Steven Ma admits to Blunders in SIAC

wenweipo  3/3/2014 ;
tv news transcript

Yesterday Steven Ma and Joyce Tang attended the "Keep Fit Party 2014-Professional Drivers" event organized by the Occupational Safety and Health Council (HK OSHC)*. Steven's new tvb series, Storm in a Cocoon", is presently airing in Hong Kong, and has garnered respectable ratings. Steven hopes the ratings will increase steadily. He disclosed that after the event he needed to go back to TVB City to redo some of his dubbing in SIAC that was recorded in mainland on-location site because of extraneous factors. He jested: "If not, then the audience might spot more errors again."

Talking about blunders appearing in numerous scenes in SIAC, Steven said helplessly: "Aiya, I can't deny it. I saw that scene too. It was filmed in Sun De (mainland on-location site) That boat had a phone number on it, and there's also this one motor bike in the background. Actually, doing the filming preparation we had already noticed them on site. We made a note to avoid getting them into the scene. The crew were to conceal all the phone numbers on all the boats. But when we were shooting a panoramic view, because the crew was so preoccupied with managing the huge crowd present on site to make sure none of them got into the scene that they inadvertently overlooked that one boat's phone numbers did not get concealed with a black cloth. Besides that one blunder, I also noticed another one, that of unconnected scenes. In one scene my right arm is injured but in the next my injury has disappeared and then in the following scene the wound not only reappears but is bleeding to boot. Though they questioned why the staff did not maintain a proper recording of every detail in every scene, I feel that I was also partly responsible. As an actor I too have that responsibility. Maybe there were too many scenes filmed in a day so sometimes I lost track of them. In the future we will do our best to improve on this."

Steven said one of the reasons why the blunders happened may also be because there was only one production assistant in the production troupe overseeing the filming details. He said it would help alleviate the PA's duties if there is another PA to share the duties. He said recently there is indeed a noticeable improvement in TVB's treatment towards its artists. Though the rest period is still not eight hours interval, the work scheduling is now more 'humane'. For instance, if an artist finishes work at 3 am she/he won' t be rescheduled to work at 6 am the same day. So, there's that improvement.

On a different subject, Joyce was asked about her plans to have children in the future. She said to let nature take its course especially since her husband is often away on business trips. (Aren't you worried about his absences in Hong Kong?) She smiled and said: "He's the one worrying about me. We've web cam so we can see other other easily. I won't be a tag-along wife following her husband everywhere he goes."

TN:Can you spot the motor bike in the background in this scene? sm weibo link enlarged pix

Even now when I know where to look, I still find it hard to spot that darn bike. Guess only the sharp eyed nitpickers can spot it. Funny enough, that person who spotted the bike (that could only be identified under a magnifying glass) totally missed seeing the big phone numbers on the boat until another person pointed that out much later after the furor.

Am impressed by Steven's words and him taking responsibility for his character's blunders though they were no fault of his but still, at the end of the day another person's mistakes do affect his series character and do reflect on him. But yeah, TVB should really consider Steven's suggestion on hiring two PAs instead of just having one PA for the whole production troupe, or trained them better to be more efficient in their job. 

*Steven is the ambassador for "Safe Driving and Health Campaign for Commercial Vehicle Drivers"