Working with a legend

I don’t usually get starstruck… but JACKIE CHAN BRO

When I first started out with stunts and acting, I didn’t think that a one-day social media promo shoot would be one of the most significant and memorable gigs in my young career, but here we are! If you haven’t seen the reel we did for Sony’s Karate Kid Legends, check it out! (linked in the above photo)

the story

Back in December, Sony hit me up about doing a promo reel for their new Karate Kid film, and as someone who dabbles in movie martial arts, I very happily obliged. They gave me early access to the first trailer and tabula rasa for the format, which is my favorite way to work because I get to flex my creative muscles. After watching the trailer like 20 times, I decided to just do all of the difficult moves I saw Ben Wang, AJ Baniaga (his double), and Aiden Kennedy (another great tricker/stunt guy) perform, and here’s what I made:

The folks at Sony loved it and it actually performed pretty well with the algorithms, and that was that… or so I thought.

Flash-forward 2 months, the Sony team hit me up for a conference call with Fik-Shun & Elina Meng about putting together a team for a super stylized short-form fight scene with some of the movie cast and shot by the legendary Drex Lee. In classic showbiz fashion, we only had 2 days to organize everything, so I set out getting my team together and squared away with a favorable rate, because that’s what homies do. It was a very hectic weekend of organizing and many many contracts, but we were good to go by monday morning and carpooled over to the set. Once everyone was there, Fik-Shun, Elina, Drex, and I set out to come up with the choreography for the day, making sure to highlight everyone’s strengths and a general camera direction for Drex.

We did a few takes of the choreography (it was a one-shot) until we were satisfied, and then came the big surprise of the day that I had been merely hinting at to my team.

Now

Mind

You,

I knew from the conference call on friday that Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio would also be there in addition to Ben Wang, but didn’t tell my team so that they’d have the experience of these stars just casually walking up and greeting us. Imagine the shock! It was beautiful, I felt like a proud mother on christmas morning.

Everyone was going hard on the choreo, but with the presence of these martial arts cinema gods, we were all ready to go even harder. There was only a little bit left to do with the stars entering at the end of the reel, but the raised energy was palpable and they got it in two takes. We finished up, got that group photo, shook some hands, and that was the day for us!

Now a little personal anecdote of the day: when Jackie first came up to join us, he reviewed the footage of the choreo and pointed out what he liked, including MY BTWIST ROUND ↓

Bruh… Jackie 成龍 Chan, THE superstar of the genre and a veritable household name for basically everyone, took time to point out my move, pat me on the shoulder, and told me, “You’re very good, come train with me in Beijing!”. Son, my heart skipped like six beats, my imposter syndrome was vanquished, and I became complete. You don’t get experiences like that everyday, or even in your whole life. That was a true blessing.

the end

Last week, Sony also invited me to the influencer premiere for the film, to which I brought Alyssa (who was on the choreo team) and we got to flex our very underdeveloped, very atrophied social muscles. We don’t get out much, but we did our best and had a good time with our fellow creatives.

Look at these two nerds lmao

I won’t spoil the film for you, but I will say that this was the most memorable gig in my social media career. I’ve been inspired to train even harder and more responsibly, and work harder at my career and those of my team!