Interview with film director Alex Lee Siu
Welcome Mr Lee Siu, we are very excited to have you today and discuss about your work. Who is Alex Lee Siu and how did the passion for filmmaking start ?
Thank you for having me, AIMAFF. I’m a chinese-american independent filmmaker based in California. My years of growing up were equally divided between the East and West, in the cities of Hong Kong and San Francisco. These are both cosmopolitan cities with diverse groups of communities living in the same place, where there are plenty of opportunities to interact with people who come from very different backgrounds than you. As such, I’d say my life experience has been nothing short of cross-cultural and dynamic, and it has continued to inform, inspire and redefine my ever-changing worldview. My journey in filmmaking started during my college years, the formative time of each person’s souls. Perhaps the era with the most free time, watching films became my hobby after school. But it was never more than a means of entertainment and leisure until later I came across certain remarkable films with groundbreaking narrative methods, innovative aesthetic style and grandiose ideas. It made me realize that films and movies are media of storytelling much more than pure entertainment, that they could embody the power to enlighten our mind, penetrate into the deepest corners of our hearts and remind ourselves of our collective consciousness and struggles as human beings. Thus, cinema becomes my window of curiosity, allowing me to see worlds-of-worlds outside of my own immediate daily living. Everything behind this window is vibrant, sublime, egalitarian and oftentimes chaotic, and I’m still very curious about this window, even till this day.
Can you tell us about your previous work ?
“Out Of The Blue” is my directorial debut and my previous work are student films that I made either in film classes or experimentations with my friends. They carry little weight in terms of artistic merit but making student films provided me a very safe environment to fail and learn from my failures. Failures are crucial in learning the craft of filmmaking, you can’t learn only by textbooks or watching others’ work, you have to do it yourself. Student films also taught me how to handle the challenges of piecing every element together to make a harmonious work. The rigorous processes of various creative trials brought me to the discovery of my aesthetic taste and the diverse skills required to solve problems as a visual storyteller. Lastly, the micro successes of making them into fruition emboldened me the courage to dream and execute, that even though an idea seems impossible in the beginning, if you dare to dream, they just might come true.
CONVERSATION ABOUT: OUT OF THE BLUE
What inspired this original script ?
Well, I used to tell stories as a journalist during the height of the Covid19 pandemic. During this time I was surrounded by tragic news of soaring death in the world and my own community. This was certainly the greatest catastrophe in most recent human history. As millions have passed away in Covid, all of their loved ones must have remained to suffer from intense pain. I began to think if I could capture this sentiment through the vessel of film narrative. I was fortunate enough not to have experienced it first hand, but I’m interested to take a deep dive into it. This is the starting point of inspiration that brought me to work on a story about a tormented man who lost his spouse.
Your acting duet showcases a marvellous performance.
Can you tell us how it was casted and how many rehearsals your team had until the final shooting ?
Needless to say, the soul of this film is made by their acting, and they successfully made it come alive. The film just won’t be the same without their participation. Not only their performance is marvelous, but their dedication as well. Due to the limited budget of production, we could only rehearse twice before the shooting. Despite the emotional nature of the script, the first thing I emphasized to them during rehearsals was to know the lines really well by repeatedly reading the script out without any emotions attached, to the extent that the lines got imprinted into their mind. Due to the condensed nature of the writing, I strongly believed that the emotions of the characters would come out only if they knew the lines by heart, that is, their ‘acting’ and ‘being’ would merge into one when they didn’t have to think about their lines at all. Their acting will then flow without the hindrance of thinking. I mean, we can discuss the depth of emotions at the roundtable all day but if they don’t memorize them well, the audience will not feel the authenticity of their performance in film. So what we did when we began was reading the lines repeatedly in an almost stoic and robotic fashion, without emotions at all, and gradually I asked them to tune up their emotions into their rehearsals more and more as we progressed. And I feel fortunate to have these two talented but very dedicated actors who are willing to do the hard work before the shoot. In the end, their performance flowed naturally and created something beyond the sum of their individual parts.
Can you tell us about the hidden symbolism in your film? We see that the use of light on your project has its own storytelling.
Ultimately, this film is about salvation, the salvation of a tormented man who was stuck in the grief of his lost love and determined to live in the imprisonment of the past. Through the miraculous reunion with his wife, he gradually walked out of his grief by learning to move on. Here his grief and sorrow were represented by the color of blue. So the title “Out the Blue” comes not only from the fact that his lost wife appeared out of the blue, it was also a significant night of salvation for the man to walk out of the blue. As the conversation between the two unfolded, little by little Brennan progressed to move on from his grief through the very honest, loving and patient guidance of his wife. Their evanescent reunion made him pour everything out that had been stuck within him for too long. It was a cathartic release and eventually the discovery of solace. So you’re right, the lighting is essential in the storytelling, it represents the psychological state of the man. If you pay close attention, you would find the blue light completely gone in the final arc of the film, as it symbolized the complete departure of the man from his blue.
Was there any difficulty during the shooting of your work ?
There were numerous challenges but the biggest one was undoubtedly the lighting, or more precisely, the immense heat generated by the lighting at the latter half of our production. When we progressed into the second half of the shoot, we amplified even more the amount of lighting to practically manifest the increased emotional waves of the characters. What we realized was that using that much LED lighting in a relatively small living room generated a great amount of heat, and then the shooting literally began to become a heated battle against the heat. The live set became very hot and we had to intermittently stop and open the door for everyone to breathe and rest after every 10 minutes of shooting. It was horrible. The frequent need to stop shooting significantly delayed the pacing of our already tight 3 days schedules and in the final hours of shoot it was noticeable that everyone, the cast and crew, was struggling with fatigue and dropping to low morale. We almost didn’t have time to finish shooting the final act as the hours were getting late so everything had to be shot much faster than before amid the struggle with the heat. It was a fight and I’m glad we overcame it in the end.
What is the target audience of your project ?
This film is made for all those who have lost. Those who have endured the greatest suffering of losing someone closest to you, may it be a romantic partner or a family member or others. This is not limited only to romantic loss. Hopefully they can find certain resonances from this film, whatever they may be. For those who are fortunate enough not to have gone through this suffering yet, but eventually will because the human condition fundamentally requires us to lose someone at some point of our lives, I hope they can watch this with compassion and empathy to those who already have gone through this valley of pain.
FUTURE WORK AND CLOSING LETTER
What is the message the audience should convey leaving the screening of your film ?
There is not a particular message intended to be conveyed but I hope the general audience will walk out the screening with an increased level of awareness of treasuring your loved ones next to you and your present moment of life. After all, the present is all we have and we should treasure it, especially the people. As for those who have lost, I hope they can get a certain level of peace and understanding to keep living the best of their lives by moving forward and not looking backwards. There is a great mental temptation for those who lost to imprison themselves in the past out of pain, fear of the future, or simply nostalgia. But as psychologists noted, the most effective way to overcome grief is to keep moving forward, engaging in things that orient yourself in the future and not dwelling in the past. Easier said than done but it’s the way to do it. If they walk out of this film with this understanding, and lead their lives with a change in spirit and behavior, then it’s the greatest thing for me to hear.
Any future projects incoming ? Along with personal aspirations.
I have a few ideas but there’s no future projects settled at the moment. Every time when I finished a film there’s a voice in my head that said this might be your last film because in order to make a film, everything has to fall in the right place and you have to meet the right people to make it happen. It’s not a solitary endeavor and you need a bit of luck at hand to have all the pieces together at the right time. To me, it is truly a miracle when a film is made, however short and low budget it might be. So far, this project is my biggest miracle and I hope it won't be the last, as I was proven time and time again that the end of something is only the beginning of another, another thing bigger and better.
As a filmmaker, I strive to be a better storyteller than who I was last time, bring the lessons the l learnt from the last to the next and break the previous ceiling I set for myself. That’s the only aspirations I have.
That was the interview with our beloved creator Alex Lee Siu. Our community is rising everyday, new talented filmakers and screenwriters get onboard. Be sure to check the rest of our interviews and why not schedule one for yourself to promote your work. To publish an interview simply submit on the INTERVIEW OF YOUR FILM category on our Filmfreeway page.
