Date completed: 2007
Running time: 4 minutes
Country of production: USA
Language: English
Video: Mini DV, NTSC, 16:9
Audio: Stereo (2.0)
"Since You've Been Ong" is a story of what happens with your friends when you don't show up. They each have their own agendas, and their memories can be quite selective. Dony has a crush on Elizabeth, while Amy moves in on Jay, Elizabeth's wayward boyfriend.
The first pass of longer voice messages establishes the characters and is largely in concert with the images seen on the screen. The second half features interleaved messages with more contradictory images.
We start in the parks and bright streets of San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood before descending into nearby Chinatown parks and darker alleyways. Throughout the day, you see a contrast of leafy green and dark red.
Once the four writers agreed on the general premise, locations, and character personalities, the three actors first wrote their lines in isolation to recall different events or have further divergent recollections of this fictitious day. Writer and actor Jay Patumanoan's original idea of conflicting perspectives of the same event evolved into the more immediate contrast of contradictory audio and video.
The Sake Bombers collective is made up of eleven Bay Area based Asian American artists. The group consists of freelance filmmakers, editors, animators, screenwriters, film theorists, musicians, and film lovers. "Since You've Been Ong" was written, filmed, and primarily edited in one weekend of June 2007. This film was made possible in part by the support of the 4th Annual 72 Hour Film Shootout, presented by the Asian American Film Lab, AZN, and Asian CineVision.
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