- [Narrator] At first glance, The Half Of It might look
like a typical teen rom com.
It begins with a romantic parable
about finding your other half, your soulmate,
and introduces the classic setting
of a high school in small town America.
But writer-director Alice Wu quickly subverts
those expectations by introducing
an atypical protagonist, Ellie Chu.
And by the end of the opening sequence, sets the stage
for an even more atypical love triangle.
- The Half Of It's really about a girl
who is never the main character.
Even in her own mind, she's not the main character.
She's just existing.
- [Narrator] So today, I want to explore the thought process
and craft that went into the opening animated sequence.
To see how the film visually contrasts the hyperreal world
of high school with Ellie's life at home,
and to examine how it introduces a protagonist
who doesn't realize she's the main character
of her own movie.
Let's sit down with Alice Wu to take a look
at the opening sequence of The Half Of It.
- I'm Alice Wu, I'm the writer-director of The Half Of It,
and this is The Opening Sequence.
- [Narrator] The Half Of It opens with a quote from Plato.
Love is simply the name for the desire
and pursuit of the whole.
Kicking off a story about the search for wholeness.
- [Ellie] The Ancient Greeks believed humans once
had four arms, four legs, and a single head made
of two faces.
We were happy.
Complete.
So complete that the Gods fearing our wholeness
would quell our need for worship, cleaved us in two.
- I kind of wanted to pull on the fact
that like from the beginning of,
at least through recorded time, there seems
to be this idea of like love in this idea
that once you find your other half, you will be completed.
The whole point of the opening's to setup the myth.
Like setup the, here's the thing
we all have been looking for through the ages.
- [Narrator] To illustrate the myth
of the other half, Wu collaborated
with animator Hayley Morris
to craft an expressive animated sequence.
As Wu and the animator collaborated, the sequence evolved
from simple 2D animation
to an innovative two-and-a-half-D stop motion approach.
- I was again, thinking these would be lines being drawn,
but she actually made it happen through stop motion.
And I think it adds a whole layer.
Now, we're two-and-a-half-D, right?
Like where the paper is 3D
but there's still like a 2D background behind it.
- [Narrator] The materials used in animation
were even sourced from the film's setting.
- In Washington State, there are a lot
of rock quarries, right?
And like gravel's actually an industry.
And then we actually did research and chose gravel
that would be from that region that like fills the frame
and then crushes into charcoal.
- [Narrator] And all the while, Wu drops
in visual references foreshadowing key moments
in Ellie's story.
- I secretly wanted to drop in images, visuals
that are actually about to come,
and you're not aware of it when you're watching it.
But the hope is that by the time you're done with the film,
suddenly everything actually feels of a piece.
When Aster first draws a piece art, we shot it,
and then I gave that drawing to Hayley Morris, the animator,
who then created out of like paper a version
of that, that flower.
The paper falls into the water and sees its reflection.
That is very much call backed
when the two girls are floating in the water.
- [Ellie] It is said that when one half finds its other,
there's an unspoken understanding,
and each would know no greater joy than this.
- And from there, we pop into the reality of high school.
- [Narrator] After establishing the myth of love
as the search for the whole, the opening sequence sets
about establishing Ellie's world.
Ellie's world is split into two realities.
The colorful stylized reality of high school,
and the more grounded static reality of home.
- I don't know what your experience in high school was
but I think mine was, mine was actually quite lonely.
You start to feel like everyone else
has this like colorful, incredible life
and they're off doing incredible things,
and yours is just this sort of like unfiltered, boring life.
With that high school reality, I purposely directed that
to be a tiny bit hyperreal.
Because where I really want to feel real is the next frame
when we hit on Ellie.
Like Ellie in her engineer's booth and with the train.
That's when it's like here, we're in grounded reality.
- [Narrator] Wu worked with her production team
to create a distinct color palette for Ellie's home.
- Edward Hopper was a big influence in terms of colors.
Like primary colors that were very distressed.
It feels like time has stood still.
- [Narrator] This idea of stasis is key
to understanding Ellie's reality.
Her father is paralyzed by grief over her mother's death,
and Ellie, in turn, feels responsible for him.
- The dad doesn't want to move on emotionally.
It's sort of beautiful.
Like you can see the love they have for each other.
But there's a sadness to it because there's no growth.
If Ellie continues on her life the way she does,
she will just become another version of her dad.
- [Narrator] Contrasted with this frozen
in time, grounded reality is the hyperreal setting
of high school.
We're introduced to the high school
as Ellie passes around essays she's written
for fellow students in exchange for money.
Augmented reality style graphics
representing phone interactions are introduced
as a device.
- I try not to shoot phone screens
as much as I can get away with,
which is why you see that things pop up on screen a lot
because I actually felt like
that will probably stand the test of time more
than we see in actual phone screen.
- [Narrator] And through the cinematography
and sound design, we understand the treacherous world
of status and gossip Ellie will have to contend with.
- I basically said to my sound designer
and also to like my DP like,
"This should be secret lives of students."
Just that slight whispers of people as we're going.
- [Narrator] One shy boy oboist types out,
"Wanna go to Oktober Fling?"
Which appears on a trombonist's screen.
She forwards to three of her friends who roll eyes.
One posts a screenshot with caption "#nerdalert."
- Here, I just want it to be like, this is
how cruel kids can be.
That oboist gets shot down.
And I very much want to put that there
as like, this is what happens
when you put yourself out there.
You're probably going to get mocked by your peers.
And it's just a tiny hint
as to why it would be so terrifying
for someone like Ellie to ever reach out.
- [Narrator] The camera continues to track
with the papers passed around by gossiping students
until we finally reach a girl who seems different.
- And then through there you end up getting introduced
to sort of the king and queen of the school.
I totally was like "Okay, she has to glow."
Like it was something I said to my DP.
It's like we we're going, we're going, we're going,
but when we get there, it's got
to feel like a tiny bit magical
because we're suddenly gonna realize,
that's the moment we cut back,
we're like "Oh, Ellie's watching her."
- [Narrator] It's here that we realize Ellie has a crush
on Aster Flores, the queen of the school.
But Aster seems impossibly out of reach
because as we have seen in the sequence, Ellie
is practically invisible to her classmates.
- The most interesting thing's you
don't see Ellie texting anybody.
Like that doesn't happen 'til much later.
Like there's just the sense
that she's still living this very isolated life
while everyone else is connected.
- [Narrator] In the world of high school, Ellie feels
like an extra, but in this movie, she's the protagonist
who doesn't know it.
- I'm Ellie Chu.
- Yes, I know.
- Pretty much Ellie and her dad are like the only immigrants
in this tiny town.
You sort of see that and immediately
it feels fish out of water.
And I guess that's the story I wanna tell
of the person that you never get to see in movies,
or if you do, they're an extra, or they're background.
- [Narrator] The first time we actually see Ellie is
during the opening credits montage
as she's getting ready for her day of school.
But the way Wu and her director
of photography, Greta Zozula, shoot Ellie is designed
to reflect the way she sees herself.
Not as a main character,
but rather as playing a supporting role.
- I've said to my DP, "Look, I just wanna capture, like
"if we see her, it needs to be an elbow,
"it's a foot, part of her face.
"Like I just want to see parts of the beginning of her life
"and we're gonna setup those macro shots."
So the first time you see her face is that rack focus
to the mirror of like when she's written,
like "Okay, these are the things I have
"to do every morning."
But even then, it's like literally all her duties
in front of her, on her face.
She clearly doesn't think she's the main character
in the story.
- [Narrator] By the end of the opening sequence,
Ellie's sense of herself leads her
to take a supporting role in someone else's love story.
Helping a jock, Paul Munsky, pursue the girl
of Ellie's dreams, Aster.
- Who writes letters these days?
- I thought it seemed romantic.
- [Narrator] But it's through this unlikely relationship
that Ellie begins to realize she is the main character
of her own story.
- Inside her, she does have deep desires and dreams
but she doesn't even think she could have them,
and it's through her interacting
with the last like most unexpected person.
It's their collision.
Like that guy ends up changing her life.
This story's really about three people who collide,
and in that moment in time,
each of them ends up finding the piece within themselves
that allows them to become the person
that they need to be.
- [Narrator] Before writer-director Alice Wu could subvert
the classic teen love story in The Half Of It, she had
to introduce a specific character, world and premise
that we don't normally see.
- When I'm writing, I never think
to myself, "What will the audience think about this?"
The really interesting question is
what is the thing you're dying to say
through this character, because you're the only person
who can write that thing, so write that thing.
Don't write the thing that somebody else could write.
- [Narrator] Only Alice Wu could've created
and introduced us to Ellie Chu
in the opening sequence of The Half Of It.
(mellow music)