Ruling his own world

It's 1996 and Tedman Lee is adjusting to life in America. Having just migrated to Ohio with his parents, the 10-year-old from Hong Kong speaks little English, has no friends in the US, and knows nothing except mainstream Hong Kong culture. He is lost.

But one day, the young boy turns on the radio and hears the song If I Ruled the World (Imagine That) by rappers Nas and Lauryn Hill. The beat, the flow, and the lyrics, Lee says in hindsight, "blew his mind". He knew instantly that he wanted to do something creative - as well as something different.

Fast forward to today, and random glimpses of Lee's life reveal a man "ruling the world" - or at least his own world. There's Lee performing with his electro-rock band Ni. Ne. Mo. at Clockenflap, Hong Kong's largest music festival; there's Lee DJing with his crew, the Living Discoheads, at parties such as The Do-Over; there's Lee in his office, auditioning young models for a role in an Eason Chan Yik-shun music video that Lee's company is creating.

The Eason project is the latest - and perhaps biggest - sign that Lee has "made it", that he's far away from the nine-to-five pencil-pushing life he dreaded. "Eason was looking to do something different [with his music video], and that's what we do - fun, unconventional, different," Lee says.

The "we" he's referring to is Hehehe, a company Lee co-founded with like-minded creative types Eddie Yeung and Dee Lam, that specialises in multimedia content. Hehehe isn't even a year old but they've already produced commercials for Vans, Nike, and Red Bull; music videos for Jun Kung and, of course, Chan; and album art for indie band Hardpack. The Eason video, released last month, opens with characters in eye-catching, futuristic suits set against a stark white backdrop. It then explodes, along with the song's chorus, into a mishmash of surreal imagery involving android women and a kaleidoscope of floral patterns. Chan himself doesn't show up until near the final moments of the song, appearing only in quick cuts and extreme close-ups - he's barely visible. To say the video is different from the average Canto-pop music video is an understatement.

Hehehe was responsible for every aspect of creating the video, from conceptualising to designing the outfits and backdrop to shooting the footage and post-production work. The video became a major hit.

But it wasn't always so easy for Lee. Five years ago, having just returned to Hong Kong after graduating from university, he was juggling a sales job he hated by day and hustling in the indie music scene at night. "I came back to Hong Kong with the goal of just doing something creative," Lee says. "I wasn't sure what. I just wanted to do something."