Detours Ahead is featured in the shorts program The Journeys That Shape Us. We join director Esther Cheung here in conversation with curator Aiko Hamamoto.
Can you speak about your background in animation?
I graduated with a bachelor of animation from Sheridan College in 2019. To be honest with you, I chose to do schooling in animation because it had the most job opportunities at the time. My thinking was, that if I went into illustration, I wasn’t going to know how to animate. But if I went into animation, I’d still know how to draw, so I could illustrate on the side. It was a business decision because I didn’t want to be a starving artist. And it turns out I really like it…after the first few years at least.
Animating was my least favourite part of the process at the beginning. It was a really tough learning curve because it’s difficult and tedious and you’re drawing the same thing with just the slightest bit of difference between each frame. But over time, I learned that there’s an art to it. It’s meditative and fun. I really enjoy it now.
What was the process for making this short?
The short stemmed from two road trips I took during a summer that were vastly different. Each trip was about 3000 km long. I took the first trip from Vancouver to Toronto by myself. And in that same summer, I drove back with my dad. This was a very different drive overall, I believe, because of the way we were being perceived and thus treated in Canada. It was very interesting because both were in the same summer, in the same year, and on Highway 1. It was essentially the same road trip, the only isolating factor, being an ‘us’ instead of just me.
The catalyst for the film became that difference. I kept on wondering why my experience alone was so different from my experience with my dad.
It was fun trying to figure out what the story was and how to keep it grounded in that road trip that it was seeded from. It’s challenging to tell a traditional road trip story in an interesting way while staying true to how I remembered and felt everything to be. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist and like to do everything myself. The only person on the whole project that I hired was Ambrose, a sound designer who is amazing. This type of workflow is non-traditional. I don’t often get to touch parts of the pipeline such as compositing or script-writing in my day job.
Writing, in particular, was an interesting part of the process. Drawing is my usual medium; my way to process and communicate. The grant process flips my personal creative process backward as I am required to write and explain myself before drawing. I am thankful for my journalism degree as it definitely helped me learn how to process through words a little bit better than in the past.
How did you navigate working through grief while working on this project?
It hit me like a truck when I realized the stark difference between how I can move through the world versus how I could move when me and my dad were together. It’s tough to pinpoint because I have few people to verify this experience with. My ‘code-switching’ creates the unique opportunity to live the world on either side of the coin: as someone culturally accepted, as well as someone othered. It’s quite a bizarre experience and one that is quite prevalent in North America as a child of immigrants.
Throughout the film, I was trying to wrestle with those questions: Why were people treating us so differently? How am I being perceived when I’m one way and how are we being perceived in a group or when I’m with my dad who has an accent?
I realize that I am so privileged because of my cultural fluency and it’s ridiculous because my dad has been in Canada longer than I have. So what does it mean to be Canadian? What does it mean to be Chinese-Canadian? How does perception create identity and how does it own and limit your own understanding of yourself? That was my grief.
Has your view on grief or those moments changed since making the film?
It’s a work in progress. It’s hard to put fact onto memory because memory is so faulty. I can only be as honest as possible through my experience of either side of the coin. This is especially so since my dad only has his experience to go off of, and nothing to compare it too. “This is just what I live. I don’t know any different. This is just how it goes.”
But I’ve experienced both sides, And it feels a little bit lonely in that regard because there are not many people who can vet what I’ve said. I can’t fact-check my memories.
It wouldn’t be honest if I tried to prove something about the greater state of the world or the country. There’s nothing to prove. It’s purely anecdotal. I figured the most honest way to tell that concept or that feeling is to just tell it as I see it.
In your artist bio, you mentioned that the relationship with place is important to your artistic work. What places are important to you? How has that relationship changed over time?
My first film, 風不太冷 In Passing, is based on my parents’ stories of telling me about growing up in Hong Kong. That one was very place-based as well. I went back to Hong Kong in 2018 to experience Hong Kong for myself, have my own experience, and patch their stories to the place.
This time around, Detours Ahead is very rooted in Canada—specifically so. I tried to situate the film from the West to the East Coast; through what you see geographically from the water of the Pacific Ocean to the Rockies, the plains all in the middle, and then the trees in Ontario. I tried to build that into the progression of the film, as well as the art style.
I was inspired by the Group of Seven: how they use color, paint light, and treat landscapes. I tried to imbue their painterly aesthetic into the film through the art style, translating the Canadianness into this piece while being inspired by the Asian animation that I grew up watching, animating on lower frame rates and pacing the film with shots of nature and details that make Ghibli films so rich and relatable. In this way, the art styles in the short reflect my questions of what it means to be Canadian or Chinese Canadian and to wrestle with these different identities.
Was there significance in the inclusion of the dandelion and deer?
I used dandelions as a marker for each season passing, highlighting the circle of life. The deer was because I hit a deer.
The story of this short was truly my drive. Although it didn’t span a year, I did hit a deer at the end of the trip. The entire film hinged on the image of the car and the deer on opposite sides of the screen. I knew that was my last shot from day one. I worked backward from there, shuffling everything else to get to that point.
Is this how you approached your first film as well?
There are definitely similarities with both films being structured around a place and time, anecdotes based in real life, and an emotional crux.
With In Passing, I knew I wanted Hong Kong to be the story and a character. I also knew I wanted to be based on what my parents told me about Hong Kong. For Detours Ahead, I knew that I needed Canada to be the story and a strong character in the film. The film had to be grounded in my personal road trip experience across the country. For In Passing, thematically—emotionally—melancholy was the theme. And for Detours Ahead, the theme is grief.
And that ties in a bit with your previous question “How is place important?”. I realized that the way we experience the changing seasons is so important to the experience of Canada while preparing for the imminent destruction from typhoons are so specific to East Asia.
That is deeply ingrained in how I see the world—“What’s the weather today?”
Can you speak a little bit about the color decisions that went into making this film?
It was very deliberate. It went with the seasons: Every season has a color theme.
I split the film into chapters. I had summer as blue. We’re in the ocean on the West Coast of Canada. It’s very nice and sunny and inviting.
The next season is fall in the Rockies. It starts to be a bit mountainous with the leaves starting to blow in.
Fall leaves decompose. Colours begin to desaturate as we move into winter. The days are shorter and the nights are longer.
Spring comes back around. It becomes brighter again.
Anything else you’d like to share about the short?
I have a fun animation tidbit for this. This film was an opportunity for me to push my animation chops.
So the whole film was animated in one pass instead of a typical three (rough pass, then a tiedown pass, then finally the clean line).
Did you like that process?
Yeah. It was a chance to be a bit of an animation nerd and challenge myself as an animator.
Additionally, it was also more budget-friendly as it took me a bit less time.
What are some of the films you look to for creative inspiration?
So I have like a top 50 of movies that I just really love and would always go back to. But I think my top one, out of the animated films that I really love is Paprika. It’s my favorite animated film.
Recently, I watched Rainbow Butterflies. And it’s so good. I love the animation style. I like slice-of-life films and this fits right in. Its animation is gorgeous. And the character designs and style are so nice because it’s a little brushy and loose, but the animation moves very technically well.
What next for you?
I feel like I’m still playing producer on this film. I feel like it’s not done. The artistic part is wrapped, but now the other side is going full swing. So that and playing director a little bit—at least formally.
I haven’t had too much time to think about any new film, but I do have an idea that I’ve been sitting on for a year or so. Very beginning works, but maybe a film.
Maybe I’ll switch mediums and go to graphic novels. I don’t know. I’ve always been curious about that medium. Maybe it’s time. Or maybe a short series—if I can figure out how to fund that. Or maybe I’ll try something a bit more narrative. We’ll see. That’s what I’m playing with right now.