CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE THE LOTTERY A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in Art By Wei-Chun Yang December 2009 The graduate project of Wei-Chun Yang is approved: Craig Ashby, fv\F .A. Date Magdy Rizk, M.F.A. Date Ron Saito, Ph.D., Chair Date California State University, Northridge 11 DEDICATION For CL. Lee and CH Yang Special thanks to my graduate committee members, Professor Ron Saito, Magdy Rizk and Craig Ashby 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS SIGNATURE PAGE ...................................................................................... .............. ii DEDICATION ......................................... .......... .................... ...................................... iii ABSTRACT ........................................... ...................................................................... v INTRODUCTION ... ................................... ..... .. ........................................................... 1 AESTHETIC APPROACHES ........................................................... ...... ........... .......... 3 STILL IMAGES FROM THE FILM ............................................................................ 8 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 10 lV ABSTRACT THE LOTTERY By Wei-Chun Yang Master of Arts in Art THE LOTTERY IS A SHORT NARRATIVE FILM CONSISTING OF THREE segments delineating the misconceptions that many new immigrants from Taiwan hold about living in the U.S. The subject matter of these three segments included in this film is respectively: health care for immigrants from Taiwan, ABC (American-born Chinese) Singers' Concerts in the U.S., and celebrities in Hollywood. I attempted to express serious subject matter with a lighter, humorous attitude in my thesis project. The aesthetic approach employed in this film is to incorporate found footage from DVD movies and overdub with original dialogue to convey a completely innovative sense of meamng. v INTRODUCTION Ever since I came to the U.S., I discovered that studying and living in America is nothing like what most ordinary people in Taiwan have pictured in their mind. My curiosity was piqued while exploring the myths of America that many new immigrants from Taiwan believe. I started out by reaching out to the Taiwanese community to collect more first­ hand information. Throughout the course of my interviews I found an abundance of intriguing misconceptions about America these Taiwanese immigrants had in the first place. In addition to the immigrants I encountered in Los Angeles, there are also a great number of authors across the nation writing about their experiences of emigrating from Taiwan to the U.S. I narrowed them down to three which I considered the most worthy of further examination. The first misconception is that people in America benefit from the most advanced medical system. The medical system in the U.S. is advanced but only for people who can afford it. So many Taiwanese immigrants would rather fly back to Taiwan for treatment rather than seek treatment in the U.S. The second is that the ABC (American-born Chinese) singers' concerts in the U.S. teem with American fans from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Though ABC singers were born in the U.S. it is more likely that they launched their singing careers in Taiwan where they have more of a connection to their ethnicity. After successfully establishing their entertainment career, the ABC singers get a chance to embark on a World Concert Tour including to their home country, the U.S. The primary audiences of the ABC singers' concerts in America, however, are still largely Chinese and Taiwanese fans. The last myth is that celebrities can easily be 1 spotted in Hollywood. In reality, Hollywood celebrities are rarely seen on the street except for special occasions. 2 AESTHETIC APPROACHES Film Form Inspired by Woody Allen's film What 's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) along with the TV series Kung Faux (2000) created by Michael Neumann, I adopted a similar technique in my thesis project of dubbing voice, sound and music over the original movie clips and re­ editing the footage. This technique gives existing imagery an entirely new message. The scenes used in my film The Lottery are the excerpts from three different movies. First, the footage used in the health-care piece is from Timeless Romance (1998) directed by David Lai; the second piece I used for the ABC singers' concerts sequence is from Chinese Odyssey 2002 (2002) by Jeffrey Lau, and the third segment is a clip from A Chinese Odyssey Part Two - Cinderella (1994) also directed by Jeffrey Lau. In terms of the language used in The Lotte1y, the dubbing in English in lieu of Mandarin for the Chinese characters is not only for the sake of the convenience for non-Mandarin speakers but also symbolizes the cultural overlap that is taken into account in my thesis. Conflicts and Anticipation Conflicts and anticipation serve as critical elements in most narrative films. In On Film-making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director, Alexander Mackendrick emphasizes the creation of tension. The advice he gives on how to create conflict is what I find quite useful in terms of narrative film. For instance, screenwriting is about reaction 3 rather than action. When getting stuck in writing the screenplay, consider the same story from the perspectives of other supporting roles. In order to set up conflicts and anticipation that can effectively motivate the film I have experimented with numerous plots and dialogues for the same footage and ultimately committed to the most appealing ones as concluded in the final project with the consultation of my thesis committee. In the first segment, the dancing couple is discussing where to go for their vacation and all appears normal. However, the husband really intends to persuade his wife to choose Taiwan over Florida for his medical treatment. The flight in the last shot does not disclose where the couple eventually decide to go for their vacation. The open interpretation is intentional. In the second sequence, the conflict stems from the misconception of a man and woman's expectation of an ABC singer's concert and then follows a second misinterpretation of the jewelry that the woman has been yearning for. The man's double misinterpretations against the woman's predisposition create the tension between them. In the final piece, the woman holding a sword threatens the man to show her the celebrities in Hollywood. The man comes up with a convincing story to persuade the woman not to kill him. 4 The Process of Formulating the Ideas for the 2"d Sequence The second sequence, The Concert, took me the most effort to get to the final concept though it is the shortest piece in the trilogy. The initial iteration for the concert scene was a teenager drawn to a poster of an ABC singer's concert in Las Vegas. His monologue continues as the concert imagery goes along informing the audience of ABC singers. The problem with this approach was the lack of drama, and the lack of dramatic anticipation. With a different perspective to the concert, I later contrived a whole new character - a staff working at the concert rather than an audience. A Taiwanese security guard for the concert is rehearsing his lines for the upcoming event in English, but when the day comes, he realizes that he is working with the mostly Taiwanese crowds in Mandarin instead. It was literal and explicit, yet there was lack of a conflict and no resolution. I then added a plot in which the security guard pictured an encounter with an American female fan at the concert, but it turns out he has a crush on a Chinese girl at the concert. This problem still did not solve the fundamental lack of conflict. In the next iteration, a man exercises in order to obtain the security job at the concert while his girlfriend ponders which traditional Taiwanese dress to pick to stand out among the American-majority crowd. As a consequence, the concert does not go as they had anticipated because most of the audience dressed the same as her. The straight­ comparison method of storytelling does not establish the conflict and anticipation that functions as in the first and the third segments. After all the struggles with the multiple revisions, I made a change to get rid of the straight A-B, Chinese vs. American comparison. In the next iteration I started the story after the concert rather than before it. On their way leaving the concert the couple argues about her expectations. In the end the 5 man gives the woman a bracelet that symbolizes what she is looking for in the U.S. as a new immigrant from Taiwan. Form and Meaning At a certain point in the first sequence, The Dance, the audience may question why the couple is dancing while having this conversation. The couple dances around the real issue, which is about health care while the destination of their vacation seems to become the center of their conversation. The subject is serious, but there is a tongue-in­ cheek approach to it. The second piece, The Concert, concentrates on cultural identity in relation to a person's ethnic background versus where he grows up. In the film the woman's complaint regarding the ethnicity of the audience at the concert indicates the false perception of the international popularity of ABC singers. Yet the ABC singers found success in their own culture due to the fact that being American born is almost "exotic" to the native Chinese and Taiwanese fans and that is the drawing power. An additional kind of identity somehow extends a certain amount of value in the field of art. In the last section, The Celebrity, I used celebrities posmg as non-celebrities talking about finding celebrities in Hollywood. The costumes which the actors dress in symbolize the awkwardness that appears to be normal in Hollywood. For instance, people are used to seeing men/women dress in costume all the time in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.