Writer/Director: Joe Turner Lin

Running Time: 22:00

For more information visit: www.kulturemachine.com

Awards:
• National Finalist, Student Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
• 2nd Prize, Best Short Film, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Student Narrative
• Faculty Honors, Columbia University Film Festival
• Best Cinematography, Columbia University Film Festival
• Semi-Finalist, Angeles Awards

Official Selection:
• Breckenridge Short Film Festival
• Los Angeles International Film Festival
• Orinda Film Festival
• Black Bear Film Festival
• IFP Market (NYC)
• IFP Buzz Cuts (NYC)
• Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival
• Short Film Festival (Tubingen)

A young man who works the graveyard shift at an all-night photomat falls in love with the picture of a girl.

Joe Turner Lin received the his MFA from Columbia University's Film Program and is a recipient of the Arthur Krim Award and HBO's Young Producer's Development Award.

What inspired you to make this piece?

As I neared the end of film school, I was looking for a story to tell as my thesis film. I was also deeply immersed in what seemed like an inescapable insomnia. Slowly, I realized that a lot of it had to do with escaping the responsibilities of "daytime," as the post-film school, real world loomed ever closer. Years ago, I had written a feature script about a young man who falls in love with the picture of a girl, but it hadn't really gone anywhere. I decided finally to combine the plot line from the feature with the emotional subtext of the moment, and ended up writing a love story about breaking free from the night and taking a chance on something real.

Briefly tell us how you made your film or video: what camera and format did you use to shoot your piece, and what system did you use to edit it? What is your working process? Did you use any special techniques to make this work?

We shot on the HD 24p Panasonic Varicam (at the time, one of the two higher-end HD cameras). After downconverting the HD tapes, I edited on a Final Cut Pro system at home. Once I was done, I took the cut to an online house to have it assembled and color-corrected (an important step in HD). Then we did the sound mix [and] went back to the online house to lay it back to a D5 master tape. From there, all the subsequent copies were made.

Do you have any interesting behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this particular work?

When I had written the script initially, the lead was a white male named Beckett. And as I continued with rewrites, I kept finding myself placing the story in Paris or China ... somewhere foreign. My producers told me, of course, that I couldn't afford to shoot in Paris. So as I began to explore why my intuition was driving me toward that creative choice, I realized I was trying to make the character more sympathetic by giving him a motivation, a real reason, why he only connected to the world through photographs: a language and cultural barrier. When casting began, I snuck in a few Asian actors to test my theory. And when Tokio walked in the door, I realized he was it ... it was like a breeze would blow him over. As an Asian American, I had resisted using an Asian actor because I didn't want to be categorized as an Asian director, but eventually I realized that it was best for the film ... and of course, I am an Asian director. So why not?

More briefly, the shoot took place in the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and Flushing from about 7 in the evening to 8 in the morning for six straight nights. Needless to say, this was exhausting for all of us, but perhaps none so much as our lead, Tokio, who was used to getting to sleep by 9 p.m. and getting up at 6.

Lastly, when Tokio is in the subway toward the beginning of the film, and takes a picture of the stranger, he says (in Japanese): "What if you take a picture of a stranger on the subway, and it turns out she's a distant relative?" The nurse he photographs is my mom. My dad was in a scene in the Laundromat too, but he got cut.

What is the relationship between your work as a video/filmmaker and life in the New York metropolitan area?

I was born and bred in New York. I went to high school, undergrad, and graduate school in Manhattan (Stuyvesant, Columbia College, and Columbia's School of the Arts). The fact that New York is so prevalent in my life has a gigantic bearing on the kinds of stories I tell and the way I tell them. I think the city is a unique place in that it has enough support for filmmakers (which is such a deeply collaborative and resource-heavy medium), but is big and vibrant and diverse enough so that it doesn't become all about the movies (the way Los Angeles, for example, is a company town). New York's heartbeat is what drives all of my stories, whether they take place here or not. The energy, the urgency, the random, romantic beauty is what inspires me daily to keep going in this very demanding field.

What films/videos and makers have inspired you or influenced your work? And why?

CHUNGKING EXPRESS by Wong Kar Wai is the most obvious influence on this particular film. But overall, Woody Allen, David Lean, Mike Nichols, and Wong Kar Wai are probably my favorite directors. MANHATTAN, CASABLANCA, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, BRIEF ENCOUNTER, THE GRADUATE, and AMADEUS are in my top 10 films. They all have distinctive voices, without their voice getting in the way of the story.

If viewers are interested in obtaining copies of your work for rental or purchase, whom should they contact and at what address and phone number?

I can be contacted at seibutsu@kulturemachine.com for inquiries regarding purchasing the film.