Two strangers, camped out in a foreign land, cross paths in a luxury hotel elevator and exit into adjacent rooms on the same floor... then what? Do they fantasize about one another? Do they build up the courage to knock on the other's door? Did they even notice one another at all?
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We discover disparate answers to this question in The 10th Floor, a new short film from Director Alexander Paul, who is repped by Mighty Film Co. in the US. Though primarily known for shooting automotive spots, the ever-evolving Paul saw an opportunity to make an idea he had conceptualized some time before into reality on a recent stay in China.
"My Producer, Susanne Porzelt, and me had been talking since the beginning of the year about doing a freestyle project with the view of charging my reel with more beauty, sensuality, humanity and storytelling with a stronger concept," stated Paul. "We spend so much time in hotels that at some stage we started talking about what people think when they meet in elevators or vanish in hotel rooms next to each other."
With permission from the art-loving Frenchman/hotel general manager, Paul took over the 10th floor of the Hotel G in Beijing. What the 10-man crew produced is a sensual adventure of the imagination; a dream world where an innocuous evening elevator ride leads to half-naked fantasies of compressed flesh and lust. When the two characters rejoin reality beside the elevator in the morning, they let the door shut and disappear to explore their pent-up passions.
"We wanted something daring and racy, something very aesthetical and stylish, but something that appealed equally to men and women by showing male and female fantasies," Paul said. "For that, it was very important to have a strong ending, revealing that everything we had seen were dreams borne of separate minds in separate rooms. We then left the reality that followed to the viewers' imaginations. While men and women alike gave positive reviews, it was interesting to see how opposite sexes interpreted the same scenes in totally different ways - which is of course exactly what we intended."
Partly for that reason, Paul and company gave considerable thought to casting, deciding, after some consideration, on locking in an Asian girl and Caucasian man as their small cast. "We felt that a pure Caucasian cast would be wrong for this project," Paul stated. "A mix just adds more spice and fuels the fantasy. But we had to find actors who would be up for something a bit more racy - a search of local modeling agencies turned up Taiwanese model Ai-Li and Peter Simon from Slovakia." Given the project's abbreviated timeframe, Paul had a very short window to earn the actors' trust, a task complicated by the fact that this was Simon's first foray into film.
Downloads:
Credits:
Written and Directed by: Alexander Paul
Cast: Ai-Li, Peter Šimon
Produced by: Susanne Porzelt
Director of Photography: Vikash Nowlakha
Editing: Michael Pikelj
Assistant Director: Chang Yu Pang
Sound Design: IV Group
Camera Assistant: Liu Ming Hao - "Haozi"
Coloring: Swen Linde
Post Production: wefadetogrey.de
Very Special thanks to:
Hotel G Beijing
Made in China (MIC) Films
A Ping-Pong. Films Production 2011
