JJ Fong – From TV to the laptop

 With Go Girls season five wrapped up and season six off the cards, actress JJ Fong is focusing on Flat3, a series about three Asian girls flatting produced for online release only.

The 27-year-old Kiwi born Chinese actress came up with the idea for Flat3 to partly fill the lack of good roles available for Asian girls.

Now Go Girls, a New Zealand comedy/drama TV series, will not be returning to the small screen, Fong is on the lookout for her next break and focusing on Flat3.

Fong, New Zealand director and writer Roseanne Liang, and Kerry Warkia, who works alongside Liang, sat down during SPARK, an international festival of media, arts and design, to talk about their work on Flat3 and some of their own experiences.

“We just wanted to do something empowering,” Fong said.

With a role that has gained her many fans, Fong said working on Go Girls was a huge opportunity and she is grateful to have been given it.

“That’s just the way it rolls, that was my first break and I was grateful.

“I can put that on my CV at the end of the day it’s a job, if you get a big head or an ego it doesn’t help you,” Fong said.

 With the help of Liang, actor Ally Xue who plays Lee, and Perlina Lau who plays Perlina, season one of Flat3, the series is a funny upbeat drama, helping to merge roles for Asian New Zealanders.

Flat3, described as a funny upbeat drama, started out with a budget of $1000,  but another $3000 was spent on soundmix and grading – something Liang thinks is important at any level.

Low budget production means multitasking. “In between takes I’ll make some cookies!” Warkia said. She recalled having had to yell out to Fong to stop cooking and “do the scene”.

But low budget can actually be fun, Liang said as, with fewer people to answer to, they can take advantage of getting away with a few things.

“We were shooting by the waterfront and this woman came up and asked what it was for and we said we were students. 

“There’s a real joy to breaking the law to achieve goals,” Liang joked.

Fong said many of the ideas for Flat3 episodes are personal experiences.

In one scene Fong’s character Jess is approached two guys in a car who mistake her character for a  prostitute, not far from an encounter Liang had herself.

“I was standing outside in a short skirt waiting for my boyfriend and this car of guys pulled up and they looked at me and I looked at them.”

The web series has had 45,000 views since February 2013, with a slightly higher percentage of male subscribers.

Warkia said they did not set out with a target audience in mind. “We don’t presume to know who will become our audience, at the beginning we are our audience.”

Season two is well underway and Liang said it will be bigger and better than the first season, merging drama and comedy.