Lee Lin Chin's voice is a perfect match for inventive short films 'Eating Late' and 'Working Late'

Creators Daniel Woods and Lewis Attey talk to SBS about combining miniature sets with real actors, connecting with Lee Lin Chin and telling unexpected stories.

A Chinese restaurant is seen at night, from outside. People can be seen seated at tables.

Eating Late Credit: Bit Livid Films

Late at night, in the lonely fog between the end of a long office day and the inevitability of bed, before waking up to do it all over again, something incredible happens to shock characters back to life in the inventive, poignant and darkly hilarious short-form film Eating Late. A similar unexpected glimpse of the inner lives and thoughts of a group of office workers is captured in a companion piece, Working Late.

Daniel Woods and Lewis Attey directed, written and produced the two films and in a wonderful creative coup, the duo convinced journalist, former longtime SBS newsreader (and fashion icon) Lee Lin Chin to narrate the series.

Woods says, “Lee Lin’s name came up quite early on in the scripting process. Lewis and I identified her as really the perfect narrator.”

He concedes, “At that point, we didn't really think she was going to be ‘gettable’ for us. We didn't have any sort of direct contact to her and we'd never worked with her before. We knew she famously sort of shied away from the spotlight, or having a very public persona at least.”

Over the course of several months, following a chain of industry connections and an eventual back-and-forth with Lee Lin Chin herself, Woods and Attey convinced her into the studio to tell the character’s stories. Like the unique aesthetic of Eating Late and Working Late, it is impossible to imagine it working with any other narrator.

A man and a woman are siting at a table in a restaurant, with food bowls in front of them.

'Eating Late' shares vignettes capturing moments in the lives of people eating at a Chinese restaurant. Credit: Bit Livid Films

In Eating Late, ordinary suburban characters – some alone, some in pairs – prepare to eat dinner in a brightly-lit Chinese takeaway. The set design is gorgeous, based on miniature models designed by Derrick Duan. A haunting flute-based composition heightens the drama, care of Rick Parnaby.

The theatrical, vaguely surreal visuals combining miniature sets and actors filmed against a green screen were the glorious result of Woods and Attey’s inability to secure the physical location they’d targeted. There is a single scene in Taiwanese director Edward Yang’s 2000 film Yi Yi that features a couple eating dinner. The audience see them through the window of a Chinese restaurant, somewhat voyeuristically. That scene inspired Woods and Attey to imagine multiple vignettes taking place simultaneously in a Chinese restaurant.

Woods tells SBS, “We wanted originally to shoot it like Yi Yi was shot. We wanted to use a real location and to actually set up a camera out on a jib [similar to a crane], out in the car park and shoot through the windows of a real Chinese restaurant. Of all the Chinese restaurants we could find in Victoria, there was literally only one that fit the bill in terms of having an expansive enough façade with wide enough windows to shoot this thing.”

The duo put their idea to the owners.

“They were just absolutely not interested, it was just a hard and fast ‘no’.”

While Eating Late creates an imaginary restaurant, Working Late sees the viewer looking through the windows of an imagined work setting.

The view through wall of office windows shows a series of people sitting and standing. The lighting suggests is might be after dark.

Working Late Credit: Bit Livid Films

Derrick Duan’s miniature sets are so gorgeously detailed, even romantically kitsch, that it’s perfectly fated to have worked out this way.

Attey says, “The miniatures in particular really go a long way to crafting the look of the film. The background and foreground are miniatures and everything mid-ground is the actors, so it was quite a technical effort to get everything to feel like it was united. It’s rewarding when people don’t actually realise how it’s been constructed.”

Woods adds, “We wanted the effect of the miniatures to have this uncanny valley appearance for the audience, so that it wasn’t obvious that these actors were sitting inside miniature sets and yet, there’s something subtly surreal about the experience. A lot of people have made a Wes Anderson comparison to this work, but Wes Anderson was never a touchstone for this series.”

Attey chimes in, “In fact, it’s more inspired by [Swedish director] Roy Andersson.”

Another key influence was Tim Key, the British comedian and poet most recognisable for his role as Alan Partridge’s sidekick Simon.

Woods explains, “Tim Key was a big inspiration for this work in terms of the script and the narrative tone. He’s been a mutual favourite of Lewis and I for a long time.”

Seemingly ordinary moments, loaded with pathos and possibility, were also at the heart of Lewis Attey's 2018 short film Three Stories Inside A Rental Van, in which various protagonists steer the same rental van into some sort of moral quagmire. The unflinching camera lingers intimately on each character as they make a domino effect of poor choices.

Both Attey and Woods find the fascination in really observing people and, in putting a spotlight on seemingly random, regular people in seemingly ordinary, mundane situations, they turn the attention back on the audience. Why do we relate to these people, or this situation? What would we do in the same situation? Does our judgement of the characters reflect something about our own morality that we don't want to concede?

Attey says, “Despite it being absolutely batshit crazy, Working Late captures what it’s like to work in an office when your mind starts to drift.”

Woods adds, “It’s superficially bonkers, but that madness is the slowly creeping insanity that some people suffer in those very monotonous, drab office environments.”

Both Woods and Attey are delighted that their series has found a home on SBS.

“Everyone – or at least everyone of a certain generation – has a story of being nine or 10, walking into the loungeroom after their parents have left SBS on the TV, and there’s a completely insane thing on the screen that you’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s a foreign film or a stop-motion animation that’s alien to you and sticks in your memory, particularly if you go on to become a creator yourself. We’d love it if an 11-year-old sees Eating Late and Working Late and something about it sticks in their mind for the rest of their life.”

Eating Late is streaming now at SBS On Demand.