How Wong Kar-Wai Visualises Time: Chungking Express

INTRODUCTION

Right from the get go Chungking Express throws us into a frenzied spiral of blurred motion as time chaotically rushes by in bursts of speed.

Only to later cut to this shot, which has the opposite effect of suspending time, drawing it out, elongating it, as the outside world flies past while the two characters barely move at all.

Perhaps surprisingly, both of these moments which play with our perception of time in different ways, were actually filmed using the exact same camera and editing technique. So, let's use this video to unpack how this can be done, and what effect it has on how we emotionally perceive the characters and action in Chungking Express.  

TWO STORIES

Chungking Express is like a mirror. It splits the film in two, with two sets of characters and plots ,which each follow the same template, with each part mainly shot by a different cinematographer. Both characters are policemen in Hong Kong. Both are in the aftermath of a breakup.

However, these two sides of the same coin unfold slightly differently based on the divergences in the nature of each character.

The first policeman is an extroverted, outgoing, overtly emotional character, who deals with the breakup by calling everyone he knows - trying to dowse his heartbreak by seeking out the company of people.

Whereas the second cop is more introverted, stuck in his routine, and insular. He deals with his breakup by distancing himself from those around him.

With this in mind, it makes sense why Wong Kar-Wai may want to present how the more fiery first cop perceives time in more of a frenzied, sped up, manic way. Whereas, the second cop’s more inward facing solitude slows time down to a crawl.

To manipulate time and speed, the director and his cinematographers, Andrew Lau during the first part of the story and Christopher Doyle during the second part, used the same camera technique of shooting different frame rates and the editing technique of step printing.

But, before we talk about how they technically did this, it may be useful to examine where this influence may have come from.

FRENCH NEW WAVE INSPIRATION

“The thing that you should understand about Wong Kar-Wai’s style and what makes it different from the majority of films coming out of Hong Kong is almost all the Hong Kong films are either wild, crazy comedies, wild, crazy fantasy films, and then what’s become the John Woo, Ringo Lam action films. He’s also taking a cue from the French New Wave films. In particular, Godard is his man.” - Quentin Tarantino,         

French New Wave filmmakers, like Godard, took genre films and subverted them, deconstructing and experimenting with the very form of cinema. One convention that he played with in a film called Every Man For Himself, was that of time and motion.

STEP PRINTING

Normally films are shot at around 24 frames per second. In other words the camera captures 24 individual pictures every second that it is rolling. When these 24 frames are played back in 1 second, we get a normal feeling of motion. 

If the filmmaker wants a slow motion effect, they can shoot a fast frame rate on the camera, such as 48 frames per second. When these 48 frames are played back at 24 frames, they will play for 2 seconds, rather than 1 second - thus giving a slow motion effect.    

When Godard wanted to slow time down, rather than using the traditional method of shooting a higher frame rate and playing it back at 24 frames, he instead shot at 24 frames per second and used a technique called step printing to artificially and jerkily slow down time.

Step printing reproduces multiple copies or duplicates of a frame. For example, if you took 24 frames of film and printed each frame twice, you’ll end up with 48 frames. When this is played back, it will slow down motion, in the same way that shooting with a higher frame rate would.

Visually however these look different. Because step printing is basically doing a bunch of fast freeze frames, it gives a strange stuttering effect to motion.

This step printing technique later became popular especially in Kong Kong action films which were shot around the time. Allowing them to get a slow motion effect from footage shot at 24FPS, without needing to pay twice as much for film stock when shooting 48FPS. 

Now that this analogue technology of physically printing extra frames of film is obsolete, filmmakers can achieve the same effect by changing the playback speed of the footage in editing software.

STORY ONE

Step printing gave Wong Kar-Wai a way to slow down motion with a stutter, but what if, like in the first part of Chungking Express, he wanted time to instead pass at a chaotic, crazy, blurred pace. Visually represent a feeling of adrenaline in an action sequence or visually exaggerate how a chaotic character perceives life.

They could do this by slowing down the frame rate of the camera. Andrew Lau shot these sequences at only 6 frames per second. Slowing down the frame rate meant that the camera’s shutter stayed open for longer - approximately 1/12th of a second. This longer exposure meant more light was let in and that there would be more motion blur.

Later, they could then use the step printer to print each frame four times to arrive at a playback speed of 24 frames per second.

If you scrub through these scenes frame by frame, you can see that each shot holds on a freeze frame for 4 frames, before moving onto the next image.

This same technique can also be done with modern digital cameras, by shooting with a lower frame rate setting, like 6FPS. You can then either shoot with a 180 degree shutter angle which will automatically adjust how long the shutter stays open for, or you can set the shutter speed to double your frame rate. So in this case double 6FPS is a shutter speed of 1/12. 

Later, once you pull the footage into editing software, you can decrease the playback speed to account for the slower frame rate. A playback speed of 24FPS divided by your shooting speed of 6FPS equals 4. In other words to get back to normal speed you need to step print each frame 4 times or slow your footage down in editing software by 1/4th or 25%. 

This formula can be manipulated based on the frame rate you want to shoot at. If you shoot at 8FPS, you can set your shutter speed on the camera to double that at 1/16. Then in the edit, divide your playback speed of 24FPS by your shooting speed of 8FPS which equals 3. This means you need to print each frame 3 times, or slow down your footage by 1/3rd or 33.3%

Shooting at a low frame rate creates a lot of motion blur - especially if people or objects move through the frame at a high speed, or if the camera itself moves around a lot. 

It’s the handheld camera moves used by Lau that makes these sequences with the first cop feel much more chaotic, blurred and sped up.

Even when they are shooting at a regular frame rate, a bunch of other cinematic techniques also contribute to the chaos. Chungking Express uses wide angle lenses that distort the face when up close to characters. 

This is a technique they’d push even further on the next film they’d shoot, Fallen Angels, which was shot with an ultra wide-angle lens.

The camera is almost always moving and is for the most part operated handheld on the shoulder to give it more shake. 

They will often start the shot on an object and then rapidly pan or tilt off it onto the subject, using these as cutting points to inject more motion and energy into scenes. He also uses a combination of counter moves, where he’ll move in the opposite direction to the character to speed up the motion, or directly track with the motion of the characters.

Quick cuts are made to tight insert close ups, which are sometimes even moving. 

And, even if they do choose to move the camera further away from characters and shoot with longer telephoto lenses, they’ll still make the image feel busy and dirty by shooting through lots of foreground that blocks the frame.

Throughout Chungking Express, a lot of different, mixed light sources in different colours and temperatures are used, many of which are practicals: such as from a fish tank or cool overhead fluorescent tubes.

STORY TWO

As we transition from the intensity of the first story to the second set of characters who either monotonously wait around for their shift to end or deal with a breakup through solitude and stillness, the filmmaking itself adjusts to the pace of the characters.

Stylistically, many of the same camera techniques, such as using wide angle lenses handheld, lighting with colour and shooting with telephoto lenses through foreground, carry through to this second story. However, the intensity of the handheld moves and the frequency of the cuts made in the edit slows down. 

This differentiates how the pacing of time is perceived between the two stories. With the first feeling faster, and the second feeling slower.

The second story also forgoes the manic, handheld, 6 frames per second technique which was so widely used in the first part.

However, there are three moments in the second half that use step printing, but with a very different effect.

Instead of shooting handheld, they lock the camera off on a tripod, and block the actors in the frame so that they barely move, or if they do, they deliberately slow their movements down to a snail’s pace. 

They shot this at 8 frames per second. When each of these frames is later step printed 3 times in the edit, it makes it feel like the characters are moving in slow motion, suspended, while the world around them flies by.

There’s one final interesting use of this technique. This shot starts being filmed and played back at regular speed at 24FPS, however at the end of the shot, Wong Kar-Wai step prints the final few frames, duplicating each frame three times. This gives the impression of time slowing down during the shot. 

The following shot is then also step printed and slowed down. This quite effectively visually represents Faye Wong’s boredom as she waits out her shift.

CONCLUSION

Wong Kar-Wai’s work shows that, just as in the French New Wave, the rules of cinema are made to be broken. Throughout his movies he’s always quite overtly shown that time, and how it is perceived, is a core theme in his work.

It makes sense then that he and his DPs like to play with the very speed at which life itself is captured by the camera.