#will add the rest (Kade and Greenes) once I have the chance to

[itoldsunset]

on writing itsay as a team

[the talk is recorded here, and i’m translating it in chunks and trying to organize by theme. most of the posts won’t be this long.]

so the core writing team for itsay had four people: p’boss, p’kade, p’junior, and goy. and they also worked with p’jokang [i’m just making an assumption that everyone is older than me and calling them p’ unless i know otherwise] who was responsible for the chinese parts of the script. [side note: p’kade said she’s staying on for part 2, p’junior isn’t because he’s a flight attendant and it’s too exhausting, and goy has said on instagram she’s not on for part 2. i don’t know who the other two writers will be?]

some background: p’boss, p’kade, and p’junior all went to university together [where p’kade and p’junior were the same year and p’boss was one year above them] and that’s where they met and they worked together on a lakorn at university [i don’t know if it was theater or film, i can’t understand the words they used lol].

here are some general things they had to say about their writing team, process, and experiences [not necessarily all in order since some of them are from different parts of the talk]:

p’kade said the most intense parts of the writing process lasted about 3-4 months, where they saw each other pretty much everyday. during quarantine, they would be on conference calls together for 8-9 hours a day.

p’junior said there had to be constant communication and updates so no one on the team ever fell behind. if they were going to keep something or get rid of something, it had to be unanimous. they had to move forward together with every step. he said the team process didn’t make them slower, but it brought new and interesting ideas and since each person came with different experiences. a straight man would have one experience, a gay man would have another, a woman would have another, everyone helped bring their own experiences out to the center.

p’kade said p’boss assembled the writing team really well, because between the four of them, they all come with different personalities, experiences, and skills. so whenever they worked together, they would bring different ideas to the table, which was exciting and resulted in something that came out well-balanced, solid, and multidimensional.

p’junior said, “for example, goy is very good at getting the characters’ inner feelings because she’s an actress. she knows that this is how a character would act, and what does a character need to face in order to cry. kade is very good at details that add cuteness to the story. and as for me, i like things that are over the top and ridiculous, and i’ll throw those ideas in without holding back, so other members of the team can either toss them out or bring them down a notch. for example, the scene where teh and tarn kiss, i threw in ideas like what if they use a green colored pencil to color a tree, or a red colored pencil to color a fingernail, make it ridiculous, and then the rest of the team can bring it down, but i like to go big first.”

p’kade said that the members of the core writing team don’t actually screenwrite as their main jobs. p’kade said it’s her first time screenwriting, p’junior is a flight attendant, and goy is primarily an actress. because they didn’t screenwrite as their main jobs, they gave it their all for this project, because they didn’t know when their next chance would be. p’kade said she thought maybe it was a once in a lifetime kind of thing, so she gave it everything: “i wanted myself to feel, and the audience to feel, everything.”

p’junior said, “in terms of tastes, i like to see the audience cry, sorry. because i like to cry when i’m watching tv, i really like it because it gives me a sense of relief. like i feel the pain of the characters, but i always get something back in return. it’s good to smile, but if we don’t see the hardships along the way, it’s not as satisfying. so i wanted to cry with this story--not necessarily even make the audience cry, while we were writing it--but i wanted to cry. i wanted to see this kid [teh] experience things that make him learn, and i wanted to learn with him too. because in the beginning we didn’t know what he was going to encounter. so it became fun--that was the starting point. we all wanted to see how we could make the story fun, that’s why everyone gave it their all. during that time, everyone had this intense energy because p’kade was calling various university faculties about the types of options they had for admissions, whether they had a direct entry option, so that she could present it to p’boss that day. as for me, i was flying [as a flight attendant], and when i had to sleep at the hotel, i also had to wake up to write. there really wasn’t a lot of time for sleeping. i had to call and interview high school students who were getting ready to enter university, and i would make those calls on the skytrain, and they would hear the name of the next station being announced. it was exhausting, but no one wanted to give in.”

p’kade: “we really wanted to win [op: as in overcome the challenge or something like that]. for example, goy during that time was shooting two different lakorns while also writing with us. we would be in a meeting together until 3am, and goy would go to her set at 6am. it was the kind of intense energy where if we didn’t get to do it today, we didn’t know when we’d get to do it again.”

p’junior: “i have to thank the director. because if p’boss had said, it’s okay, go home and sleep and let’s talk in two days, we might not have gotten this far.”

p’kade: “p’boss is someone who has a lot of energy, and when we’re with someone who has that much energy, we gain some of that energy too. p’boss is someone who works very hard, and someone who has a lot of energy, and because it was like that, we ended up becoming that way all together. and it became a working team that i really, really like.”

p’junior: “for the last episode, where we needed the chinese admissions exam, i told jokang we needed it at around 9pm one night, and expected that he would get back to me in the next couple of days. he sent the exam back to me at 5am the next morning, he was up all night writing it. and he explained where the question about xīn could come up, gave advice about how to arrange the questions, told me everything. and i feel like it’s a way of transmitting energy, when you see someone with that intense level of energy, you’re ready to jump in with them too.”

p’kade: “jokang is someone who answers line at all times. no matter what it is, if i’m writing a part in chinese and i want something [p’junior interjects: at 2am], yeah, jokang will send it as a pdf and circle the words and explain them in great detail to me. it made my work easier and it made me understand, as someone who doesn’t work with the chinese language. when i see this [level of dedication], it motivates me to work hard and create something great, because everyone else is working hard too.”