A simple story about overcoming adversity by understanding one self's strengths.

An Elderly Man crosses paths with a rogue Samurai who challenges him to a duel after discovering the Elderly Man is in possession of an Imperial Sword.

The Elderly Man meets a Sword Master who eventually teaches the old master that he already has what it takes to defeat the Samurai.

The Tea Master faces off with the Samurai and draws upon the mastery of the tea ceremony he has performed thousands of times. The Samurai see the internal mastery and accepts defeat before any blood is shed.

The Tea Master is my version of an old Japanese fable that I had read years ago. There are many versions with different character points of view but I decided to takes us along the Tea Master’s journey and show that even an old master can discover something new about himself.

Since this was a period piece, I wanted to give it a flavour that set it apart from its actual time. I put in aspects of Anime cartoon to give it a slight fantasy feel. The final color treatment had our trees looking purple and the night scenes were shot day for night with a unique post treatment. The action sequence also had hints of Anime with the gore effects and camera moves.

This project was shot on the RED ONE camera owned by my partner Loyd Bateman who was my cinematographer as well as editor and visual effects compositor. Having someone with a firm understanding in those fields helped me achieve as much as I did on the micro budget and short period of time I had.