2017 Films: Rule of Threes

Rule of Threes by T.L. Quach
(Wisconsin Premiere) 
Running Time: 10 minutes
Screening Time: Saturday Sept 9th 4:30
Drama

Rule of Threes is a short film written and directed by T. L. Quach. It serves as a sample of feature length version of the story as it runs through the Film Festival Circuit. So far the film was given an Award of Merit for Women Filmmakers by the Accolade Global Film Competition.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a group of friends must decide who stays and who goes as a sacrifice after their resources are lost. The feature version delves more into the characters' psychologically thrilling, coming-of-age journey as they travel across country, challenging weather conditions and the threats of other survivors, in hopes of seeing their families back home.

T. L. Quach hopes to develop the film more in order for it to be produced after the Film Festival Circuit.

Trailer

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

http://www.tlquachfilms.com/rule-of-threes

SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITES

https://www.facebook.com/TLQuachFilms/

https://twitter.com/ruleof3sfilm

https://twitter.com/tlquachfilms

https://www.instagram.com/TLQUACHFILMS

T. L. Quach

DIRECTOR

T. L. Quach has dedicated her life to entertain, inspire, and educate about the complexity of human behavior through filmmaking. She dives in writing and directing stories about normal people in extreme circumstances. As a child of Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants, Quach wants to provide a different lens in tribute to her family and also display a diverse perspective about humanity. Directing has always been her passion, and she is very excited to share her latest film, Rule of Threes, with the world.

Avalonne Hall

PRODUCER

Working on Rule of Threes is Hall's first foray into producing film projects besides her own. There is something very liberating about producing someone else's vision. First you need to believe in the project and next you commit yourself to producing a great project. She has written and directed her own short film Shyness, which is currently in post-production. As she finishes off her own project, she wants to help others produce their films with passion and integrity.

Director Statement

As Walt Disney says, “I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something, than educate people and hope they were entertained”, I strive to do the same but with psychological thrillers. I want to share my exploration of human behavior and challenge morale. Growing up as a child of refugees from Vietnam, I heard stories about a foreign world of desperation and poverty and how their environment had shaped their actions, perspectives of others, and decisions in their lives. For example, decisions like abandoning their home and jumping on an old dilapidated boat in hope to make it to a Hong Kong's refugee camp still seems crazy to me. With stories like these, it always kept me thinking about to what choices, to what limits, that normal people do under extreme circumstances. Whether it's positive or negative decisions, I want to put that complication onto film. Hence why I had written and directed narrative films about desperation, understanding of one another, and finding hope - including this one. 

While working in production, I remembered a prop sign on set where it states the "Rules of Threes" where: Humans cannot live 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water, 3 hours without shelter in extreme weather, 3 minutes without air, and 3 seconds without hope. I love the last line and had to write around it. The core value of survival is having the will to move on and I feel everyone needs to know that. 

I grown an interest in post-apocalyptic films and TV shows that display life-death situations but still find inklings of hope. Works like The Road, Snowpiercer, and The Walking Dead explore the human rationale under extreme stress and with these influences, I created the short film "Rule of Threes". 

The short film is a snippet of a feature film I'm developing. This film serves as a metaphor about young people struggling to survive in a world they were never prepared for. Not only I want to display human desperation but also express how "thinking inside the box" or within rules can add psychological weight for human survival. For example, these young characters treat their lessons of the "Rule of Threes" as a survival checklist rather than a survival guide. Additionally, nostalgia can add weight in a world of lost. Through audio flashbacks, character's experiences emphasize the character's psychological fight as they live through this desperate, mundane life. 

I hope that this film can ultimately give some perspective of life to adults as they inherently develop these expectations through their upbringing or from society. Regardless of any unexpected roadblocks, we still must find hope to survive; so our jobs in entertainment is to educate and/or remind everyone about that.