Following the journey of Lin Yu, Lucky Boy chronicles several decades of his life as well as those of his family, friends and Qingqing – a childhood love that he pines for throughout him growing up. There is one thing to know about Lin Yu though, and that is: he is constantly one step behind others and surrounded by misfortune. Will he be able to change his fate, or remain an “unlucky” boy forever?
Starring Chew Chor Meng, Chen Xiuhuan, Wang Weiliang, Venus Wong, Jeremy Chen as well as Terence Then, this film will be out in cinemas on 18 May 2017. We interview Boris to find out more about the film – from conception to execution.
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How did the conception of this film come about?
It all started when Mr Lim Teck from Clover Films approached me to make a film about an unlucky person. There, an idea that always linger in the back of mind struck me. I am always very fascinated with the state of mind of human being. E.g. when a person think he is unlucky, he will blame any failure on luck. However, say something happened on this guy, and makes him think that there is a change in his luck, then out of a sudden, he will think he has the world under his feet. Not only he becomes confident, but also takes failures on his stride and will brush them off easily... Because he thinks he is lucky. So I thought, why don't we explore this interesting notion? Let's do a story not only about a pure unlucky person, but someone who thinks from birth that he is ill-luck. And this guy that we created a guy, is someone who always miss success or his goal by a little bit. So is he really unlucky? Because if he always miss his goal a bit, such that sometime, he miss passing grades by 1 mark, sometime, he misses his dream girl by a bit, sometime, he missed the first place by 1 place. But he is actually second! So in the end it is about what you think you are, and not actually who you are. Stop blaming it on luck!
Taking three years to create this film, has the director’s vision evolved over time?
I worked on this for 3 years since writing. Of course it has come through many many drafts. From initially the thoughts of making this a SG50 film till the current version. And the long post production we have since I completed the principal shoot in December 2015. However, in terms of the structure of the film, it did not change much, as I constantly went back to where I started and stick to the concept.
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What do you get inspired by to make films?
Many things in life, of ourselves. Things that happens around us. Interesting incidents that happens to my friends... Some seniors told me (jokingly) before, as scriptwriters, when we pass on, we go to hell... Because we always put/sell the stories of our love ones on screen... (And that is very unscrupulous... Haha) Well, most importantly, is we train our mind to be as sensitive as positive that whenever anything happening around us or any news we read on the papers, it will trigger the 'screenplay' department of ours that we start making stories out of it... Of course most of it do not make it to the screen... But the few that do, becomes what you see in the movies.
Share with us the most difficult part of making this film.
The biggest challenge is Singapore grows and develops too quickly! As this film deals with the growing up of a boy for around close to 40 years of his life, it is so difficult to make the various eras look believable. We do not have 'old' places anymore. Even if we spend on our props and art directions, we still have issues with the locations. Even if we find a very nostalgic corner to shoot... Any move of centimeters of the camera will capture either a new building that does not belongs to the era of a new vehicle will pass by... Of course we do contemplated moving the shoot to our neighbors where there are an abundance of more aged-looking buildings, however, we do have a very big cast from various walks, such as the ever popular Weiliang, Venus from Hong Kong, Terence the YouTuber, Jeremy the latest TV comedian... It is such a challenging task to put all of them together in Singapore in a same location already, it will not be possible to bring the, overseas, so we stall that idea and stick to filming in Singapore... As mentioned abt the location problem earlier, our shoot becomes extremely slow... And to the producers that means spending money and it translates into stress for production.
What's your favourite part of this production making project?
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Actually, being the 8th directorial work of mine, surprisingly this is by far the one that is closest to my heart. I have included many own experiences and childhood memories into the story. In fact, apart from Weiliang, Chor Meng and Xiu Huan's y single names that appear in this film are friends' names. Any injecting stories of my friends into the film, and seeing these memories 'replay' during shoot is amazing... (Ok, I am resigned to it, I'm going to hell!) And of course, my amazing casts. They are a bunch of amazingly fun group of people to work with! They are talented and they can almost deliver anything I request them to perform.
Lucky Boy opens in cinemas islandwide on 18 May. Be sure to catch it!
This film is a co-production between JTeam Productions, mm2 Entertainment and Clover Films. Jack Neo is the producer.
For more information and pictures, you can 'like' the Lucky Boy Facebook Page.
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Written by Dawn Teo
What's your favourite part of this production making project?
Actually, being the 8th directorial work of mine, surprisingly this is by far the one that is closest to my heart. I have included many own experiences and childhood memories into the story. In fact, apart from Weiliang, Chor Meng and Xiu Huan's y single names that appear in this film are friends' names. Any injecting stories of my friends into the film, and seeing these memories 'replay' during shoot is amazing... (Ok, I am resigned to it, I'm going to hell!) And of course, my amazing casts. They are a bunch of amazingly fun group of people to work with! They are talented and they can almost deliver anything I request them to perform.
Lucky Boy opens in cinemas islandwide on 18 May. Be sure to catch it!
This film is a co-production between JTeam Productions, mm2 Entertainment and Clover Films. Jack Neo is the producer.
For more information and pictures, you can 'like' the Lucky Boy Facebook Page.
Written by Dawn Teo