Awkward Cafe

‘Awkward Cafe’ is a group project based on Lyreca’s 7th observation, depicting the awkwardness of meeting an online friend in the real life for the first time. My role in this project is to 

contribute ideas to the interpretation and to play the ‘friend’ character. 

My own post-production experience:

Compared to my individual film, this is not a very intense work. My only concern is to avoid the over-acting which would affect the extend of awkwardness. It was weird that I suddenly felt a bit nervous to say the lines in English to the camera, so I practiced the two sentences over and over at home. After reflected on my film, I found that acting was an influential element that I wanted the awkwardness to be just right on the point. When spoke to Lyreca at the filming cafe, I felt it was much more relaxed than my practice just like our daily chatting. I am generally satisfied with the performance. 

Funny things happened in the actual filming:

For the part which filmed my mouth moving, I came up with the idea to speak Chinese to Lyreca. On one side, it was easier for me to say random things without thinking. On other side, Lyreca could be real confused by simply staring at my mouth. The initial plan was to muffle out the sound, but it was weird that my words could still be heard. I suggested that we could adjust the tone of the voice like aliens but finally we just muted it which was better to focus on Lyreca’s monologue. 

There was a small problem that we skipped the flashback which was written in the post-production plan. This part was meant to happen in a different location, indicating the online friendship of two characters. At the end of the filming, we didn’t have enough time for it and thought it wouldn’t matter a lot. However, it leads to the lack of narrative in the final film that audiences wouldn’t understand the nervousness of the first catch-up in the real life. If we could improve, I reckon it would be better to have one shot of Lyreca accepting the request on her phone and viewing the friend’s Instagram page.  

Thoughts of the final cut:

Watching the film from the big screen on the exhibition day inspired some new thoughts. First, as I said above, the relationship between the friend talent and the main talent is very ambiguous. The monologue mentions ‘him’ that audiences could guess the drama about relationship, but they probably wouldn’t know the real situation which might be confused. The ‘online friends’ part was abandoned, reducing the diversity of narrative. I would suggest to have 2-3 actual dialogue for characters to briefly introduce the situation before the monologue.

Overall, everyone in the group devoted a lot. It’s really happy to work with them and I still like the nice ‘awkwardness’ of our film.