Set in a modern day local culinary
school, “The Lying Theory” is a comedy drama between the world’s most
mistrustful girl and the world’s most honest boy
Nominated for Best Script at The 5th Singapore Short Film Awards
Nominated for Best Script at The 5th Singapore Short Film Awards
That’s quite a lot of effort for a
short film, given the variety of scenes (a home, school, culinary institute..).
How many days did you take to complete filming and do post-production work?
We
shot for about six days in total and took approximately one and a half months
for post-production
As we know, casting child actors can be
really challenging. How did you/your team manage to get such a convincing child
actress to play young Claire and direct her into her role so well?
Kyra
showed up to our auditions all confident and eager to to perform her role as
Claire. Ever since that first meeting, I was won over by her natural flair for
acting and her charisma - I knew she had to be young Claire. Directing Kyra was
a rewarding experience: I would run through the scene with her and she'd
understand what I wanted to achieve, always asking questions and giving
suggestions of what she thought her version of Claire would do. It was really
fun and engaging to in discussions and directing her.
What were some of the bigger
difficulties you/your team encountered during production?
The
biggest challenge would have to be getting everyone’s understanding and
co-operation throughout the shoot, and managing time and forces beyond our
control. For example, shoot time overran for about two to three hours for
the classroom scene and we were supposed to move on to the house scene, but it
rained quite heavily so we had to postpone the shoot. It was a huge effort to
reschedule everyone’s time.
Were the actors playing Larry and
Claire really culinary students or did you/your team have contacts in the
school which allowed filming within the premises?
Our
actors were not culinary students. TP's culinary school generously
provided us with facilities to shoot, as well as some insight to
the culinary environment so we could ensure our film was true to
industry.
Could you share with us the type of
equipment you/your team used for shooting ‘The Lying Theory’? Would you also mind telling us a rough cost
breakdown for the production? (We understand that it was a student final year
project.)
We
used 5dm3 and zoom h4n for the camera and sound respectively. We rented a
circular dolly to achieve the 'transformation' shot and other basic lights.
What inspired ‘The Lying Theory’?
Growing
up and having experienced the ups and downs of friendship just as
everyone else has, I'd always wondered what it'd be like if I could just have
some sort of spidey sense or super power that could tell me which person I
could trust... that led to the conception of The Lying Theory. I wanted to
make a film about friendship and trust. I was inspired by the style of
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, which tells the tale of a lonely misfit in such a
whimsical and surreal manner - it touched on heavy topics but never was it
dreary or depressing.
How else would you have improved ‘The Lying Theory’?
I
would love to further develop the other characters, such as the classmates who
tease Claire about Larry. I would love to have added more depth to the
'villains', to give them motivation and some background/hints as to why they
seem so mean towards the main characters. Also, production-wise, better props,
with cakes that are more whimsical and 'wow' as we'd intended it to be.
