My Own Private Belly Dancer (2007) UK Premiere
A comedy about a fungus scientist who is leading a lonely and colorless life until he acquires an imaginary friend: a mischievous belly dancer that nobody else can see. .
 

Susanna Fosse: You were invited into BAFTA/LA's recently created Newcomers’ Programme. How did that come about?

Emmeline Yang: BAFTA/LA is obviously a big focus of the British film community here, and the board decided that they wanted to reach out to newly-arrived Brits who are making their way in Hollywood. I heard about the Newcomers Program through a friend, and was very happy to be selected to be part of the inaugural group. As
a producer who is relatively new to Los Angeles, it is a great way to expand my network and exploit my international knowledge, and the members of the Newcomers Committee are very generous and helpful. I came to Los Angeles after working for five years in the London film industry. I believe very strongly in UK talent, but I decided to come to Hollywood to broaden my horizons. I am working with a number of UK writers and directors who I want to promote in the LA film industry.

Dance On Film News: You and the director Mark Stern co-wrote the screenplay. What was the process for writing a comedy film?


Emmeline Yang: Mark and I met each other at the University of Southern California's Peter Stark Producing Programme, and we decided to collaborate on a comedy short film. I came up with the original idea and wrote the first draft of the script. Once Mark came on board as the director, we knocked the script back and forth and brainstormed scenes together. We shot this film on a super low budget, and our equipment did not allow us to shoot sync sound simultaneously. Every sound on the film was added in post production. Essentially this means that you cannot shoot dialogue scenes, only voice-over or off-camera dialogue. So the challenge was to write a script in which the characters do not talk to each other. Therefore, we
had to be creative and think about physical comedy and actions that revealed character in a fresh and funny way. This is actually a very good exercise in writing for the screen. We had a lot of fun talking about how the belly dancer
would torture our hero by interrupting his structured existence. When I was writing the script, I knew I wanted to make a comedy and I knew I
wanted a dance sequence. I'm really not sure where the belly dancer came from! However, music has definitely been a theme in the films I have produced. I produced a short documentary called "Forever Elvis" which is about a Thai man
who performs Elvis songs at a Thai restaurant in Hollywood. His name is Kevin Thongprecha but he is known as "Thai Elvis", and our documentary revealed how is a wonderful singer and performer in his own right, and not just a cheap
impersonator of Elvis. I'm fascinated by performers and their inspiration and process. Another short I produced is called "How To Write A Song", which is more of a mood piece featuring a talented singer-songwriter called Melissa Moshe.

Dance On Film News: The film takes place on a university campus. Where did you shoot the film?

Emmeline Yang: We shot the outdoor sequences and the laboratory sequences at the University of Southern California, which was an easy choice to make, since we were students there. We were incredibly lucky to shoot in the brand new molecular science building, which had exactly the kind of sparklingly sterile appearance that we were looking for. An all-white room is not an ideal condition to shoot, and so we worked hard to cover the walls with colourful charts and adorn the shelves with "chemical" bottles in different hues, so as to create an eye-catching and
hyper-real world for our film.

Dance On Film News: Randall Park and Alexandra Fulton have great chemistry together. How did they come to be cast in their roles?

Emmeline Yang: The leading role was written for Randall Park. I had seen him in a friend's short, a festival favourite called "Dragon of Love" and he immediately stands out as an incredible comic talent. So when I was writing the main character, I always had Randall in mind. Alexandra Fulton responded to an open casting call we had in Los Angeles.

I always had a mysterious middle-eastern woman in my head when we wrote the script, but when Alexandra walked into the audition with her blonde hair, in full costume and makeup, she won us right away. American belly dancing is a whole sub genre of belly dancing now, and Alexandra is really the epitome of what it has become, very glamorous and showy. She also has the quality of being like a fairy princess, a magical and mischievous Tinkerbell, which really helps our story. Randall and Alexandra had immediate chemistry and they both have fantastic improvisational skills. They always kept us laughing on the set. In our down-times Alexandra would give us belly dancing lessons - it was pretty funny to watch the male crew trying to shake their hips with sparkly scarves tucked into their shorts!

Dance On Film News::Your cast pull off the acting and dancing simultaneously. How much time did the choreographer Steven Butler have to work with everyone before shooting?

Emmeline Yang: Producing the dance sequence was like a whole extra production. I found our choreographer Steven Butler through an ad I put up at the Edge dance studios in Hollywood.

He loved our script and immediately responded to the kind of dance number that we wanted to create. I was very much inspired by old Hollywood musicals like "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", and I also love the dance sequences in "Austin Powers" and "The Mask". We wanted a routine that was bursting with exuberance and joy. We only had one rehearsal with the actors for their dance routine, but they were totally game and picked it up very quickly, and Steven is a skilled teacher of course. In total I only booked two rehearsal sessions for the dancers because we were on such a tight budget. However, Steven recruited dancers that train with him at the Edge Studios and they were all fantastic, very professional.

As a producer, creating the dance sequence was the hardest part of the process, but also my favourite part. It took a lot of forward planning as we had to have the music composed and recorded up front. Finding the key creatives such as our
composer, Dan Ring, and our choreographer was a huge challenge, especially as both worked for little or no pay. As a producer I was entrusting a crucial element of the production to someone else, but ultimately I had to trust my
judgment in choosing the right people. The first time I walked into the Edge Studios, where I have taken classes myself, and realised that these dancers were dancing to my music was incredibly exciting, and the day that we shot the dance
sequence was my favourite day of the shoot. One day I hope to produce a really big dance sequence on film - like the one in the recent Disney movie "Enchanted". When I produce a huge number in Central Park - that'll be the pinnacle of my career! We've been very gratified by the audience reactions to the dance sequence -- it's usually a big surprise and is greeted with a round of applause. There's no greater feeling for a film-maker than to hear that!

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Dance On Film News: The film has a large number of locations considering it is a short film. From a producer’s angle, what was the most difficult thing to pull off
during the making of the film?


Emmeline Yang: Locations are one of the hardest things to produce, especially on a low
budget. We got around it by begging locations on campus, and shooting in one of our crew-member's houses. The most difficult thing to pull off was the dance sequence, as above.

Dance On Film News: The director Mark Stern has a small cameo in the film. How did that come about?


Emmeline Yang: Mark does have a cameo in the movie, but not everyone guesses that I am in that scene too! Mark and I play a couple whose passionate clinch embarrasses our hero as he walks past.

That came about in an unplanned way - or at least I didn't plan it that way. Mark was supposed to recruit the extras to play in that scene but when we got to set, he told me that he had not been able to find anyone so we had to do it. The crew got a big laugh out of that, and so did our friends when they saw the footage! As the producer I had to do a bit of everything, so stepping up for an unwanted clinch with my director was just part of the fun. I'm actually in a couple of other scenes too, but the whole point of extras is to blend into the background. All of the key crew have a their moment in the spotlight in the credit sequence.

Dance On Film News: What are you currently writing?

Emmeline Yang: I'm not so much a writer as a producer. I'm now working in Los Angeles with producer Steve Golin at his company, Anonymous Content. Steve is the producer of many features, including "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Being John Malkovich" and "Babel". We're working on a number of different projects, and our next film, "44 Inch Chest" is shooting in London. It's by the writers of "Sexy Beast", and will be directed by a very talented commercials director called
Malcolm Venville. Working with Steve is a wonderful way to increase my reach as a producer, and I'm able to use my international contacts.

This film is part of Dance, Camera, Action 2
and is being shown on Thursday 3rd April 2008