Production stills from my Japanese film, KINGYO

I've spent the last two days editing my Japanese film, Kingyo, which I finished shooting end of January a day before flying back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year, I have posted some stills from the dailies few weeks ago ('dailies' is the term used to describe raw, unedited film footage, it's known as 'rushes' in UK and Aus, I normally call it 'rushes' too). I only have two more nights left in Tokyo, so am trying to do as much as possible. It took me a while to familiarize myself with Final Cut Pro, and also the Mac, since all these while, everything I've done have been edited on Adobe Premiere Pro. Thankfully, it didn't really take that long for me to get used to things.

Progress is smooth, although I'm unlikely to finish anything until I return to Tokyo again in April. For the time being, I'll just share some production stills taken by Chou-san (he's from China, the surname 张 'Zhang' is read as Chou in Japan, which is what everyone calls him). My last post only had a single picture of my lead actress, Rukino Fukisaki ("Hellevator: Bottled Fools"), so I'll put some here.

An odd, unexpected dream

On the first night I returned to Tokyo, I dreamed of someone I never thought I would dream of again. The last time I dreamed of her was two years ago, which I had chronicled in painstaking detail to my friend Sebastian during a melancholic rant in Valentine's Day 2008.

In my dream, she and I were both in some sort of a bare living room adorned with illogically minimalistic decoration and furnitures, bathed in ethereal white glow. Even though it had been nearly three years since I've last seen her, when she had seemingly vanished from my life with inevitable finality, and I myself never making any effort to find out where she was, meeting the dream-her again made me joyous, a joy mirrored by the smile on her face that I have seldom seen on the face of her real-life counterpart.

Together we spoke, about many things, all kinds of things, but none of them I can really remember. Perhaps we spoke about nothing, yet because we were merely speaking, nothing felt like many things, or everything, or anything. Her voice from my memories used to sound like a lilting whisper, yet the voice of the dream-her was boisterous and snappy.

Flight Fright

I'm in Tokyo again, but only for a week. Had to settle some things before flying back to Malaysia next Tuesday to continue preparations for Ming Jin's new film, WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER (I'm producing and editing).

Running into Hong Kong actor Nick Cheung and director Dante Lam

This happened on the 9th of February, the day before I saw snow for the very first time in Berlin. I was hanging out with the Singaporean filmmaker Michael Kam.



We were walking around at the main area of the Berlin Film Fest, Michael wanted to buy some souvenirs. But as we walked towards the Berlin Palast, I noticed a very familiar face.

My short film FLEETING IMAGES showing at HELP University tomorrow night

My short film FLEETING IMAGES will be making a premiere of sorts at HELP UNIVERSITY's Theaterette tomorrow (that's Thursday, 19th of February). It's one of the ten shorts at the Asiapromote Power and Grace Competition Screenings. The screening begins at 8pm.

Footsteps in the Snow

Returned to Malaysia just a few hours ago.

The past few days had been great. It's unfortunate that I didn't take a single photo during my brief trip in London. Three nights were too short for me, especially when I had such a hectic schedule. I saw a play starring Richard Dreyfuss called Complicity at the Old Vic, then I met up with a number of old friends from secondary school whom I've never seen since... secondary school, and after that, I went to do some hardcore book-hunting at the numerous antique bookshops in Charing Cross Road. So no, definitely not that much time to take photos.

But I'll rewind a little to the morning of 10th of February.

A Conversation With Quentin S. Crisp

Justin Isis has interviewed Quentin S. Crisp before, and that interview is probably the best place to start for general information on Crisp's writing and clothing style. The purpose of the following interview is to whore out Shrike, Crisp's soon to be released novella from PS Publishing. Before reading this you should order Shrike, especially the jacketed hardcover version. Shrike is one of Quentin S. Crisp's most exciting works to date, and by 'exciting' I mean 'tenser than injecting Red Bull directly into your blood stream'. Brief responses to Crisp's statements are given in [ ] brackets.

Arriving at the Berlin Film Festival

The flight to Berlin was a long one, but I needed to transit in Amsterdam first for 3 hours. I slept through most of the flight, so I was fine.

This is Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. I arrived at 5am in the morning.

NTV7's The Breakfast Show thought I was a headcrab zombie

As I waited to enter the studio to talk about videoblogging on NTV's The Breakfast Show in Monday morning, three thoughts were in my mind:

I'll be on tomorrow morning's NTV7 The Breakfast Show

It happened on Friday morning.

I woke up and saw a Facebook message and an email waiting for me, inviting me to appear on the 2nd of February's (that's tomorrow morning) edition of NTV7's The Breakfast Show. I'm supposed to talk mostly about videoblogging (that's why I posted this tweet on Friday, and got some interesting links in return), and also (hopefully) some stuff about my filmmaking.

I'll be arriving at the studio around 7:30am tomorrow morning, so I think I might appear around 8 to 9am? Quite early, I hope I won't be yawning repeatedly (or worse, dozing off) during the show! The chances of me embarrassing myself will be quite high, due to my personal discomfort with the camera (despite my acting aspirations!) I think it also had to do with... self-consciousness and vanity, I always worry that I don't look pretty enough, and the fact that I'm going to be on national TV will make things more complicated!

Snapshots of Chinese New Year 2009

When it comes to taking photos, I like taking the candid moments, when people are just talking, eating, doing things normally, everything without having to pose for the camera. Posing is fine, but I often ask people NOT to look at the camera when I'm snapping photos. I want... REALISM.

I didn't have my camera with me, I think I left it in Tokyo. So I used my sister's Nokia N78 instead.

The first day of Chinese New Year, as usual, was a visit to my uncle (dad's elder brother's) house. He and his family used to live in Malacca before moving over to Shah Alam 2 years ago, which is great, because going to his place takes only around half an hour as compared to nearly 2 hours in the past.

The entire family from my father's side were gathered, on that day, at my uncle's place. My dad's elder brother and his wife, my dad's eldest sister and her husband, my dad's youngest brother, my cousins, my cousin-in-laws, and the like. Seeing that one of my cousins is pregnant, I know that there will be more people at the family gathering next year.

Just some snapshots from my uncle's house.