What new project was in mind?
- Real Life English People Playing Mahjong – An English and Chinese Cultural Understanding.
Well just to reflect back on my Time Mahjong that I built for my degree show, I wanted to try out something beyond that and thought about the idea of using real English people playing a Chinese Traditional Mahjong game.
I did think about this for several months now in figuring out ways in how I can successfully do this like getting the right setup, camera gear, english people to play it and so on…… So it just basically crossed my mind with a chance to ask Dr Tsang if he will collaborate with me. Tsang is the film lecturer of my University in Ipswich who is fully qualified within the subject and he also has film students that could help do the whole setup plan for this project.
Reflecting back to the last post of the meeting with Film students.
Yeah… it was nerve racking at first to meet with his level 5 film students to whom I had never meet before and wondered what they thought of this Mahjong idea. So even though they looked a bit stunned and unsure about this idea, the meeting became a success and that we were due to start this filming process in a week’s time by Friday 20th November. So the only thing left to do now was to gather the Mahjong game and table to play on and to confirm by email with Dr Tsang that I was up for this project to commence on Friday.
How did me and Dr Tsang organise everything before the shoot?
So basically once my attendance was all confirmed for Friday I just kept on going through my mind in how to present this the best possible way like what table we would use and what kind of people will play first… In the end I just grabbed a nice wooden style table from Room 1 cafe which looked the best idea mahjong table to use. And then when the day finally came I was introduced to everyone and then they introduced themselves to me just so that we can know a little about each other first before we proceed.
Then after that half of the level 5 film team grabbed the filming gear whilst I setup the mahjong and help Tsang grab the table, everything was now prepared and ready to film…
What did I feel about this whole experience and the final outcome at the end?
I really felt excited about this already as soon as I went through them filming doors, all I wanted to do was just try to make this happen and work the best way possible. I felt more welcomed by other film students once we got rolling and setting things up like cameras and stuff and got to really know them more as we were going through this filming process. It was a very cool and exciting experience to work with them and seeing them holding up the take 1 or take 2 clip board was funny.
It felt as though I was on a proper filming set but then the more I teached them how to play mahjong the more I seemed to forget other people with cameras around me. It felt as though I soaked up so much of this experience that we became the Iconic stage with others to watch us play at the same time. I certainly needed good patience for this kind of thing because Tsang and 3 film students who were playing did not know how to play this game at all and I felt really good about myself in teaching them successfully how to play it in the end.
I felt like I had achieved something very good and at the end of all of this we even thought about starting the Mahjong club which sounded really nice and one guy said that this was the most fun he had in 8 years so it felt like one of my best experiences that I had also. We had a small break in between the two hours of playing and when that was all over we just sit back and wait for the filming and voice recordings to be transferred over to their hard drives and my computer. The footage looked very high quality in my eyes and everyone elses and one camera got some good close ups while another camera got other angles and they basically done a very ace job of it so was very pleased with the end result.
What will I think about doing next?
Well… After all of this Dr Tsang mentioned to me and other film students if we would like to collaborate again to do this same idea but only next time we do it in a restaurant or a theatre which sounded like a very cool idea to me and others too. So maybe after Christmas time I can have a proper chat with Dr Tsang to see how we can go about organising this exciting event and should hopefully cross over some good ideas with each other to plan for the next shoot. Hopefully we will be able to take this so many steps further in making a successful experience in playing Chinese Mahjong with English people.
Please feel free to watch or browse through this short interesting version with Level 5 students in teaching them how to play Chinese Mahjong.
Here is the Link to the Movie file if movie does not load…Enjoy!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u3k9magjpsjkic4/Alex%20Woolcock%20-%20Teaches%20English%20People%20How%20To%20Play%20Mahjong.mp4?dl=0
