HopkinsCinemAddicts

Last Production Diary (Hee Won)

         I received an email from John on Thursday saying that our film was here. I stared into the word “came back” for a while and shut my laptop and went to sleep. The next morning, I checked my email to see if its still there and (un)fortunately it was.

         I was waiting for John at the center, and when he entered the room I squeaked “NO!!!!!!” I don’t remember exactly why I said no but that was the only thing that popped into my mind. I was so excited to see it, but at the same time so terrified that I wished I didn’t have to see it. The box came with the film negatives and a hard drive.

    My heart was actually pounding when I opened the box. I had no idea what I was going to see. My only hope was to at least I could see something when I opened the files. Although I had experience from freaking out excessively over film during my classes last semester, I still was freaking out. Very nervous and paranoid, I messaged Sue saying that our film was here, sending her a photo of the box and its contents so that she would freak out with me.

         Sue and I weren’t ready to watch it. The whole day, I walked around campus hugging the box that contained our film. We met up in the library after her class and decided that we shouldn’t watch the film because we are not mentally prepared. Sue was tired and caught up in work and I wasn’t mentally strong enough to see it by myself. So, we promised we would see it on Sunday.

         Sunday came and we were at the DMC with the orange Lacie hard drive connected to a Mac. We opened the 45Gigabyte file labeled “JHU Hee Won Han” and stared at it for a minute. We took a deep breath, looked at each other nervously, and hit the play button.

         After 5 seconds of darkness, an image appeared on screen and we screamed “yay,” the fact that there was something on the file at all was a huge relief to us. We watched our clip with some hushed commentary for 36 minutes. When we finished, we hugged and agreed that we were really proud of what we were able to do. Some of the shots of the cherry blossoms were beautiful. All the chaos we went through to get the footage was so worth it. We watched the scenes on repeat, admiring how beautiful the cherry blossoms were. There were definitely some shots that we were not happy with because of the low light inside the house, but it wasn’t horrible. We could definitely fix some of them in post.

         After looking at our 16mm footage, we looked at the footage that we shot on digital. The train scenes, which I was most worried about were pretty decent. I was worried about the color temperature throughout the entire shoot on the train, but it looked fine. Some of the shots were really nicely lit and overall we were happy with what we had.  We went back to the clips and exclaim things like ‘hell yeah, that lighting was on point” “I love this framing so much!!” “What a great line!!” We were having so much fun seeing what we had made.

         It was a really good moment for us. Although we are far from being done since we have SO much work to do in post, we are starting the next phase of our film with good material and happy mindset. Sue and I went out for a drink to celebrate and talked about everything that went wrong during our shoot. It was nice because we could actually laugh about it now.

         I came back to my house and sat in front of my computer and thought about everything that Sue and I went through to create this film. It started off as a conversation, then became a script and now its actually a film. Because Sue and I were the only ones really invested in making this happen, we had to put so much work into it. From pre-production to production and even looking forward to post, we’ve done so much and have a lot to do. To be very honest, most of the process was difficult and stressful. So many things fell through and went wrong that I can’t even count them all. However, there were some really breathtaking moments. There were moments so great that I forgot about all of the difficulties.

         Overall, I’m just proud of myself and Sue, and I feel very fortunate that I had so much support from people around me. My crew—especially Jack Cullinane and Lydia Milano—were so amazing and I can’t thank them enough for everything they have done. John was helpful in every way possible, and my actor was simply marvelous. But most of all, I thank my co-director Sue who was with me every step along the way and kept me sane at the most insane times. I would not have the started project if were not for her, and I would not have been able to complete it without her at my side all times. I feel blessed to have been able to come this far with the help of so many great people.

         Although it sounds like I’m done, I’m really not. I have so much more to do. Our goal is to finish the film before I graduate and screen it sometime next semester. I had a lot of fun writing this production diary, it really helped me organize my thoughts, about what happened and where to go next. I hope this was interesting to read, or at least fun to read about my painful stories! This will be my last production diary, and lastly I want to thank Helena Chung for reading all of my posts before I submit and giving me the most helpful feedback. 

Production Diary #6 (Hee Won)

         I am writing this post on April 20th, two days after we finished shooting. From the 15th to 18th I experienced every spectrum emotion possible, ranging from exuberance to devastation. Although I cannot feel my shoulders from carrying so much equipment over the weekend, and I have 15 bruises across my four limbs from my carelessness in navigating the set, I still have not fully realized that I am done shooting the film. With no exaggeration, these three days were some of the most panic-inducing, stressful, hectic days of my Hopkins life. It was hard. There is no other way to put it, but I think I enjoyed it. I think.

         The chaos started on Friday, picking up equipment from three different locations: the DMC, Gilman 35, and the Film Center. Because not everything could fit in our small four seat car that we borrowed from a friend, we had to make multiple trips just to have everything in one location. After getting all the equipment sorted out, we rushed to Giant and bought all the food that we need for the three-day shoot. Then, I picked up the actors while Sue unloaded everything and delivered the car back to her friend. I ran around all of Charles Village collecting props that I reserved from various people. I walked a total of 13000 steps from 5pm to 11:59 pm. When we were done with everything, it was 12:30 am and we had to wake up at 5am to transport all the equipment to the location and start production design. 

        The first morning was the busiest time of the whole day. Sue had to  drive from Homewood to our location in Hamden many times to transport the crew and extras. I had to bring all the equipment to the set and start production design. In the midst of all that, actors started to arrive and and I had to greet them and give them instructions and answer their questions. We started shooting at 9:30am and ended at about 6pm which was 30 minutes over our planned schedule. I did not think that so many things could happen in the 9 hours of time that we had. There wasn’t anything that was extremely horrifying but there were some very stressful situations. The cat scene was almost impossible to shoot, because the cat got annoyed at everyone on set, lighting was tricky with very little daylight coming into the house, and we had some trouble with equipment and props. Because there was such low light, we ended up having to shoot some of our scenes in digital with the Canon C300. After the shoot, we sent everyone home and we stayed behind at the location until 9pm to return the house to its original state. When we prepared everything for our Sunday shoot, it was 11pm.

         Our Sunday shoot began in Penn Station at 10am. We were worried because we really hadn’t gotten the permission we needed to shoot inside the station. Because we did not want to be noticed by the Amtrak police, we went into the station with minimum crew, and acted as if we were just a student group. We managed to get the scene of our character getting in to the ticket line without being noticed but we definitely got attention from the Penn station employees when we were shooting a scene of her sitting on one of the benches inside: one of the guys at the front desk stood up with his arms crossed and gave us a stern look. We all left the station hurriedly before getting caught and finished our Penn station scene in exactly 20 minutes. After this scene, we relocated and shot multiple tracking shots of the grandmother. Because  it was almost impossible to load the dolly, we ended up using a wheel chair. It was scorching hot and the wheel chair was very jerky so it was difficult to get a good shot. We wrapped after shooting two more indoor scenes. We managed to finish around 5:30 pm and when we sent everyone home it was about 6pm. After transporting our actors, we returned the equipment and props that we didn’t need,  and planned our shoot for the final day.

         I woke up at 6am before my alarm went off because I was very nervous. We had to shoot inside Union Station and inside the MARC train which were both locations we did not get a full permission from. I was very worried also because we had to shoot all the train scenes in an hour without getting caught by the ticketing agent. I was also worried because our actor, the grandmother, told me that she was not able to get enough sleep last night. We were shooting in 4 locations from 9am to 4pm so it was going to be a tiring day for everyone but it was especially going to be tiring for her. It was indeed a very stressful day. As soon as we got off at Union Station, we started setting up the camera to film a scene of her exiting the station. 2 minutes into shooting, the security officers came to stop us. We thought that they are going to kick us out and makes us format our card, but Sue showed them an email that she exchanged with the Union Station authorities and they just told us to wait for a little. While they made us wait, I spoke to my actor in Korean and secretly kept rolling the camera. After couple of minutes, they came back to us and told us that we had to leave. Because we got what we wanted, we just packed up and left. They came back to us when we were shooting the exterior of the station but we begged them to give us 5 minutes and they did. Because everything was so rushed, I don’t know how everything looks but we did get all the shots that we planned on getting.

         After we shot the conversation scenes near the station and the non-cherry blossom scenes in the tidal basin area, we came back to the station to get on the train. We were extremely exhausted by then, because we shot everything in an hour. Our extras for the scene arrived and we got on the train. Everything felt chaotic inside the train. In the beginning, we panicked because the train car that we wanted to film in was packed with people. After 5 minutes of terror, Sue politely asked if they would willingly move to other parts of the train. Everyone was very nice and gave us the place that we wanted to shoot in. It was a busy hour of me trying to get as many takes as possible without getting caught by anyone. As I was shooting, Jack and other crew members would cue me whenever someone was coming towards me, and I would just drop the camera to a seat next to me and act as if nothing was going on. We got the last shot got 3 minutes before it was time for us to get off at Penn station. After the final shot, I high fived Sue and shouted that it was a wrap.

         We let everyone go, dropped off all of our props and equipment, sent our actors away, and we were actually done. When we were walking back to Sue’s place after everything was over, we talked about how we couldn’t believe that we are done with shooting. We had planned this film for a year and now we are done shooting it. We do have to edit it at some point but I don’t want to think about that right now.

Production Diary #5 (Hee Won)

Production diary 5

         In my last post, I talked about the disasters that surrounded our miscalculation of the cherry blossoms’ peak bloom. We needed the cherry blossoms but cherry blossoms were blooming earlier than planned. We were not ready to shoot but we went down to DC anyways thinking that we are going to figure something out when we got there. We did, but it wasn’t easy.

         Deciding whether or not we should go to DC to film cherry blossoms was not easy. We did not have any of our actors with us. In our script, Ghunja looks at the cherry blossoms, and in  our storyboard, we have a back shot of her looking at the fully bloomed cherry blossoms. As I mentioned in the previous post, we called our actor to ask if she would be available, but she could not come down on such short notice. We brainstormed what we could possibly to do to make this work. One solution we thought of was to get a body-double. We knew it was not the best idea, since the a body double would be very noticeable to the audience, with the numerous tracking shots of our actor’s back that throughout the film. However, we decided to look for someone anyway, a 5’6 female who wears size 8 shoes. After sending hundreds of Facebook messages we managed to find one person who could match. However, she was only available from 11am to 3pm which was a very narrow time window, considering we had to drive to DC, park our car, get the equipment out, film everything, and drive back.

Another big problem was that we didn’t have anyone to help us shoot. We needed at least one or two people to help us carry equipment but everyone was busy or had class. If we were to go to DC, it would be just Sue and me and we would have to be back by 4pm because we both had classes that we could not miss. Also, we could not get the digital back up camera that we wanted. Although our we are shooting on 16mm, we wanted to get some shots on digital just in case. We were thinking about using either the Black Magic or Canon C300 for the back up camera but neither of them were available for that date. We were able reserve a Canon 5D Mark II in the end, but we weren’t ecstatic because we wanted a camera that could shoot 4K.

         We could not make a decision right away because there were so many complications. We only had five hours to do everything and it seemed almost impossible. On Wednesday night, after exchanging a couple of serious texts we decided to go to DC by ourselves. We knew that things would not go smoothly but we thought that it would still be worth it. Because we could not guarantee that we would be back before 3pm, we told our body double not to come. We decided to get a lot of POV shots and B roll of the cherry blossoms. Before I went to sleep, I packed everything that I needed for the shoot in my living room and wrote down all the shots that I needed. I was tossing and turning all night and get much sleep because I was terrified.  

         As soon as I woke up the next morning, I headed to Gilman 35 to check all the equipment that I needed. I checked the cameras, batteries, tripods and anything that could possibly go wrong. Just looking at all the equipment Sue and I would have to carry made me want to cry, but I took out all the equipment one by one thinking that everything was going to be okay. We had all the equipment loaded in the car by 11:30 am and headed for DC.

         By 12pm we were very happy with the situation. The weather was great, we were on schedule and nothing was wrong with the equipment. Because everything was going so well, I started to feel uneasy. Sue told me to shut up when I told her that something would go wrong during the shoot.

         When we got to the National Mall, we realized that I was right after all. We thought that the location would not be crowded because it was 3pm on a Thursday, but we could not have been more wrong. The streets were filled with tourists and none of the parking lots had spaces. This was a huge problem because we did not have PAs to control pedestrians as we were filming and we needed couple of wide shots that looked pretty empty. On top of that, the traffic was horrible because there were so many cars and people walking on the roads. We lost about an hour just looking for parking and we were getting nervous because it was already almost 2pm when we miraculously found a place to park. We needed to shoot everything in an hour with all the equipment that we had.

  

       In the end, we got some B-roll of the cherry blossoms and got some footage from near the tidal basin area. It was very challenging and time-consuming with so many people trying to take selfies and group photos near us. It was also exhausting because we had a very heavy camera, a tripod, and equipment. It was a hassle, but we managed to get the most important scenes on film. We wanted to shoot more but we had to get back to Homewood as soon as possible and we were already late. During the shoot, we had some issues with the gate; we saw dust particles in the frame when we were shooting towards the end and could not figure out exactly where it was. We won’t find out how everything turned out until late April when we get our film is processed, so it is very frightening and thrilling at the same time.

         We left the parking lot at about 3:15pm, thinking that we will probably be 20 minutes late for class. We were wrong again. The traffic was so bad that it was 5pm when we got back to Homewood campus. We were an hour late for class.

         One most important takeaway from this hectic shoot was that you just have to be prepared for the worst situations. I have three more shooting days left, in less than 10 days, and one of them requires scenes that take place on a moving train. How exciting. (but actually not).

Production Diary #4 (Hee Won)

Production Diary #4

         One thing I’ve learned from trying to make this film is that nothing really goes according to plans.  This last couple of weeks have been one hell of a roller coaster ride for me; full of ups and downs but mostly full of downs.

         One major accomplishment for us was the successful launch of our kickstarter campaign. The week I posted my latest production diary, Sue and I, with our AC, Will, filmed a short video of us introducing our film and asking people to donate. Our goal was to get $1500. We imagined our budget to be a little over $2000 but we decided to aim low because we didn’t think we would be able to get even $1500. However, we were wrong! In three days we achieved half of our goal, $750, and in less than 2 weeks we reached our fundraising goal. Now, we have about $1600 in our account! While, of course we were happy to get money from our supporters, the best feeling came from the individual messages of support from friends and donors. One of my friends sent me a very heartfelt message (below) saying that she really supported the message of our film. We also had people we didn’t even know donate. Knowing that some people share my concern for the immigrant narratives that I am very passionate about, felt very special. It was amazing to see how much people cared about us and our project. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1687979953/ghun-ja?ref=nav_search

         Meanwhile, we were also able to revise our storyboard and get props and ideas for production design. Over the course of the past three weeks, we workshopped our story board with our advisor, John Mann. I think this may be the final version storyboard, since our shoot is right around the corner. Sue and I also met with our production designer, Seola Lee, and brainstormed on how decorate the row house we rented for our shoot. In order to plan for this meeting, I looked up Korean dramas and movies to get an idea of what we wanted our house to look like. We made a list of props that we might need and divided it amongst ourselves so that we could start looking for and buying materials. After the meeting I went to thrift stores to look for the outfit for our grandmother when she goes out to see the cherry blossoms. After looking around about seven thrift stores, I was able find a great jacket and a pair of shoes. We still have to get clothes for our interior shoots, and we are planning to figure that out in the next week or so.

         We did get some important things done, but there were also many downs that followed. Gaffing is important because we are shooting on film, and we had a gaffer until recently he texted us saying that he can’t help because he got booked for a shoot in April.  Now, we have three weeks until our shoot and no one I know is proficient with gaffing. I messaged everyone who could possibly gaff and they were all occupied. As of now, I either have to use a part of my budget to hire an actual gaffer from a company in Baltimore, or gaff myself.

         When I was working on Andrea’s set, someone told me that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong on a film set. I’ve heard many horror stories from friends, and really hoped that nothing horrible would happen on our film. But something went terribly wrong. In, the most important scene, the grandma looks up at the cherry blossoms and mumbles her line. In order for this scene to work, the cherry blossoms have to be breathtakingly beautiful. So, we planned our shoot exactly according to the cherry blossom festival dates from last year: April 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th. However, this year, the weather is exceptionally warm and the cherry blossoms are blooming A LOT earlier this year. The moment I that the peak cherry blossom dates will be March 22^nd, I wanted to throw my laptop to the ground, drop dead, and never regain my consciousness. This really is a big problem, even as I’m writing this, I am not sure what to do.

http://cherryblossomwatch.com/peak-bloom-forecast/

         At first, I planned on changing our shooting plans entirely. I checked AirBnB, hoping the location would be available but of course, it is not available for the whole of March. I called the actor who is playing our grandmother and she told me that she couldn’t make it if we shot in March. As of now, Sue and I have a VERY BIG problem and the cherry blossom peak is this week. We might have to go to DC to at the very least get B roll of the cherry blossoms, but the weather forecast states that there will be a huge storm Friday so I’ll have to see what happens.

Production Diary 3 (Hee Won)

    Just when everything was falling apart and I was on the verge of quitting school and going back to Korea, things started to come together. Right after I published my second blog post, I heard back from all the locations that were giving me trouble. The Union station authorities emailed said that we could shoot there as long as we did not have a tripod and set things up such as lights and flags inside the station. Penn station authorities initially said no, but then told we could work something out with as long as we didn’t disrupt the convenience of their passengers. The house that we really wanted to get through AirBnB was suddenly unavailable, but we were able to rent our second best option for two days at a relatively low cost.

  However, the biggest accomplishment of the week was our success in finding our grandmother. We posted on five different websites and contacted the senior center repeatedly to cast our grandmother but did not hear back from any of them. After asking around for weeks, we finally found one person who was willing to act for our film. She is not an experienced actor but she likes the idea behind our project and is excited to film with us. It will definitely be a challenge to work with someone who is not a professional actor, but it is important that we have an actual Korean grandmother play the part.

         We still have to lock down more locations, such as the ticketing booth, the entrance of a row house. We also have to scout for outdoor locations, but we now have secured the two most important locations for our film. In terms of casting, we also have 5 more people to cast which includes two boys, a father, a mother, and someone to sit across the grandmother on the train, but we are just very happy right now at the fact that we have a grandmother.

      

         I was ecstatic for exactly three days. Then, I realized that there are still plenty of other things that I should be doing and worrying about. First and foremost, now that I had a story, a location, and an actor, I needed to put together a team that could help me realize the film. Because I am not a very experienced filmmaker, I needed to ask for help, a lot of help. One of the most important lessons that I have learned from taking classes at Hopkins and watching a lot of student films is that sound can make or break a film. From the very beginning, Sue and I knew that sound would play an integral part in capturing the empty, lonely world in which our grandmother lives. Although we are on a tight budget, we still decided to allocate money to hire a sound person because we felt that it would be worth the money.

         Another area that we needed help on was production design, someone who could realize the atmosphere of a Korean row-house. After a long discussion, Sue and I decided to contact a recent JHU graduate who is very acknowledgeable about both Baltimore and Korean culture. The three of us will meet and plan the minute details regarding the props for the house and the clothes for the family members. We also managed to find a costume and make-up artist, and grip. We are still in the process of finding a gaffer, which is essential as we are shooting on film.

         Lastly, we’ve been working on launching a kickstarter campaign. The biggest drawback to shooting on film is that it is very expensive to buy and develop since it is a dying medium. The biggest chunk of money that we are spending is coming from costs due to film, sound, location and transportation. We are now in the process of writing up blurbs about our project and planning a short introduction video so that we can inform people about our film. We are hoping to launch our project sometime during the middle of the next week at the latest. One significant drawback to using kickstarter is that it is an all or nothing campaign. I hope that the issue of isolation resonates with a lot of people and they find the idea of shooting on film interesting and endearing.

         I wasn’t able to check any of the big boxes off my production notebook, but I am proud that I am getting somewhere. Less than a year ago, I didn’t even have second thoughts about realizing this film because I knew that I wasn’t experienced to make it. Two months ago, we had nothing but a script. Now as I am writing this, I still have a lot of work to do, but I can definitely say that I’ve made progress. I was talking to my friend Helena Chung, who is the assistant director, about what we’ve done so far and she told me that she was surprised and proud of what Sue and I were able to do over the past couple of weeks. Hearing that really made my day. I have 5 more weeks until our first shooting day, and as always, I am more worried than excited, but I too am proud of us for what we have achieved so far.

Production Diary 2 (Hee Won)

         Just when I committed to making this film, realistic questions slapped me in the face. Specifically questions about: casting, location scouting, and story boarding.

         At first, when I thought I would not be able to make this film and decided to forget about it, one of the big questions that discouraged me was casting. How am I ever going to find a grandmother, in her 70s, who is Korean, who would be willing to act for a college student’s film with no monetary compensation whatsoever?

         Sue and I searched all over the internet hoping to find some kind of Korean acting community in DC/Baltimore Area but we weren’t successful. Then, we decided to broaden our search and look for grandmothers living in the Baltimore Area. We made a visit to the Greenmount Korean Senior Center hoping we would be able to recruit a member of the community to act in our film. We met with the director of the senior center and emailed her about the project two days later,  but have yet to get a response. We plan to continue with out efforts to find the perfect grandmother, or any grandmother for that matter.

         After the yet unresolved issue of casting, our next immediate problem is location scouting; we need to shoot in a row house, at Penn Station, Union Station and the National Mall. We anticipated that getting permission to shoot inside the train stations would be difficult as it would raise safety concerns with the respective authorities. We contacted both the MTA Baltimore Office and the DC Union Station Office, but still haven’t received a reply. We plan to send another email , or give them a call, or even ask in person, if necessary to get permission to shoot inside the train station and inside the train.

         One other location that is giving us a hard time is the house. We assumed it would be easy to find a house for our shoot because we have friends who live in row houses. However, we could not have been more wrong. None of the five places we went to see seemed suitable for our film. They were either too big or too small, too fraternity-esque or too collegiate. Realizing that we may never be able to find a house that is appropriate for our film within our friend group, we looked for a house on the internet, on AirBnB. Although it sounds crazy, we were able to find couple of houses that matched our vision of the house in our story. Now, we are narrowing down our choices for the house. The tasks of contacting the owners, persuading them to let us use the house for little compensation, convincing them know that this is not a pornography but a student short film remain.

         To be very honest, the past two weeks have been very stressful because it felt like everything was falling apart. We did not hear back from potential casting opportunities and the locations that we hoped for just didn’t seem to fit.  I dreamed multiple times about finding the right grandma and finding the perfect house for the film, only to wake up devastated that they were only dreams. Despite this, one thing that motivated me to work harder was our storyboard.

         One major decision that we had to make after we decided to move forward with this project, was the format we were going to shoot in. I sent my advisor, John Mann, our rough draft of the script last Fall and he suggested that we shoot on film. However, I was hesitant because I had many bad memories with film. I saw everything that could possibly go wrong with shooting on film in two intermediate film courses last spring: there was a piece of hair in one person’s project the whole time and another had to be re-shot in its entirety because it was shot at the wrong frame rate. At times, the camera would suddenly stop after working fine for hours, and the lighting would completely ruin some parts of the film. However, at the same time, I was really enticed by the idea of shooting my project on 16mm.  

(Picture of my Introduction to Film Production Final Project)

         Although I knew it would be painful to deal with all the problems caused by shooting on film, I also love how it looks. There is something amazing about how sunlight looks on film, and the grainy look of the film itself is beautiful. I brought this up with Sue and we talked about the pros and cons of shooting on 16mm. We came up with fifteen cons one pro of shooting on 16mm. The cons were that everything that could go wrong and the single pro was that it might look incredible and go really well with the feel of the project. After lying on the floor for ten minutes thinking about what to do, we made the decision to shoot on film. Partly because we knew that we would never be able to shoot on 16mm after we graduate, and mostly because we envisioned cherry blossoms on film with sunlight lingering in between the branches and we were sold.

 

         Because we decided to shoot on film, we really need plan what and how  we are going to shoot, and creating the perfect storyboard became crucial. We started storyboarding two weeks ago and it hasn’t been easy since neither of us are experienced artists. We met everyday last week to finish our storyboard and just finished it. The only thing that kept us going was the excitement that came with storyboarding. We couldn’t exactly translate what we have in mind on the page, but the process of coming up with compositions arguing over what kind of shot it should be and deciding how to transition from one scene to another was a lot of fun. At times, we got stuck on one shot for more than 30 minutes and got tired and frustrated, but there were also moments where we were ecstatic because we came up with a brilliant framing.  

         The fact that we still do not have the cast and the locations locked down is stressful, but I think Sue and I will figure it out some how. I still jokingly tell Sue that we should just give up every time something is not working with our film. Then Sue slaps my back and gives me mean looks and we start working again. I knew going in that it was going to be difficult and it hasn’t proven me wrong, but I find a delightful little joy in the process and this keeps me going and gets me excited to work again.

Production Diary #1 (Hee Won)

        It all started with an image. Last year, I was getting off the MARC train from Baltimore to DC for the annual cherry blossom festival. Union Station was very crowded with people going to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. In the crowd, I saw a woman walking into the station from the platform, by herself, with a crutch at her side. I don’t know why but the whole image left a big impression on me. Throughout my stroll around the Washington Monument and the beautiful cherry blossoms, I kept on thinking about her. I was wondering why she was in DC, or if she lived in DC or if she was just here for a day to look at the scenery.

(a picture taken that day) 

        After my trip, I boarded the train and looked out the window. I saw the entrance to the station and remembered where she was standing. We were taking the last train of the night, so the place was pretty much empty. The feeling of an empty station and my mental image of a woman walking into the station by herself went together quite well. I thought about isolation, how it could be physically rendered on film. During my train ride back, I envisioned an old Korean woman in her 70s traveling from Baltimore to DC to see the Cherry Blossom Festival alone. The more I thought about it, more vivid it became.

(Antibes Train Station)

         I jotted it down in a notebook, but left it at that, thinking that I lacked the experience and skill to create a short film by myself. So I kept it aside and didn’t really think about it until I had a conversation with my friend, Sue Chin, waiting for a train to Cannes from Antibes during our summer abroad program. We waited an hour for a train because we were confused about platforms and got distracted talking to kill time. I remembered the idea from months ago and explained it to Sue. After telling her what it was about and how I came up with it, she told me that there was something that she liked about the story and the character. During our 20-minute ride to Cannes we decided that we were going to shoot it somehow before we both graduated.

 

(Train ride from Antibes to Cannes)

        That night, when we got back to our apartment, we started fleshing out the film: the characters, their backgrounds, very minute details. We spent the whole night creating the world that our main character, the Grandma, inhabited, the kind of life she had lived before she came to America. We discussed what her son did to make a living, why she ended up in the states, what kind of house that she lived in and so on. By the time we were too tired and had to go to sleep, our “Grandma” became a more concrete figure with a face. Her and the world we created of her felt more real to me.

(Our apartment at Antibes)

         Over the rest of the summer, we stayed in contact to share new ideas and details about the story. Then, just before school started up again, Sue wrote a script based on everything we had talked about since the Cannes trip. Over the course of the semester, we edited, emailing back and forth since Sue was studying abroad in London.

(Our very first draft, also 할머니 is Korean for Grandma)

        Even as we edited the script, I had doubts about whether I would ever be qualified to shoot this film that had become quite dear to me. I’ve never created a short film on my own, outside of my projects for class. I was nervous about everything: how would find the perfect Korean grandma who would willingly act on the film, how would I find someone to do the lighting and sound, how would I shoot it? How would I going to assemble crew for this project? Most of these questions ended with me throwing myself on my bed screaming. I still do not have answers to all of these questions but I’ve decided to commit to making this film because the project feels special to me. The prospect of making a film is still very frightening but there is really no room for me to back out now, since I’m getting credit for this film as my senior project and also because I have started writing a production diary about it!

         I just had a 3-hour conversation with Sue about how this film might end up horrible because neither of us is experienced, but we came to the conclusion that this film will never get made if we don’t do it this semester. We will just have to make our way past the difficulties and survive since what’s already done is done. I am now at the beginning of the preproduction process and am anxious for the couple of months ahead of me. I have to cast the perfect actors, lock down all the locations and finish assembling crew for this short as of yet untitled film.

        Sue and I do not have high hopes for this project. We don’t dare dream we’ll make something that everyone will see and love immediately. We just hope that we make something worthwhile, something that we can look at and be proud of and say we are glad to have pulled through with the film.