Remember? – a Third Year BA Film Practice Graduation Film

As part of the LCC’s Graduate Showcase, we will be featuring the works of students from across Screen School, giving an insight into their graduation projects. For this week, we have Remember, a 3rd Year, BA Film Practice film directed by Maya Ngoma and produced by Jazelle F. Cheong.

Remember is about an old divorced couple with Alzheimer’s who see each other for the first time in 10 years. Will they remember their love despite everything life had in store for them?

We spoke with Jazelle and Maya to discuss their work as director and producer on Remember.

Maya Ngoma (Director)

Tell us about Remember? How did you come up with the idea for the film?

A year ago, I saw a video on TikTok from the influencer Reagan Yorke. She was addressing her grandparent’s story: « My grandparents divorced, got Alzheimer’s, forgot they divorced, and think they’ve married again ». I remember thinking that this could make a really good film and thought about pitching it. However, I needed to make sure that Reagan would accept for me to tell her grandparents’ story so I decided to send her an email. This felt like throwing a bottle at sea as she is a Californian influencer with 3.2 million followers. A few days after I sent my email, I got a response! Reagan was super excited for me to work on it and we hopped on a Zoom call and had an amazing conversation. I then created an entire backstory for my characters to give them the motivation to find themselves again in our film. But Remember is based on a true story, and Raymond and Joan exist! 

How was your experience on working as a director?

For my second time directing a short film, I did feel more confident about my position and responsibilities, however, I have to admit that I was anxious about directing older actors. I was pretty much scared to lack credibility as a young director but I learned that by believing in your vision and showing determination your crew and actors will always trust you and therefore work towards a shared goal. 

Even if you’re scared it’s kind of “fake it until you make it”, eventually no one will know that you’re anxious and they will trust you. Then, feeling supported will help you build confidence and you’ll achieve your goals, it’s a cycle.

How is the edit of the film coming along?

The film is finished now which is crazy knowing the journey we’ve been through, but we’re really happy about the final result and can’t wait for people to watch it. 

Jazelle F. Cheong (Producer)

What are the challenges in making remember? How was your overall experience in producing?

I think one of the biggest challenges was securing locations and people. From personal experience, it usually takes a couple of days to weeks in between for a response! Our initial challenge was securing a proper care home location alongside elderly people as the care center’s patients. Maya and I knew we couldn’t use active care homes as that would affect the patients’ well-being, and through a long search, inactive care homes were just kind of… inactive. We also wanted to reach out to local community centres as a way of connecting our story and the themes that center around it— hope and love! We would also have to think of looking for older extras that would play the patients, and we were told that might take a bit of time as we weren’t paying them to be on set, which was a constant worry as there weren’t many people getting back to us on casting websites.

Thankfully, after an arduous search with Maya and our Production Designer Flo Earnshaw, we had managed to get in touch with St Paul’s Community Centre (Wimbledon Parkside) with the lovely Mrs Sam Egan (shoutout!), who has been a big help, providing time and space for us to troubleshoot some of the logistical challenges that the camera and sound team had to overcome before filming began. Our crew also visited for a couple of games of bingo with the lovely regulars at St Paul’s and we got beaten every time! We had such a fun time with everyone and they’d wanted to hang out with us and be in our film, and we had such a lovely time hearing their life stories on set and being around them!

We also had a tough time looking for our Oliver (played by Joe Miller) as we needed an actor who could also drive, and we weren’t getting any replies from the actors that we had reached out to who got past our first round of auditions. Our DP, Stephanie A. Chao, had worked with Joe prior and reached out. He had agreed, but unfortunately he couldn’t drive! Thankfully, because we were using our friend’s, Panwa’s car, who also offered to drive for us on filming days, Steph and her camera team, had managed to plan for rigging up the car and film the scenes in a safe way that allows for Panwa to drive while Joe was acting (in the scenes where Oliver was driving his father to the care centre). He was in the passenger seat and we slowly drove down a straight, quiet road with the mirror facing Joe, and then flipped it in post! In one of the parking scenes our crew had to push the car into the lot so that we could have a shot with Joe looking like he was parking himself!

I had a really fun time producing for Remember? as it had allowed me to form a deeper understanding of our crew, and I’m really proud of what we managed to achieve with everyone worked extremely well together (I always say it’s because we’re an all female crew minus our AD Archie, but he’ll always be a girlie to us)! As a Producer, I knew I was always going to worry about anything going wrong, but this experience has taught me that you can never be too prepared, and all the stress that came along with it would be worth it in the end as long as you have people you worked well with. I was excited to see that all the prep work we did showed for itself and we were always on time and on schedule, and I had gained a better understanding of Producing as a role.

How was your collaboration with your crew?

Going into 3rd year of Film Practice, like the previous year, I wanted to be in a role where I’m able to collaborate with all departments in the filmmaking process developing a deeper understanding of filmmaking, and I wanted to make films that are about love lost and found. Prior to the first round of pitching, Maya spoke about what she was going to pitch and I was instantly drawn to her idea, knowing that if I didn’t have my pitch greenlit (which it didn’t) I would love to be producing for Remember. I was excited going into this project as I had fun working with most people on the crew prior to our 3rd year and I knew we were all going to give our best for this film.

Having worked on films that gave me adequate compensation for my work, I understood the importance of creating a budget that could comfortably accommodate our filmmaking process and provide a fair exchange for anyone working with us, and I wanted to create an environment where our crew members felt financially secure in the budget. I was ambitious with our fundraising goals and that proved worthy as it aided immensely in the filmmaking process, allowing different departments to be able to make some creative choices that wouldn’t have been in the film without enough money.

I also felt that it was important that all departments were supported not just financially but by being with different departments both individually and as a group; we had mini brainstorming

meetings almost everyday and bi-weekly group updates on our film’s progression, which seemed slow at times but did aid the filmmaking process. We were familiar with each others’ communicative and collaborative styles and therefore that helped in every aspect of the film— from going on location scouts with Steph (DP) and Flo (PD) to figure out each department’s logistics and if it was logistically and aesthetically viable to film, to looking for a bigger car and doing multiple tests in that car that allows Steph and our Sound Designer and Recordist Kat Gray to both be in the car with Maya while having Panwa drive with an actor on board, to post production when we just had to further the refine the pacing with Lottie (Editor) as we had prior conversations with Maya and Steph with regards to the flow of the story, to just having a level of trust with all of us to bring the story to life.

Besides the countless meetings we had prior to production, the meetings also didn’t stop for post production. We wanted to be sure that everyone was on the same page and also take each department into account through the edit, while giving space for Lottie and Kat to work on the film. Maya and I would sit in edit and sound sessions to make sure that we were staying true to our story, while being in conversation about how we can emphasise life’s realities more, especially through the scene where Oliver and Susie argues. Lottie and Kat did such a good job in dialogue editing with that scene!

Overall we had such a fun time with each other, and we hope that our crew’s collective passion shows through Remember?

What are the next steps once the film is completed?

The film is already completed we’re so happy that we won Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Film, and the Audience Award at Film Practice’s Elephant Awards! We’re having our first screening at LCC’s grad showcase on 15 June, and we’re hoping to send our film to film festivals with the support of LCC, like Raindance, London Short Film Festival, Leeds Film Festival etc. We’re also planning for a screening at St Paul’s Wimbledon Parkside sometime late July, or early August where we filmed Remember? and hopefully after we’ll be able to put it up somewhere after film festival submissions!

You can also follow Remember? on Instagram for more updates.