After Us—Director’s Commentary
Our latest short film “After Us” is an important project to us because the inspiration behind the project came from a few different places. While we’ve noticed several comments saying this was “just another romantic short”, or “more of the same from WFP”, most people won’t even realize that this project was the culmination and fulfillment of several creative goals.
The first lies in the main character, Carly, who is played by Victoria Park. Having a female be the lead and focus of the entire short is something that we don’t often do in WFP. While we have had female leads in the past, they are usually driven by the actions of an opposite male. This isn’t something we purposely do, with the intent on only telling stories from the male’s perspective, we just normally write from our personal point of view… and we are guys, haha. Christine has always pushed us to have more female leads which we gladly support (like in When it Counts, The Places We Should Have Gone, The Other Side of Yesterday, and others), but we wanted the girl in this story to be completely self sufficient, which leads to another inspiration.
We recognize that many of our stories are about trying to get the girl/boy or losing the girl/boy, but we wanted to tell a story where that wasn’t the goal, and not even the point! Making Carly end up with no partner was the intention from the very beginning. We didn’t want to make an ending where the she needed another guy to make her feel whole again. The message of this short was that we must try to find strength within ourselves, and build our own lives in these difficult situations, rather than rely on another to make us feel better. Because it’s only when we are understand ourselves, that we can truly know what we want from, and can offer, others.
Another inspiration comes from one of our own past works, “Strangers, again”. Around this time last year I had wanted to do a thematic continuation of “Strangers, again”. Not really a sequel with the same characters, but just as “Strangers” presented the stages of a relationships beginning to end, I wanted to do a short about what happens after the end, because, as those of us who have been through it, there’s a whole other process of pain and growth to go through. This was paired with me realizing that most of our romantic content dealt with either the building up to love, or the breaking down of it, but rarely going past that point. Even though the catalyst of the short is losing love, the rest of the short departs from love being the focus.
Many people will watch this short and think that it’s another sad love story, but if you really think about it, it’s a story about self discovery, not even about loving someone else, but loving yourself.
This short took place over 3 days. The script called for a lot of locations, and a lot of passing of time, so many different set ups and resets were required. You’ll notice that many shots are repeated but something is notably different in the frame, this helps illustrate that time has passed. For example, each new step begins with her bed in the morning. The first time we see her still and afraid. The 2nd time see rises and gets up. The 3rd time, the frame is empty, she’s not even there as she’s awake even before the camera.
We worked with a small crew, moved fast, but still had pretty long days. Check out the full behind the scenes here!
Frequently Commented Comments!
WF’s recent stuff are all sappy love stories!
On the contrary, so far this year we’ve only made 2 love dramas out of 11 sketches/shorts. The rest have been 4 comedies about relationships, 1 about living a full life, 1 about going again career stereotypes, 1 about racism, 1 teasing internet trends. This has actually been our most diverse year of content ever. I think people just forget what we’ve done… or the romantic stuff stands out the most, which means that they resonate with you the most, so why so angry? =) And even if we were making a lot of love stories, we have been since the beginning, it’s not “recent” haha.
Please make a guy version!
It’s funny, every time we make a video from a guy’s point of view (Strangers, again,The Last, She has a Boyfriend), we always get comments that say “Please make a girl version!”. We should just make two channels and make each short twice from opposite sides, haha. But hopefully you can see that the message in “After Us” is not just for girls, it’s for everyone. You don’t have to be female to feel the same emotions.
This reminds me of “Her”!
While it’s very flattering for that comparison to be made, because “Her” is an AMAZING movie, the truth is that movie never came into my mind. Voiceovers are used all the time in movies and TV. One of my favorite uses is in the show “Scrubs”. Maybe because it was a girl’s voice and they were talking to each other made it feel like “Her”. In case you missed it, the voice is actually Carly herself. It’s her own inner voice that’s talking her through things. The idea of Carly talking to herself was meant to represent how usually we know what’s best for ourselves. Deep down we know what the right thing to do is, but it’s usually impossible to implement it. Giving advice is always easier than applying it. So Carly already knowing herself what she should do emphasizes the message that recovering from a breakup is an internal journey.
I love the music!
We love the music too! When I first started editing I was a little worried because I knew that the music would be crucial to this short. But I didn’t want to do an orchestrated score, I wanted produced songs to drive the soundtrack. But finding good, independent, and free to use music is very difficult. Fortunately, I recalled our trip earlier this year to Singapore where we met a singer named Daphne Khoo. She was singing at the event we were speaking at and she gave us a CD. I remember listening to it then and being really impressed. When this project came around I immediately knew which song to use and I emailed her and thankfully she was very grateful for us to use her song, “Weak” in the closing. The other music is by April Nhem who I found through our good friend Tom Ngo. He’s always on the verge of new artists and is currently helping to manager April. We fell in love with her sound as soon as it was shared with us. Kenson did a phenomenal job extending and elaborating April’s music to fill in the rest of the score.
OMG it’s KEVIN!
Yeah, it’s been a long time since Kev has made a video on youtube! I guess we are very lucky to have him here! Kev’s a good friend of ours, and right now he’s taking some personal time (and also about to release an AWESOME looking movie), but we’re glad he was down to come by for these quick cameos. Wasn’t it cool to see him in a more romantic role?
I wish this came out 6 months ago!
Sorry we couldn’t be there for when you broke up! But we actually did shoot this 6 months ago, in March! After shooting though we had to focus all our energy on making the movie, so “After Us” had to wait awhile to get edited and finally released to you.
Of course Phil casted himself as the “cute guy”
Ok, first, haha… this was no intentional the way you might be thinking. Yes I did cast myself at the end, but more because I thought it’d be a fun tie-in to “Strangers, again”. Perhaps my character there continued on into this story. I also didn’t write “cute guy”, that was Christine’s original line so I just kept it there. I don’t think narcissistically of myself as cute! Finally, I actually wanted to take this scene out. After we were finished editing and saw the short in its entirety, I questioned if bringing in a male at the end undid everything we were trying to do. Christine believed it was okay to leave in there, because despite still being attracted to others, she makes the conscious choice to be single as part of this healing process.
Why do you always make us cry Wong Fu!
Sorry to make you cry, but happy to make you feel. =)
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