After much hard work, our newest and FOURTH music video for our good friend David Choi is up for your enjoyment! We hope you like the video and please share with your friends as we’re very proud of the final product.

One more time!
It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when David didn’t want to make any music videos, way back in 2008, and here we are completing video No 4, in 4 years. The previous three music videos we did for him are “classic” Wong Fu videos and were great accomplishments for us during each year. Thankfully for all of us, David continues to make great music and meaningful songs that are just meant to have something visual accompany it. While he released his newest album back in October of last year, we hadn’t had time to make a new video right away. In the meantime David worked with other directors and made some great music videos, but lucky for us, he saved us a song we wanted to do and we sought to carve out time to make it.

What’s the story?
We like to tell stories. The song itself has a very clear story within the lyrics, and we while wanted to represent the words, we always try to add a twist, or something that’s not completely literal. The song is from the perspective of the heartbroken, but we decided to look at it from the other side. It’s common to first feel empathy for the rejected, but why not try to place yourself on the receiving end, and instead of being sad that you lost someone special, take the positive route and celebrate that you could be (or are) the “lucky one”. We felt that this mix of emotions, first feeling sorrow, and then flipping the story to feel joy would be interesting to convey.

And that’s what happens in the video. We lead the viewer to first believe that the old man in the beginning is the young man sitting in the car, writing the letter. He gets his heart broken as the girl he’s confessing to says that she cannot be with him, because she already has chosen another man. From that point, the story shifts focus onto this new young man, which we initially are not happy about, until we realize that the old man is actually the man she chose. Furthermore, as the lyrics encouraged, “he did make her his wife” because he knew “that he’s the lucky guy”. And in the end, rather than being another sad story, the video becomes a beautiful example of a man and woman who truly loved each other, appreciated each other, and had a happy life together.

Trying some new things…
For some reason, with every new David Choi music video we make, we’re always pushing ourselves to try something new, or challenge ourselves in some way. Maybe it’s because we have a history now of videos so there’s pressure each time, or maybe it’s because he’s a good friend, so we feel like we can experiment on him, haha! Well this video was no different. Even with the song choice we were already headed into new territory.

First of all, the song is primarily piano, unlike previous videos where guitar was the main instrument. So performance wise, we needed a piano. We also wanted to use a new camera (big deal for all the techies out there), so we had to learn how to use the new equipment. And then as we came up with the story 3 major challenges arose, casting senior citizens, casting younger versions to look similar, and also shooting a story from a different time period.

Casting
We knew we had to work with actors for this video, and not just someone’s grandparents. In order to get the performances we wanted, we needed pros. We’ve never had to cast for the elderly, but once we put the call out, it’s amazing how many working actors in that age range there are. Jerry and Betty were the CLEAR choice, mainly because they were already a couple in real life. So instead of casting separate people and trying to get chemistry between the two, Jerry and Betty already had decades of love to draw from, thus making the shoot a lot easier and more comfortable. (A lot of comments were discussing why we didn’t use Asian actors, but consider this, if we wanted to use young asian actors, we’d need old Asian actors to play the leads, and trust us, there are not many older Asian actors to choose from, if any that we could find). Since Jerry and Betty were set, we cast the younger versions based on their appearance, trying to match as closely as possible.

We felt we found a great “younger Jerry” with similar enough features, except for one thing… Jerry has really bright blue eyes but John didn’t.

Here’s John straight from camera with his dark brown eyes. In high resolution, and with the shots coming rapidly right after each other, it’s very noticeable.

So with some VFX magic we changed his eye color to blue. Now they really match!

Shooting in a period
We’ve never had to dress a set and actors to a specific time period. Well, we have, but usually as a campy joke. This was the first time we wanted it to look authentic. In order to do this right, we hired a set designer to find certain props and fixtures and adjust the locations to look right. We also hired a costume designer to help us find the right wardrobe from the time period. And finally we gave our makeup/hair stylist instructions to create accurate looks. We feel that with the time and resources we gave them, they did a great job!

 
Some reference photos we used.

Production
The entire music video was shot in one day. HUGE thanks to Mitchell Ing for helping us find BOTH location. With the help of a great crew, and a very professional, talented cast, we somehow got it all done (granted 1 hour behind schedule, but c’mon, that’s not bad!) Check out the Behind the Scenes video to see how it was on set!

Sadly, we don’t have a final group photo because it was so late in the night, and different people had to leave at different times, but we’re so grateful to everyone involved in this project. We had a small but efficient team, and we wouldn’t want it any other way. Can’t believe another year has passed, and another David Choi music video is complete. Unique from each one before, but still, as we said last time… “a great representation and testament to the progress of our work, our friendship with David, and most of all your support of both of us to continue what we love to do.”