Had the pleasure of meeting Yang Yi from the indie punk band Hypocrite the other day, and the conversation brought home the difference between rockers in China as compared to the West.

There’s a certain mystique and glamour surrounding rockers in the West, whereas rock is uber underground here in Beijing and can’t command nearly the number of listeners that saccarine pop can. Yang Yi works in an SOE (State Owned Enterprise) and jams on weekends with his guitarist/lead vocals. They’ve performed in numerous Beijing bars and venues, but Yang Yi says it’s unrealistic to expect one’s rock career to pay the bills.

Hypocrite’s got a funky cool sound which we hope to include in the film, check it out on their Douban page:
www.douban.com/artist/Hypocrite/

A month into the hard slog of edit and we now have a rough assembly running 101 minutes—we’re still laughing at the jokes, which is a sign either that the film’s script is solid, or that the filmmakers have a lame and infantile sense of humor. Who knows? Maybe it’s a combination of both.

With just the credit sequence/titles, music rights and sound mix to secure, we are tantalizingly close to a rough edit that can be test screened for a small group of “fresh eyes”. Of course, before that happens we also need to slap on some subtitles, which will take a good chunk of time—as all good actors do, our leads chose to take some parts of the script and put their distnctive Chinese spin on things, making the lines not only more colloquial but funnier. So far, my favorite example of this is Zhao Jun’s improv changing of the line “I can read you like a book” into “I can tell the turd you’re laying by the way your ass twitches.” The Chinese language is indeed very expressive.

Keep an eye out as we confirm musicians for the final cut, and in the meantime Red Light Revolution is now on Twitter! Follow us at www.twitter.com/RedLightFilm

Editing is underway! After several weeks of converting the footage into Pro-Res, logging, and choosing takes, we are well into putting a rough cut together, with over 40 minutes assembled so far.

Everyday that we look at the footage we are reminded of the countless crew, actors, and extras who came out to lend us a hand and give support—we couldn’t have done it without you! Not to mention the locations that generously alowed us to film: D22, Kebab Classroom on Guloudongdajie, and the Special 2 Supermarket up in Tiantongyuan, to name but a few. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed.

We’re now ready to begin the long search for the film’s music. We strongly believe that a Beijing film should have a Beijing sound, and we’re trolling through CD shops and indie music venues in our quest for indie pop and rock bands whose tunes might fit—we’re looking for instrumental as well as cool lyrics, ranging from soft sugar coated pop to old school rock and roll. Know a band? A singer? A composer? The musically inclined who might be interested in getting involved with an indie film? Send them our way, we’d love to hear from them!