HCMC – Young Vietnamese girl Duong Nguyet Nghi won 53 international awards for her 3D animated short film titled “The Organized Life”, which was co-made by Nghi and her friend Patrick Yu Wang.
This is also the result of Nghi’s passion and efforts during her studies at the Academy of Art, San Francisco, and internship at the Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Watching animated movies was not just Nghi’s favorite activity when she was little but brought on a passion to pursue a career in the film industry. By now, she has participated in many noticeable 3D projects in the United States.
One of the reasons that led to the success of “The Organized Life” is the empathy from the audience with the main character in the film.
The film is a letter expressing the thoughts of a little boy who is a perfectionist. He tried very hard to meet his mother’s expectations and, in the end, realized that it still did not satisfy her and did not bring him joy.
The boy had to struggle internally and try to change his thoughts to find the key to a life that brings him happiness.
“To integrate into today’s society, we have imposed on ourselves and those around us difficult standards and expectations. Those pressures have unintentionally created a number of psychological diseases such as obsessive-compulsive disorders and are very common among many young people in developed countries,” Nghi shared.
Perfection is a trend of the times that young people are being trained toward, but it has also unintentionally become a serious problem affecting them.
“But happiness doesn’t have to come from perfection. Society has trained us to see our own worth through the material factors we possess and the way we behave, but all standards will be meaningless if we are not happy,” the young girl said.
“We want to bring about humanistic meanings through stories, dialogues, and shapes, especially the characters’ expressions. The film chose abstract storytelling to encourage viewers to feel stronger and realize they are not alone if they encounter times when they have strange thoughts.”
Speaking about the time taken to implement the project, she added, “We together found the direction for the story with sketches and narration ideas, looking for the most economical direction for the project but still ensuring the quality.”
After making a stable plan, Nghi made the camera layout, selected the camera angle and created the direction of camera movement for each sequence and created animation for the character.
“We were constantly modifying the script, adding ideas and working in tandem to improve the performance and quality of the project. In the summer of 2020, we proudly completed the movie ‘The Organized Life’ in a period of one year with a team of two people and were fortunate to receive positive feedback from the viewers,” she said.
Based on criteria such as creativity, script, directing, cinematography, character creation, and music, “The Organized Life” has been honored with 53 international awards.
Among them are awards from MetroCAF, the Golden Short Film Festival, the GAROA Awards, the Barcelona Indie Filmmakers Festival, the Asia South East-Short Film Festival, the British Animation Film Festival, and the 2020 Taiwan International Student Design Competition.
To watch “The Organized Life” by Patrick Wang and Duong Nguyet Nghi, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzYLYZNlpCA
