a player again. I remember that on the last day, when we finished shooting the volleyball scenes, I cried because I was saying goodbye to volleyball again and also saying goodbye to how great my mom was as a player.”

Leap is currently available to stream in the US through Prime Video. The Academy's shortlist for the 2021 Best International Feature will be revealed on February 9th.

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