Director: HE Lok Yiu (uid:3035980120)
The short video I make is about three groups of people’s experiences on the footbridges in Hong Kong, and how do these experiences help forming their perception of the city.
The title of my video is Hybrid City. “Hybrid”, referring to Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, is defined as “that is the product of mixing two or more different things”. This description reveals the complexity in the characteristics and users of footbridges, and further suggests the similar nature of the city. The story is narrated by a local Hong Kong person and a tourist, each of them presents their own perspective on the footbridges.
Initially I wanted to include three different groups of people, besides the abovementioned, there are domestic helpers. However, due to the time limitations and concern of offending their privacy, I decided to use a third-person perspective to include them in the tourist’s story. The experience of the local, indicates footbridge’s nature as transit space, implying it as a “non-place”, in which there’s lack of relationship built between the users and the place. Footbridge here is more like a facility for the act of walking. In addition, there’s also an accusation against privately owned footbridges that are used to manipulate people flow, under the guise of a public transit space. While discussing the concept of “place” from the perspective of a tourist, numerous applications of footbridges are shown, including the function of sightseeing by providing a higher platform, and the appropriation of the place as a gathering spot for socializing, through which the users make connections with the place. These explorations were made because of the complexity in footbridge’s nature, it is an architectural element itself, while it can also be a part of the secondary circulation space and the city’s 3-dimensional development. Besides, the high density of buildings and population also made this a scenario that is unique to Hong Kong.
The starting point of constructing this story was the 4th and 5th Lecture of this course: Everyday Spaces as Narrative, and Urban Infrastructure as Event, in which circulation spaces were examined, while there was a discussion of “walking in the city” in both the lesson and readings given. My research was done based on most of the available academic and non-academic resources about footbridges in Hong Kong, that contain academic journals which include a PhD thesis done by Rotmeyer, some YouTube videos by local news media, and online articles. After reviewing all the discussions on footbridges, I refined them into several properties I’m going to further examined through the fieldwork.
The video was inspired by Chungking Express (CE). In terms of narrative, there’s a shift in perspectives learned from the transition of two stories in CE, that was caused by the encounter between two characters; While I also learned the presentation techniques from the rapid moving scenes from CE, this is to make up my shaky phone-filming and add the hustle-and-bustle feelings into the scenes. The video clips are put together through montage, as a collection of their fragmented impression of walking on footbridges which forms their conceptions of the city. Due to the familiarity to this ordinary space, the journey of the local is smooth, and the sight is limited within the footbridge as the priority is to get to certain destinations; there are also external shots to show the ubiquity of footbridges in this city. On the other hand, the experience of the tourist distinguishes from the local one, with various ways of shooting to render the exciting feelings that was further strengthen by the music, emphasis the sightseeing function of footbridges. While the gathering of the domestic helpers, presented as a new thing to the tourist, to provoke audiences’ thoughts on the potential of footbridges as public space.
This is my first time of making a short movie, from writing the script, designing the camera shots to editing and finally post a plight for me to think of how to connect them together with a story. Nevertheless, thanks to my sudden inspiration gotten from the films I previously watched and shoo-production, these are all done by my own. I was excited to do it since I have been into films and video-making and have watched a lot of movie analysis. I realised the necessity to follow the procedure, since my shooting was done simultaneously while I was doing my fieldwork, skipping the step of storyboarding; it has been t some substitute clips to realise my ideas. I understand how extensive film watching and analysis are necessary for those working in this field.
background music:
Jean-Michel Blais and CFCF – “Hypocrite”
Alexandre Desplat – “Obituary”
Reference:
De Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City.” The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Randall, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Hybrid_1 Adjective – Definition, Pictures, Pronunciation and Usage Notes | Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com. www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/hybrid_1?q=hybrid.
Miquel, Alice. “Slow Hong Kong: The City in 693 Footbridges.” Zolima City Magazine, Oct. 2020, zolimacitymag.com/slow-hong-kong-the-city-in-693-footbridges.
Lam, Stephanie Kwan Nga, and Andrew Yu. “City of Skywalks: Exploring Hong Kong’s Public Space and Power of Discourse From Footbridges.” Social Sciences, vol. 11, no. 12, MDPI, Nov. 2022, p. 546, doi:10.3390/socsci11120546.
Rotmeyer, Juliana Adele. Publicness of Elevated Public Space in Central, Hong Kong : An Inquiry Into the Publicness of Elevated Pedestrian Walkway Systems as Places and Non-places. 1 Jan. 2010, doi:10.5353/th_b4730029.
RTHK 香港電台. “鏗鏘集：走在天橋上.” YouTube, 26 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=we0HWNtPYfs.
South China Morning Post. “Extreme Poverty in Hong Kong: Homeless Life on a Footbridge.” YouTube, 5 Sept. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBE2gMvzjzI.
Wang, Weijia. “Everyday Practice in the High Density, Volumetric Hong Kong: Ambiguity, Intensity and Life Between Interfaces.” Cities, vol. 96, Elsevier BV, Jan. 2020, p. 102462, doi:10.1016/j.cities.2019.102462.
果籽｜飲食男女｜壹週刊 backup. “香港好多行人天橋起完無人行 深水埗呢條橋成露宿者聚腳地 回顧第一條行人天橋落成係銅鑼灣？北角英皇道廢橋雀仲多過人 #社區｜人物─果籽 香港 Apple Daily─原刊日期：20210529.” YouTube, 25 June 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtHlOt8lIrU.
Your video focuses on the footbridge network in Central and it is good that you are able to reveal some insightful findings of your subject matter. I also appreciate your creative idea to investigate the footbridges from three different groups of stakeholders and reveal how the space affects their behaviours. Footbridges are indeed ‘manipulated’ compared to the streets. Happy to see that your text is responding to the course materials but it would be even better if you can describe / comment more on how the whole footbridge networks affect the everyday life of the people in Central and the urban landscape.