Video link of rough cut:
The work I am planning to do is a short narrative film. It’s about a family that the father died when the son was 16 years old. The story will be told in 3 different time periods, 8, 16 and 28 years old of the son. It will focus on the relationship between the son and the mother, and how the death of the father affects the family. The length of the film will be around 30 minutes, and the story will be told in nonlinear structure, to symbolize the memory fragments of the son. Most amount of the story will happen in night time, so the whole story is like a dream that happened in one night. That’s the reason why I took the name 《子夜》which means midnight in Chinese and also has a meaning of “Night of son”.
The inspiration and motivation of the work is from two of my important memories. The first one is when I am a kid, my dad always have to go to work in mainland every week, and I seldom saw him. However, my dad will call home every night to find us. It’s the bond that connect me and my father. Sometimes I was scared that what if he didn’t called. The second memory is the death of my grandfather. He died when I was also a child. The only thing I remember about him is the much love he had for me. I don’t know how to respond to his death. When time flies, I slowly recognised that he is really gone, and started to feel the emptiness inside me. Both memories are about lost. The first one is the fear of losing, and the second one is the fear due to an actual lost. In the work, I want to combine the two feelings and create a story, showing the imaginary but also real memories to audience, like a dream. I would like to emphasize the psychological status of different characters, and the connections between memories and dream.
This is a story about memory, so the storytelling of the script is also built with fragments, using different periods of the main character’s memories and characteristics. There won’t be a climax in the story. I blurred the character of father in the film and there won’t be any shot of his face in the film. The whole character is built based on how his mom and father remembered and recognised him, which is like a memory. To the son, maybe the most important feeling is not father himself, rather the phonecall by his father every single night. Feelings are subjective and maybe some parts of the film are just modified memories from the main character. Most parts of the film use night as time, because the memories from child age or teenager are like the dream in the 25 year old main character. Everything seemed happened in the same night, but the pain already stayed for many years.
Progress:
More than half of the film are done shooting, the rest of the film have to be shot after the prohibition of public gathering is canceled.
CHUNG YIK CHING 