Established in Shanghai, 2003, Willmountain Films is a boutique, creative based production house specializing in TVC production, corporate videos, web movies, creative content development, and full service production support. In addition to client-based production services, Willmountain Films is also involved in developing original content such as television, web, feature films, and documentaries. Among their most recent films are “Lavender Flame” and “Requiem for a Martyr”.
On the occasion of their film “Lavender Flame” being reviewed on Asian Movie Pulse, we talk with co-directors Jud Willmont and Nicholas Z. Scott about the inspiration behind the movie, coming up with a film in 48 hours, mental health, the visuals, the editing, the casting, and their future projects.
What was the inspiration behind the story of the movie?
[Nick] Lavender Flame was made for the Shanghai International Film Festival’s Shooting 48H competition, which meant we didn’t know the theme of the film or our shooting location prior to kickoff. Once the competition began, we learned our theme was ‘coming together’ and that we needed to shoot at a local library. Based on our acting talent, we decided to write a family drama focusing on the conflict between a mother and a daughter.
Check the review of the film
Why did you choose the concept of the mental health hotline? Do you think it is a solution to problems like the one the protagonist is experiencing?
[Nick] The mental health hotline was a way to explore the daughter’s interiority and create a kind of visual poetry. Wendy Wang was really instrumental in making those scenes authentic. She called a local mental health hotline for research, wrote the scenes, and acted as the hotline volunteer. She did a tremendous job. Having Kirtan Hummelen as our DP meant that we were able to experiment with images and lean into a more experimental, more surrealist style. We wanted the film to stand out visually.
In general, how do you think people can overcome such psychological issues? The film also deals with the issues relationships face (nowadays). What is your opinion on the subject?
As filmmakers, we think the first place to start is empathy. In Lavender Flame, the daughter character struggles to reconnect with her mother, and it’s not until she considers her mother’s pain that she’s able to reconnect. The first step is understanding what other people are going through. Beyond that, we encourage everyone to speak with a mental health professional.
Relationships coming together and falling apart are natural parts of life. This short film is really a coming-of-age drama about a teenager learning to deal with her parents’ separation in a mature, adult way. Even though things like divorces can be extremely painful, there are still healthy ways of coping with the trauma. Open communication, for example.
Regarding the visuals, you chose a mixture of realistic shots and more impressive, dreamy ones. Tell me a bit more about this approach.
[Jud] We wanted to tell a story about a young girl going through emotional distress so we thought the best way to achieve this was to split the storytelling into two parts, the external – what was causing that distress, and the internal – how she was feeling about the issue. We used realistic shots to communicate the external story elements and surreal, dreamy shots to convey the internal feelings our main character was experiencing. As filmmakers, we like to use every opportunity to stretch and explore new styles of visual communication, so in this case, delving into the surrealism of her dreams and emotions was an opportunity to be experimental. We’re happy with the result.
What was your purpose in the visuals of the movie in general?
[Nick] Going inside a character’s mind is always refreshing for a filmmaking team, as the usual limitations of realism get to be ignored. Everyone brought ideas to the table. Kirtan Hummelen really wanted to do underwater cinematography and Linus Tang, our Art Director, brought in a lot of great props to burn and play around with. Actress Li Pei, who played the mother, went outside her comfort zone and wanted to do the underwater shots even though she can’t swim. Everyone came together to push the poetic visuals of the film.
Check the review of the film
Same question about the editing and also how come there are four credits regarding the editing?
[Jud] Regarding the editing, it’s hard to explain the choices we make because much of that comes from our intuition, a strong understanding of the story we’re trying to tell, and a sense of pace and timing. For me, editing can be an organic experience. I know what story I want to tell, and I know what we shot, but once I’m looking at the footage on a timeline, I like to try different things and see what the footage has to say about how it wants to be cut together. This was especially true for the opening sequence of Lavender Flame which is designed to mimic a ‘home video’ style. I felt like I had to put myself in the mind of our character and ask myself, “how would she have cut it.” That accounts for the raw nature of it. That approach was unique to the opening sequence. The rest of the film is broken into the scenes in the ‘real world’ and in the ‘dream world’. For the real-world sequences we concentrated on choosing the best performance for each line, action, and reaction – I think that’s a constant for us with all our films – especially when dialogue is involved. For the dream scenes, I was inspired by the idea of recurring dreams, and that accounts for the recurring images, but I wanted to show those recurring images within the context of a progression, so while we do go back to similar images in those sequences, each time we go back, something new is happening or the image is shown in a new way.
The reason there are four editors involved is because 48-hour film competitions create a huge amount of time pressure. We have people working on strict timelines and sifting through footage to make initial selections. We also split up into two teams, Nick was doing the dialogue scenes with Daniel, while I was doing the opening DV scene and the dream sequences with Jiarui. Towards the end we would get together and examine each-others work, make notes and revise accordingly. It was a real challenge to get that film cut in time and we ended up editing for 24 hours straight.
What was the casting like for the movie? How was your cooperation with actors and particularly Crystal Rao?
[Jud] We’d made two short films with Crystal prior to Lavender Flame and we really liked working with her. In our previous films, she wasn’t the main character and we wanted to make a film where we could put her in that ‘main character’ role. She stepped into the role and absolutely aced it. We’d also worked with Lipei Gao and Tian Liang on previous films and knew they were great actors. Since we knew we wanted to build the cast around Crystal, it made sense to cast two actors we trusted who could play her mom and dad. We didn’t know what our story was going to be until the competition started, but we knew we had the cast to do some kind of family drama.
Are you working on any new projects at the moment?
[Jud] Absolutely! We just finished a horror short starring Crystal Rao and Lipei Gao, again as a mother-daughter duo. We’re going to do some test screenings, then submit it to horror film festivals. I also just finished an AI Generated Animated short for a competition sponsored by the Shanghai Film Group, which premiered on BiliBili June 4th. We’re currently finishing up our first feature, a Mandarin-language, found footage superhero noir, which we expect to release sometime next year. We’re also working on a documentary about the polluted waters around Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and we’re in development for our next feature, a monster thriller set in rural China.
