things that strike my fancy

So I’m taking a quick break before I dive down the Kissing in the Rain fan-canon rabbit hole to post some stills from another weekend directing project of mine.

Some of my Tumblr friends might be familiar with a directing series on my personal channel, I Didn’t Write This, in which I take short excerpts of poetry and literature written by other people and adapt them as a directing/filmmaking exercise. We did an episode in which I adapted a short excerpt from John Green's Looking for Alaska, since we had already recorded the audio for the Kissing in the Rain trailer.

A few weeks ago, I decided to finally check out Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. I’d known about the book for a while and had been putting off reading it because I knew it would hit far, far too close to home (I’m a filmmaker whose creative origin story is tied pretty heavily to writing Harry Potter fanfic.) Reading Fangirl was like finding a long lost diary I’d forgotten I’d kept. I read it in two nights and fell completely and totally in love with these characters and the worlds they lived in, both in fictional fandom and IRL. Since I Didn’t Write This is my way of playing with source material I love, I knew I absolutely had to do a Fangirl episode of IDWT. I want to direct this feature so badly it hurts YOU GUYS ASDLKFJLSDK FLERMMMMMMMM.

I reached out to a few fanartists in the Tumblr tag because I thought it might be fun to use actual Fangirl fanart in my fangirl-directed fan-adaptation, so thanks goes to toerning for the sketches on Cath’s desk and doctorhooper for the fabulous poster design on the wall! We shot one scene adaptation and a few would-be promo stills as well. Much love to the always wonderful Mary Kate Wiles and the awesomely talented Denver Milord for being my Cath and Levi.

This episode of IDWT might take another week or so to come out while I work on Kissing in the Rain (which everyone should go watch Mary Kate being awesome in), so keep a look out and subscribe to my personal channel, maybe? If you like literary adaptations and shippy short films, it might be your kind of thing.

And just because it’s topical, hey look, here’s my old fanfiction.net profile. #nostalgia

Much love,

Yulin Kuang
writer  //  director  //  fangirl
youtube.com/yulinisworking
youtube.com/shipwreckedcomedy