About the Production

The story of a young man's search for meaning and direction, AN AMERICAN IN CHINA follows recent college grad David Braddock to China where he finds more than he bargained for.

Filming this coming of age journey was an amazing journey in and of itself, a whirlwind production that included four cities and more than 40 unique locations. The majority of the movie was shot in mainland China. Filming began first in the bustling modern city of Shanghai, and then the production moved to a quaint little village named Jinxi, a place that time hasn't changed for hundreds of years. Then it was on to the capital city of Beijing where it's many landmarks: Tianamen Square, The Temple of Heaven, and of course, The Great Wall, were used as elements in David's story. The movie finished shooting in Los Angeles for one last week, capping 25 whirlwind days of principal photography.

Shooting in China, while providing the filmmakers with many amazing backdrops, was also an incredibly difficult challenge. The nationality mix of cast and crew consisted of American actors who spoke little Chinese, Chinese actors who spoke little English, and a handful of key crew personnel from America who were forced to learn how to communicate however they could with a Chinese crew who spoke absolutely no English at all.

The American actors found the experience a little unnerving at times. "James (David Braddock) had to do scenes with something like thirty different Chinese actors," director Ron Berrett says. "And most of the time, neither James nor the Chinese actor he was working with really knew what the other was saying. In fact, since I speak only limited Chinese, quite often even I didn't know if the Chinese actor was getting the lines correctly. I usually just went with my gut feeling, gauging the performances by the emotions that the actors were putting across… and then I would glance at my producer/wife to get her okay before moving on," Berrett muses.

The American portion of the crew were faced with unique challenges of their own. "Things took a little longer to get done than I'm used to. Actually a lot longer," says 1st assistant cameraman Paul Gonsoulin. "I've been fortunate to work on Desperate Housewives here in Los Angeles for the past couple of years, and the experience of doing an independent movie in China was a drastic change to say the least. It took a little time, but we were able to figure out a workable method of communication. Eric and I learned as many Chinese terms as we could, words like "key light," and things got better as the shoot progressed. The Chinese guys also tried really hard to learn our American terms and ways of doing things. By the time we left China, I was really, really proud of my camera crew. It was hard to say goodbye, because we had all become so close in the three short weeks we were together."

AN AMERICAN IN CHINA was a true "east meets west" collaboration between the writer team of Ron Berrett and Wenxin Yuan. The story is loosely based upon Berrett's first experiences traveling in China, and also on Yuan's experience of watching a crazy American (Berrett) invade her country.

The first time I flew into Shanghai, I was looking out the plane window trying to catch a glimpse of the city lights below as we descended," Berrett says. "I didn't see anything, just blackness, and I actually had the thought - I'm ashamed to admit this now, but I actually thought that maybe there was no electricity in China yet. When we landed I was relieved to find that the reason I couldn't see any lights from the air was due to the thick clouds and humidity. Then as I was driven through the streets of Shanghai to my hotel - and I'm also ashamed to admit this, I found myself surprised that there were traffic signals, with red for stop and green for go just like back home in America. The next morning I took a walk and came upon the Shanghai Olympic stadium, where I found literally a thousand women flag dancing to traditional Chinese music. It was an amazing sight: beautiful, graceful happy people enjoying a simple yet elegant morning activity. This was in stark contrast to the China I had learned about while growing up in America during the cold war. Most of my life, when I thought of China, I pictured a poor, repressed country: people in San Pan hats plowing rice paddiies behind water buffalo, or multitudes of glum, gray faces trudging slowly forward in green army fatigues, or political prisoners being crushed under the red communist thumb in rat-infested cells," says Berrett.

"Years later my wife and I were amazed to find that we shared a similar childhood experience even though we grew up on opposite sides of the world and political spectrum. In elementary school I remember a classroom full of children diving under their desks, rehearsing for the possible air-raid that would come from our communist enemies on the other side of the world. I was amazed when Maggie told me that she had the same experience as a child, only she and her classmates crouched under their desks in Beijing to hide from the imperialist American bombers that her country's leaders were afraid might attack them any day."

Berrett continues, "the more time I spent in China, the more I realized that while there were a lot differences between my country and Maggie's, there was much, much more that we had in common. I began to feel the desire to tell people back home that our perception of China was totally out-dated and wrong. I also wanted to tell them about all the amazing and crazy things I had experienced in that great country. Obviously these thoughts were the genesis for the story I would eventually write with Maggie."

Producer Wenxin (Maggie) Yuan adds "we decided we wanted make a travel film, to sort of take the audience on a trip to present-day China, and not only give them a psuedo-vacation, but also show them that even though there are many differences between our countries and cultures, we all share the same dreams and desires, the same common humanity."

The producers hope that audiences will find AN AMERICAN IN CHINA an enjoyable journey, one that inspires them to follow the path of their own dreams, no matter where on this big, wide world those paths may lead.