An expat filmmaker is screening an early version of his film to attract funding for a final version.

“The View from Here” looks at two expats trying to mend a broken relationship with a weekend by the Korean coast.

But the new environment only brings their problems into sharper focus, and the trip begins to tear them apart.

Having finished a 65-minute version of the film, Lambert is using crowdfunding to fund a final version, supporting the project with live screenings in and around Seoul.

The film as it is now stands has a story in itself, but Lambert wants to complete what he sees as an unfinished work.

“It’s not that I’m not happy with the beginning and the end, but it’s not actually the real beginning and the real end. So what you have is an incomplete story,” he said.

“The story doesn’t end right there, where it does. We want to tell what happens next. What we want people to see is that these characters are not inherently doomed, they’re not wrong or damned or anything like that. It’s like there’s a shift that is a catalyst for change.”

This in part involves giving more depth to the characters, but while he wants them to be realistic, Lambert doesn’t want to bring the viewer onto their side.

“We are in the process of fine-tuning characters ― just to flesh them out to the extent that we don’t have to give the viewer too much, but at the same time we want to be able to give them characters that they can relate to, and the trick is that we don’t want to give them characters that they can root for. We don’t want that. 

“The idea was that the characters were always supposed to be a little bit ugly and rough around the edges.”

Other things they wanted to improve on were more detailed.

“Some things we didn’t get just right. One of the scenes is where he’s looking at porn and she’s in the other room getting prettied up. And of course the natural inclination would normally be to look at her, but at the same time, you see what he’s looking at and it’s ‘Oh wow!’

“The problem is that it’s not that clear. It’s not that we want it in focus, because we can’t have it in focus, and I don’t necessarily know that it’s obvious, so it’s more of an instantaneous thing.”

The male lead’s porn addiction is a big part of the film, and among other things Lambert has visited online communities of porn addicts as part of his research.

He even recently tried the “No Fap Challenge,” a task set by one such community for addicts requiring 90 days of abstinence from porn and masturbation, which he says had a strong impact on him.

“I do feel that the changes are pretty solid. That my focus, I feel, is a lot stronger. It does engage so much of your time that when you disengage yourself from it, you get so much more accomplished. But it also changes the way you perceive things,” he said.

Lambert added that some of his backers had come from those online communities, with people happy that he was adding to the growth of people talking about the issue.

“Chris Rock went on a radio show and said that he was taking the No Fap Challenge, and he said he was on 40 days,” he said. “So it’s not an uncommon (issue).”

But the taboo is still strong. As a comedian, Chris Rock is implicitly given a pass to break norms. For other people it might not be so easy, even compared to things like drug and alcohol addiction.

“At least communities are defined. ... If you are in a work situation, you won’t say you are in Alcoholics Anonymous if you walk into a job interview. But if it comes up you probably won’t hide it. If you say you’ve been sober for however many years, people will probably pat you on the back and say that’s a good thing. (But with porn addiction) it’s incredibly difficult,” he said.

“The good thing is that you see more people talking about it.”

One thing Lambert wants to get across is the idea of what recovery from addiction might look like, which is something that the current version does not cover.

“More importantly, what makes them good together and why it should be sad that they’re torn apart,” he said.

“I think that the idea is to show why they are together. You look at Virginia Woolf, and you see the couple there, and yes they’re always at each other, but you see that’s who they are and it’s perfect.

“These two people are not together out of laziness. It’s two people that really love each other, but because they are unable to handle their own situations, those predicaments tear them apart.

“And that’s what makes it tragic. And ultimately that’s what I think it’s supposed to be is tragic.”

As it stands, the film culminates in an argument out on the mudflats, undoubtedly the most striking scene in the film and a setting so simple it could have filmmakers kicking themselves for not using it first. But Lambert said shooting it was not as simple as it looked.

“You don’t want to spend too much time there because it’s a natural habitat, but you’re scheduled by a tidal chart so you can only shoot the same scene every two weeks, and even then you don’t know if the light is going to be the same,” he explained.

“And the actors are also knee-deep in mud, and they’re yelling at each other across this plain and you’re trying to catch them with this sound guy who is half a mile away, it feels. And it’s also hard because you have all this expensive equipment and it’s rented, you can’t afford to drop it.

“The winter is going to be even harder because now we’re going to do the same scene but at zero degrees. And we’re going to have to go out much farther because 400 meters out it’s frozen.”

The seemingly endless mudflats give the scene a slightly fantastical appearance, but although he wants to keep it striking, Lambert said that he aimed to give a more grounded impression in the reshoot.

“In the second one (the flats are) going to be a little more finite, and a little more realistic. Because as you see them marching out through the cold, you realize that that’s not a sane state to be in and that something must be really wrong,” he said.

Screenings are planned at the Bull and Barrel in Itaewon at 8 p.m. on Dec. 12, and at the Lomography Shop in Hongdae at 7 p.m. on Dec. 14. The crowdfunding project for the film is at www.indiegogo.com/viewfromhere, where there is a link to the trailer and the current version of the film.

By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)