Welcome to the world of Formosa Betrayed!

Hi Everyone --

My name is Adam Kane, I'm the Director and one of the Producers of the new political thriller FORMOSA BETRAYED.

I'm going to be posting a daily blog to tell you all about the making of the movie from when I came aboard the project in January of 2008 all the way through the shooting of the movie and then through the post production process where we edited the film together, wrote music, and completed our special effects (yes, believe it or not there are few of those in the movie!).

First, a little background on me: I went to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where I discovered and fell in love with Cinematography. After graduating, I went on to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles where I started to shoot small music videos and commercials, and eventually shot my first professional feature film in my final year of school. I went on to be the Cinematographer on many feature films and tv shows including THE BOONDOCK SAINTS, RESURRECTING THE CHAMP, SKINWALKERS, THE MAN, "THE WEST WING", "GREY'S ANATOMY", and "HEROES". In 2004 I decided to move into Directing and Producing -- I started with a short called THE FIX, which won a bunch of awards on the festival circuit and eventually got me an opportunity to direct an episode of "HEROES" during it's first award winning season. From there, things took off for me and I was lucky enough to become the Director/Producer on "PUSHING DAISIES", a show that to this day remains close to my heart.

Unfortunately, after only producing 8 episodes of Daisies, we in Hollywood were affected by the Writer's Guild of America's labor strike action in November of 2007 and all production eventually ground to a halt. Those of us in producing jobs were out of work, and I found myself with too much time on my hands (always a bad sign!).

During Christmas of 2007, I was thinking again about the script for FORMOSA BETRAYED, which I had read several drafts of during the previous 2 years. Dave Cluck, one of the producers on the project, had been slipping me copies as it was being rewritten; he wanted some outside feedback on the script ( I was not on the project at that point; they had hired 2 different Directors during their development process on the screenplay and for one reason or another neither had worked out).

I woke up one morning during the holidays with a realization -- what the script needed, in my opinion, was an identification for Westerners with the Taiwanese. The previous drafts had been missing this emotional thread to fuse the audience's experience of watching the movie with the characters. I thought of political thrillers I admired, like THE KILLING FIELDS and THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY -- both tour de forces in filmmaking; both were films that forever shaped the way I looked at movies -- and knew without that element of humanity it would be almost impossible for the audience to identify with the plight of the Taiwanese.

I now knew that I had to Direct this movie. It's story had found it's way into my heart. I was so excited about the possibility...

I immediately called Dave and he arranged a meeting with Will Tiao, the project's originator. Will came up with the story and raised the financing to make the movie. We all sat down 2 weeks later and talked for hours; we talked tone, character, and story. We spoke about the way American audiences might perceive the film differently from Asian audiences, and why that was important. We talked about the history of Taiwan since WWII, and why putting an element of that history into the movie was necessary to help frame the story for the viewer. We spoke about my central idea; to create a Taiwanese character, Ming, who would represent the voice of the people and give Westerners a portal into the cultural concerns and values of the growing masses who believed in and wanted the island's independence from mainland China. 5-6 hours later we all agreed to work together.

What transpired next became one of the most incredible journeys of my life -- stay tuned!

Adam