TIFF: ‘Riceboy Sleeps’ Director On Minimal Single Camera Coverage: ‘It Was The Scariest Thing’

Hollywood directors routinely take additional photos and camera angles, or “covers,” to give them options later in the editing suite.

Without Anthony Shim, director riceboy is sleeping. He avoided being filmed when one of his cameras rolled on the set of the world premiere of his Korean-English immigration drama at the Toronto Film Festival.

“We didn’t do any coverage. It was the scariest thing,” Shim said. the hollywood reporter About his and cinematographer Christopher Lewis’ single camera shots, which capture single, choreographed, continuous wide shots that cover all the dialogue and imagery in a scene.

From the hand of a master director like Martin Scorsese and his opening credits good friends Minimal camera coverage can be the creation of a movie legend. But for a second feature director like Shim, a single-camera shot is fraught with danger.

“There’s a reason people shoot and edit a scene together because it allows you to adjust to the rhythm, have flexibility and find nuance in the editing process,” he says. But Shim chose to emotionally manipulate audiences for a film about a South Korean mother and son struggling to adjust to a new life in 1990s Canada and bridge the gap between them.

“I really wanted the audience to be able to experience the story and look at these characters from a very observational point of view… and form their own feelings and opinions about them,” Shim insisted, in what turned out to be an intense character study. .

This is partly because riceboy is sleeping is part of a new movement of Canadian immigrant dramas highlighting newcomers to Canada and their families from around the world.

The Vancouver-filmed Shim drama casts its main Korean characters such as Soo-young, a Korean mother played by veteran dancer and debut actress Choi Seung-yeon, as she raises her son Dong-hyun, whom she played. from small. By Dohyun Noel Hwang and Ethan Hwang, 15, front and center to show how they are slipping, albeit awkwardly, into Canada’s dominant white culture.

“I often shoot the 1990s part of the movie so the Korean characters are in the background and the Caucasian characters are in the foreground, and they are very dominant with their voices, faces, bodies, often blocking out the hero. said Shim.

“And when we got to 1999, I started doing the opposite and dominating the film with Korean leads and supporting characters who are ethnically diverse,” Shim, who also appears in the film. riceboy is sleeping added in the role of Simon.

He insists that Korean characters must grow into their own skin, just as the hyphenated citizens reflect his childhood, where at age 8, arriving with his family from South Korea to Vancouver in the early 1990s, he finally got over his shyness and went turned into a movie. Director.

“That was the reality of how I experienced the 1990s as a kid,” recalls Shim. “I always felt that my family and the Koreans we were with were always in the background, always hiding and sometimes we voluntarily hid to avoid embarrassment or embarrassment.”

The riceboy is sleeping The current lineup of Canadian immigrant dramas at the Toronto Film Festival is similar to Clement Virgo, the director said. brother, Anthony Bourget concrete field and Kelly Fife-Marshall’s first feature film when the morning comes represents a fashion that comes and goes.

Instead, says Shim, she and other filmmakers from underrepresented communities who, like her, came to Canada as children are empowered to pick up a camera and make their own films about their immigrant experiences, as well as the descendants of immigrants did. So for generations.

“For the first time, there are people who can have a voice in these industries…so it’s important that black filmmakers tell good, honest, good stories,” Shim added.

The Toronto Film Festival will continue until September 18.