Shooting the rest of my short 'LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER'

So, in the 11 days since I last updated the blog, I've gone through the grueling shoot for the rest of my short film LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER (March 15-18), and then rushed off to the Hong Kong International Film Festival on March 20 for the HAF (HK - Asia Film Financing Forum), and came back last night (March 24).

This blog post is about the grueling shoot.

Thoughts on the Sendai earthquake and tsunami in Japan

Since the devastating Sendai earthquake and tsunami in Japan last Friday, I've been receiving numerous text messages, emails, phone calls, Facebook posts etc. from friends, family, online acquaintances worried about my well-being. (most people didn't know that I returned to Malaysia a few days earlier)

I'm very grateful for their concern, and I thank them from my heart.

However, my being safe in Malaysia should not diminish the fact that a great tragedy has occurred in Japan, which had more or less became another home of mine in the past three years. I don't feel relieved, nor lucky, that I'm not in Japan when it all happened, since many of my friends and loved ones are still there. I also can't explain why a part of me felt a little uncomfortable, guilty even, that I'm here.

I'm returning to Tokyo in ten days. The Malaysian part of the shoot for my new short, LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER will begin tomorrow. Perhaps the most I can do now is just concentrate and finish what I started in Japan.

6th of March 2011. An uneventful birthday suddenly turned suspenseful.

I'm back in Malaysia since yesterday morning.

Had a nice belated birthday celebration dinner with parents + sister + 'Ah Gou' (aunt in Teochew, dad's elder sister) and Kai Fai and cute fat Wai Kong (unofficially my mom's two godsons).

My film shoot at Shirakawa-go

Yes, I've been busy the past few days shooting my new short film LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me tweeting some production stills.

It's now my birthday, and I find it rather fitting that I'm spending it in my editing room.

Preparing my new short film 'Last Fragments of Winter'

In my previous epic post, which I spoke about the eating problems and depression I sunk into, I also made a casual mention of a new short film I'm preparing, and also a junk camera I bought as a key prop for the film.

The short film is called LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER, and I've started pre-production even though I was half-dead during the days I just came back from Europe. The film will be shot in both Japan and Malaysia, with me shooting the Japanese segment first before flying back to Malaysia on the night of my birthday to continue.

Junk cameras, eating problems etc.

It all started when I arrived at Tokyo after my somewhat lengthy Eurotrip.

I was in a bus from the airport to Shinjuku. As I was arriving, I saw through the window, a young girl carrying a kickass looking camera and taking photos at the streets. The bus stopped, I got out, dragged my luggage with me and tried looking for the girl. She was still there, I started asking about the camera.

She spoke fluent English and told me she was using a Mamiya RZ67.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.

Discussing INHALATION at the Clermont-Ferrand Intl Short Film Festival

Ernest Chong Shun Yuan and Susan Lee Fong Zhi in INHALATION


It's been nearly 3 nights since I got back from Europe, yet I still feel a little jetlaggy, a little worse for wear. Despite recovering from a bad cold while I was in Clermont-Ferrand, I ended up with another bad case of diarrhea (happens every time I go to France, really, 3 times in the last year. Maybe me and French food just don't mix, maybe I had too much French fries, maybe I shouldn't eat train food, maybe I shouldn't have airport food etc.)