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I'm Lulu on.
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I'm the writer and director of the Farewell, and today we're gonna look at a couple drafts of the script you probably don't want.
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Theo scene we're gonna look at today is a scene that takes place in a wedding photography studio between Billy and 99 which is Chinese for grandmother and in the background, the bride and groom are having their photograph taken.
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One of the main things we wanted to establish was the relationship between Billy and her grandmother.
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Nine I and, you know, at the same time, we wanted it to be really visual, even though it's a dialogue heavy scene.
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I wanted to make sure that we were always looking at something interesting on screen and reminded that there is a wedding that is supposed to be the focus of the story, even though, for Billy, her mind is clearly on the impending loss of her grandmother.
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Here is a version of the Chinese script.
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I speak both languages, and I understand both languages, but I don't write or read Chinese, so I don't really know what any of this says, but as you can tell, the formatting is very different.
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Instead, of having this indented dialogue that is traditional for American or Western scripts.
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I guess the dialogue here is written more like in prose.
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This says 99 that I know.
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And then here is her dialogue I'm seeing now that they've retained the brackets, meaning that this is in Chinese.
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I think the biggest challenge in writing a bilingual script for me what I hear in my head is not what I have the ability to write down on the page.
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I hear it in my head and Chinese, and I'm translating it and writing it down in English.
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And then the translator would have to take this English and translate it to Chinese.
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My mom, she did a lot of work with me on this where she would read through the Chinese dialogue and asked me, Is this what you heard in your head?
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Or she would say It sounds very formal.
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This doesn't seem like the way that nigh nigh speaks to you.
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We would make corrections that way.
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I would tell her what I actually heard, and then she would go into the document and change it.
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We had professional translators and they had their versions And then I would have this side version from my mother.
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I had no way of distinguishing between them.
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I think that thes folded lines are the scene headings.
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This is Billy here.
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This is no no nanny that's in English.
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It's phonetically spelled out.
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I mean, you can see this was very challenging for me because I don't read Chinese.
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But this was given to the actors to read so that we could cast them.
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I couldn't correct it on the page.
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I had to correct it once I heard them say it at a table, read or even on set.
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So before we started developing the script, I actually did an episode of this American life.
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So for a long time, I just called it untitled.
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Ta l this American Life project.
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I originally wrote all of the Chinese dialogue in I talents.
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You'll see and later drafts that I actually changed it to brackets because the italics air a little bit confusing.
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I'm kind of o C.
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D.
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So I really like consistency throughout a script.
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So it just became easier to create brackets around any dialogue that is meant to be smoking in Mandarin.
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The name of the main character.
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Funny coincidence was Nora and I don't remember why I named her Nora, and this was way before I cast Aqua Fina, and that was a very weird coincidence.
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I think that the main reason I changed the name to Billy was because Nora is a difficult name to pronounce in Chinese.
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And so I wanted to have a name that sounded the same in English as in Chinese.
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It would.
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So this is the final shooting scripts in the earlier drafts.
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A lot of these conversations happened in different scenes.
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Nine.
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I had multiple conversations with Billy, you know, here you see, it's nine Eyes Apartment and then another conversation happens in a car.
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In the final film, I convinced all of the conversations that Billy and Nine I have in tow one scene at a wedding studio, and this is the main scene that you have the dialogue between nine I and Billy.
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This is nine.
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I complaining about the wife in this first draft, she says.
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What is wrong with this girl?
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There's a part of Billy that feels like if she knew why this wedding was put together, she might have a little bit more appreciation, you know, even here, Nora is defending Ami the Bride or Eiko the bride.
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Her name also changed at some point.
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And then here she Billy says, she seems really sweet.
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So that was one thing that I kept the same from the first draft.
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The final shooting script was always nine eyes Dissatisfaction in this first draft.
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Nine hotels.
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Billy, when you were little, you were so generous.
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You haven't been yourself lately, perhaps because of your break up.
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There's no longer a break up in the final script, but this stays the same nine.
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I says.
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When you see people, you should say hello, Auntie.
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Hello, Uncle.
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Don't be Union Union.
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So this is silly child here.
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But throughout the movie nine.
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I refers to Billy Stupid Child.
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It was one of my producers who suggested we translate it to silly child.
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Stupid Child seemed very harsh in the context that nine eyes speaking to Billy.
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She's saying the word dumb or stupid, but she doesn't really mean it.
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And actually Shaft, she uses shot to refer Thio Niko, the Japanese bride.
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It's on Lee for me, within context of how my grandmother is saying that word.
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Do I not take offense to it?
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I wanted to give the audience that same moment of being a little jolted by it, but then relearning the word through the context.
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So this is a really big moment that's been in every single draft from tthe e inception of the scripts where nice is gonna meet you.
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Other drafts of the script.
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This line was sort of interspersed in between other dialogue.
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Here in the final shooting script, we end the scene with it, and I didn't really right.
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You know the reaction.
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Because I knew that I was gonna shoot the reaction of Billy and that we were really gonna linger on her face for a significant be as a reaction to nine.
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I saying this because, of course, she knows that that day may never come.