DIRECTOR DAN LIU

After a few seasons directing on television shows such as “For All Mankind”, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” “Star Trek: Picard”, “NCIS: Los Angeles”, “Shadow and Bone,” and “The Walking Dead”, I was pleasantly surprised when I was approached by our lead actress and producer, the up-and-coming action star Neraida Bega, and producer Mike Chat of 87 North Productions. They had an action comedy concept that was dark with a lot of action potential, but also felt fun, light, and refreshing. As a longtime martial artist always looking to incorporate my experiences to push the boundaries of my storytelling, collaborating with this all-Asian creative team felt like an incredible opportunity to contribute to the continuing push for inclusion, diversity, and female empowerment in our film industry.

Fueled by our female star/producer and writer duo, “The Proposal” started as a simple “gun fight class assignment” from director David Leitch for his next generation stunt team in training. Just to create some choreography. From idea to execution, the 87 North Pro Stunt Class Team went to work. This was also a great opportunity for me to help educate and add value to their tool box as filmmakers. Neraida was part of this process from the very beginning. She brought in our writer Uttera Singh and developed it into a full blown kick ass, empowered, sharp shooting and funny female John Wick dark comedy action short!

What we thought would be a 3-day shoot ended up condensed to a single night due to the availability of the cast and crew, and without any script changes we were determined to get it done and show what we could do. Everyone donated their time, and in the last week of prep, our crew ballooned from 26 to 44 brilliant creatives who came together to make some movie magic! We started filming in the evening, and 16 hours later, we all left the location thanks to a third crew that came in to handle equipment rental and truck drop offs so the rest could get home safely. It was a tremendous effort that I’m extremely proud of and we are looking forward to sharing this short with everyone!