Smoking Tigers: A Heartfelt Journey of Identity and Growing Up

by Nefeli Soteriou for Winter Film Festival
See the feature film Smoking Tigers on February 20 @8:40 PM at LOOK Cinemas (657 West 57th Street) as part of New York City’s 13th Annual Winter Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!

Feature film Smoking Tigers is about family dynamics and teenager relationships. When young Hayoung enrolls at Miracle Academy, a college prep school, she mingles with peers and a boy of her interest, while her newly separated parents face financial challenges.

Filmmaker and writer So Young Shelly Yo, created a film held from her heart, excavating painful yet beautiful moments of growing up. She spent many years conjuring up ideas and many years after, putting those ideas down on paper. Once she thought the script was ready, together with Guo Guo, her producer, reviewed it again to make sure it made sense for their budget.

The film takes place in Los Angeles, California, home to many Korean and Asian immigrants; it was easier to cast that way. Additionally, the director and the producer felt that having the story take place in Los Angeles naturally represented the story they wanted to tell. Many of their crew members shared they felt connected to the story due to their background and upbringing.

The actors’ levels of speaking Korean varied. Dialogue tweaks specific to each actor were made and the screenplay was altered. This film is an honest representation of a lot of Korean Americans.

In regards to rules and regulations for young adults on a film set, the majority of the characters were 18+. Erin Choi, the only minor, who played Hayoung’s sister, Ara, was a total performance champ, hitting all the marks and delivering the lines. The film crew got all they needed fast.

Working with a producer like Guo Guo was exciting and comforting. After many years of working on the script alone, the director found it wonderful to bring on a partner who understood the story, the characters, and the world. Guo Guo and So Young Shelly Yo had many nightly conversations about Smoking Tigers during pre-production which ultimately prepped them to find the best creative solutions for production challenges that came their way.

Trying to secure the real “hagwon-looking” locations and extras was the most difficult issue. After many weeks of searching and unexpected locations falling through, with Shelly’s vision and the help of the art department, they recreated the Hagwon location with a semi-reconstruction of a standing set. As for the extras, it took a couple of weeks of searching and tapping into the local Korean communities to find actors. Smoking Tiger’s amazing Casting Director’s help was invaluable. Because the hagwon was very much constituted with young adults, everyone’s energy felt electric.

The model home scene was for sure the most difficult to complete. Prior to production, the filmmaker workshopped the scenes at the model home through a Tribeca Film program with Unreal Engine, more information are shared here: https://tribecafilm.com/unreal/projects

So Young Shelly Yo wanted to test out an idea where the entire reveal of her protagonists’ fantasy happens in a one-shot. Finding the location for this moment in real life was a challenge. The production team lost the model home location twice during the principal photography phase and had to do a pickup shoot three months later. Shelly had such a specific vision for that scene. The line producer scouted over fifty different locations, both online and in person, and were lucky enough to find the right place. And because Shelly knew exactly what she needed during the post-production editing phase, she pinpointed what she needed.

Smoke and mirrors is a concept supported through the cinematography. It is seen in some of the reflection shots throughout the film, as well as the use of smoke. As the main character, Hayoung, experiences new relationships, she starts to imagine a different lifestyle for herself and her family but soon learns that those ideas are simply fantasy. Though her dreams are shattered, her new reality grounds her in a space where she can sprout a new understanding of her family and friends.

One fun fact about Smoking Tigers is that it was shot in the same house So Young Shelly Yo used for an early short, “Soft Sounds of Peeling Fruit.” When shooting SSOPF, the filmmaker mentioned to the location owner that this was a proof of concept for a feature film. When the director went back a year later, the location owner was actually surprised and gave the team a pretty decent discount in support of their endeavor.

Smoking Tigers was shot in Alexa Mini and edited in Avid.
Both the producer and the filmmaker now hope that they can make more films!