The Instrument

DIRECTOR STATEMENT (Short Version)

The Instrument grew out of a longing for presence in an overstimulated world. After decades photographing celebrity culture—and following my mother’s passing and a long, quiet recovery from a knee injury—I felt pulled back to storytelling anchored in breath, vibration, and emotional truth.

What began as a tiny vertical-shorts experiment revealed itself to be a meditation on attention: how easily we lose it, and what returns when we finally look inward. The film mirrors the healing landscape of post-wildfire Los Angeles and reflects a deeper personal journey—one that asks what remains when the noise falls away, and who we become when we remember how to truly see one another.

DIRECTOR STATEMENT (Long Version)

The Instrument began in a moment of clarity—the realization that my life had dissolved into noise. Years of photographing celebrity culture and documenting the churn of media had trained me to live at the pace of notifications, constant visibility, and near-automatic overstimulation. I found myself craving something smaller, quieter, more honest. I needed to come back to presence.

In 2023, I completed a Power Yoga certification in Bali, deepening practices I’d followed for more than twenty-five years. After the pandemic, I expanded into the healing arts—earning Reiki I & II certifications and immersing myself in sound healing, which grew naturally from a lifetime of choral singing. These practices became the compass for this film: breath, vibration, presence, and truth.

Then, in June 2024, my mother passed away—just two weeks after attending a choir concert I sang in. She seldom missed a performance, loved supporting the arts, and cherished being fully present with others. Her refusal to live through a screen reminded me what real presence feels like. She could spend hours talking, listening, or simply keeping herself company. In the months after she died, I felt her nudging me back toward the work that mattered—the artist in me who had fallen quiet.

A full-moon eclipse sound bath I led with yoga teacher/actress Dahiana Bilbao brought together the team that would eventually make the film. That night, I met actor John Richard Frey and pitched him an idea inspired by my favorite sound-healing instrument. Ironically, he had been part of the same 48-hour film festival contest that my editor, Joey Krulock, won with a different team.

That festival reminded me how quickly a story can take shape when you commit to momentum. John later introduced me to his teammates—Em Hampton and Daniel Amato—over Zoom. Their sincerity and natural chemistry were immediate and undeniable. I cast them on the spot.

The Instrument didn’t begin as a concept-driven film; it started as a small vertical-shorts experiment for a soap-opera competition. After that sound bath, John responded strongly to the instrument I’d played, and I wrote a few 90-second scenes around it. We improvised them on an iPhone. Joey edited the early material, encouraging me to keep building toward the ten-episode requirement, and the project began taking shape almost accidentally.

We shot the first four scenes in a single take—with no coverage—because the actors had tight work schedules. But that limitation unexpectedly liberated the film. It made space for instinct, breath, and truth. When I saw the natural screen chemistry between Em and Daniel, I leaned into it, expanding their storyline and raising the emotional stakes of the triangle.

The intention was simple: capture something honest in one-take masters. But in the editing room, the material revealed its own intentions. It didn’t want to live as bite-sized vertical episodes. It wanted to breathe as a single, uninterrupted film. Which raised a surprising question: How do you give a vertical narrative a theatrical spine?

I found the answer on a hike above Runyon Canyon after a rainstorm—where extraordinary light drifted across hills still charred from the 2025 wildfire. The trails were empty; fresh green shoots pushed through soot. Something in the silence felt like an invitation. I filmed a single long take, not knowing whether it would work.

Only later did I realize the footage was quietly dancing with the narrative—echoing the emotional tensions between the characters and giving the film a breath I hadn’t planned. The hybrid form wasn’t strategic; it revealed itself. At a certain point, it felt as though the film were being made through me rather than by me.

The sound-bath events in my backyard eventually evolved into a simple outdoor yoga studio, which inspired the film more than I expected. I’ve always loved writing with locations in mind, and these spaces began steering the story in unexpected ways. I had planned to shoot a key breakup scene at a food truck, but nothing felt right—the sound, the energy, the permissions.

On instinct, I stopped by a small neighborhood café a few blocks from my home, tucked in the heart of Carthay Circle. The café occupies a building that once operated as a movie theater in the 1920s—the very place Gone With the Wind premiered. It was also my mother’s favorite film. Dahiana mentions it in the movie, and for once, the line is historically true. The trees shading her in that moment carry a strange, unmistakable movie magic.

Much of the film unfolded this way: at my home, and at my neighbor’s house across the street, where he graciously allowed me to film in his extraordinary backyard—a space he has shaped for years with trees, stones, and sculpture.

The neighborhood became an unplanned character: a quiet witness to the story, and to my own twenty years of living and creating here among century-old trees that seemed to speak directly to the lens.

Even the heavy rain—arriving on the only day the actors were all available—became a cinematic gift, naturally setting the stage for the doomed romance between Daniel and Em.

As the story found its shape, so did its emotional undercurrent: two partners drifting out of sync—one accelerating toward digital visibility, the other turning inward toward stillness and repair. Beneath the humor runs a quiet spiritual thread: questions about distraction, self-worth, and how to stay connected—to oneself, to another person, and to the land that holds you.

That land became deeply personal. The wildfire-scarred ridges echoed both the city’s renewal and my own long recovery from a knee injury—the same knee issue my mother endured most of her life. Filming that ascent in a single take, after months of physical therapy, felt like a small act of healing. The canyon and my body were repairing themselves in parallel—quietly, slowly, beneath the surface. And I felt my mom’s presence urging me to keep going, keep climbing, and never abandon the passions that matter, no matter how tough or painful the path becomes.

As a queer Asian American filmmaker, I see this as an unconventional, spiritually inflected indie rom-com—shaped by queer sensibility, chosen community, and a desire to be seen without performance. Its minimal iPhone production reflects the ecosystem that formed me: yogis, healers, artists, outsiders, and seekers searching for meaning beyond the feed.

If invited, I would be honored to offer an optional live sound-bath layer around a screening—playing the wave-shaped instrument featured in the film during moments when the muted hiking imagery blooms into color. It is not a performance, but an atmospheric extension of the film’s themes: breath, resonance, attention, and the subtle spaces between words.

In a meaningful coincidence, we locked a rough cut on November 11, 2025—the same day Sally Kirkland passed away. Sally starred in my first short, AUDIT, and narrated Arctic Plunge. Her passing on the day this film was completed felt like a quiet blessing—a reminder of lineage, mentorship, and the artists whose fingerprints remain on us. I dedicated the film to both my mom and her memory.

The Instrument is ultimately a meditation on attention.
On what we notice when the noise falls away.
On how we lose ourselves—and how we find our way back.
On the fragile renewal of post-wildfire Los Angeles, and the quiet renewal inside each of us.
On the moment someone chooses not to scroll, but to look.

In many ways, The Instrument is a love letter—to Mother Earth herself, to the city that raised me, and to anyone trying to remember who they were before their phone began telling them.