Bloodline

About the Film

“Bloodline” was produced at China Movie Metropolis (CMM), referred to as the “Chinese Hollywood” and one of the largest film production sites in the world, where films like “Pacific Rim Uprising,” “The Wandering Earth,” and the “Creation of the Gods” trilogy were produced. “Bloodline” uses the action genre to tell a story of a man’s relationship to the mistakes of his past, and how that part of his identity has followed him into the present. The film was my first venture into the action genre, and it succeeded in what we set out to do, examining the cyclical nature of violence and how it affects the innocent people in the protagonist’s life. Shot on ZEISS Supreme lenses and finished in professional post-production suites, “Bloodline” let me experiment with new ideas and technology, with fight scenes and confrontations that were particularly difficult to choreograph and direct, but pushed me to improve more than I ever have.

Director’s Statement

Being selected to go to Qingdao gave me the chance to work with industry professionals alongside a familiar crew of my friends, and it let me make my most ambitious film yet. I wrote “Bloodline” wanting to construct a complicated protagonist and explore how his relationship with his daughter is shaped by the forces around him. The final fight scene was shot entirely in the dark, illuminated sparingly by the light from gunshots, a quiet scene with no score that highlighted the horror of it rather than the spectacle. Directing and pitching that idea was a real challenge, since it was unfamiliar and untried to both me and the staff at CMM. Over the week-long process I found myself improving quickly as a leader and a collaborator, leading a larger and more experienced team than I was used to. Leading this project meant learning to communicate decisions clearly and quickly, since there wasn’t room on this shoot for the kind of on-the-fly experimenting I get to do on smaller projects, and I came away with real experience building something specific inside one of the largest production sites in the world.