In our recent lengthy interview with Mike Christie - director of the brand new Wham! 10 Days in China film - the difficulty of restoring and shaping the archive footage that forms the film’s foundation was explained to us in great detail…
“We always knew these cans of film existed in some classic artist archive warehouse in the middle of nowhere,” Christie told us. “Artists don’t get rid of anything, everything goes into an archive somewhere, so we knew those cans were in there.”
The archive footage in question is drawn from a mountain of film reels, shot by director Lindsay Anderson during his aborted attempt to document the pair’s groundbreaking journey to China in April 1985.
Aside from a performance from Jean-Michel Jarre a few years prior, Wham! were the first western group (and certainly the first western ‘pop’ act) to perform in the heavily censored communist country. Opening doors for many others to follow.
The long-tail impact of the pair’s two shows in Beijing and Ghuangzho would inspire a generation of young Chinese attendees to embark on their own journeys of creative self-discovery…
“Documenting the impact [on China] was the whole point of the film,” Mike told us. “But we didn’t know. It was an exploration. We always knew the Chinese perspective needed telling because it had only been skimmed over.”
For the duo themselves, the trip (and being tailed non-stop by a pre-assembled entourage) became something of an ordeal…
“No one could possibly know what awaited them in China,” Mike explained. “I don't think the band necessarily understood the scale of the entourage that was going. It was well over 100 people, which is insane. They took their families, a documentary crew of 30 odd people, a tour crew, 11 band members, both managers, plus all the journalists.”
All the footage used for Mike's new film is taken from the hours of unused film rushes shot by that original director, with nothing that was used for his version of the film, and the subsequent ‘Foreign Skies’ film that came out shortly after the trip, making the cut.
But dredging up this long-lost footage, restoring it, and editing it into shape took time… and not an inconsiderable amount of patience.
“The first month of production was the first time that these cans had come out of storage,” Mike said. “There was a very long process of restoring this quite old footage physically, then capturing it digitally and remastering it.
“We didn't know what was in the cans… as it worked out Wham! 10 Days in China is made completely from the unseen rushes. There are no clips from the previous two films in it at all. So it's a brand new film. In the interviews we covered off the build-up story and the aftermath, but we didn’t actually have need for footage from the other films.”
But the film reels themselves, sitting in storage for decades, were in something of a state…
“It took seven months from start to finish to transfer, restore and sync all the rushes. One of the technical guys suggested that every minute of footage was an hour's work. So, if you think there are a lot of hours of footage… We were slightly worried,” Mike told us.
“We went to China [to film the interviews] without having seen much, while we were there they were still arriving - drip, drip, drip. The edit started in February, In May we were kind of getting closer to the rough cut, and we were still getting rushes.”
Mike continued: “It was so random - because the footage in these tins was chopped up. They’d literally cut bits of the film out. There was so much stuff that was great, so it was stuck back together with tape, restored and cleaned - then digitised. Then the digital footage has to be polished and restored. So yes, we didn’t use any of the first two documentaries, but the key to it was that it was a proper, in depth, editorial documentary process.”
Made with the full blessing of The George Michael Estate - and with the heavy involvement of Andrew Ridgeley - Christie’s film exposes a lot more than other films have previously shown.
Particularly, there's a pivotal scene in which the young George Michael receives a pre-gig massage - whilst speaking quite candidly to the crew about his perspective on the state oppression he’s witnessed first-hand since being in China.
It’s a striking scene, but at various points, George’s backside is somewhat visible, making for an odd juxtaposition…
“It's a good job George gave us permission to use the footage in the footage, because that would have been a debate otherwise!” Christie tells us.
“The making of this film was kept secret. It’s so different, it’s such a different story. It’s so honest. What was really refreshing was how authentic the George Michael Estate and Andrew allowed us [to be] in making the film. Allowing us to keep a lot of the stuff of George mucking around. [In the massage scene] we had long debates about how long we should keep George's bum on screen. And is it okay that he's playing with cough sweets and doing silly voices? But both were like, ‘That's George.’”
Wham! 10 Days in China is out July 28th. Read our full interview with Mike Christie here
