N221 Historic Building Appraisal Shaw Studio (邵氏片場), Clear Water Bay Road, Sai Kung, N.T. Hong Kong was once the world’s largest film producing centre. The annual Historical output reached 310 in 1963, compared with 271 made in New Delhi, 225 in Interest Tokyo and 155 made by Hollywood film producers. The illustrious film industry gave this tiny city the title of “Hollywood of the East”. Amid this background, on a scenic site in Hong Kong’s Clear Water Bay stood a film giant which created numerous popular films under the company name, Shaw Brothers, from early 1960s until 1980s. The main gate to the complex is distinguished by a prominent signage: SHAW STUDIO and 邵氏片場. This film studio is also valued for its association with Television Broadcasts Ltd (known locally by its initials, ‘TVB’) which remains a dominant force in Hong Kong. Its head man was a media magnate, the late Sir Run Run Shaw (1907-2014) or 邵逸夫 as he is styled in Chinese, who built up his international film empire comparable to any of the large film companies in the US and Europe. Run Run was born to a wealthy textile merchant in Ningbo (寧波), near Shanghai. At 19, he joined his three elder brothers on their pioneering efforts to venture into the cinematographic industry. The brothers started with one cinema, but by the Pacific War, they had their own film studio and opened more than 130 cinemas in Southeast Asia. In 1925, the eldest brother Runje (仁杰) established a silent film studio, Tianyi Film Co (天一影片公司) which evolved into several companies, each more famous than its predecessor. By 1934, a Tianyi studio was set up in 42 Pak Ti Street, Kowloon, to produce local sound films. The Tianyi studio was handed over to the second brother Runde (仁棣) in 1936 and was later renamed Nanyang Film Co (南洋影片公司), becoming Shaw and Sons Co Ltd (邵氏父子公司) in 1950. Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd (邵氏兄弟(香港)有限公 司), established in 1958, is the most famous of the various enterprises of the brothers. In 1957, Run Run made the move to Hong Kong where he took over family film production business from Runde, with an aim to upgrade and expand film production in Hong Kong to feed his cinemas in Southeast Asia and to contend for screen dominance. In quick time he bought an 186,000 sq. m. lot in Clear Water Bay to splash on constructing a world-class film studio, which he ran with his third brother Runme (仁枚). “They chose Hong Kong because it was the only place they had the freedom to make the films they wanted to make,” said Stefan Hammond, author of several books on Hong Kong film. Run Run invited Eric Cumine Associates (甘洺建築師樓) to design the first buildings. Eric Cumine (1905-2002) graduated from the prestigious London Architectural Association School of Architecture and set up a practice in Shanghai. He opened his office in 1 Hong Kong in 1949 and became one of the most celebrated post-war architects while he was practising. From 1958 to 1960, a total of 65,000 sq. m. of land was levelled down for the construction of the film studio, and two sound stages were completed by the end of 1960. By 1961, the administration building, the film store & dubbing, and two more sound stages were operational. The following year saw the completion of staff dormitory, workshops for technical crew, and another two sound stages. The levelling of an additional 200,000 square feet of land began in 1964, and the colour film processing laboratory was completed in 1967. By the decade’s end, the sprawling film studio boasted a total of 10 sound stages and various outdoor sets. It also had resident quarters for film makers which placed it ahead of any other studios anywhere. The 1970s saw the erection of a production department, more offices, and the Shaw Villa (1971) for the reception of VIPs. “Movies are an art, but they are also an industry,” the 59-year-old Run Run said, according to an interview in Life magazine, Asia Edition, published on 14 November 1966. And in fact, Run Run lured large numbers of film talents for his studio, which was run like an assembly line. Every stage of film production, from script preparation to studio shots, was systemized. The studio was equipped with its own comprehensive set of installations so that all high-tech special effects, superimposition, and colour animation were done in house. The site also included staff dormitories and canteens, and a mini-bank was set up in the 1970s, making it a self-contained entity which was essentially a ‘town’ in itself. Thus it was, still is, locally known most famously as Shaw Movie Town (邵氏影城). In the mid-1960s, the studio complex had more than 500 members of resident staff, among them actors, scriptwriters and a crew of technicians including carpenters, plasterers, painters, and electricians. “It was at that studio that each of us lived out our dreams…. Back in those early days, we frequently spent all the twenty-four hour day in our paradise. We had no reason to step outside of the studio campus…. Even when we were not making films, if we did not feel like cooking for ourselves, we could eat out three meals at either one of the two restaurants located at the studio”. Thus said actress Cheng Pei-pei (鄭佩佩) when she reminisced about her movie town days. Run Run also encouraged his staff to partake in extra-curricular activities held inside of the movie town: in the 1960s the huge sound recording auditorium was gaily decorated in Christmas and Chinese New Year Days, when the resident staff such as directors, cameramen, stars and their guests gathered for family-like parties. There were lots of singing, dancing, drinking, eating, and gifts were raffled to the delight of all participants. By the late 1960s, Run Run had risen to the status of film mogul and his movie town helped put Hong Kong film on the world map. Still, because of the need to meet audience demand for more and better films, the studio staff were 2 shooting and editing films around the clock, working 3 shifts of 8 hours each. “World’s busiest film producer,” was how Hong Kong’s English-language daily, The China Mail described Run Run in an exclusive interview published on 9 March 1965. The newspaper reached this conclusion by taking as its criterion the total number of films in active operations on a single day by any producer. By this token, Run Run’s 21 films was a world record, making him the most illustrious film producer. Comparative figures for any individual film producer elsewhere in the world were 16 in Hollywood, 15 in New Delhi, 10 in Tokyo, and 5 in London. The movie town survived and developed by concentrating on both quantity and quality. Throughout the 1960s, it turned out many notable films that could hold their own in the Chinese film market and dominated the Asian Film Festival awards ceremonies: Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture. The period dramas from Chinese classical tales, directed by Li Han-hsiang (李翰祥), won acclaims for aesthetic qualities accomplished entirely within the studio. The Magnificent Concubine (楊貴妃) released in 1962 won the Grand Prix for Best Interior Photography and Colour in the Cannes Film Festival of the year. The Love Eterne (梁山伯與祝英台) (1963) ended up being a smash success, both at home and in Taiwan. The King Hu (胡金銓) classic Come Drink with Me (大醉俠) (1966) and the Chang Cheh (張徹) classic The One-Armed Swordsman (獨臂刀) (1967) inaugurated a new generation of martial-chivalric films in the late 1960s. With so much interest surrounding the Shaw successes in box office, film producers from abroad knew that in the movie town they could find not only spectacular film sets (with walls, palaces, pagodas, streets gracing the landscape of ancient dynasties) but also skilled people and modern equipment essential for sophisticated film work. Among the films screened here were: Three Yellow Cats with Germany; The Goddess Of Mercy with Korea; and The Golden Buddha with the Philippines, all released in 1966; and the British film, The Million Eyes of Su-muru (1967). Curiosity of Asia’s largest film studio was furious, and the 1964 visitors included Robert Wise, a director in Hollywood who twice received Academy Awards as best director; C. K. Yang (楊傳廣), Olympic silver-medal decathlete who got the nickname ‘Asian Iron Man’; and Lady Trench, the wife of Sir David Trench, Hong Kong Governor. When they came to Shaw Studio, they were entertained by Run Run, who used them to bring publicity to his big screen stars by having group photos. Shaw Bros. was the driving force behind Mandarin film business. Due to its widespread influence, Mandarin films edged their way to dominance in the Hong Kong cinema, displacing their Cantonese counterpart to the margin, resulting in a different outlook for the film world. The rising crest of locally produced Mandarin films was due largely to the technical innovation and artistic sophistication displayed by them, often boosted by the theme songs that became 3 hits with the cinema audience. Most of the Mandarin films were made in full colour, but the films produced in Cantonese sound-tracks were usually in black-and-white, and they thus lagged behind in box-office returns. Production of Cantonese films dropped sharply by the decade’s end—from 211 in 1961 to 35 in 1969, and only 1 in 1970.