Jason Cheung Seven Minutes Fast

Seven Minutes Fast is a 25 minute musical that I made in the University of Iowa's Advanced Production Workshop in the Spring of 1996. It documents the working relationships of five people working in a chinese retaurant.

bite

The origin of Seven Minutes Fast dates back to the Fall of 1995. I was a Communications Studies major at the University of Iowa and was completing a production class called Electronic Field Production II. EFP was basically a production class that covered non-linear editing with a Media 100. For our final project, we were allowed to make a 5 minute short of any kind. I decided to try and put something together that would take place in a chinese restaurant, because I worked in and had access to one in Dubuque, Iowa.

The result was a short script in which one employee got fired and said goodbye to a co-worker. I cast my friend Tod as the guy who gets canned, my then girlfriend Laila as his co-worker, and another friend, Karen, as their boss. Laila, Karen, and I all worked at the same restaurant at the time. My employer, Johnny, allowed us to shoot in his restaurant in downtown Dubuque, which was closed on Sundays.

When the time came to shoot, Tod arrived with two mutual friends, Ken and Chad. Having them around proved pretty distracting so I told them to go into the kitchen, come up with a scene, and maybe we'd shoot it. What they came up with was fantastic. The spontenaeity of their performance gave a new aspect to the heavy handed script I'd written.

When I finally edited the short, I decided to be even more ham fisted and insert shots of a sailfin dragon eating pinky mice. I scored the thing using songs by the God Bullies and Red Red Meat and called it "bite."

bite played at the film show held every semester and got a positive response. Compared to some of the other works the short was downright delicate in tone and execution. And the audience loved Ken and Chad. Absolutely loved them.

My instructor for the EFP classes was Franklin Miller. He was also my student advisor and one of the heads of the department. It was Franklin who suggested that I apply to the Advanced Production Workshop. The workshop consisted of six openings, four for film projects and two for video projects. All applicants had to submit a script and a budget and a letter explaining how you were going to pull it off. This was important because you weren't going to get any support other than $70 at the company store. The group would meet once a week to discuss how things were going and that was it.

I had heard about the workshop but was dismayed by the combination of fact that most of those accepted were graduate students and I basically felt that I didn't have any ideas that would be accepted. By the time I met with Franklin I had also missed the deadline to apply.

But Franklin was a fan of bite (he hated the lizard shots though) and was, conveniently, one of two instructors who picked applicants for the workshop. He told me that if I applied on the first day back from the winter break my proposal would still be considered. Now I had to at least try.

So I wrote Seven Minutes Fast. I wanted to use the same characters, but expand on the story. The new script started with Laila's first day on the job and ended with Tod getting fired. (I have trouble thinking of names for characters so everyone in Seven Minutes Fast uses his or her real name.) I wrote a few scenes that would show their relationship change over time. The last scene was basically bite in its entirety. All of the casting stayed the same, with the exception of the role of the manager. I replaced Karen with my friend Mick, who, despite being the youngest of everyone involved, was the only one who could exude the personality and maturity of the character.

I submitted my proposal as planned. Students could only take one production class per semester at Iowa because of the limited resources. Having no guarantees about the workshop I had enrolled in a class to learn Director, which was also taught by Franklin. On the second day of class he came in and said,"What are you doing here? You're in the workshop, see you Wednesday." Great! Now what?