Film Independent is now accepting submissions until August 4, 2014 for our quarterly 2014 Canon Filmmaker Award. Four times a year, we select one filmmaker to receive a Canon Cinema EOS package loaned to the recipient. Only Film Independent Fellows, Los Angeles Film Festival alumni and Spirit Awards nominees and winners are eligible. Click here for complete eligibility details and to apply.

Last quarter’s winner was filmmaker Emily Ting with her feature debut It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong. Emily has put the pedal to the metal recently and it’s quite astonishing what she has accomplished. She is currently in post-production on the film A Year and Change which she produced just after taking the project through the Film Independent Producing Lab last fall. She executive produced Man From Reno and co-executive produced Land Ho!, both of which played the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival. And she wrote and directed It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong–in Hong Kong. I caught up with Emily to hear about the making of and what she learned on the shoot.

Tell us about the film and why is it important to you to tell this story?
It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong is a walk and talk romance in the tradition of Before Sunrise set in Hong Kong. Ruby is a Chinese American toy designer visiting Hong Kong for the first time for work, and Josh is an American expat working in finance who’s lived in Hong Kong for over 10 years. They meet while Ruby is looking for directions to Lan Kwai Fong and Josh shows her the way. An attraction forms between them, but timing may not quite be on their side.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with the Before Sunrise trilogy. Shortly after college, I lived in Hong Kong for five years as an expat, and for years I’ve said that someone needs to make a walk and talk romance set in this gorgeous city. And since no one ever did, I decided to make exactly that as my directorial debut. This movie, more than being a homage to my favorite film of all time, is also a love letter to a city that was so instrumental in shaping much of my adult life. And… I may or may not have met a cute expat in Hong Kong once.

How did the shoot go? What were your biggest challenges with making this film?

We shot for 14 days in Hong Kong and despite all the challenges going in, the shoot went really smoothly! There are so many challenges with making your first film in a foreign country. The biggest being not knowing anyone there who is willing to do you any favors or have a support system you can lean on. I felt really lost and helpless until I met my wonderful producer Sophia Shek. She really made the whole film happen and opened up her support system to me and called on favors on my behalf.

Once Sophia was able to put together a local crew for me and take care of locking down locations and securing the necessary permits, the biggest challenge became dealing with the fickle Hong Kong weather. It rains almost every day and always at the most random times. But we got so lucky with the rain! Miraculously, it would always rain right before we rolled camera or start right when we’re wrapping. We did get rained out a couple of times but it was always after we’ve gotten everything we needed and the crew was happy to break anyway. Besides the rain, we’re also dealing with 100% humidity and shooting exterior nights every single day. And since much of the Hong Kong skyline and neon signs shuts off at midnight, we could only shoot for 6 hours on many nights. So we were always running and gunning. And we also had to pay off the local triad in order to shoot in certain locations we wanted, which is something I’ve never dealt with before.

Who is on your creative team and how did you all come to work together?
Bryan Greenberg and Jamie Chung play the two star-crossed lovers and they’re also a real-life couple. As a producer I had done a couple of movies with Bryan and I’ve always had Jamie in mind for the role of Ruby. Some time after Bryan wrapped on the first movie we worked on together, they started dating. At the premiere party, I told Bryan about the Hong Kong film and asked him to pass the script along to Jamie. They read it out loud to each other two weeks later, and said they were in. I am so incredibly lucky to have them on board this film. The chemistry that comes with being a real life couple just can’t be engineered.

The DP Josh Silfen and I first met at NYU Film School and have been friends for over a decade. We’ve worked together a lot as producer and DP and he has also shot some shorts and commercials I’ve directed. Even though Josh is my go-to DP, I wasn’t sure if he was necessarily the best person for this job because he’s never even been to Hong Kong before, let alone shot there. So last year, we flew out to Hong Kong for a camera test and based on his passion for the material and understanding of my visual sensibilities, it just became a no-brainer to have him on board. Long before I even had a producer, he was my first collaborator on this project at a time when I had none. And being a first-time director, it was really important for me to not only have a really experienced DP standing next to me at the monitor guiding me through it all, but also a friend who could be my moral support.

Tell us a bit about the development process and your preparation as a director?
Once the actors signed on, I worked really closely with them on perfecting the script. We would get together and read through the script and just tackle any issues they had with dialogue or character motivation. They also flew out to Hong Kong early so that we could have a week of rehearsals where we further broke down the script and discovered the beats before we rolled camera.

On the visual side, Josh and I watched a lot of different films together that had a similar sensibility to this film and came up with a visual style together. And then we shot-listed the whole film together. We would shot list again every time I discovered a new location I’d rather shoot in, which happened quite often. And then we would go over the shots every day before call time once we got to Hong Kong. I don’t think Josh wants to see another shot list for a while after this movie.

What is the visual look and feel you are trying to achieve with this film and why did you want to shoot with the Canon Cinema EOS?
We wanted to go with a very raw and naturalistic look for the film. We wanted the camerawork (which is mostly handheld) to be non-obtrusive–to stay out of the way of the performers as much as possible and just let their chemistry shine through. We wanted to capture the rich textures and colors of Hong Kong as well as use as much of the city’s natural ambiance (the skyline, the neon lights) as the lighting source as possible. We needed a camera that can perform very well under low light conditions and we knew that the Canon C300 could because we came to Hong Kong last year and actually tested this camera. We ended up shooting on the C500 and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results. Visually, I think we really did Hong Kong justice in this film. I still can’t get over how beautiful everything looks!

How have you built the support for this film and how are you putting together your financing?
We are very lucky to have been so warmly embraced by the Hong Kong community. We started out a little bit off the radar, but word spread very quickly that an indie ‘foreign film’ was being shot in Hong Kong. And soon everyone started following us on Facebook and Instagram to see where we would shoot next, and just show up on set! We were able to get many of our extras for free through our fans on social media! It also didn’t hurt that we shot all over Hong Kong and if you hung out in Soho or Lan Kwai Fong at all, you would have bumped into us at some point, which further helped grow buzz. We also were warmly embraced by the local press who showered our little production with so much love. The film was largely self-financed, with the help of some family and friends. And of course, winning this amazing Canon grant from Film Independent really helped us tremendously with production!

Jennifer Kushner / Artist Development Director