Gene Luen Yang’s beloved mix of coming-of-age themes with magical adventure finally makes its way to the screen with American Born Chinese. The Disney+ series centers on teenager Jin Wang, who finds himself pulled into the fight to prevent an uprising to bring down Heaven. He teams up with the son of the legendary Sun Wukong, otherwise known as the Monkey King, and the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin.
Ben Wang leads the ensemble cast of American Born Chinese alongside Yeo Yann Yann, Chin Han, Ke Huy Quan, Jimmy Liu, Sydney Taylor, Daniel Wu, Michelle Yeoh, Leonard Wu, and Ronny Chieng. Tapping into the graphic novel’s themes of racial identity through a timely modern lens and pairing it with powerful performances and fantastical action, the series is an entertaining ride for young and older audiences alike.
In honor of the show’s acclaimed premiere on Disney+, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with VFX Supervisor Kaitlyn Yang to discuss American Born Chinese, the importance of her position in establishing better diversity in the industry, working with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings‘ Destin Daniel Cretton, and more.
Kaitlyn Yang on American Born Chinese
Screen Rant: I watched American Born Chinese, and it was just wonderful. It’s heartwarming, it’s funny, it’s action-packed, it’s great. You have worked on VFX for so many different things, how were you approached to be the VFX supervisor for this show?
Kaitlyn Yang: There’s not a whole ton of diversity in VFX, and it’s not an area of highlight, or promotive importance or anything. I saw a stat that someone told me, right before the pandemic, was that there were, I think, two overall Asian-American, especially Chinese-American, woman Visual Effects Supervisors in the world, which is a very sad statistic. I had to look it up what constitutes being an endangered species, you have to be in the 75 digits. (Chuckles) So, I knew that this series was coming about, and I had met Melvin Marr a long time ago when he was still doing Speechless, so I had hoped to work on it.
When I got the call, and just to (see) so many incredible people, the cast and crew, on this project, it kind of felt like you won the Hollywood lottery a little bit. I was like, “Oh, I get do work on this, this is amazing!” Especially because it’s so dear to me, I had watched the the ’80s version on TV, that was my afternoon show of choice when I was in elementary school. So, I had really fond memories of it, and it has been an incredible journey bringing the story and the look and feel up to speed, to modern day, and introducing it to this audience in the West.
The show brings so much diversity, both in front of and behind the camera, in a way that we are starting to finally see with things like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. How did you go about ensuring that you brought as much authenticity to the visual effects as the cast did to their performances and the writers did to the scripts?
Kaitlyn Yang: I think our writers knocked it out of the park, I was meeting with a few of them a couple of days ago, and I was saying to them I truly believe there was an old-timey sitcom named Beyond Repair, and all the racist things were happening, and now it’s coming back to light, that’s so believable. First and foremost, that starts on a page — solidarity with the WGA, everything they’re fighting on, there’s no way any sort of AI can kind of bring up that kind of nuance, and spin it in a way that is so captivating.
For me, going into this project, I’d say it was pure fun, because most of the time when I get a script, I was like, “Okay, I have to be on, it’s work time. Let me read the script, let me process it, let me figure out what is simila, where you can go, What’s kind of the the X factor that I can add in there. Let me watch a whole bunch of things.” For this one, I was like, “I’ve already seen it. I really enjoyed seeing it, so I’m seeing it again, just for the pure fun of it.” In terms of visual effects, and this is something that I do since I started my career back in 2007 — and I can’t specifically recall which one of my professors or mentors taught me this — but visual effects, you’re really just capturing life.
You’re not making anything out of it, you’re studying light, you’re studying composition, you’re studying movement, how can you pack in as much trickery to the eye as you can in 24 frames a second, however much you can do that. So, just from the very beginning, my methodology has always been, “Well, what is one thing that actually can happen for real, that can actually happen in real life, that can serve as the jumping off point to any other creative endeavor, and any other twists and turns I want to add to it?” So, specifically for the Ruyi Jingu Bang, which is the Monkey King’s staff, it’s a weapon of choice, it’s a staff, so every time it hits, I wanted there to be some sort of a lurking spark.
My mind directly went into, “What do welders see? What happens if you hit something equally as hot with another thing just at the right temperature at just the right speed? What kind of embers would trail off of that?” So, it’s always thinking about the material, right? If we’re all the Monkey King gods, we had to go get a staff, where would that come from? Kind of just filling in as much of the backstory as much as any department does, especially for costume, and especially for the actors to try to kind of solidify themselves in this point in time, knowing there’s some before, knowing there’s an after. So there’s tons of research done just on material, like what actually exists on Earth, what is similar, what can I emulate, what can we mix and bash together to create a different look?
For episode 4, we looked at a lot of Chinese paintings of what does heaven look like, because it’s not supposed to be a hyper realistic heaven. It’s supposed to be very dreamy, you’re kind of going back in time, you’re setting them up to go into this very fancy party, the environment is not something that should catch your eye, but really just kind of provide the setting in which all the fascinating or rich dialogues can take place. We looked into watercolor paintings, how can we translate that into the CG world? Would the clouds move, how fast would they move, do they have specific shapes, are they kind of just very ethereal?
With the ground fog, that was one of the ideas that we decided to add to our version, because every iteration, there’s tons of ground fog, whenever you get into this kind of Heavenscape, which was so fun to shoot. But it was also very freezing, because you had to have a certain temperature for the fog to maintain low and kind of give that ambiance. For episode 8, it’s kind of the pinnacle moment where the portal between Heaven and Earth opens up.
First of all, that won’t happen in real life, but if it did, what layer of Earth are we hitting? Are we hitting the magma layer? Are there any other sedimentary rocks? What would that look like, would they shake the ground, how would the ground crack in the way? Is there a YouTube video of a crater landing or something? So, kind of doing a lot of backend research of grounding things that could happen, that have happened, that’s adjacent to the effect that we want to create, and use that as our baseline starting point.
There is such a wonderful balance of realism and magic that flows throughout the show, even in things as small as the staff hits. Having been a fan and being really excited about working on this project, when you got the scripts, which scene were you most excited to help put together?
Kaitlyn Yang: I would say the opening for episode 1, that was so exciting. I was reading and I was marking up and I was taking so many notes, and I’m like, “Man, I’m doodling on the bottom of pg. 1, this is gonna be a fun puzzle to put together.” I, like so many immigrant kids, grew up on Hong Kong action movies, right? Kung Fu. I actually grew up in a town in China called Zhengzhou, and we are known for two things: we’re the birthplace of kung fu, and that’s also where they make the iPhones now, that’s where the Foxconn factories are located.
Kung Fu has been this common denominator for so many things that I absorbed unknowingly as a kid, and I think what makes American Born Chinese fun is, kind of like you said, there’s an element of magic, what I like to call editorial magic. It’s very deliberate, it’s crafted, but hopefully with all the deliberate efforts that we put in, it does feel very natural and very fitting in all the spaces. Because the best way for magic to do its thing is to drive the story forward, it kind of glues the tendons of taking one scene from the other. The thing that was really the most exciting, aside from the opener with Sun Wukong doing not all of his 72 transformations — knock on wood, if we get more seasons, I would love to keep transforming him into all the things.
But I was really looking forward to seeing the modern day Guanyin played by the lovely Michelle Yeoh. Guanyin is a huge figure, not only in the Chinese literature, but kind of just in this Chinese deity realm. I have tons of friends who have a statue of Guanyin on their mantle as you would with Buddha, or with Jesus, or whatever you believe in. So, she plays a large, ethereal force within the Chinese cultuel, and so it was quite daunting to figure out what kind of magic Guanyin would have. That also kind of encapsulates all of the qualities of her character, but also in a way that’s fitting within the scene. At the beginning of the pandemic, I co-founded a coalition called 1IN4, and we’re made up of disabled creatives and filmmakers in working in Hollywood.
What I learned from that, through disabilities that are different than my own, is those who are neurodiverse, or who are autistic. One of the common graphics to show solidarity and support and allyship is a kaleidoscope, because we can all exist in all different ways, shapes and form. One way you look at it might not be how someone else is looking at it, through a different lens, off at different angles. So that was the look of Guanyin, of her being the Goddess of Mercy, always being compassionate. That was the graphic that led to her final ethereal magic that we needed a beat in the story for her to have a calming feel when everything else is on fire.
And you can’t find that any better than Michelle Yeoh, she always just fully embodies the writing and the visual effects. It’s a perfect marriage.
Kaitlyn Yang: I want to give a shout out to our costume department — oh, my goodness — led by Joy Cretton, and Jose Ramos. The costumes were incredible. If you get a chance to really pause on a few frames, especially in episode 4 in the Heaven scene, they were phenomenal, oh, my goodness, looked incredible.
On the flip side, what was the scene you would say was the most — I don’t want to say daunting — but when you knew you had to tackle it, you were like, “Okay, this is gonna be a tough one, but I’m up for the challenge”?
Kaitlyn Yang: That one is probably the ending of episode 8, of the portal and Heaven and Earth, and what that will all entail. The most challenging side of that is the boundaries within the story is that we’re at a high school soccer game, and as someone who grew up in the Midwest, those games are a big deal. That’s what you did on Friday nights, because there weren’t anything else going on. It was really a gathering of the community, especially for the students bringing their family, bringing their other friends, and so forth.
Before the huge battle takes place, the starting point is the beginning of a play that we’re seeing the kids put on, kind of as a pre-game show. So, really finding magic that is covering both spectrums, has to be grand enough for it to be the portal between Heaven and Earth, but also believable enough that a student production could put this on. What was so fun to work on that scene was our incredible choreography led by Ping Chong. It’s so fun, it’s martial arts, you’re fighting in the sky, you’re kicking things around, you’re trying to grab the staff to stop the opening.
It’s so heightened in every single way, you have your audience watching in the background, and there’s a dialogue of like, “Oh, how are they flying?” And the joke was like, “Oh, one of their parents is really rich.” (Laughs) That was kind of this hilarious comedic relief, as we’re still kicking and fighting around. But it’s really kind of finding that balance of, “Okay, these are low lights we have to work with, it’s the stadium lights, that’s it. What colors will go complimentary in this way.” We’re not going to be able to do the full-on Avengers fight, the ground shaking is because the audience is kind of sitting there.
So, it’s a constant push and pull between the fantastical and the realism, and just try to find the best balance that we could. Destin Cretton, he was very clear of the vision that he originally had that he would like us to build upon, and our incredible creative partners at Double Negative. We went through a few look developments and iterations to kind of get the tone and the feelings. My starting off research for that, I found this installation by an indie artist, I think it’s titled “Ground Electricity,” what would happen if electricity was solidified, and what would that look like if they’re coming out from the dirt?
That was my initial thinking of how would the light emit, and what’s the radius of the light emission, would it be this vibrating, tangible kind of thing, and can music help us really drive that, kind of give us that low hum that you hear? Yeah, that was probably the most challenging one.
You mentioned Destin, and he worked on a few of the episodes in the director’s chair for this series. He’s just coming off of Shang-Chi, and building on that fantastical mix of magic and grounded realism he showed there. What was that like working alongside him for some of the really vital episodes in the series?
Kaitlyn Yang: Yeah, before Shang-Chi, Destin really showed his mastery of the craft in how he could bring out different emotions, especially Short Term 12, which is a film that I love. I think having gone through Shang-Chi, the fruits of his labor that were able to enjoy was he had an incredible pipeline of what the effects could look like at certain stages. For example, for our initial stage, it’s a rough, we’re really just adding something in there to help the editors with the timing, any of this can change, but it’s really hard to cut together a staff thing without having the beats and knowing like, “How long do we get the embers to fall off before it cuts to the next scene?”
With episode 8, “How long do you give the opening of the portal and all that?” So, we did the initial round of temp, knowing that, again, this is just the first version, the end version might not look anything like this. He was really down for us to have our first creative stabs at it with the few kind of guidance (points) and directive work that he gave us to play with. Then, it was really honing it in, because he had such an extensive run with Shang-Chi, he understood we have to pre-vis this, this version, we’re all going to be seeing a grayscale, we just had to really figure out the composition before we could move on to the next stage.
Then, even before we get to that, sometimes it’s like, “Hey, that might take a little bit for the CG team to give us something that’s kind of floating in the scene, let’s start with pre-vis, let’s start with look-dev, what other kind of imageries can we pull that are in line with where you’re thinking, where it’s adjacent to your ideas that we can still build off of?” Because he was so comfortable working through all of that on Shang-Chi, this one was just really fun, because we already kind of established the groundwork, and now it’s really building on top of it.
About American Born Chinese
Based on Gene Luen Yang’s groundbreaking graphic novel that chronicles the trials and tribulations of a regular American teenager whose life is forever changed when he befriends the son of a mythological god. This is the story of a young man’s battle for his own identity, told through family, comedy, and action-packed Kung-Fu.
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American Born Chinese season 1 is now streaming on Disney+.