Somebody Else
A car valet pretends to be a golden boy to charm a beautiful socialite. They wander through Shanghai at night, their budding attraction threatened by his lies... and her secret.
Interview with Laurent King
Watch Somebody Else on Vimeo
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
Thank you! I made this film for several reasons. I am half Chinese on my father's side, but only discovered China in the last 10 years. As I have recently been going back there for shoots quite often, I was struck by a cultural difference between the old and new (very old city blocks with wooden houses surrounded by super tall skyscraper and marble floored malls) as well as the rich and the poor.
There is a balance and cohabitation in China where everything organically finds its place but in France where I live for example, you would not find yourself with that wide a gamut of society on the same sidewalk. Which trigged a question in my mind: how would envy work in the mind of a young man born to a lower class family if his day job was to park cars that cost 100 times what he would practically be able to make in a lifetime? From there my co-writer, Olivier Domerc, and I extrapolated a simple story set against this backdrop.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
I'm not familiar with film festival programming subtleties, or which film screens before or after ours, but our idea was to make a simple, small, emotionally touching film. So depending on what other stories are around, if you are in the market for some visual narrative with a more positive twist, this could be of interest to you.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
The binding glue between the two main characters (rich and nihilist girl, lower class ambitious boy) other than the chemistry that happens between the two of them, is their respective paternal relationships, which everyone can relate to. What was more interesting to me was also the "unsaid" tensions and small behaviors that, one quickly finds out, are universal.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development and production?
The script started out in French, as my co-writer and I are from France. We then translated it to English, sent it to our producer in China where we started the casting process based on a loose and literal translation. Then all of the dialogue was "adapted" with the actors during rehearsals, I wanted something credible and actual like people would talk in 2016. Story wise, we remained fairly simple even though there are a lot of set pieces for 15 minutes. I had a bit of time to prep so every shot was storyboarded. Then we just proceeded to gather all the shots in the four days of shooting we had.
I was lucky to have a fantastic crew, including a bilingual assistant director (Jo Chan) who helped move things along as quickly and intelligently as possible, and a very talented DOP (Paul Morris). The only big roadblock we had on the shooting (as always) was time, and I had to combine shots and crunch stuff as we were getting close to getting kicked out. Which happens regularly on location shooting... Editing was fairly straight forward, but also because I had an excellent editor in the person of Luc Golfin.
Sound design was an extension of the storytelling process, and even then we also retouched the edit (mainly taking things out to simplify) with sound designer Alexandre Poirier and sound producer Franck Marchal for whom this was also a passion project that went beyond technical duties. Much like all the key collaborators who worked on this short film.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The feedback has been very positive. This is the first short film I do that goes through an international round of festivals, and so far I'm very happy with the exposure it is getting.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
We have also gotten some negative feedback of course, but that hasn't been a complete surprise. Making something that pleases everyone is impossible, and we certainly did not set out for that. We set out to tell a very simple story, almost naive, but straight forward and cohesive in its own little word. We wanted to create a small autonomous visual treat where these characters evolve, based on their everyday lives. So we did not want to revolutionize storytelling, but wanted to make something solid as to what it says and "airtight" as to how it says it. But as this is a first outing, all challenging feedback is interesting and important for the next projects.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I'm already grateful this film was made, and credit for that goes to the production company in Shanghai. As this is my first Q&A ever about this short film, I am looking for it to give some complementary insight on how the film came about, as there are a lot of festivals I cannot attend. Should people be curious and interested in finding out more about the film, it is a great idea to have somewhere on the internet where film makers can expend on the why and how their film came to existence.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
I suppose distributors of film festival directors would help spread the "screenings." Short films are passion projects, the more people get to see them the better.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I will let the viewers be the judge of that, everyone can take his/her own experience out of the short. We set out to have, in a limited time, images, characters, color and music that stick to one's mind as one of the many possible stories that can happen in a big city like Shanghai.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Hm. Good question. I guess the main one would be: in modern China, can you be more than what you were meant to be?
Would you like to add anything else?
Just that I am feeling grateful for the attention the film has been getting and to be part of some very high quality international selections. The fact that this film resonates with people is a testament to the cast and crew's efforts and support.
What are the key creatives developing or working on now?
My co-writer and I finished a feature script, have some serial projects being read at two different networks and are preparing an independent web series to be released in 2017.
Interview: August 2016
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We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series and music video. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
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SOMEBODY ELSE
A car valet pretends to be a golden boy to charm a beautiful socialite. They wander through Shanghai at night, their budding attraction threatened by his lies... and her secret.
Length: 15min
Director:
Laurent KING
Producer:
Pauline SUN, Nick DODET
Writer:
Olivier DOMERC, Laurent KING
About the writer, director and producer:
Olivier is a screenwriter and content conceptor/producer in Paris based digital advertising company Fighting Fish.
Laurent is a Paris based director interested in cross cultural communication, new technologies and narrative storytelling.
Nick is a Shanghai based producer working mostly in advertising and experimental digital projects.
Key cast:
Zang Zhi Zhong, Long Zheng Xuan, Cao Shi Ping, Eric Chow, Cheng Fu
Looking for (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists):
Distributors, Film Festival directors
Funders:
Made in association with:
Release date:
May 2016
Where can I watch it in the next month?
Odense International Film Festival, Denmark
DC Shorts Film Festival, Washington DC