From cut to chop
An award-winning Fairfield film director is planning his next project. And he’s looking for local faces. Michael Huynh reports.
THE light shines down and all noise stops. And for the 20th time in an hour the director yells: “Action!”
We’re not talking about a Hollywood mogul in some multi-million-dollar overseas film.
We’re talking about one of Fairfield’s rising young directors, Timothy Ly.
While it has been six months since he took out the award for Best Film at this year’s Fairfield Shortcuts Film Festival, Ly says he is still just as inspired to stay on top as a director. And as an editor, action choreographer – and even as an actor.
His martial arts comedy, Maximum Choppage, this year won Fairfield’s own short film festival for young people, backed by Fairfield Council and Powerhouse Youth Theatre.
Ly said his interest in filmmaking goes back to his Fairvale High School days when he was preparing a special performance for his final year-12 concert with a handful of “bored and slightly audacious” friends.
While winning his first film award earlier this year out of a field of 12 entrants was extremely rewarding, Ly said there was a less conventional motivation in fusing his love for old-school martial arts cinematography with his rapidly-growing passion for filmmaking.
“Being a practitioner of martial arts and having been brought up watching cartoons, kung-fu, wrestling and ‘80s/’90s action movies, it naturally came to the point where I’d merge the passions,” he said. “Maximum Choppage was my first serious amateur attempt at a short film,” he said. “I didn’t have the funds or the experience but I had an idea that I persisted with.
“One of the themes that I like to reflect in my projects accentuates taking my own personal experiences growing up here in Fairfield and the people around me and then exaggerating them just so I can change the perception of the people out there.
“The diversity of people in our community, I feel, is never really shown authentically in the media.”
Ly is currently about to commence a digital video and media course in order to broaden and refine his film techniques and said the future still holds the potential for an array of action films that aspire to “leave a redefining impression on the audience”.
Ly is currently working on the sequel to his first award-winning project. This time around, though, he is after some new faces to work with and hopes to prove to an even wider audience that the people of this community are really more talented and have more going for them than some may think.
Anyone Interested in being involved in the new film can contact Ly for information at any time via his email at Timothy.ly@gmail.com