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A man lost his love. He decides to go out and find her in the night of Hong Kong, only to realise that it's not with her he's in love, but with the city itself.



interview for Raindance festival





Interview for Showreel magazine

SHOWREEL: A wonderful homage to Hong Kong and sultry nights of love. How did this urban-erotic epic come into being? : July, last year. I often take rides, in the back of a taxi or in a double-decker bus, looking at the gorgeous landscape that Hong Kong offers to my eyes each time I come. And there is this thought that crosses my mind: will there be a woman to mark my Hong Kong with her perfume this time? My Hong Kong is complex. It’s memories from those special years of high school to summers spent there, strong feelings to countless stories, seeing the closest people to me. My Hong Kong is, from the day I discovered from tipping my head backward to look up at the top of the skyscrapers, a huge monster of concrete and metal exhaling its oddly suffocating warm breath. And so I went, wandering in the nights, unable to find sleep, taking pictures of it, its dirty and mysterious streets, the rare people that I encountered in the early morning to the intense crowd of Wanchai’s market at dusk. My Hong Kong is a double-faced city, which releases most of its charm after sunset. And although it’s a beautiful monster of modern urbanism, it remains deeply human. Since the day I’ve known it, it made my heart race inexplicably, made me laugh, cry, and deeply fall for it like a strong love story that led to passion. It has been my muse for many years. I wanted to give it an homage, and as I do with the one I love, show it to others as I see it. SHOWREEL: The finished piece has a playful effect – resists being pinned down. Can you give a brief description of what you did? Did the combination of live action and illustration just come out that way, or are we seeing the results of meticulous planning? : A few days before leaving for Vancouver and starting the production, I still had no idea what to do exactly about all those confused intentions. I decided one morning that it was late enough. I sat down with a pen and paper. It all suddenly became clear. But after writing the main outlines and drawing a first sketch of the storyboard, it appeared really big for one person, with only six months ahead. I wanted to use film at first, as my main goal is to join traditional cinema, with actors and sets. But it did not fit the concept at all, and I decided it was better to use animation and visual tricks to actualize the project. Crowds in 3D were tough to handle by myself, so I decided to make every character in 2D animation. And to make it the fastest way possible, I used the sequences of pictures I took, which is close to pixilation in a way, printed them down and rotoscoped them one by one.

This shrunk down the animation time to barely two weeks, which is crazily short compared to six months of time. Not to mention that during my years in Supinfocom, I discovered two animated featured that radically changed my perception of Japanese animation: Tokyo Godfathers and Mindgame, made respectively by the studios Madhouse and Studio 4°C. I had this urge to experiment with mixed media. I also saw the technique at work on Al Dente, that my fellow classmates made at Supinfocom using a similar technique, resulting in an astounding aesthetic piece. I wanted to remain free with camera moves, so I opted for painted backgrounds in still shots and 3D ones for the movements, such as the fly-through. I had an idea of where to go at the start, but thanks to one of my mentors, Casey Kwan in Vancouver, I pushed myself to make a proof of concept. It turned out to have a rather realistic background look against naïve simple drawings. I then proofed it in an animated shot, and the look developed little by little in such a way. I realized a few months before the end that what I could have done was use no light but 3D software as a simple engine, painting every texture and render it as flat colours, without using shaders. But it wouldn’t have had the same mysterious darkness and impact. I adopted mixed media without trying to blend them seamlessly. SHOWREEL: You live and work in Hong Kong, have a French background and finished your degree in Vancouver. What role do your intercultural skills play in your work? : Given that I was born and spent part of my childhood in China, went back to Hong Kong for high school with my family and stayed with them, while studying in France in between, and that I only spent six months in Vancouver, my main cultural backgrounds remain France and China. I never thought about this until I had a talk with a friend of mine. He asked me why I didn’t use more of my Chinese background in my projects. After that, I started to give some serious thought to it and the rest came naturally. I think I might be able to understand more of the two countries as I can have a external point of view of both of them. I think it helps me to be open-minded and respect differences. It also helps me to see through preconceived ideas that both peoples have about each other – that can be very surprising sometimes.

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