EXHALATION Q and A sessions (Day 1 and 2)

Happy Chinese New Year, folks.

It's still 6:25pm here in Rotterdam, gonna head off for my 'reunion dinner' with a bunch of Korean folks.

Anyway, haven't been able to post anything on the blog despite a whirlwind of stuff happening.

But here you go, videos from the Q and A sessions of EXHALATION on the 29th and 30th of January. They are both pretty long videos (especially the second one, since Sherman Ong was there as well to talk about his short film).

Article of my short film EXHALATION on MSN and Yahoo Japan

Had been trying to upload the videos from my screening Q and A sessions in International Film Fest Rotterdam the past few days, but they're taking quite a while to compress.

So I'll just share an article with you about EXHALATION that was on Cinema Today yesterday (which was then syndicated on MSN and Yahoo). Click the link below!

シノラーこと篠原ともえ、女優として新境地！喪服姿で涙を流す31歳の女性の色香漂う！


Trailer


The short was also mentioned on actress Tomoe Shinohara's blog yesterday.

Discussing my short film 'EXHALATION' with Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow

Less than two days left before I head off to Rotterdam International Film Festival, so pardon the onslaught of EXHALATION stuff here.



While preparing an EXHALATION press kit for the festival last week, I enlisted the help of Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow's Marc Saint-Cyr to conduct a short interview regarding the film.

Marc Saint-Cyr had previously reviewed EXHALATION.

The short interview is here.

I'll share an exchange from the Q and A regarding why I alternated between black-and-white and colour in the film.

MSC: How did you decide which sequences in the film would be in black-and-white or color?

EY: The black-and-white, was, in fact, a last-minute decision made during post-production. I remembered reading an interview with Andrei Tarkovsky where he pointed out that a black-and-white film immediately creates the impression that your attention is concentrated on what is most important. On the screen, color imposes itself on you.

In order to underline the melancholic undertone of the film, I decided to drain most scenes of their colors. I inserted colours in certain scenes when I needed to accentuate the emotional states of the protagonists. A feeling of brief warmth, or lingering sadness, or an abrupt break from monotony. In the end it was an experiment of sorts for storytelling.

(UPDATED: The Tarkovsky interview I was referring to is here.)

5-minute previews of my short films EXHALATION and INHALATION

If you are one of the 3 people who had been following my filmmaking escapades so far, you'll know that I've made two short films, EXHALATION and INHALATION. Both are similarly titled and shared many common themes, but are ultimately two (vastly) different films.

Exhalation's World Premiere

Okay, I'm back from Dubai, but I'll still have to give a quick recap on the very first screening of EXHALATION.

So here's a quickie.

Returning to Dubai International Film Festival with my short film, EXHALATION

I'm actually leaving for Dubai tonight.

My short film EXHALATION is making its world premiere in the Muhr AsiaAfrica Shorts competition section at the Dubai International Film Festival.

40 hour editing marathon for EXHALATION

I was supposed to put together a rough cut of my latest short film EXHALATION by today.

I took almost a 2-week break from its editing to wait for Maiko the Producer to finish her Masters thesis, Torigoe the Sound Guy to the sound mixing (he had 3 productions lined up before him, EXHALATION, unfortunately, was number 3), and for Woan Foong the Composer to send me the music pieces (we last worked together in my last completed and still-unreleased short THE WHITE FLOWER). To kill time, I ended up helping to put together Kong's film, which is now called LADYBIRD'S TEARS.

But once Kong's film was out of the way, and Maiko was done with her thesis, and Woan Foong had sent me her avant-garde music pieces, things were set into motion again in order to hit today's deadline.

On the 28th, I went to Tokyo University of Arts at Yokohama to do some additional voice recording for actor Hiroyuki Takashima. It was actually my first time in Yokohama, I was surprised by the Western-styled architecture. I snapped photos like a tourist.

EXHALATION shoot day 3

Last night, I shot the remaining scenes for my new film EXHALATION.

This is lead actress Kiki Sugino in her uniform (in the film she works in a Pachinko shop).

EXHALATION shoot day 2

Early in the morning, when I returned to the location for the shoot of my new film, EXHALATION, it struck me that i was going through the last few days of 2009.

It was rather apt that, in a year which I would consider a breakthrough for my filmmaking career, I would end it while making a film.

EXHALATION shoot day 1

The 3-day shoot for my newest short film, EXHALATION, had just started. It's the biggest production I've ever taken (yes, even bigger than KINGYO).

Some photos from the film shoot today. I have only 4 hours to sleep before I get up at 5am for day two of the shoot.

The crew arrived at the location at 8:30am in the morning. Everyone started preparing.

My return to the ruins of Sun Hills Hotel and Fujino

Back in May, I explored the ruins at Sagamihara. It was an unforgettable adventure that stayed with me, so I decided to return to the ruins of Sun Hills Hotel again, for location scouting.

I don't think my handwriting is THAT ugly

Another sleepless night.

I developed an outline for my new film two nights ago.

Yesterday evening, I tried to come up with a rough film treatment. (it's typically the step before the first draft of a screenplay)

Maiko and Kong, along with An-chan, were having discussions about Kong's new short film, which was scheduled for shooting this month.

Me, knowing that it was a rare moment where I could concentrate without having any other distractions, took some papers and started scribbling some notes.

Difficult to sleep because of another new project

I've been having problems sleeping again.

The past week when my family were around, I had my most normal sleeping schedule in MONTHS. Sleeping around 1am, waking up around 8-9am, it was healthy.

After finishing my latest THE WHITE FLOWER (I now have the film in screener DVDs, but there will still be some minor tweaks here and there before it really premieres), its month-long post-production leading to some of the craziest, most irregular sleeping time for myself (I would take a brief nap from 11pm to 1-2am, wake up, orchestrate net meetings with Niklas the cinematographer and Woan Foong the composer, getting materials for them to continue the progress of the film, and then updating them by uploading some footage online for them to view etc.) I started having breakfast before I sleep at around 9-10am.


still from THE WHITE FLOWER

The best thing is that I get to skip lunch (which isn't served for free in my dorm, haha) since I often sleep through the noon and wake up around 2pm. I live like a peasant because my deluded romanticized view of struggling artists is one where everything is shoved aside for the sake of his craft or art.

So yes, after THE WHITE FLOWER was done, family came to visit, and I slept properly. They returned to Malaysia on Saturday morning.

I then started planning the storyline for my latest short film. Yes, my 7th short film of the year. A project that happened suddenly (more details in future posts, if I can remember) during a conversation in a cafe when I went to the TOKYO FILMeX end of last month.

My new film is called EXHALATION. I wrote the script back in April when I was in Malaysia just after the WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER shoot. It's an original script, and not another Yasunari Kawabata adaptation. The script was rather simple and I had planned to shoot it only in one night. Unfortunately, things didn't work out with the film's intended main actress, so I ended up making AFTERNOON RIVER instead (the first half of my upcoming short film AFTERNOON RIVER, EVENING SKY).

Since EXHALATION was written before I finished KINGYO, 3PM, AFTERNOON RIVER, EVENING SKY and THE WHITE FLOWER, I think I might have grown more as a filmmaker in the past 8 months (well, I hope so anyway), so I decided to resurrect the project but transplant the story to Japanese settings, and also to increase the scale of the film.

On Sunday, the day after my family left, I spent the entire day in my room, watching films, doing research, reading Yukio Mishima's DEATH IN MIDSUMMER anthology which I just bought two days earlier (funnily, as I try to find reviews of the book, I would end up finding a 3-year-old entry ON MY OWN BLOG written by guestblogger Justin). There was an idea of turning the story from a solo one-woman piece (initial plan was that all secondary characters were either out of focus, or off-screen, audiences can only see the main actress) to a two-hander (instead of being about one character, it's about two, Kong would point out that it's consistent with my usual theme with 'dualism')

By then, my body clock has already been disrupted. Again.

On Monday (that's yesterday), I hung out in the uni lab to do the Japanese subtitles for LOVE SUICIDES. Film will be screening in Waseda University (along with my KINGYO and FLEETING IMAGES on the 15th of December). Maiko the producer and Liu Jin (assistant producer for THE WHITE FLOWER) were there, so I had a few hours of brainstorming session with them. The film became increasingly dark, elements of child porn, child and teenage prostitution, incest etc. were discussed as possibilities for the film's plot. The film went from a nihilistic drama to a murder thriller, then to a soap opera, and then to didactic sociopolitical bore.

My head was spinning.

In the end we figured it was a bit too much, so we took a more melancholic route instead. With that, a story outline started to take its form. So excited with its materialization that I started typing it out and sent to Ming Jin. I then went home at 11:30pm and took a nap at midnight. I woke up this morning at 3am. Ming Jin said he liked the idea. I became more excited and started to think and think and think. Discussing more ideas with Woan Foong, looking at other films, reading about articles, all these to grab hold of the film's essence.

... and then, it's 10:30am.

Creativity is sleep's greatest enemy.