Author: ujin

INTRODUCTION

I would be remiss for the assignment to not speak about my inspiration for the story.

The theme of this project would be “Home”. How we choose to interpret the word is entirely up our own discretion. There were a few possible approaches I saw going in. One could illustrate their idea of what home is to them, be it a physical space or some sort of interpersonal relationship. Or one could talk about an aspect of home or the sensation of belonging.

Recently, my grandfather passed away at the age of 88 of old age related causes. In the weeks that followed, my family underwent a period of quiet transformation. We learnt a little more about each other and him through the process of sorting out things following his passing. This artist’s statement that I had written might sum how that experience flowed into the creation of this work.

Filmmaker’s Statement

My grandparents until this year of 2019, have all been alive and well aside from  a few age related ailments. With both my maternal and paternal sides of family pushing through life’s difficulties with grit and determination and emerging battered but stronger, they had little to worry about and could live their twilight years in peace.

2 years ago, my Paternal grandfather Lim Hong Loke was diagnosed with early stage dementia. As with the elderly, his condition began to slowly but surely deteriorate. Come March this year, less than a week after celebrating his 92nd birthday, he passed away from pneumonia related complications.

He had lived a long, filled life. He was a good man, my grandfather. Ever silent, ever smiling.

Some say your heaven exists in the minds of the people you leave behind. A life well led, and you will be remembered bathed in golden sun and the scent of the freshest that nature can offer. Live a life of pain in your soul and pain inflicted, and your name will be tainted with anger, resentment and misunderstanding till the day its forgotten. When I think of my grandfather, all I remember is his gentle smile. No words, just an unspeakable softness radiating from his eyes. Is that heaven?

We found his writings, journal entries of dozens of scribbles of whatever he could find. And unsurprisingly, tragically, his hand revealed what his mouth could not. During the Japanese occupation, his own father was taken by the Japanese whilst buying food for him.

My grandfather would spend the rest of his life wondering about the state of his father’s soul, and where his body rests.

The thought, that my grandfather, barely educated in the arts, turned his tremendous lifelong sorrow into words akin to poetry as a natural response with no training, is devastating.

Men of that generation, more so than those of today are taught that stoicism and stalwartness in the face of anguish is salvation. I can not claim to know what that solution truly might be, I will not even attempt to answer my grandfather’s aching queries.

What I will try with this film is to reassure him that if all is for naught, at least his sorrow and name will always be remembered.

His writings

His writings were largely done in the stream of consciousness style. Hastily, maybe absent-mindedly jotted down in the heat of epiphany over the years. This lack of premeditation, haphazard method of jotting down his thoughts lent me an insight to how he might have felt at the time.

With no artistic training, no exposure to the arts and no shoulder to cry on, it would have seemed that this was all my grandfather had to express himself. The loneliness must have been soul-crushing.

I would not hazard to psychoanalyse my own grandfather, but I cannot help but wonder at how quiet he was over the years. Distance and isolation are the wrong descriptors, he simply did not express much aside from gentle warmth and that standard truisms of ‘stay in school’ and ‘study hard.’

We were never very close, no such gregarious relationship between grandfather and grandchildren was shared. And upon closer inspection, this was the same of nearly all father-son relationships in my extended family. This has never bothered me, I simply expected this was the way things were. I just never lent thought to what that might mean until recent years.

 

What I’d like?

I’d like to take a look at the bonds between men in Singaporean Chinese culture. Specifically, those of the bonds made at home, within the immediate family.

There will no presumption of how things should be, or how they may be improved of even if they should be in the first place. All that I will try is show what it looks like from my perspective.

I will say this; others may see repression, blockheaded machismo and isolation, perhaps all those are true. However, I also see restraint, stoicism and sacrifice at the same time. Those are beautiful things, maybe I’d like to tell this story through the lens of those values.

 

PRE-PRODUCTION

Logline

In the year 2019 in Singapore, an old man passes away surrounded by loved ones. His grandson discovers his writings and the family discovers a heartbreaking truth about their great-grandfather from World War 2.

The logline above is the one that I proposed to the class during our pitch session. Gratefully speaking, it was well received. The setup of a grandparent passing is a universally relatable one and the hook of a ‘heartbreaking truth’ about a wartime incident is both evocative and grounded in a very accessible emotional reality.

The Script

I thought of the story structure in these terms:

1. Introduction of the characters and establishing their wants/needs
2. Discovering the writings
3. Their physical journey/ emotional reflection
4. Their epiphanies and cartharthic revelations about the situation

From there I would specify what I aimed to achieve in each scene:

1. Hospital- establishing my characters and allowing the audience to empathise with their journey through the universal shared experience of a loved one’s passing.
2. Grandpa’s house- the aftermath of the experience. and the imposition of the life changing question of ‘How did my ancestor die, and how did it shape my grandfather’s life and by extension- mine?’ or more concisely ‘How do the experiences of my forebears shape my life today?’ 
3. The Car- the characters embark/ prepare for that journey of discovery and start understand the full implications of the question posed.
4. Purvis street- the characters arrive at the physical space that anchors the question and confront its influence on themselves. They each find variations on the same answer.

 

The final iteration of the draft offered little change by way of structure. One crucial change made was the shift of the Grandfather’s voice over from over the Purvis street scene to over the car scene at the suggestion of Yue Han.

This was a vital improvement as the final scene would have been too laden with information for the audience to process properly with the inclusion of the VO. On top of discovering Purvis street alongside the characters, they will have to digest the sudden inclusion of anachronistic characters within a modern setting as well as figure out the relationship these new characters have to the main characters within a short span of time.

Having the VO begin immediately after the writing’s discovery (beginning of car scene) serves a multiplicity of functions:

1. Audience will understand the relation between the disembodied voice and the handwritten note easier.
2. The VO will be overlain over the relatively uneventful car journey which contextualises the purpose of the physical journey’s purpose. This contextualisation of the journey would have happened too late if not for the VO explaining the significance of Purvis Street.
3. The VO is evocative and emotional as is, anchoring those emotions visually with the characters’ reactions to reading the writings the car will emphasise the weight of the text.

This change was then reflected in the final iteration of the script. The final film would deviate from the script in a few key ways which I will elaborate on later.

CASTING

I posted a casting call early on the Casting Call Singapore Facebook page as I knew, the casting for the film will be one of its most challenging aspects.

My key concerns were:

1. Finding older actors that correspond to the age of the grandparent characters convincingly.
2. Finding actors who could play a father, older brother and younger brother trio with the appropriate chemistry and acting ability to convey the emotional nuance that I needed for the various scenes. (This was a very tall order)

The response was surprisingly favourable. There were many responders for the roles of Edward, Landon and Jeffrey.

I would eventually have the opportunity to call down actors Patrick Min, Leonard Teo, Marshall Poh, Te Hao Boon, Daniel Ang and Drake Lim for auditions. 

I would categorise them into the roles that I felt they might be suitable for.

Edward / Landon

Leonard Teo

Marshall Poh

Te Hao Boon

Daniel Ang

I instructed them to read for the hospital scene for both brothers. During the audition process it was important to me that the actors playing the brothers had a convincing chemistry and at the very least, resembled each other. Due to scheduling constraints, it was very difficult to have script reads with the father and sons trio in complete attendance. It would hence fall to me to make intuitive guesses on if the actors made a convincing family on screen while never having met each other before.

It was important to me that the actors could convey the subtlety of hiding grief on camera in their performance, especially for the father.

Jeffrey

Patrick Min

Drake Lim

For the role of Jeffrey, both actors were unfortunately unable to make it for a physical audition. Hence, I requested them send me video auditions.

Here are a few excerpts (please do not propagate):

Drake Lim’s audition

Patrick Min’s audition

As can be gathered from Drake’s performance, he was able to muster a more nuanced performance and I felt he was able to convey grief in the controlled manner that I required. Patrick’s approach was more theatrical and expressed more through the body. 

My director-actor relationship with Drake bears special mention. Upon locking down his availability, 

I knew that Drake was more suited for the role of Jeffrey as that role required more breadth of emotion conveyed through the closeups I was planning for. Serendipitously, Patrick was perfect for a completely different role: that of the great- grandfather.

Up to that point, I had planned for the altercation between the great-grandfather and the Japanese soldiers to take place in an unbroken medium- to- wide shot in telephoto to convey suggest viewing from a distance. For that scene, the emotions are large and hence, the action would have to be too. For that scene, I would entrust to Patrick.

Eventually, virtually none of the younger men seemed suitable either individually or with each other. So I decided to try casting from people I have already known from before. Working with non-actors was not an issue to me, as long as the cast was well suited for the role, smaller problems such as unfamiliarity with on set protocol or receiving direction was a non issue.

I believe casting non actors come with the caveat that they must carry a certain onscreen charisma that is well suited to the story. With sufficient preparation, the lack of actual acting ability can be circumvented with practise and technique.

I decided that my ideal pairing would be Mayle Kor and Leonard Teo. I felt Mayle had a few key characteristics that made him an ideal choice.

1. He spoke Chinese 
2. Fairly tan (more convincing still enlisted NSF)
3. Shorter than Leonard (more convincing younger brother)
4. Had the correct amount of vulnerability to carry the key emotional beats of the script

I would think that my faith in these two paid dividends. They both delivered the naturalistic performances that the story required.

LOCATIONS

There were 5 locations that I would require for the film:

• Hospital
• Grandfather’s house
• Car
• Purvis street
• Altercation with Japanese soldiers location.

Hospital

It was exceedingly difficult to secure a hospital location as the medical institutions around Singapore are historically resistant to allow for film shoots to happen at their premises. 

I had contacted NTU’s Lee Kong Chian medical school to request their Manderlay research campus for use for half a day of filming. Unfortunately, the staff in charge of their facilities were not very accommodating towards my request. 

Similar queries to other institutions were likewise turned down all the way till the last moment. It came to a point where I had to cancel one shoot day the night before. That was a producing challenge indeed.

A major windfall came in the form of Le Yee’s mother who happened to work at a private hospital. I will not mention it by name at her request. Through her, our production was generously afforded a precious few hours to shoot.

Grandfather’s house

This required some digging as well. I found it awfully difficult to find a location that held the same rustic atmosphere that most HDB flats lived in by the older generations had.

Eventually, I got in touch with an actress I had worked with in the past; Loh Heng Joo. Ms. Loh had hired her house out to us for that production years ago, so I thought I might be able to give it a try again. And again, God’s favour found it’s way through. She would play the role of the grandmother and hire her home out to us for the sum of $400.

The price was exorbitant, but I decided that achieving the correct tone for the home was crucial. Besides, there were no other suitable responders for the call for a grandmother aged actress. May as well kill two birds with a fat wad of cash.

Car

The car to be used needed to be a 6-seater for twofold reasons. The characters occupy the driver’s seat and the middle row, the DP would sit shotgun to have the best vantage of all the character’s facial expressions while the sound recordist will occupy the backseats.

The hero vehicle will ultimately double up as our production vehicle. The 6-seater SUV that I chose would have a sunroof which delighted me for lighting purposes. However, this would not be utilised for reasons I will elaborate upon later.

Purvis Street

At Yue Han’s suggestion, I purchased a meal for the cast and crew at one of the restaurants along the street such that we’d be able to use the outside seating area as a sort of staging area for the shoot. This was done without permission, I am reluctant to admit. However our patronage did net the establishment about a $100 so I surmise we might have paid for at least some of the inconvenience.

Fortunately, the street was not a very busy one. The various restaurant goers and small businesses mostly ignored our very sparse crew consisting of myself, the camera on a tripod and Le Yee with the sound kit in a sling bag. With none the wiser, we may have looked like we were just taking photos.

Japanese Soldiers Altercation

During the shoot day, I realised that filming on the main street itself would be a difficult endeavour owing to traffic. Hence, I made a quick jaunt into the back alleys to see if any alternatives may work. Lo and behold, I made an incredible discovery:

That doorway in the scene above is the entrance to the Hainanese Clan Association of Singapore. Seeing that entrance, something clicked in my mind: “My grandparents were of Hainanese stock, this clan association has probably been around for a very long time… might there be a connection somewhere?”

A little bit of Google research reveals that historically, Middle road (Purvis inclusive) has been a Hainanese district. It then hit home that my own great-grandfather was abducted at Purvis Street because he probably lived very close by if not in the street itself.

I was reminded that Purvis was not just a location for this film, it is a real place with a real history that I have ties to.

PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Day 1

 

On day 1, we aimed to cover the Grandfather’s house and Car scene. Unfortunately, we had to overrun as one of our actors was late. As a result, the car scene, which was meant to take place at dusk was shot entirely at night.

This would change the film entirely.

Originally, the entire film was to take place during the day. However, due to the overrun I was forced to make the scene at Purvis street a night one. I do think this ultimately was to the benefit of the film. It provided a more concise reason for the Japanese soldiers to stop the great-grandfather character (for being out after curfew) and it allowed me to capitalise on the street lighting naturally present at night.

 

Day 2

(Images courtesy of Alvin’s Bunker https://www.facebook.com/Syonan.Reflections, Carey Ou https://www.facebook.com/yanjing.ou)

 

 

THE FINAL FILM

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytQOVBXHBPTMXGQuHw7VG4UGAinphCNr/view?usp=sharing

(More incoming, more to reflect upon)