STYLE
LOCATIONS
The main locations of the film are the University of California at Santa Cruz and its art studios, iconic forests and bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean as well as the home of students and family in the Central Coast.
This area is the historical heartland of Filipinx America, yet traces of the community are barely and rarely visible now due to the community’s violent expulsion almost 100 years ago in the 1930s.
This film reclaims Filipinx American belonging and storytelling, especially in focusing on women, gender and sexuality which are largely ignored in primarily racialized stories of this large California ethnic community. Locations in Santa Cruz require fees, insurance and rentals for accommodations and mileage travel for the heads of the production teams traveling from Los Angeles and San Francisco.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
The project will use two cameras, one still and one moving, in fluid-master long takes, moving in and out of scenes to enable intimacy and proximity for the viewer. Close-ups of facial and other bodily expressions are tantamount as is centering the female perspective, including her desires in lustful looks and longing gazes.
The color palette of the locations are blue, green and brown with people in oranges, reds and yellow. Color grading will be saturated, passionately bleeding on screen.
Our experienced and professional director of photography comes with her female team of gaffer and electrician and assistant camera/focus puller. Dolly grip and other camera operation as well as other grip roles will be provided by students who also receive a stipend.
PRODUCTION +
COSTUME DESIGN
Anachronistic design informs the look of the film’s costumes, props and locations. The costumes mix the 1980s with the present, reflecting the multigenerational authorship of the film where professional division heads supervise talented and extraordinarily experienced students.
Production design similarly reflects 1980s aesthetics with the 2020s. The art department team is composed of a professional production designer leading a team of student set designer and props master. A professional costume designer, with make-up artists and assistants, will design the looks of the large cast. Professional visual artists make original art including a house of boxes and folded origami flowers.
SOUND
The sound is naturalistic and very heavily so—as an example, mixing the sounds of the pogonip and nature with the industrial sound of the amusement park in the horizon. Music will largely reflect independent and originally composed songs of the moment produced by young people to reflect the current generation’s tastes such as Amihan, Ouida, Ruby Ibarra and other Asian American women independent musicians.
The characters possess and regard their heritage and ethnicities importantly and their tastes reflect hybrid and diasporic mixes of music, rather than traditional and unmixed music of their backgrounds. The sound recordist and composer are professionals from Los Angeles. The re-recordist, mixer and sound designer is also an experienced professional from San Francisco. Boom operators and other assistants will be students interested in careers in sound.
EDITING STYLE + APPROACH
The editing style of the film recognizes the ways sexuality is represented in American cinema when it pans away from the sex scene or fades to black when intimacy ensues. Our film will not represent sex scenes, yet, will shoot as if they are sex scenes that deserve representation.
The expectations of the audiences—who are not accustomed to centering women’s desire or seeing sex on screen—will be burst open deliberately in how we cut and weave together to arouse a heightened response. The editor is a professional independent filmmaker with extensive editing experience in fiction films. The archival work will be conducted by a paid student. We will use a professional and reputable colorist in Los Angeles who will also produce all the outputs for film festivals.
INSPIRATIONS
Generations of Asian American women resist their subjugation through art. MAIL ORDER BRIDES boldly explodes static stereotypes. Painters Jenifer Wofford and Pacita Abad interrogate tropes powerfully. Writers R.F. Kwuan in YELLOWFACE (2023) and Elaine Hsieh Chou in DISORIENTATION (2022) center the internal lives of Asian American women. Documentaries PICTURING ORIENTAL GIRLS (1992) and SLAYING THE DRAGON (1988) analyze Asian female hypersexuality on screen. Recent films like Celine Song’s PAST LIVES (2023), Adele Lim’s JOYRIDE (2023), The Daniels’ EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022), Diane Paragas’ YELLOW ROSE (2019), THE HALF OF IT (2020), A.V. Rockwell’s A THOUSAND AND ONE (2023), and Savanah Leaf’s EARTH MAMA (2023) and classics like Mira Nair’s MONSOON WEDDING (2001), Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO (1998) and Lee Tamahori’s ONCE WERE WARRIORS (1994) compel a powerful cinematic language that centers women of color.