In Conversation with Michael Oblowitz Director of Confidential Informant
Confidential Informant stars Mel Gibson, Dominic Purcell, and Kate Bosworth
Before Christmas
Date: June 1, 2016
Director: Abigail He
Producer: ‘Zhang Hao
Writer: Abigail He
Cinematographer: Cairang Yangjie
Budget: $20,000
Financing: individual donors and self-financed
Shooting Format: Digital
Screening Format: 16:9 digital format
Awards: Golden Cine Award at Headline International Film Festival
Website
indieactivity : What is your film about?
Abigail He : Before Christmas is a film about a Chinese working-class family relocates to a big city, hoping to live a better life but ends up being another victim of capitalism. The father, along with his 18-year-old son Xiao Lee, finds employment in a factory producing Christmas decorations. As the family endears the difficulties of sweatshop labor, Xiao Lee must come to the harsh reality that his dream of becoming a musician maybe just a fantasy. The original idea of the film came from a photograph taken by a Chinese photojournalist. The image unfolds the workers’ daily routine in Christmas decoration factories in Yiwu, China, a small town where produces 80% seasonal decoration products in the world. Seeing the potential for creating a script based on the photograph, I reached out to the photographer and decided to transform the story behind that photograph into a film.
indieactivity : Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Abigail He : The festival circus lasted for about 2 years. It was selected by over 20 film festivals around the world and was nominated for Best Short Film in several film festivals and won a few awards, including Golden Cine Award at Headline International Film Festival. We were lucky enough to have media exposure in the local press (especially The Los Angeles Post) during the festival circus and had various magazines and critics to review the film and interview the filmmaker. The film was also screened in several special art events in galleries and was showed as part of the festival anniversary highlight in Manchester. So it had been an amazing journey! We are planning to release it on Amazon Prime later this year so audiences from around the world will be able to see the film.
indieactivity : Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Abigail He : A Chinese working-class family moves to a big city for a new job in a Christmas decoration factory. The Father and the son Xiao Lee, who just turned 18 years old last month, work in hard labor there. Same as other workers, they need to make as many Christmas products as possible for the salary. With his childhood best friend Zhang Wei, Xiao Lee was a member of a band and they shared the same dream of becoming famous singers. Getting bored with the factory very soon, he starts to sing while he is working. The routine of work and sleep in between the factory and his paternalistic family is torture to Xiao Lee. Until one day, a mistaken phone call seems to rescue him and light up his dream.
indieactivity : Development & Financing?
Abigail He : As I mentioned earlier, the film was inspired by photographs. They were published on a news website and I was very intrigued by the images. Then I decided to contact the editor and the photographer for permission to adapt the photos into a screenplay. The screenwriting process was very smooth, I made three to four drafts and I finished the final draft after I visited that city in person, 3 weeks before the production started. I think visiting that city helped me to make the final touch of the story and the script became much closer to reality.
We had some individual donors back in the States but like many other indie short films, it was mostly was self-financed. We had a very intense timeline for the project as most Christmas products were supposed to ship to other countries by the end of August so unfortunately, we didn’t have time to go through the pitching process to get funds.
indieactivity : Production?
Abigail He : I went back to China from the States in early June. Thanks to the connection we had back in China, we found most of the crew in the same month. For the casting, my assistant director, who helped me a great deal during pre-production and production, sent me a candid photo of a student who was studying at Beijing Film Academy. And from that photo, I knew he would be the right person to play the protagonist. He was basically untrained, he had just turned 18 at that time, and he has a similar upbringing to the main character that was written, which I didn’t know until we finally met. So we were fortunate to find the right person to play the lead so easily.
The location was the most challenging and nerve-racking part in the pre-production. We knew we needed to film in an actual Christmas factory but we couldn’t confirm the location until the very last minute, like one day before the production started. But once we had a location, everything came together in a very organic and natural way. The production started in mid-August, and we were told we had three days to film in the factory before they pack everything and ship them oversea. It was very intense and I didn’t even have time to worry because we needed to make it happened before the products were shipped. Luckily enough, my DP and I had similar visual styles and we already had the vision in mind so the actual footage we shot was very close to what we storyboarded. I still think we were absolutely blessed to be able to film in an actual Christmas factory because we did minimal production design and everything was just the way it is in reality at that factory. We were able to capture how the hats and stockings were actually piled in the movie. And all those workers in the background, they were the real workers who were taking their shifts during our shooting. So it was like having reality and fiction merge into one location in a very organic way.
We had a 5 days production and the post-production took me about 3 months. I made the first and second cut and my coeditor and I finished the final cut. I did the sound design and sound mix myself and it took me about a month. Then we had three passes for the color correction. So I think the pre-production was the most challenging and time-consuming. Once we got onto production, things moved along a lot faster.
indieactivity : Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Abigail He : I think the biggest lesson I learned from this project was to have a festival strategy ahead of time. Compare with my latest project, we didn’t have much of a strategy when we began to send this film to festivals. It really is a learning process, through making each one of your work. But we did submit it to various film festivals, both prestigious and local, in States and around the world. But what I learned from this project was it’s essential to know who your target audiences will be, then you will have a better idea on what festivals you should focus on. Having said that, we had great experience during the festival circus as we received great feedback and got to hear different voices from the audience, which made me very grateful and proud.
I enjoyed Trenton Film Festival a lot, and Monmouth Film Festival. They are small festivals in New Jersey but they are run by people who really care about the filmmakers they invited. I had a wonderful Q&A experience at Trenton and ended up being one of the festival juries afterward. Same as Asian American International Film Festival, my film was showing at Village East Cinema for the first time and I returned as a festival staff the next year. I’m very grateful to the people I met during the festival circus.
indieactivity : The Release?
Abigail He : We are planning to launch the film on Amazon Prime later on this year to reach more enjoyers of independent cinema.
indieactivity : Advice from the Filmmaker?
Abigail He : Keep your eyes open but stay focus on your work and listen closely to your heart. Becoming a real artist is a lifelong process so you need to be patient and stay focus on your own work no matter what. Let it become the way for your self-expression and one day you will realize your work speaks for yourself, that’s when your work truly stands out.
Tell us what you think of the Case Study for “Before Christmas” What do you think of it? Genre? More genre? Lets have your comments below and/or on Facebook or Instagram! Or join me on Twitter @oladapobamidele
