Noodles Goes Viral: Art Must Stand the Test of Time

For its time (2016), this was an ambitiously novel project for both visionary director Greg Rom of Gentleman Films, and Chocolate Tribe the VFX studio. Not only because it was the first time both parties worked with each other, but the brief was weirdly fascinating. Make a woman cry, noodles! Epic, crazy, disgusting, jarring …. but certainly captivating! 

You can’t stop watching the worm-like tassels of noodles filling the silver bowl as she is breaking down into a hysterical cry. You are weirded out but can’t stop watching. Why is she crying noodles?

Noodles is a story about a woman who has fallen on hard times and needs a quick way of making money. One day in a state of despair, she discovers she has a 'talent' for crying noodles. Light bulb and dollar signs beam brightly in her cerebral cortex! Of course, she doesn’t waste time to use her talent to solve her financial woes.  

Soon enough, she also discovers that the things that used to make her spontaneously cry, no longer have the same effect. Not even injuring herself makes her cry. She now has to dig deep to conjure the money-making noodles from her tear ducts. 

From a creatively technical stance, this was an interesting project as Chocolate Tribe’s VFX supervisor, Rob van den Bragt had to figure out a seamless way to match the facial movements of the actress and the falling noodles. What was also critical was that the visuals of the noodles dropping or cascading down the woman’s cheeks do not overwhelm the audience with the strangeness of the  spectacle. But instead, draw the audience closer to the heart of the story.  

Six years on, the phenomenon of the woman crying noodles has gone viral and feeds to our social media cravings of the weird and wonderful. This short film, in its gravitas, won a number of international awards and speaks to the idea of artists always needing to create work that defies metaphoric gravity and time.