"I Will Never Fall in Love" by Gerald Ko & "Tea Bag Artwork" by me!

Threw in a bunch of photos - I'm in Malaysia now and am heading to the airport now, going back to Shanghai. Will edit this post once I get there - this is just a rough post! Feel free to leave comments though :)

Collaboration: Singer + Artist = ?

Storyline:

The story is about how Boy meets Girl, and Boy falls in love but a way that's different from most relationships - everything that can go wrong goes wrong when he asks her out. The video starts with Boy meeting Girl for the first time in a cafe when she serves him a cup of tea. Being too shy to verbally ask her out, Boy writes little notes to her on tea bag labels instead. Girl agrees to go out but every date is unsuccessful - Boy spills drink onto her, topples popcorn in cinema over her, forgets to bring cash at dinner and slams the door into her face. Girl finally says no to Boy, who then decides to take a box of tea bags and write out his thoughts on each label before giving it to her. Girl - who from the start has a soft spot for him - thinks about their relationship and decides to use the tea bags to surprise Boy at the end by creating a portrait of him, showing Boy that she feels the same way about him too.

So one day as I was making tea, the tea bag label dangling off my cup caught my attention...I thought it was cute and tiny - perfect for writing little secret love notes! Then I thought: how would it look like when tied to a few other labels? How about THOUSANDS of labels? Hold on wait...what if I could make a story about this!? How about a LOVE STORY!?! *sips tea excitedly and starts thinking*

I had the opportunity to work with my friend and amazing singer/songwriter Gerald Ko - who is also the first Youtube singer I started listening to! We discussed how a singer and an artist could collaborate, brainstormed through the story across oceans - him in LA, me in Shanghai (isn't the internet amazing?!) and we put this video together when I was in California last month for the EG conference.

THIS WAS MEANT TO BE A SAD SAD CHINESE SONG! I drew out the storyboard and sent it to Gerald and the team, the original one's here below! We changed the song from a sad to an upbeat one A DAY before the shoot :p

Inspiration came one day at work when I was researching on these two building facades.

Testing it out on the computer!

Thanks so much to the amaaazing crew behind this project - Moses Pan, Maria Takaoka, Jon Wang and their team (see credits) - I was just expecting one person with a camera to help us film, but a WHOLE TEAM turned up! I'm SO glad I got to know you guys this trip - you guys are awesome! And for a special appearance by Jason Chen & Jessica who acted as my boba-making co-worker!