HOW A TRIP TO A KOREAN GENRE FILM FESTIVAL CAN MOTIVATE YOUR WRITING
Or The Power of Genre Joy In Bifan
I was a BIFAN virgin.
On May 25th, 2022, I received an email from Bifan. The email was from an industry program manager who congratulated us upon having our feature film idea chosen as the official IT PROJECT SELECTION in the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). Over 3 days, my director friend Jacen, and I would have the opportunity to meet with leading global film industry professionals to talk to them about our project and explore possible collaborations.
Out of 217 projects that were submitted, we got selected.
Consider me amazed, flabbergasted, and humbled.
WHAT WE DID OVER AT BUCHEON
I spent 4 nights in Bucheon, where we met with genre fans from all over the world and got to watch genre films from Vietnam and Australia, and Thailand. We stayed at a very nice hotel called Hotel Polaris. I had a large-sized room with a king-sized bed with fluffy pillows and a large screen in front of the bed where at night I binged a new K drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the first season of the Walking Dead. But during the day, it was all work. After breakfast, we walked over to the neighboring hotel where we went up to level 3 and entered a large room where the organizers had arranged dozens of tables. Each table had a little card that indicated our project title. I and Jacen set up shop at our table and got ready to meet our potential collaborators.
It was my first time attending such an event so yes, I was a Bifan virgin. Not so my director friend, Jacen, who has been to such gigs a few times and he was even an alumnus of the Fantastic Film School. Our project was called “CUCARACHA”, which is Spanish for Cockroach. It began life as a short script that I wrote just for fun, and just to keep the wheels of my writing craft oiled and humming.
From time to time, I try to either write a short story or a short film script in the genres that I love, like thriller, horror, comedy and romantic comedies. I write more horror short film scripts because they are generally easier to produce as they can be shot at low budgets and still be compelling. When I told my director friend, Jacen, that I had a couple of genre scripts in the drawer, he asked if he could take a look at them. I said sure and sent them over. One of the scripts was titled ROACH LOVE, the story of which can be boiled down to this — BOY MEETS GIRL. GIRL IS REVEALED TO BE A COCKROACH MONSTER. GIRL EATS BOY.
It is a romance.
It is a horror.
It is BEFORE SUNRISE meets THE FLY.
Which begs the question.
Why roaches?
I have a deep fear of roaches.
It is a fear of epic reach. It is a fear of such staggering depth that it defies human comprehension. Just the sight of one cockroach scurrying across a room fills me with a primal revulsion. Roaches that fly make my pulse race and the pupils of my eyes dilate. Sometimes I think I have a built-in roach radar because I could be writing a script in the wee hours of the morning and I would suddenly look up for no reason, and glance to the right, downwards, at an acute angle of thirty degrees, and I would see a roach on the floor, its feelers twitching the air.
This is despite the fact that roaches are silent invaders that move with cunning stealth. But they are no match for my radar. It has the ability to sense the soul of a roach within five feet of my body. And once that radar is activated, everything else is put aside. Nothing is more important and of an immediate concern than finding that roach invader and terminating it with extreme prejudice with my roach spray.
But how does one get from fear of roaches to writing a script exploring that very fear?
A WEIRD SEXUAL THING
One day, I was scrolling Yahoo news for any strange ideas on which I could flesh out a script and I came across an article about people who are aroused by stomping on bugs. I can’t remember if the bugs were roaches, but apparently, somewhere in the world, there exists a weird fetish where you can get transported into divine levels of sexual ecstasy just by stomping on bugs.
Useless facts like these, make my writer’s brain go Hmmmm.
Fact 1 — my fear of roaches.
Fact 2 — Sexual fetish.
Mix them together and you get a ROACH LOVE script. For those who ever wonder where writers get their ideas, this is how. Get two strange ideas and mash them together and see what sparks forth.
I have always felt that one’s fear was a great springboard to lend impetus to writing anything of worth. Great art often arises from an artist’s deep fears and obsessions. Art is a way to make sense of the chaos, and a human attempt to tame the turmoil, in our subconscious that is triggered by these fears and obsessions. Some compose songs and poetry. Some dance and some paint.
I write.
My director friend, Jacen, asked if anyone was doing the Roach script as we called it. I said no. And told him if he wanted to do it, he had my blessings. We would split the cost fifty-fifty.
He thought he could shoot it in one day. He knew a production designer who was in the middle of shifting offices. The production designer had not moved into his new premises yet and he had given permission for Jacen to use the empty office for the shoot. The short film only required two acting talents. It was a silent film. Shot in black and white. We would like to say that we were inspired by the black and white visuals of German Expressionism, but to be honest, black and white is a great way to hide evidence that the film was shot on a low budget.
As a writer though, I felt the black and white aesthetic really fitted the theme and subject matter of the story. What are roaches but bugs that live in the shadows? And my characters in the story are exactly that. They live on the fringe of society. They have secret fetishes that are frowned upon by society. They are downtrodden. They are the judged. They suffer from the whiplash of prejudice because of their appearance and their unpopular desires. They live in the shadows, and what better way to characterize them visually than the classic black and white aesthetic of Fritz Lang.
The film was shot in one day. Jacen also edited and put in the soundtrack.
Then he sent the first cut of the film to me.
How did I feel?
HOW I FELT UPON SEEING THE FIRST CUT OF MY SCRIPT
Writers are dream weavers.
First, you conjure a dream, a vision, these images in your head, then you try and make sense of it with words. You put them on paper. Organize them in a certain way on the page. Create a trail of word crumbs that hopefully will lead the reader down a path of Story, and hopefully, when you do your job right, you will lead the reader to an emotion, a revelation, a catharsis. It is the hope of all artists that their art can change minds and hearts. I have been writing for a long time and there is nothing quite like watching the birthing of a vision that was originally composed of just words. Words can punch you in the guts but Film will punch through to your very veins and arteries.
Jacen took the cloth of words that I stitched and wove a dream vision on film. I will be forever grateful for that.
But he did not stop there.
Films are never completed in that sense. Once you complete a film, it is time to share it. It is time to bring it on a circuit of festivals. It is time to gauge the responses of the public. For when you make a genre film, it is never enough to please yourself. One hopes for the approval and enjoyment of fellow lovers of the genre too. Jacen saw the potential in Roach Love to be turned into a feature film by expanding on the love story. Titles are important in genre films and he found out that the Spanish word for roaches was Cucaracha. I thought it sounded cool. The phonetics of the word Cucaracha suggested a bright and party vibe which was such a contrast with the subject matter. I loved it. It fits into my theory that words sound more impressive when you phrase them in old Latin.
In this case, it was Spanish. And so Roach Love became Cucaracha. Jacen thought it would be cool to submit to Bifan and see what happens.
And as good fortune would have it, we got selected to participate in the project market at Bifan.
WHAT’S GREAT ABOUT BIFAN
I had to now turn a short film idea into a feature film-length script. I managed to turn in a first draft in a month, just about two weeks before we had to leave for Bucheon. We met with Japanese, other Singaporean producers, the Italians, the French, and the Spanish, and we were heartened to learn that the fear of roaches was indeed universal. The Japanese producers grimaced when we showed them our fake prop roaches. I got to meet Mr. Brian Yuzna, the legendary producer of my favorite B HORROR film The Re-Animator, and the creator of Honey I Shrunk the Kids. He suggested a possible kick-ass ending for our film.
Oftentimes, when you write a story, you are toiling all by your lonesome. You have been in the trenches for so long. Your hands have been soaked in the dirt and mud of story creation. In the words of the poet Shelly, when winter comes, can spring be far behind? In the context of writing, when you finish the first draft, can self-doubt be far behind? The answer is yes. The specter of self-doubt looms over your shoulder, breathes down your neck, and envelopes you in its embrace.
This is why an organization like Bifan is so useful. You get to meet a tribe of genre lovers. A community of writers, directors, producers, and investors, who are encouraging, whose minds are open to all weird and fantastical manner of dreams and visions. They know the struggle it takes to put those dreams on paper and film and turn them into reality. You will see and hear your idea through the eyes of other like-minded individuals and their comments will be like the daylight that would cause those shadows of self-doubt to flee in shame and ignominy.
GOOD MEMORIES
I met Singaporean filmmakers that I did not get a chance to meet when I was in Singapore. They have become new friends. I made new friends as well with Koreans and a Nepalese filmmaker. I got to try Makgeolli, a popular Korean rice wine, and of course, friendship was forged over food and cold beers.
MY TAKE AWAY
Keep writing original material. Have fun with the genre. And do have faith that someone somewhere in the world will see it with eyes of love. Accept all feedback, be it good or bad because it will help you in your rewrites. It is not just you in your own little corner of the world, toiling alone, struggling in solitude. There is a tribe. You are part of it. There is BIFAN.
I was a Bifan Virgin.
I no longer am.
I hope I will return.
I hope.
