Video · Client project
One lift, and everyone ends up at the same expo.
One Expo, Connected (一展相连): a two-minute story film for 房东网’s autumn expo of 2026
- Kind of work
- Video
- Project
- Client project
- Scope
- Story film · Script to final cut · Event
- Year
- 2026
One Expo, Connected
A two-minute film made for 房东网 (58home.ca) and its tenth autumn expo, held at the Hilton in Markham on 13 September 2026. The expo brings together property, renovation, loans and insurance, and talks on AI. The film’s Chinese title, 一展相连, means roughly “connected by one expo”.
These trades have little to do with each other, and they had to share one short film. Our way in was a lift that keeps going up. Each time its doors open we are in a different place of work: a sales centre, a unit under renovation, a meeting about a loan. Only when the lift reaches the second floor does the viewer see where it was heading. Everyone we met on the way is at the same expo.
We made the film from the first idea to the delivered files: the story, the dialogue and the storyboard, the look of the people and the places, the shots, the edit, the sound, the titles and the credits. What we handed over was the finished film at 2.5K, subtitle files in Chinese, in English and in both, the titles and credits as separate files, and posters in two formats.
The thinking
The decisions behind it
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One lift, five worlds001
The lift does two jobs. It is the cut between scenes, and it tells the viewer how these places sit in relation to each other. We kept the expo out of sight until late in the film, so each time the doors open the story moves forward, and the last time they open is the answer.
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Continuity first, shots second002
A film falls apart when a face changes between two shots, or when the lift opens the wrong way. Before making any shot we drew up reference sheets for the people, the places and the props, and settled the light, the materials and the direction of each space. The renovation scene keeps one camera position, so the room before and the room after are plainly the same room.
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Sound before picture003
Before producing the pictures in quantity, we set the length of each part with a rough cut of the dialogue, the narration and the sound. The lift chime, the sound of each room and the music then carry the viewer from one place to the next.
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Keep what changes separate004
The Chinese and English subtitles, the titles, the event details and the credits were each made as a layer of their own. Any of them can be changed without redoing the picture.
On an ordinary day these people would never meet. One lift brings them into the same hall.
About the film: the people, the places and the voices in it were generated with AI tools. The story, the choice of shots, the edit, the grade and the titles are our own work.
