Justin & Louise: Movie Magic

Filmmaking can be fun, but what happens when a dynamic pair of siblings come together to make movie magic? We catch up with Tanglin alumni Justin (2012 Cohort) and Louise Villar (2016 Cohort) who collaborated with fellow filmmaker Hano Vivaldoran to make the short film Why Can’t We Have Nice Things? 

Justin is a director and writer, known for his visual effects work on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Elvis (2022), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) while his sister Louise is currently in Sydney doing Graduate Certificate in Cultural Studies with the generous support of Tanglin’s Career Development Grant. Let’s find out more about the siblings who may have gone on different paths in life, but came together to collaborate on a film project with fellow filmmaker Hano Vivaldoran. 

What’s your Tanglin story? 

Justin: I started Tanglin in 2002 as a Year 3 student. We were the first batch to start at the Junior School Building. I was there for 10 happy years, graduating with the Class of 2012.

Louise: I started nursery the same year as my older brother in 2002 and stayed until I graduated from Year 13 in 2016. I grew up entirely in Tanglin!

Justin, what was it like being in the same school as your sister?

Justin: It was funny growing up and the teachers picked up on our similarities. We have another sibling, Julius (the youngest). The teachers knew us all by the end of our Tanglin days, they said it was pretty easy to tell that we were all siblings. Haha! 

What did you do after you left Tanglin?

Justin: I studied Marketing at The University of Melbourne in Australia, but I realised after graduating that the marketing industry wasn’t my cup of tea. So I spent my 20s trying different things and figuring out what I liked and what I was good at. I’ve had a bunch of different jobs over the years. I worked the night shift at a supermarket, and I was a police transcriptionist as well as a chess tutor. A formative job I had came when I was 24 when I cold emailed a creative agency. I ended up there for two and a half years where I was trained as a Producer and a video editor, working primarily on Google and YouTube projects. I directed and edited passion projects and collaborated with different creative communities such as musicians, comedians, stunt performers, and other filmmakers in Melbourne. When I left the agency, those connections I made from doing my own thing helped me land my first film industry role doing visual effects (VFX).

Louise: I stayed in Singapore and completed the Tanglin Internship by working in the Art Department. Then I moved to Melbourne in early 2017 to start my Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne. I majored in Art History in Philosophy and graduated in 2022. After university, I gained experience working in the art industry both in Singapore and in Melbourne but also spent that time entertaining different passions like film, social advocacy, and creative producing. I’m currently living, working, and studying in Sydney doing a Graduate Certificate in Cultural Studies - another passion of mine (generously supported by Tanglin’s Career Development Grant, I might add!)

Why film?

Justin: Honestly it never started out as a career path for me. I just made films at university because I thought it would be funny. Then I just kept making them and meeting more people. I also continued to collaborate with different people because it helped me learn how to make movies.

Louise: My older brother Justin (the first film buff I knew) involved me in his projects after I moved to Melbourne. I was a creative person and willing to help out in whatever role I could fill, often doing the Hair and Makeup or SFX. It was he who introduced me to the local filmmaking community, and it was thanks to him that I got to nurture my interest in producing and enjoy the energy of working on set.

Why did you decide to collaborate on a film with your fellow filmmaker friend, Hano, and what is the film all about?

Justin: He had success in making TikTok content and there were producers in New York who wanted to see something more substantial from him - basically a proof-of-concept to show that he can work with a crew, camera, and budget rather than by himself in his apartment. 

Louise had always been helping out on my film projects usually as hair and make-up, and sometimes acting in them. But during the last couple of years, she’s been the Assistant Director (AD) for my stuff and some other projects in the Melbourne scene. Her background as a project manager in the Art industry was a massive help. As an AD, they need to run the whole day and make sure we’re on schedule. There’s a lot of logistics, planning, and relationship/crew management involved so there were a lot of transferable skills that she brought along from her Art background. It also made sense that she became a producer as well, and she ended up handling the financial aspects of Hano’s film.

Louise: Hano first connected with Justin, acknowledging both his expertise in producing and their compatible energy. My brother tapped me to jump on as a producer, with the specific responsibility of managing the budget thanks to my background working in event management. More importantly, I had faith in their vision and knew that our collaborative energy was special - it’s such a crucial part of producing a film successfully. 

Why Can’t We Have Nice Things is about two brothers, Konrad and Dino, who reunite in their family’s restaurant at midnight. We get to watch the path of destruction that follows Dino as well as the fraternal grievances that finally get to be aired out.

Any memorable moments/challenges?

Justin: Yeah, there was a really chaotic scene at an Italian restaurant where an angry taxi driver storms in with a baseball bat, smashes a table full of plates, and then gets punched in the face. Organising all the logistics of that and shooting it at 2am was all sorts of exciting.

Louise: The main challenge was managing the energy on set during really difficult filming hours - between 8pm and 5am for four nights straight. You’re asking a lot of your crew to be on the ball and active, especially when you’re nearing the end of that shooting day and it’s 3am! Luckily we had gathered an incredibly reliable and talented crew whom we had all worked with in previous sets, so there was good rapport. Good crew relations are not always a given, but they are always a godsend.