'SARANG HEY!' AT THE GALWAY FILM FLEADH
‘For a debut feature it’s probably best to avoid no-budget
intercontinental existential dramas.’
Neil Dowling talks about his debut feature Sarang Hey! that has its World Premiere
at the Galway FIlm Fleadh (Friday July 8th @8pm)
You’re from Dublin originally but you’re based in Seoul – how did that come about?
I moved to Seoul because of my wife’s job (Norwegian Diplomat).
We knew we’d be there for three years. I had already been thinking of
making a film and had a vague plan in mind. I was really happy when I
found out we’d be going to Seoul because I felt that would be perfect for the
story. I’ve always been interested in stories where very different cultures come
together and you don’t know how the two will co-exist.
Tell us about the background to making your film?
Actually the original kernel of the idea came after I visited London
and shot some photos and super8 film. And on the developed film there
was a girl that I didn’t remember filming. So I thought of the idea of
the guy getting fascinated by this girl and trying to go and find her,
a person that he knows nothing about and no idea of where to start
looking within this big city, but trusting in fate that if it’s meant
to be he’ll find her. So I made a little short film about it and over
the years it evolved through scripts and rewrites into what it is now,
something very different. But there’s also still some of the same
elements.
Also, just before I went to Seoul I was at Cannes in 2008 and I
met this German guy each day I was there. He had driven down from
Berlin and was sleeping in his car. we kept bumping into each other
and chatting. Then maybe i told him what I wanted to do but didn’t
think more of it until about two weeks later back in Dublin it
suddenly hit me that he was the guy. Then I couldn’t find his card and
couldn’t exactly remember his name so I had to track him down through
websites of all the German actors agencies and eventually I found him
and gave him a call.
I was also extremely lucky to meet Nils Clauss, the cinematographer and
co-producer, pretty soon after I arrived in Korea . All of a sudden I
found a really talented photographer who was getting into
cinematography at the time and not only that but he could speak fluent
English, German and Korean so a more perfect person to work with
probably didn’t exist. We also became friends and have continued to
work on lots of other projects together.
And what was the catalyst for taking the plunge and actually getting
started?
I didn’t need a catalyst, I just jumped into it w ithout thinking it
through too much. I usually worry about the problems later. If I had
thought about everything or kept waiting for the right time it
probably would never have happened. Having said that I was in a good
position and I got a lot of support from my wife and family and was
lucky to meet the right set of people who were willing to join me at
the right time.
Tell us about how you actually made the film?
There’s no such thing as a no-budget film because even if this film
cost very little compared with most films it was self-financed and
therefore cost a lot, not to mention the cost in time and effort. For
a debut feature it’s probably best to avoid no-budget intercontinental
existential dramas. But to be able to make the film at all myself and
Nils tried to find an approach that enabled us to both maximise the
time that we could afford to shoot while still satisfying our
aesthetic and stylistic preferences as much as possible.
Tell us a little about the story of the film and what happens?
I presume almost everyone reaches points in their life when they ask
themselves if they would be happier taking a different path in life,
and this film looks at someone who makes the decision to drop
everthing and go to the other side of the world to find someone he
spent one night with to see if there actually is ‘more to life than
this’. It also shows how this decision impacts on the lives of the
people around him and the dilemmas that they also face. The film has
love-story and road-movie elements although I don’t think it’s too
easily categorisable.
How much of the story was scripted and how much was improvised?
I wrote a script which the actors read, but when it came to shooting I
preferred to get away from the script and write treatments of each
scene and then encouraged the actors to improvise. i just find that
I’m often not too comfortable with my own lines delivered by an actor.
This was particularly the case when we started preparing Ji-young the
Korean main actress and the dialogue I had written were all wrong for
the way she spoke English. Crisjan has to take a lot of credit for the
inventiveness he brought to his work. He was always ready to try
something else and always brimming with ideas.
Has the film screened before? What are your plans for it?
The Galway Film Fleadh is the World Premiere. I hope people will enjoy
it and I hope it gets to be seen by as wide an audience that it
deserves, wherever that might be. Germany may be the place that it has
most potential because the story is primarily from the perspective of
a German character. It would also be great to see how it goes down in
Korea, because even though I’ve lived there for three years, the
Koreans remain somewhat of a mystery to me at times. I know that they
are very fascinated by how they are represented abroad especially by
foreigners. So I really hope we can get the film seen there.
