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Friday, November 20, 2009

Wrapping up my Pusan Film Festival 2009 experience (part 1)

The post-production of THE WHITE FLOWER had seriously made me insomniac (or gave me messed up sleep patterns), so aside from being able to catch a nap from 1 to 3am, I've been widely awake since then.

So I decided to try to unload the remainder of photos from last month's trip at the Pusan Film Festival. I think I'll finish everything in two posts.

PIFF Center during evening

Outside the PIFF Center


After the screening of WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER, the rest of my days in Pusan were spent on attending functions, parties, meeting people, looking around the Asian Film Market, trying to see a film but missing it in the end (I ended up only seeing MUNDANE HISTORY at the festival, just one film in a festival! A personal low).

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

17th of November. Mom's Birthday.

It's 5am now. I'm supposed to wake up in 2 hours to go for an early (press?) screening of ZERO FOCUS at Shinjuku Wald 9.

But then, it's my mom's birthday, and for two consecutive years, I've always made an issue out of it on this blog (read my 2007 and 2008 blog post). This year will not be an exception, since I won't be able to dig out some lost videos of my mom floating around on the Internet like I did last year, I'll share some anecdotes with you all.

Deciding upon the music for THE WHITE FLOWER

Today's my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, mom. But I'll get to that later.

I am still knee deep in the post-production of my new film THE WHITE FLOWER, which I'm trying to complete by end of this month.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

KINGYO receives two awards at Eibunren Awards

[kingyo] A nocturnal conversation at the carpark


I actually knew about this back in September, when I was in Singapore for the Singapore Short Film Festival. Maiko the Producer called me then to tell about the good news, but since the awards ceremony is in December, I didn't think there was any need to announce this earlier.

But since I've already announced about FLEETING IMAGES winning the Grand Prix at the CON-CAN Movie Festival, I'll make a mention of this as well.

So yes, my Japanese short film KINGYO had picked up two awards from Japan's Eibunren Awards: The Semi-Grand Prix (or Silver Grand Prix) and Best New Creator (also occasionally referred to as the Best New Director award) awards.

Organized by the Japanese Ministry of Culture and the Japanese Association of Audiovisual Producers, I was told that this is the first time an independent narrative short film had ever received a major award from the association. And in order to commemorate this, I became their first ever recipient of the Best New Creator award.

Definitely very honoured by this.

The awards ceremony will be on the 2nd of December. Parents and sister are attending.



Trailer of KINGYO (click here if you cannot see embedded video)

Wayne Wang's film adaptation of Yiyun Li's A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS

A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers


Caught a free screening of A THOUSAND YEAR OF GOOD PRAYERS in uni yesterday evening (a day before it opens in Japanese theaters, check out Kaori Shoji's review on Japan Times). Went because I read Yiyun Li's anthology of short stories of the same name just a couple of weeks earlier (which I really enjoyed).

Friday, November 13, 2009

Waseda Weekly Magazine (12th of November, 2009)

There's a profile of Maiko the Producer and I on Waseda Weekly magazine that came out today (actually, yesterday, since it's 2am now).

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

My short film FLEETING IMAGES wins Grand Prix at Japan's CON-CAN Movie Festival

I received a phone call yesterday morning from the CON-CAN Movie Festival. They told me that my experimental short, FLEETING IMAGES, had won the Grand Prix.

Waseda Festival 2009

I realized that last year, around this time, I was in Malaysia (for a brief trip to Rome and the Rome Film Festival), so I missed out the Waseda Festival.

I didn't even know about the Waseda Festival, which was held last weekend until I saw people setting up on Friday (as I was on my way to my lab to record Zhu Dan's guzheng performance).

Monday, November 09, 2009

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Zhu Dan touches her... Guzheng

It's strange how quickly a week had just flown by like that. It happens all the time when I'm in post-production for a film. Each day just goes by in a blur, and I myself lose the concept of day and night, for the past few nights I had spent sleepless nights in the editing lab for my new short film THE WHITE FLOWER. I usually go home around 6am, sometimes I get to eat breakfast, and then sleep at around 8am, then waking up at 12pm, and then going back to work again.

THE WHITE FLOWER is a challenging film because, aside from it being constructed almost entirely with still photos (which is a nightmare to edit by itself), I myself still have to various sound jobs. Recording voiceover narrations from the three main characters, recording sound effects, downloading sound effects, discussing with my two primary collaborators, Niklas (the cinematographer) and Woan Foong (the composer) about what I need for the film through the net (Niklas is in Finland, Woan Foong is in US), because I'm a crazy nocturnal, the time difference doesn't affect me much.

I always believe that you learning something new whenever you make a film, and for me, making short films is a constant learning experience for filmmaking, that's why I've been so prolific this year (shot 6 short films this year, though only four will be in my official record this year, since I've merged two into one, and another was just a practice for a cinematographer course I took) For THE WHITE FLOWER, I can say that I learn the most when it came to sound, having to teach myself how to do sound mixing and all after recording.

Two days ago I had to record some guzheng music for the film. So I enlisted the only guzheng player I know in Japan, my good friend Zhu Dan, who is also the unfortunate main actress of THE WHITE FLOWER.

This is me carrying her guzheng into my lab.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Zhu Dan touches herself... er, wait....

Zhu Dan touches herself (but ends up touching some guy's butt)


Sorry, I just couldn't resist the blog post title.

Last night was Halloween. I remained rooted in the editing lab, editing my new film THE WHITE FLOWER. Which, in case you don't know, starred my friends Zhu Dan and Kong.