Romantic
Interlude was
a script that Dennis A. Amith wrote back in 1989 and after
talking to actor John Cho (American Pie 1 & 2, WB's "Off
Centre")
who urged him that if he wanted to write or do something with
the
script,
to do
it. The web drama began in September 1999 with five friends
as a college project. The drama was used on the Web inspired
by Asian Avenue's "Liquid
Soap" and was later published in the Asian American CSUF
college publication "Asian Pacific Review". This
being a first in Asian American comedy on the Web, was promoted
on several websites
including asianconnections.com. The drama was completed before
Christmas of 1999 with the five episodes but new footage and
the series was extended to 15 episodes in 2000 and the final
16th episode was completed on January 2001.
Episode 11 - "Tomorrow
Never Knows" was originally supposed to take 6 hours
to film/picture but it actually took 18 hours total.
Episode 12
was top secret that only the four main cast members knew about
it and the others didn't. It was so difficult to keep
everything a secret but we wanted to make sure the fourth
episode would surprise
people. Norie Tanaka (Rei
Tomosaka) practiced her crying scene for several weeks
and at times had assistance from friends in Japan that she
would call to prepare for the scene.
RI
EPISODES - When Romantic Interlude was first released, there
were a total of five episodes. Each episode being around 40+ pages.
People loved the story but they said it was too long. So, in 2001
I decided to redo "Romantic Interlude" to 16 episodes,
adding new segments never seen before and a new perspective to this
web drama.
The print version of "Romantic Interlude" had
a slightly different storyline to compensate for trying to fit
a storyline into two full-length
pages.
Episode
12 - "Please Count to Ten" - Many people wrote to
ask where I got the inspiration from the "counting to ten"
segments. I got the inspiration from a Japanese drama titled "Saikou
no Kataomoi ~White Love Story~". In the Japanese drama, the
character "Usagi" would count to ten whenever she was
depressed or escape. It was an emotional experience and knew that
many people probably will never see that drama thus I just wanted
to use the counting segments in this Web drama. Also, to show how
sensitive and fragile Rei's character really is.
Episode 14 - "The
Engagement" required several hundred photos and
almost a hundred people to be part of the episode. The
result: A very expensive investment, everyone had fun, a
lot of people
showed up for the food and awesome photos were taken but
the bad news was that 3/4 of the photos taken (about 200+)
[All from the
engagement party] were damaged during processing. Since
this was a one time photo shoot and the fact a lot of money
was
spent on the first shoot (and the chances of doing it again
was near impossible), the story had to be rewritten and
video capture
from video cameras had to be used.
If you have a fast
connection, just click on the "here" section. If you are like
many of us who are using 56k or lower, right click on the "here" to
download.
Norie Tanaka and James
Hoang on their favorite scene
RI's Norie Tanaka (Rei) and
James Hoang (Khai) talk about their most difficult scene in
"Romantic Interlude". Click here.
Phillip Kim
on 12+ Hours of Filming and taking Pictures
RI's main actor, Phillip Kim
(Joe) on episode 12's breakup scene. Click here.
Outside Antics
Sometimes certain scenes took
a long time to film/picture. While
filming was taking place, Edwin Macaraeg and Candy Dempster would
come up with some funky ideas to make the other cast members
laugh. Click here.
Filming Episode
1 - Do you think about me?
In
this scene, Edwin and Stephanie have the camera while me and
Mahito are photographing the pre-fighting scenes between Joe
and Christopher. I kind of like the Wong War Kai of not letting
the actors know too much about the characters and upcoming
scenes as you can see in this
clip.
Friends vs.
Friends Photo Shoot
Here
is a little behind-the-scenes segment while we prepare the
four for their "Friends vs. Friends" shoot. Click
here to watch this clip.
