page_title: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: English: Mount Cangyan in Jingxing County, Hebei Province, China.
context_page_description: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film directed by Ang Lee and written by Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus and Kuo Jung Tsai, based on the Chinese novel by Wang Dulu. The film features an international cast of actors of Chinese ethnicity, including Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen.
  A multinational venture, the film was made on a US$17 million budget, and was produced by Asian Union Film & Entertainment, China Film Co-Productions Corporation, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Edko Films, Good Machine International, and Zoom Hunt Productions. With dialogue in Mandarin, subtitled for various markets, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became a surprise international success, grossing $213.5 million worldwide. It grossed US$128 million in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing foreign-language film produced overseas in American history.
  The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2000, and was theatrically released in the United States on December 8.
context_section_description: Although its Academy Award was presented to Taiwan, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was in fact an international co-production between companies in four regions: the Chinese company China Film Co-Production Corporation; the American companies Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Sony Pictures Classics, and Good Machine; the Hong Kong company EDKO Film; and the Taiwanese Zoom Hunt International Productions Company, Ltd; as well as the unspecified United China Vision, and Asia Union Film and Entertainment Ltd., created solely for this film.
  The film was made in Beijing, with location shooting in the Anhui, Hebei, Jiangsu, and Xinjiang provinces of China. The first phase of shooting was in the Gobi Desert where it consistently rained. Director Ang Lee noted, "I didn't take one break in eight months, not even for half a day. I was miserable -- I just didn't have the extra energy to be happy. Near the end, I could hardly breathe. I thought I was about to have a stroke." The stunt work was mostly performed by the actors themselves and Ang Lee stated in an interview that computers were used "only to remove the safety wires that held the actors." "Most of the time you can see their faces," he added, "That's really them in the trees."
  Another compounding issue was the difference between accents of the four lead actors: Chow Yun-fat is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese natively; Michelle Yeoh is from Malaysia and grew up speaking English and Malay so she learned the Mandarin lines phonetically; Chang Chen is from Taiwan and he speaks Mandarin in a Taiwanese accent. Only Zhang Ziyi spoke with a native Mandarin accent that Ang Lee wanted. Chow Yun Fat said, on "the first day [of shooting], I had to do 28 takes just because of the language. That's never happened before in my life."
  The film specifically targeted Western audiences rather than the domestic audiences who were already used to Wuxia films, as a result high quality English subtitles were needed. Ang Lee, who was educated in the West, personally edited the subtitles to ensure they were satisfactory for Western audiences.
caption: Mount Cangyan, including the bridge pictured above, was one of many filming locations.
exif: {}