We Better
Major Production of Final Year Students
Suzhou, China • Film Short • Comedy, Drama, Satire
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In a crowded café, a man and a woman place bets to secure the last empty seat during a rainy afternoon.
About the Project
Better Bet Her is a student-led project from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's Academy of Film and Creative Technology.
Two female filmmakers, who share multicultural backgrounds and have strong passions for telling feminist stories, partner up to produce a short fiction film in their final year of studying in the BA Filmmaking program.
Along with their classmates who are graduating, their project will be showcased in the 3rd annual MEGA International Creative Media Festival held in Suzhou, China and virtually on May 12, 2023.
The Story
Tracy, a hardworking, diligent, but mildly callous woman, arrives early to her favourite café to ensure she is given a seat to study.
During peak time, a spontaneous and carefree (seemingly Tracy’s antithesis) man named Aaron shows up at the same café, only to be met with no vacant seats. Finding a free seat in front of Tracy, he makes it his life mission to take this seat for himself, even if it means having them both sit through a series of absurd bets.
When Catherine shows up, she becomes the unwilling player in one of these bets. They all begin disputing over their dissimilar individual goals.
Film Title
Better Bet Her
Media Type
Fiction Film
Running Time
10-20 minutes
Genre
Comedy, Drama, Satire
Language
English
Production Location
Suzhou, China
Production Completion
March 2023
The Intentions
In this slice-of-life movie, a callous woman has to deal with a cheeky man’s coquetry and bets. Who will win? Who will lose? Let's be real... betterness does not mean fairness for all. Ostensibly, the message of Better Bet Her is simple: Have the common decency to respect others' boundaries.
Most women who work still worry that most male coworkers do not understand or accept that women are not treated equally. One may argue that the largest barrier to the growth of women's rights in the workplace is the fact that most men typically fail to see the problem. Because it is uncomfortable to have these kinds of conversations with them, it is difficult to change these entrenched prejudices.
We are telling a story that is clearly not about the romance between two strangers. The comedy genre is often one of the best tools in film to unfilter gender issues in a pleasant way. Comedy's messages can be explicit and honest. We want to bring our male audiences to a comfortable position for watching the beginning of the film before they are conscious of the male character's deep-seated bias against females. Meanwhile, we want to give our female audiences the liberty to let go of polite conversations so that they can use their voices to defend their personal spaces.
Director's Statement
Amarta's directing process of Better Bet Her has been mostly guided by rom-com tropes and her experiences of growing up as a woman. She wanted the main tone of the film to follow the tone of classic rom-coms from the start but eventually subvert the audiences' expectations in the end. In particular, she held onto the contrasting personalities of the main characters: a man's persistent and sunshine behaviour and a woman's pensive and low-tolerant behaviour. Amarta says, "as a woman growing up, I realised a lot of things about the way I was taught to interact with the world around me, and how it differed from the way the men I grew up with were taught. Most of my male peers always seemed to be rewarded more for lower standards of work and effort. They seemed to be encouraged to continue pursuing women despite unfriendly reactions. I had the impression that the women around me were quickly written off as unlikable for setting appropriate boundaries and not playing around with constant, unrelenting unwelcome advances. I intended to reflect all these flaws I had encountered through the main characters."
References
If you enjoyed watching these films or TV series, then you can bet that you’ll want to sit and watch Better Bet Her.
What most of these funny stories have in common is how their characters cross their boundaries with discomfort when they are in comfortable settings.
The Location
SUNPATIO restaurant serves as the major mise en scène.
It attracts characters who enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.
It is located in Suzhou, China. At the interior, it has a café and bar. At the exterior, it has a patio. Most of their regular customers, both Chinese and expats, dine in there to socialize.
Click here to learn more information.
The Timeline
Pre-production
Principal Photography
Post-production
Release Date
Film Festival Distribution
December 2022 - February 2023
March 2023
March - May 2023
May 12, 2023
August 2023 - August 2024
The Challenges
Better Bet Her is the first project our team has collaborated internationally. Maintaining all the operations of this project is a challenging process because we are working with students who are based in both China and Indonesia. The crew members based in Indonesia are in charge of the post-production and they have been communicating via online meetings with our production crew for only an-hour time difference. The language barrier is less of a problem for us but more of an advantage to prepare the screenplay's ability to be comprehensive.
The film will be shot entirely in a café which is not so far away from the XJTLU campus. Since there will be rain scenes, preparing for the rain effects with while dealing with a lot of extras in one location will take a lot of time and effort to rehearse in order to save water. Another approach that we aim to achieve will be applying the rain effects into the editing stage.
Moreover, we are aware that it will be challenging to film after the covert winter wave of COVID-19, but our crew is making every effort to make sure everything is running smoothly. Our fully-vaccinated cast and crew will wear masks and social distance. The café location will be kept clean.