(up and close with) Dear New Neighbour - a Singapore covid19 short film
Dear New Neighbour came from a conversation with a group of filmmakers, artists and creators who came together in early February to respond to the challenges faced by the filmmaking community in the wake of the pandemic in Singapore. We were asked to create stories that inspire, give courage and help people make sense of the uncertainties of these times. And we had to be quick in turnaround after projects were green lit.
But, then circuit breaker came in Singapore and production was halted for three months.
The Story
I wrote a story over the next two weeks where an old couple who run a food stall are forced to shut their business because of the heightened public scare around coronavirus. The story ended with a schoolteacher, a previously misunderstood figure, who brings his class to eat at the restaurant as a gesture of solidarity to the old couple. It was a good story. But there was a problem. We were running on thin ice with food safety in a story that showcased children eating together in a group. Turns out, we were right and eating food in groups was banned shortly, thus blocking the story forever. But I used the framework and theme of the misunderstood figure. The old couple with the skeptical husband, a wife, and a schoolteacher daughter remained the same and I created a new character to embody the frontline healthcare professional. Thus was born Dear New Neighbour - a more humble, but intimate look into the lives of a family dealing with the pandemic. At the heart of it was a character painted in grey.
Donkey work
Mike Leigh calls pre-production, "donkey work". You have to do a lot planning and preparation to execute a successful shoot. It starts with online research and goes all the way up to post production schedule - all has to be on a drive somewhere. I am not a big fan of doing too much creative planning in this phase because it removes the “play” from the movie-making and is against my creative approach which is slow and deliberate. But I am very happy doing the logistics and getting them out of the way as soon as in the game. This makes everyone, myself included, get into work mode faster. Creative work like storyboarding, script development, dialogue writing and character preparation cannot be rushed and take their own time. Sometimes a two hour session is more productive creatively than weeks of effort in story development. The end of preprod, I need one clear outcome - the movie should be running in my head and in the heads of key people in our team, such as the producer, Ning Lee who doubled up as production manager and the cinematographer, Grace Baey. If the director and the cinematographer are watching the same movie in their head, you are ready to go into production.
Working with the talent
The story was developed during the circuit-breaker in Singapore. The rigours of the project demanded us to be rehearsing, table reading, movement, character development all done from the comforts of our homes. The situation gave a unique challenge to performing artists. They had to learn to collaborate without the physical interaction, open new doors in their minds to compensate the lack of physicality of space. It had its results. We had Kiah Lim Cheng for the lead role of Adam, Peggy Tan playing the wife, Esther Leong as the daughter and a late addition of Fish Chaar as Josh the frontline worker. We came up with dialogue during rehearsals and workshops I conducted during my individual conversations with actors.
We worked on language, dialect and most importantly activity that they can use to illustrate their character on screen. I wanted to mimic the reality of our day to day as much as possible. Cinematic reality is not created from research. It has to be fashioned inside your head first. My actors helped me immensely to make this world authentic. They worked on their backstories and come up with action that gave them the motivation to move plot. They pitched their ideas and I separated grain from the chaff. We had a stretch of two months - enough for us to build a rapport with the characters and dispense with the screenplay on the set, which is what we did. During the shoot, they didn’t ask me much about their motivation or lines. They were critical of their own performances and self-improved their takes.
It was beautiful.
Going to the floor
Some people love being on a film set, some hate it, some don’t have any feelings. For them, it’s just work. I belong to this category. Being on set is the ultimate escape from the world of reality. I haven’t been inside a spaceship, but I know what it’s like. I have been on many sets as a creative lead. I don’t impose many rules. I hire people who are driven by high personal ethic, mental hygiene and are highly proficient. They don’t need to be managed. My job is to make sure we are all looking in the same direction. Films get made on their own. Seriously, they do. The first few minutes in every shoot are the most horrifying for me since I feel my mind preparing for the ride ahead and I hate making decisions during this phase. For example, someone came up to me with the look of one of my actors and I was paralysed. I knew the scene was important and I knew the look sort of didn’t work. But I didn’t know what else to say. My actor came to the rescue. He put his words in my mouth. “I always thought my hair should be washed before this scene.” We made him wash his hair and the look matched my vision. Being a film director is a job that needs common sense as the foremost storytelling tool. Oh, that and a deep connection with the story. Preparation helps you relax and tap into your common sense. If I am energised, my crew is energised. If I am positive, my crew is positive. You can truly appreciate the value of energy and spirit that imbues people banding together for a single purpose.
How we designed the look
Grace Baey, the cinematographer and I started talking about the film when the story first came to me. She had some ideas; I had some ideas. In general, I would let her choose hers because she pitches ideas that are well thought out. She isn’t a loose pitcher so we have a tacit agreement to let her run with what she has in her head. That is the joy of working with someone who matches your vision in their whole being. I am spoilt but I would rather put this energy with my actors than haggle for every last pixel on the screen. I usually sketch the movie that’s running in my head and Grace uses them a lot. It allows her to see my storytelling and identify problems early on. A lot of our work is about problem solving and anticipating errors and trying to block them out. You can never eliminate but you can achieve peace and serenity on set if tough problems are solved before arriving there.
Peace is paramount on a set. Grace and I had extended meetings over zoom and ran over the script multiple times trying to isolate key moments and making sure we have our best possible visual treatment for those moments. During this project, the schedule had to be watertight. We couldn’t afford spillage. We were going for the deep and contrasted look where moments breathe and actors move freely within the shot. I hate to lock my actors to positions. It feels less intuitive to perform in a fixed pattern of action and movement. If actors are reluctant it robs the soul. I told Grace we cannot compromise on that.
Boban James
Photographer
Post Production
The film was shot with a lot of precision and economy. After months of prep, we had a very crystallised version of the story, which was already kind of edited during the shoot. But editing is indispensable and problems in the story material do rear their head in the editing work and are not easily solved sometimes. Editing is a creative challenge, not a technical one. If something didn’t work as a sequence, there is often no recourse but to reshoot or remove. As it often happens editing a fictional story, a snag developed in the narrative logic during the second half of the story and we had to think on our feet to fix the problem with the limited story material. Debasmita, the art director and my creative partner came to the rescue. Her suggestions to string out the action and increase cinematic time for some scenes worked to improve the story and we came up with a very impressive version of the story after three rounds of iteration. But I knew my biggest challenge awaited - one which could wipe out the entire sandcastle if not done well. I started feeling the pinch in the finances and we ran out of funds to hire a good sound designer. I started preparing myself for the idea to do it myself. I had done it before for my documentaries but fiction was a whole new ball game. I wasn’t sure if I had the patience, or the tools to finish the job. I came across a tremendously useful online course on sound design to gear myself with the technology of EQ, Compression, Limiters, Side-chaining and Noise reduction. Sound design is much much more and it is a craft where outcome is always greater the sum of its parts. Sound design took the majority of my thought and time over the next two weeks. It was like taking a deep dive and surfacing at the end of the day to get some sleep before starting the new day from the next page. It was the closest thing to finishing a novel that was cooking in your head for years in a two week sprint.
Marketing and Distribution
Most creatives (including me) have the least idea of how this is to be done. They almost hate the word business. And marketing and release is commerce - not for creators. Their job ends at the delivery of the art. While it’s true in a studio system; it is simply not the case with indie film. As part of my contract with the commissioner, we released the film on social media and promoted it on our own. Its success and failure at this crucial stage was our doing. That’s power. Would I like to outsource this? Yes! But should I remove myself from distribution and release? No! While this is the additional responsibility most filmmakers rather not have, I felt this was another chance to learn filmmaking from the audience and develop the art of interaction with people over social media. During the distribution, I get in touch with my audience and through them, with myself. Every indie filmmaker develops a following and an audience over their career and that audience becomes their primary target while creating their stories. I know each view on my social media page is accounted for, each comment is heartfelt and the viewers know me personally and would love to follow my work out of love and sheer passion for it. They’d happily exchange their regular movie time to watch my movie and would love to talk about it on their own pages. Do they carry a big influence? Sometime, but that’s not even the point. The commercial element of film business sidelines the notion that cinema is a medium to express and artists have no alternative but to do so - despite the inherent challenges in the nature of indie filmmaking.
Every indie filmmaker has to make some big decisions before committing into this line of work and once it’s decided there is no looking back. Your life’s other goals - marriage, children, household - shape around this choice. Over the last twenty years, this self expression has been hijacked by another word - influence. But that’s to no fault of film itself. It’s the fault of human nature and free will.