An overworked office worker has the quirk of turning into a butterfly under stress. We watch him struggle to keep his insect side a secret as the pressure of his office life becomes so intense he can’t take it anymore.
Says director Amanda Mai of her award winning short film:
The premise of this film is one that I had carried with me since high school. It was an idea I was very attached to, and dreaming of it being fully realized motivated me through class periods. While the film is now heavily adapted to fit my school’s requirements, it still contains the tone, drama, and personal themes of alienation and judgement that I sought out for it to retain. While working on this project, many have come up to me and told me it has inspired them, that they understand it, and that they appreciate that it has made it this far into Ringling’s program. I hope those who can relate to it feel seen as I have along this process, and I am happy to be presenting it to you here.
Min-Jun Byun (more commonly known to his co-workers and Ringling faculty as “Michael”), is a 28 year old unfulfilled Korean-American working in accounting. He mysteriously acquired this aliment of turning into an insect around a decade ago (albeit a very pretty one), and has been struggling living with it ever since.
Michael is also a character I’ve had in the since my teenage years and was adapted for the assignment. The bug he turns into is a mix of the morpho menelaus and papilio ulysses (both very blue, shiny butterflies), while his character on the inside is inspired by several Koreans I grew up with, and of course a bit of how I react when in overwhelmingly oppressive situations.
At 00:39, you can just make out some of
the sticky notes around his mirror. At
the top left is a blurry variation of the saying, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the
world, the master calls a butterfly, but in
this case it reads closer to “What the
caterpillar calls the end of the world, the
man calls a FREAK OF NATURE”, but it
has been paraphrased, and we can’t
make out what the end of it says. At the
bottom left is something in Korean, so
we can’t translate that one. At the top
right is one that says “ You are normal.
Just be normal.” Finally, the bottom
right says “Don’t bug out”! Also noteworthy
is the little vase at the left with the sprigs
of lavender in it, something that butterflies are known to love.
The theme of Butterfly Business is a familiar one. Everyone knows somebody who has to suppress their true nature in order to fit in. Perhaps, in your case, that someone is you.
