Short Film, "Talking to Yourself"

In july of 2007, we shot Oon Jit Fongs thesis film for NYU, "Talking to Yourself".
"Talking to Yourself" begins with an old man dining and talking to himself in a restaurant where the protagonist, Jiasheng, works as a waiter. After this encounter with the "Crazy" old man, Jiasheng is dared to try talking to himself in a restaurant after he had been stood up by his girl friend. He soon realises that by talking to himself, secrets of his past come to the surface forcing him to confront his suppressed feelings. This helps him to realize his love for his girlfriend and the beautiful relationship that they share.We shot the film on location, in 2 restaurants, along banks of the Singapore River and on a bus, using the Panasonic HVX202 with the Redrock 35mm lens adapter. We used the the set of nikon prime lenses ranging from 20mm to 105mm.The biggest challenge for me was the lighting. I was working on 100ASA and i wanted to be on f2.8-f4 most of the time. So a well planned preproduction was needed to think up the lighting plan for the shoot. The most complicated lighting set up was the wide shot of the restaurant restaurant scenes. We had 7 arri 1k rigged on auto poles creating pools of light on each of the table, a 2k blond bounced for a bit of fill, florescent tubes placed in the back ground for blurred highlights and a 2k blond through 251 behind the bar highlighting the bottles. On the shoot, my gaffer Brandon Lee helped alot by taking care of the rigging, electrics and commanding the crew. Another great help on the shoot was my CA, Nick Chu. He had the task of pulling focus on the old Nikon lenses where the depth of field is extremely shallow on the longer lenses. even for the long tracking shots he kept it in focus the whole time. My hats off to him.

Shot with Panasonic HVX202 and redrock adapter 1080i 25p

Director: Oon Jit Fong
Producer: Charmaine Seah