Basketball Training Camp for We Are Champions Transformed Basketball Players into Star Actors

The movie We Are Champions follows students competing in the High School Basketball League (HBL). It is the latest work under the collaboration of Chang Jung-Chi, a Golden Horse Awards’ Best New Director winner, and producer Rachel Chen. It is also a highly anticipated movie about the youths in Taiwan. To promote the movie before it hits the theaters, producer Chen has been taking the cast members (who play basketball players in the movie) to schools around the island for some friendly exhibition games. Invited by the Taichung Film Development Foundation, producer Chen and the cast members came to Youth Senior High School as their last stop. In addition to the exhibition game, they also held a movie seminar with a special guest. Principal Lai Jien-Chen of Youth Senior High School, as a long-time basketball fan, was deeply honored to have the cast members visit the school and wished for more similar activities to be held at Youth Senior High.

The Youth Senior High basketball team, who finished top 8 in HBL, played all four quarters in the friendly exhibition game. Both sides showcased their high level skills in both defense and offense, including sweet jump shots and long passes. The 400 Youth Senior High students in the stadium were screaming non-stop, as if they were back to the HBL championship game. We Are Champions follows two brothers, who play each other in the national championship game on the opposing teams. Fandy Fan (from Bad Boy Symphony) and Berant Zhu (from How to Train Our Dragon) play the two brothers. During the post-game movie seminar, producer invited the special guest – Coach Jia Fan, who was the basketball consultant for the movie, to share some funny stories during the casting and training of the cast members. Producer Chen said that director Chang Jung-Chi, who started his career by making documentaries, likes to cast amateurs in his movies. For We Are Champions, a large audition was held to find good-looking actors with basketball skills. 25 players/actors were selected among the 2,000 candidates island-wide. After 4 months of strict training by Coach Jia Fan, these 25 amateurs were transformed in to the characters you see in the movie.

11 actors who played the players in the movie shared their movie debut experience. Even though most of them did not have much screen time, they still had to pay close attention during the filming. Their favorite moments were when the director yelled, “cut”. Lin Mu-Kai, who graduated from Youth Senior High, said that he was just like everyone else in the audience, listening to people talk on the stage. That is why it felt very special for him to be able to share his story on the stage as an outstanding alumnus. Finally, the actors shared how they had this special chapter in their lives and made bunch of close friends, thanks to basketball. We Are Champions will hit the theaters island-wide on August 23. Make sure you catch this passionate basketball movie of the summer and watch the players fulfill their dreams on the screen.