Asian A.V. Club newsletter #21: Emma Koh

Production Designer Emma Koh gets honest with us about her fascinating career creating perfect spaces for her directors, leading to the Oscar nominated Red, White and Blue.

Production designer Emma Koh has spent the last decade utilizing her diverse skills to create exceptional spaces for filmmakers to express their stories. By collaborating and listening to them, Emma has consistently found ways to showcase authentic worlds that feel lived-in from every angle. These honest partnerships have made her a sought-after creative, able to transition seamlessly from Asian centric stories like the drama Spa Night to the light hearted Korean American joys of XO Kitty.

However, her recent project Red, White and Blue, required a different approach to tell the story of a single parent who crosses state lines to get an abortion. Given the urgency of the topic, Emma’s sensitive commitment on set not only contributed to an Oscar nomination for the short film, but also reinforces her determination to work on more projects that inspire her.

We caught up with Emma recently covering a wide swath of topics, and discovered someone who is totally open and fun to chat with.

Asian A.V. Club: We love a good origins story here at Asian A.V. Club, can you tell us the moment that planted the seed for you to pursue a career in film and tv?  

Emma Koh: I mean, there's a lot of things. But I was one of those kids every Friday that would go to movie theaters by herself and use her allowance money to watch movies. I was a little bit quiet, and on the shier side socially, and so I just lost myself in the world of film. I always thought I wanted to be a cinematographer and had a background in fine arts and sculpture during my undergrad [at Cornell University]. One summer, I took a course at USC for their photography program and I quickly realized I did not enjoy it. (laughs) I was like, oh my God, there's so many cables and it was just a lot of physical work. And so I was like, maybe this isn't for me.

Our final project in order to get credit for the class was to do a short MOS film, which means without sound and I took on the role as art director. We had a budget of like $100. And with that $100, I was able to fabricate and create an underground Iranian bar speakeasy situation with super dim lighting, lots of fabrics, lots of colors and lots of layering. We were able to successfully pull it off and ended up winning a little award at the end for the program. After that experience, I was like, this whole process was really enjoyable, doing the research, trying to figure out what a speakeasy would look like, setting the tone for it, shopping for the fabrics, and even trying to figure out how to how to fit $100 worth of this stuff into a set.

When I finished college, I was asked to art PA for an indie feature [General Education] that my friend was producing. And that was my first real job after college. I got to learn so much on that film and though it was it was a lot of grunt work still, I got to understand how to build, how to create a look, and how to work with other departments so the look of the film came out properly. So really it was a whole bunch of things that kind of ‘started it all’.

Asian A.V. Club: You managed to avoid the Asian academic trope when you went to college!

Emma Koh: Actually, no. When I was at Cornell, I did follow the Asian trope. My mother is actually a very successful physician and I'm very proud of what she's able to achieve, especially as an immigrant. That was also the direction that I was supposed to go in, but I kind of deviated with a fine art major PLUS pre-med. And at a certain point, I told my parents, I think I'm gonna go on to film and continue my art degree. That was a super huge letdown for them, but I think they're happy now. (laughs)

Asian A.V. Club: It probably helps to be associated with an Oscar nominated film these days.  

Emma Koh: Except my dad is so funny. He was just like, ‘I mean, I'm really happy for you. But like, what does this mean? Do you get paid if you win the Oscar? Do you get money?’ And I was like, ‘No’. (laughs) Then he made this joke about how he wants to melt down the award if I get one.  

Asian A.V. Club: That’s hilarious! Though you did due diligence by continuing your education by going into the AFI Masters program for Production Design. That must have been intense cause that whole program surrounds you with talented creatives as your peers.

Emma Koh: I’m not gonna lie, it was intense and very competitive. During that first year, there’s a lot of balancing, especially when it comes to working with collaborators, directors, and cinematographers; all the while doing your own course load. It was a very aggressive program, so it was like having a double major. But the beauty of the program is that you get to pick stories that you want to work on.

After every cycle film, we would show it to our class on the stage and get ripped apart. (laughs) But for me, that was a great experience, because it was real life. Since I had a fine art background, I was kind of used to getting ripped apart in front of people for my creative work. And honestly, constructive criticism, any kind of criticism for me is just feedback. And it's only going to help me progress and get better as an artist and as a filmmaker. So I’ve always welcomed feedback and criticism.

Asian A.V. Club: Your first feature as an Art Director was on Andrew Ahn’s debut feature Spa Night, how did you connect with him at such an early part of his directing career?

Emma Koh: It was also early in my career too and I had no idea how lucky I was to be working with such a talented and kind director. Working with him was honestly, a dream. Spa Night is still probably my favorite film that I've ever worked on, not just story wise, but also work experience. [Andrew] was super humble, super patient, super kind and super communicative.

I actually got into Spa Night because at the time, my grandmother was very sick and I was living in New York and I came back to LA to help out. I saw a job posting on Facebook through the AFI alumni page, and it said, ‘Korean American director looking for an art director.’ So I applied to the production designer Hyein Ki and she graciously took me on as her art director. I think mostly she hired me because she's from Korea originally and she wasn't really familiar with the Korean American experience. And since I was born and raised in LA and grew up in K-town, I was a huge asset and resource to her in terms of getting all the right things. (laughs)

Asian A.V. Club: Were there things from your personal experience that you put into the film?

Emma Koh: Actually yes, the main character’s living situation with his parents just hit home for me. So my parents had me out of wedlock and never got married, which is very abnormal and rare [in the Asian community]. When I was young, my father was dating this woman, who I now consider a ‘stepmom’, and she was a single mom at the time. Reading the story for Spa Night just reminded me of her and growing up in her apartment. I was fortunate enough to experience what it was like to live in a single parent home and I took a lot of those experiences into decorating that apartment. And that's kind of what you see in the Spa Night.

Asian A.V. Club: Was your approach different on Justin Chon’s Jamojaya?

Emma Koh: We shot the film in Hawaii, but when it came to the Indonesian village, we had to make it look like Asia. Making anything requires it to be as authentic as possible. That’s why I like to hire crew that have experiences to spawn it right and bring it to the camera. Some of our crew had Indonesian or Filipino backgrounds, so they were bringing that texture and life to the set. There was also a lot of research and Googling, figuring out the look of Indonesian villages and making sure those items were available in Hawaii. If they weren't, we would have to fabricate it and custom build it or have things shipped over.

Asian A.V. Club: Then you made the series XO Kitty. What was it like to shift from features into a series?

Emma Koh: Kitty was a beast. Don't let the name fool you. (laughs) It was wild only because it was my first time working in Korea with a Korean crew and a lot of the rules and regulations that we have in America don't really apply in Korea. We have a union; they don't have unions. We have safety rules, they don't. So the biggest challenge was trying to implement our system into the way they do things.  

For example, we were shooting Kitty in the middle of winter, and we had to make it look like spring. At the school campus, there was grass, but it was brown and yellow. So we had to get creative since VFX would have cost too much. We decided to paint the grass green, which in America is super easy and FDA regulated. But in Korea, there are all these hurdles that we had to get through. So when we got the approval to paint the grounds, my Korean crew was just completely flabbergasted. And like, What is this? I had to show them how to get the bottle and just spray. It was like a whole new world.

Asian A.V. Club: And now every K-drama will have green grass all year round! Was working on Nazrin Choudhury’s short Red, White and Blue a move to work on something intimate again?

Emma Koh: Actually no. When we wrapped Kitty in Korea, I found out about the overturning of Roe v. Wade and I just remember feeling so defeated and crushed. I told myself, or maybe the universe, that I wanted to contribute something that will help change this up, but I didn’t know how. I even said, I could work on a film that was about this.

Then maybe four months later, my friend/mentor, Kay Lee (Insecure, Euphoria), who’s the first and only Korean American female production designer I’ve ever gotten to meet and know, passed Nazrin’s script onto me. She didn’t want to spoil the plot and told me to read it. So I read the script and was like, I wish you prepared me because I was crying for 20 minutes after reading it. I knew immediately that I needed to work on this.

Asian A.V. Club: Because Red, White and Blue is a short film, budgetary wise, did you have to resort to your earlier days and get a bit scrappy with re-creating Arkansas from LA?

Emma Koh: Even on XO Kitty, I had to be scrappy. Honestly those skill sets you should never forget. Being resourceful is such a power and your biggest asset. As a production designer on this film, especially with a limited budget, we got really lucky with our set decorator Rebecca Keeling. Not only does she have an extensive background in television, but as I was getting to know her, she told me her story as a single mother of two, and I just knew she was the right fit. Rebecca really wanted to contribute herself and her experiences to this film and I wanted that for her as well. So because of her connections in the industry, our limited budget and the impending writers’ strike at the time, the Warner Brothers prop house director Robert Greenfield, actually made us a really gracious deal. He said we could take anything we wanted for $200.

Asian A.V. Club: WHAT?!!

Emma Koh: I owe him a gift! (laughs) My budget was very, very, limited. I didn’t have money for my crew and only had money to hire Rebecca and one or two set dressers. Some of the sets required carpentry, painting, wallpapering, and all that stuff, so I kind of ended up having to wear many different hats. I was the graphic artist, I art directed, I was a prop master and the picture car coordinator. That was the most challenging thing for the short. We needed to get two identical cars, but what you see in the film is actually two different vehicles made to look exactly the same. I had to put old school seat covers to make it all look homogenous. So you want to talk scrappy, we definitely pulled it off here. (laughs)

Asian A.V. Club: When everyone involved is so passionate about the subject of the short, what kind of environment was that like to work in?

Emma Koh: Everyone truly brought their heart to the film. Everyone was reminded daily what they were doing this for, especially in my team. They worked their butts off because they understood the gravity and the meaning of this film.

Asian A.V. Club: What was it like to see the final cut? Did you guys have a screening?

Emma Koh: They had a screening, but I ended up watching it by myself cause I was in New York at the time. I was really proud of the way it turned out, I don’t necessarily speak so highly of my work, but it looked so good. (laughs) I was so proud of the actors Brittany (Snow) and Juliet (Donenfeld), they did a phenomenal job and really carried the film.

Asian A.V. Club: Where were you when you found out that Red, White and Blue was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film?

Emma Koh: I had just come back from Sundance at 1am and then the whole Red, White and Blue team got on Zoom and did a live nomination thing. I basically found out at five in the morning after maybe three hours of sleep.

Asian A.V. Club: That is still so cool though! I gotta ask, did you go to Sundance for a film?

Emma Koh: Actually the last time I was there was for Spa Night (2016), so when I heard there was an AAPI House hosted by Gold House and 3AD (Daniel Dae Kim’s production company), I was very excited to attend. I texted Andrew (Ahn) a picture of the building that our film screened at and I was telling him, thank you for being part of the first group and stepping-stone for all this Asian, South Asian, Asian-American content that we are seeing these days. And he responded, ‘no, WE did it together.’ It touched my heart just to hear that. It has always been my goal to be a small cog in a bigger wheel. And seeing all these things happen is really encouraging and makes me feel that all that work was for something. I’m getting a little emotional just thinking about it.  

Asian A.V. Club: Not to bring back your parents, did they finally come around to appreciating the work you’ve done? I mean, you’re part of an Oscar nominated film now!

Emma Koh: I think they still struggle a little bit. They love and support me, and they want me to succeed. But they're also kind of like, ‘man, this industry is so unstable. We just want you to be happy and protected.’ Honestly, their continued support and faith that I'll be okay is more than enough. It probably helps that I’m a part of an Oscar nominated film and I finally get their stamp of approval. But I've already been doing this for 13 plus years without their stamp of approval. (laughs)

Asian A.V. Club: I know you’re also an artist and you’ve proven to have such diverse skills, am I getting the right vibe that maybe one day you’re going to helm your own thing?   

Emma Koh: To be frank, I have stories I’d like to share as well and have been working on something of my own. I always thought that my role in life was to be of service to artist and make sure their art happens. Then it kind of dawned on me that I kind of want to make my art happen too. It’s something that I’ve been building towards. I do have interest in writing my own projects and screenplays, and maybe one day I’ll shoot it, or it’ll just collect dust in the closet. (laughs) All I know is I want to see what happens with it.

photography by Emma Koh

Asian A.V. Club: We want to see what happens next too! Thank you for this chat!

Emma Koh: Thank you.

Red, White and Blue is available to stream here.

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