That Summer When

a short film by Kim Ngan Phung & Anh Minh Le

Amy and Michelle, childhood best friends, seeing each other again in their hometown after 7 years apart. What is the twist behind this drifting away?

Watch full here

The Idea

Aim to create a Poetry-in-Picture, inspired by a Poem by Hannah Cao - “This City Knows”.

Scriptwriters:
Anh Minh Le
Kim Ngan Phung
Nicholas Tam
Tra Pham

The meaning

Two international students celebrating years of studying abroad with an identity complex – asking where and who they were. Deep inside their hearts are the parts where they don’t dare to stir up. It took them years of gathering the courage to look into their deep roots as their time at university reaches its end. They realized that home will always be there for them, even when it is not physically there.

It foreshadows the longing mentality for any children growing up away from home.

The Challenge & Execution

Production timeline

We started this project in August, but the setting was supposed to be in the Summer. We knew we had to get the filming done by September, as Toronto’s weather is going into the fall with trees changing color and leaving when October arrives. Additionally, it would be too cold to shoot in the water, or outdoor in the nature and to get the preferred natural brightness of summer – these variables were considered as a way to save up for the equipment budget.

Pre-production and planning was continuously revising until the last day before the shooting day of September 23, 24, which was exactly 4 weeks since the first draft created.

Script development

It was the first time we embarked in a dialogue-heavy short film, our main script-writer has an English major background yet his weak points were dialogue being written more book-like conversations. After 2 weeks intensive working in a team of 4, we decided we need a table read despite a shift in budgeting.
We organized three in-person table reads: the first table read was to develop the dialogue into a more real-life conversation. The second and third table read was to create the bonding between actors, as the movie relies on displaying the deep relationship between the characters, it would not follow the script if there were no bonding; this meeting would ultimately bring out the ‘close friends’ vibes and feel of the movie.

Location & Crew

To overcome the shortage in time and personnel, we decided 2 days to drive across the city scouting location and test our visualization aspect. This was the time for us to execute our idea into real life and playing with our creativity. From then we could make the storyboard easier with our actual footage:

Team

Co-producer: Kim Ngan Phung & Anh Minh Le
Director: Anh Minh Le
Art Director: Kim Ngan Phung
Sound & Lighting: Nicholas Tam
Still cuts: Tra Pham
PA: Zach Dang
Editing Advisor: Melody