Lee Lin Chin’s voice fits perfectly with inventive short films ‘Eating Late’ and ‘Working Late’

Late at night, in the lonely fog between the end of a long office day and the inevitability of going to bed, before they wake up to do it all again, something incredible happens that brings the characters back to life in the inventive, poignant and darkly hilarious short film. -film form Late dinner. A similarly unexpected glimpse into the inner lives and thoughts of a group of office workers is captured in a companion piece, Work late.

Daniel Woods and Lewis Attey directed, wrote and produced the two films and in a beautifully creative way, the duo convinced journalist, former SBS newsreader (and fashion icon) Lee Lin Chin to narrate the series.

Woods says: “Lee Lin’s name came up quite early in the script process. Lewis and I really thought she was the perfect storyteller.”

He admits: ‘At the time we didn’t really think she would be ‘feasible’ for us. We didn’t have any direct contact with her and we had never worked with her before. We knew she was famous because she shunned the spotlight, or at least had a very public persona.

Over the course of several months, after a series of industry connections and an eventual back-and-forth with Lee Lin Chin himself, Woods and Attey convinced her to enter the studio to tell the character’s stories. Like the unique aesthetic of Late dinner And Work lateit’s impossible to imagine it working with any other narrator.

A man and a woman sit at a table in a restaurant, with food bowls in front of them.

‘Eating Late’ shares vignettes that capture moments from the lives of people eating at a Chinese restaurant. Credit: Some Livid films

In Late dinner, ordinary suburban characters – some alone, some in pairs – prepare for dinner in a brightly lit Chinese takeaway. The set design is beautiful, based on miniature models designed by Derrick Duan. A haunting flute-based composition heightens the drama, provided by Rick Parnaby.

The theatrical, vaguely surreal images combining miniature sets and actors, filmed against a green screen, were the glorious result of Woods and Attey’s inability to secure the physical location they had targeted. There is one scene in Taiwanese director Edward Yang’s 2000 film Yi Yi in which a couple is eating. The audience sees them through the window of a Chinese restaurant, somewhat voyeuristically. That scene inspired Woods and Attey to imagine multiple vignettes taking place simultaneously in a Chinese restaurant.

Bos says SBS, “We originally wanted to shoot it Yi Yi was shot dead. We wanted to use a real location and place a camera on a jib (similar to a crane) in the parking lot and shoot through the windows of a real Chinese restaurant. Of all the Chinese restaurants we could find in Victoria, there was literally only one that met the requirements of having a big enough facade and wide enough windows to photograph this thing.”

The duo presented their idea to the owners.

“They just weren’t interested at all, it was just a hard and fast ‘no’.”

While Late dinner creates an imaginary restaurant, Work late sees the viewer looking through the windows of an imaginary work environment.

The view through the wall of office windows shows a series of seated and standing people. The lighting suggests it might be dark.

Work late Credit: Some Livid films

Derrick Duan’s miniature sets are so beautifully detailed, even romantically kitschy, that they are completely destined to work out this way.

Attey says: “The miniatures in particular contribute enormously to defining the look of the film. The background and foreground are miniatures and everything in the middle is the actors, so it was quite a technical effort to make everything feel unified. It’s satisfying when people don’t really realize how it works.”

Woods adds: “We wanted the effect of the miniatures to have an uncanny valley look to the audience so that it wasn’t obvious that these actors were in miniature sets and yet there is something subtly surreal about the experience. Many people have made a Wes Anderson comparison to this work, but Wes Anderson was never a touchstone for this series.”

Attey says: “It’s actually more inspired by Swedish director Roy Andersson.”

Another major influence was Tim Key, the British comedian and poet most recognizable for his role as Simon, Alan Partridge’s sidekick.

Woods explains: “Tim Key was a major inspiration for this work in terms of the script and narrative tone. He has been a mutual favorite of Lewis and I for a long time.”

Woods’ 2020 short film A Belle Journey depicted a melancholy chapter for a French couple traveling through regional Australia. Despite the beauty and rarity of the landscapes, and their disbelief at this beauty, they are increasingly aware of the end of their relationship. There are no explosions or crashes to signal the ending, just a heartbreaking moment of clarity. These seemingly ordinary moments, full of pathos and possibility, were also at the heart of Lewis Attey’s 2018 short film Three floors in a rental van, in which several protagonists steer the same rental van into a kind of moral quagmire. The unflinching camera sticks closely to each character as they create a domino effect of bad choices.

Both Attey and Woods find fascination in truly observing people and by putting seemingly random, ordinary people in seemingly ordinary, everyday situations in the spotlight, they turn the attention back to the audience. Why do we relate to these people or this situation? What would we do in the same situation? Does our judgment of the characters reflect something about our own morality that we don’t want to admit?

Attey says: “Despite being absolutely crazy, Work late captures what it’s like to work in an office when your mind wanders.”

Woods adds: “On the surface it’s crazy, but that madness is the slow-creeping madness that some people suffer from in those very monotonous, boring office environments.”

Both Woods and Attey are happy that their series has found a home on SBS.

“Everyone – or at least everyone of a certain generation – has the story of being nine or ten years old and walking into the sitting room after his parents have left SBS on the TV, and there’s something completely insane on the screen that you can still remember. never seen before. Maybe it’s a foreign film or a stop-motion animation that is foreign to you and sticks in your memory, especially if you later become a creator yourself. We’d love an 11 year old to see it Late dinner And Work late and some of it sticks in their minds for the rest of their lives.

Eating Late is now available to stream on SBS On Demand.

Working Late is now available to stream on SBS On Demand.

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