Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs - The Trilogy

Appendix 2: Interview with Andrew Lau and Alan Mak

Conducted on November 3, 2004, at Base Production Ltd., by Gina Marchetti and Amy Lee for Hong Kong CineMagic with the assistance of Thomas Podvin Reprinted from Hong Kong CineMagic, http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/ page.asp?aid=59&page=0 On Infernal Affairs How did Infernal Affairs first get off the ground? Alan Mak/AM: Around 1998, I saw Face/Off (John Woo, 1997), and I really liked that movie. For John Woo, it is quite difficult to make a movie in Hollywood in his own style. Because Hollywood is based on a producer system, it is difficult for a director to express himself using his own style of filmmaking. In this case, John Woo had the right to the final cut, and it turned out very well. The surgery about changing the face and body, however, was really not believable. So, with that movie as inspiration, I ● Appendix 2 Interview with Andrew Lau and Alan Mak ● 178 APPENDIX 2 began to start to think about a story in which two people swap identities. Infernal Affairs really started from there. In Hong Kong, there are so many movies about undercover cops, but we didn’t have any about a triad member infiltrating the police. Actually, I think it must happen, so Infernal Affairs came out of that idea. Actually, I think all the filmmakers in Hong Kong are influenced by John Woo. Did you conceive of Infernal Affairs primarily as a police story or as an action film? AM: From the beginning, we were being pressured to put more action in the film. During the marketing of the film, for example, I was asked if I could put more action scenes in it. So, I asked them how much more money the film would make if I put in more action, but they couldn’t answer my question. From the beginning, I did want to put another three to four minutes more into the action scenes, but Andrew would not consider it, because he thought the drama is really more attractive to the audience. People always ask how you can find Tony Leung and Andy Lau to act in this movie. It’s not common to see the two of them in the same film. Because Hong Kong movies were going through a bad time, they both wanted to find a good project so that they could cooperate and make a good film. They read the script, and they were attracted to the idea. Having a script before a project comes together is not common in Hong Kong. In this case, it helped quite a bit to have a strong script. How did you come up with the look of the film and the visual effects? Andrew Lau/AL: When I direct a script, because of my background as a cinematographer, the look of the film becomes essential. When I worked on City on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987), the look of the film — lighting, dark images, camera movement — was very different — not the normal style for Hong Kong. I used a lot of green and blue in the color palette — using natural lighting without correction to give it that very distinctive look. For Infernal Affairs , I worked very closely with Christopher Doyle who spent lots of time in the film laboratory working on the color — getting the “color timing” right — so that the colors would look the way I had ● APPENDIX 2 179 wanted them to look. I wanted to design all the lighting, but I didn’t want to have to fiddle with the lights a lot on location. I worked with the art directors on the lighting. For example, at the police station, we wanted to use fluorescent light. I controlled the on-location lighting design, but I still needed to work on the look of the film in post-production. On location, we were so busy that I wanted to avoid the problem of adjusting the lights, so Christopher Doyle had a lot to do at the lab. He’s good at lab work. He’s patient, and I’m not patient with the lab. A lot of people asked why I would hire Christopher Doyle, since I’m an accomplished cinematographer, but he really helped with the post-production to create the look I wanted for Infernal Affairs. I trusted him to do it. Could you talk about the soundtrack and how you chose the...