THE SHOT THAT MATTERS I Short Film I 16 mins I Queer black comedy

Logline I A lesbian couple’s rainy night dinner gets seasoned with anxiety, guilt and violence when they realise they’re not just strangers in Hong Kong but to one another .

Backstory I This close to no budget short is my debut as a writer and director having worked as a freelance colourist and photographer over the last 3 years . This is an idea that came to me in 2018 during my cinematography course trip to The National Art Gallery in London where I was fascinated by all the frames that were used for the paintings. I was very intrigued by the thickness and design of every one of them, every combination of paintings and frames gave me an illusion of almost like a window looking out on a great view outside. This led to me exploring the idea of a frame within frame by using the viewfinder of a medium format camera as the canvas to paint this one take short that has a character framing another for a sin she did not commit. Given that this is my first short film as a director, I was hoping to use this film as an opportunity to treat this film as a glorified version of a table read where there is no distractions of lighting or camera change and I get to focus primarily on working with the two actors once the camera starts rolling. I wanted to shoot this in January 2019 but couldn’t do it then as I was busy with the grad films and Covid happened, I was able to revive this idea in January 2023. We filmed this at Clapham, London in September 2023 and wrapped up post in November 2023.

I spent over 6 months of script work and research which helped in me directing the cast. I came up with one year of backstory and designed a timeline that helped me and the actors understand the journey of the two characters since their move to Hong Kong. I reached out to many Hong Kong creatives to understand about the culture, and geography of their country which helped me design the structure of the script where we were able to use objects such as Octopus card to tell the story effectively. Being a huge fan of mens football, I thought it would be interesting for me to start watching women’s football to understand the psychology of women better . I realised that there is a lot more urgency in women’s football to score goals right from the start as opposed to mens football which is more about building possession in the first 15 mins or so, which is why this film starts with a second act where Dani questions Maddie about her arrival time from her doctor’s appointment.

Shoot I We did a day of pre light before the two shoot days. We only had 3 x 300w fresnels and used two of them as overhead lighting to give our lead a harsh bounce and backlight to separate her from the background. Our gaffer Thomas brought his led tube lights which were handy to be used as the cabinet downlights where we had them on 10% dimness. This helped to give our composition more depth and helps us show the rice cooker and woks we had in the background . We also did the set dressing by adding sticker tiles to the walls and setting up the garden table we had with a chinese table cloth. The first shoot day was more of a shooting rehearsal to familiarise ourselves with the lines and mood. We did about thirteen long takes on the second day and the very last take was used in the final film.

Post Production I In the grade session, I was able to add plenty of texture layers to reduce the digital sharpness of the log footage and a few layers of glow that helped enhance a noir look that looks more nostalgic and compliments the mood. A few masks were added to reduce light on the table cloth . We were fortunate enough to get Anita Xu from the prestigious National Film School to do the sound design for our film and we were able to add an ASMR quality to the overall sound design, in which the crisp sound of the shutter of the Rolleiflex gives the audience the cold shower treatment every now and then particularly during pivotal moments in this short when there’s a confession sequence . We exported a 5.1 mix of this where we used the ambience of rain as a substitute for music inspired by the sound design of No Country for Old Men.