San Diego Asian Film Festival

So I got my first festival rejection for 哥哥 today...

Dear Filmmaker:

On behalf of our programming staff, we thank you for your film submission. We've been overwhelmed by hundreds of entries this year, making the selection process our most competitive yet.
There are a number of factors that contribute to our decision-making process, including number the limited slots available, film length, subject matter, and whether a film will fit into a particular program. We respect and honor the work that goes into creating each entry. That is why it is with great regret that we are declining the opportunity to exhibit your film at this year's San Diego Asian Film Festival.
We hope that this does not discourage you from producing more work and that you will consider submitting to us again in the future. In fact, we have a contest going on right now called REEL IN THE VOTE – we are asking filmmakers to create a 30-second PSA by August 31st for a chance to win CASH prizes and free travel/lodging to the Festival! More info is online at www.sdaff.org.
We love film - and obviously so do you, so don’t ever stop doing what you love! We wish you the best, and hope we will have an opportunity to support your future projects.

Sincerely,
Mye Hoang, Associate Director & SDAFF Programming Staff
2010 San Diego Asian Film Festival
mye@sdaff.org

Updates -- Overworked and Tired

So its managed to happen again; I've managed to get myself booked for way to many things. Recently I've submitted my film "哥哥“ to the "San Diego Asian American Film Festival" as well as "Sundance Film Festival," so now I'm just waiting on confirmation that they've received my screeners -- which they should have since I sent them out about a week ago, but Withoutabox still tells me no (which perturbs me because San Diego's deadline was postmarked by the 11th, which was last week... and so if USPS sends me my package back instead of delivering it I'm going to have to go to the post office and raise some hell) so USPS just might be being retarded... as they often can be.

Aside from that I'm trying to find a bar for my friend Nick Feitel's film, which he hopes to shoot next week... (great Nick, just great, you ask me to find you a bar to shoot in in the middle of the World Cup... I see this going really well...) meanwhile I'm trying to get the materials I need to shoot my Interpretations Film as well as, as of last week, am now trying to make a short stop-motion spot for a coffee house called Coffee Foundry -- and yes, this is pro-bono work.

Today I woke up really early in the morning to go to the city to pick up a camera I dropped off/stashed in one of my boss's offices in PBS Friday night for a shoot up in Cooperstown New York -- which is a 4 hour drive from Manhattan. This was for a shoot for Picturing America which is that series being headed by Gail Levin -- who I've mentioned in previous posts. My plan for that was to go to sleep at 10PM and wake up at 5AM to catch a 6:17AM train into the city since I was supposed to meet up with the director of this episode at 7:45AM at 43rd between 2nd and 3rd (just a note, PBS is at 33rd between 9th and 10th) -- the go to sleep early plan was good -- in theory. I just ended waking up at 1AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to the shoot, passed out in the car for the 4 hour drive up, did the shoot, drove a good part of the way back and then got done with everything relating to that shoot at 10:30PM and then went to work until 12:30AM and then ran to catch my train home. Back home I ate a little bit and then, once my parents went to sleep, went to working on that coffee commercial -- which I'm trying to get done by the end of the week... I finished with the stadium. (I'm trying to make coffee beans play soccer... should be interesting, I'll post the final product up here) Tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to try some animation tests... something tells me I'm going to have to try to make a ghetto lens bellows system to get close enough to the coffee beans, but I guess I'll figure that out as I come to it. Right now it's 5AM and I'm tired and I need to be up at 8AM so that I can catch a 9:17 train in for another shoot (A Steve Brodner shoot for Need To Know.)

More later.

Silver Docs Pt. 3 - About Friggin' Time

So here's my rejection letter from Silver Docs -- and it's about time, considering the notify date was the 21st, but you know, I guess it's understandable. As I said before, not surprised that I didn't get in, so eh, not a big deal. Now that my final festival rejection has come in, I can now post the full film online! So, expect to see it here some time in the not too distant future.


Hi Matt,

My sincerest apologies that you did not receive a status notification from us. We sent all of our letters out on Monday, May 24. I will tell you, however, that just before sending the emails our filemaker database system crashed. We thought that it had been fully recovered, but you are not the first filmmaker to mention this to us - we have heard from a few others. For this, I apologize. I know how important it is to hear back from a festival once you have submitted work, and we take that seriously.

It is with regret that we did not select your film. We received over 2,100 films vying for 50 feature and 40 short slots. It was difficult having to turn down many wonderful projects, and I sincerely hope that you will not be discouraged.

I wish you the greatest success with 'Ham' and trust that you are well on your way to a wonderful festival journey. I am sorry that we won't have the privilege of being a part of it.

Kind regards,

Sky
--
Sky Sitney
Artistic Director
AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Festival
8633 Colesville Road
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Tel: 301.495.6731
Fax: 301.495.6798
June 21-27, 2010

Getting Old?

I found a gray hair attached to my head today. It so happens to be smack dab in the center of my head, so that's a pleasant find. I realize I'm 23 now, which means I'm old to some people, but I'm not THAT old, not old enough where gray hairs are normal, so I'll chalk it up to my schedule finally getting to me; as if the occasional break-out or 2 wasn't hint enough as it was. Typically I'm not one to worry about these things, and really, I'm not. Honestly, I never worried about my appearance much and I still don't for the reason that, well, it can't really get much worse and there's not much I can do about it anyway, so why worry? No, I bring this up because it probably means my body's trying to tell me something, which I will go ahead and promptly ignore. Yays!

In other news, I submitted my senior film 哥哥 (Big Brother) to the San Diego Asian Film Festival, so lets see if I get rejected from there or not.

Silver Docs Pt. 1

Friday was supposed to be the day by which Silver Docs was supposed to contact me and tell me that they regret to inform me, but my documentary "Ham" won't be screening at their festival; I still have yet to hear from them, in any capacity. Now, I'm not foolish enough to delude myself into thinking "oh, maybe they need extra time to consider my doc and maybe it'll get in," I know that in this industry, especially regarding matters as to whether something will be taken or not, no news is bad news.

The fact of the matter is that if the festival wanted to run the film, they would have told me earlier than their notify date. So the question is, to I just accept it as a "no" or do I call them, knowing the answer anyway, just to give them shit on mere principle?

Big Brother Film

Monday I finally finished my film 哥哥. Today/yesterday I tried, unsuccessfully I might add, to get a copy to my Cantonese teacher from last year. Will post it up here in its entirety once it's finished being rejected from festivals.

Silver Docs

So apparently I forgot about one film festival, that being Silver Docs. Deadline for submission is tomorrow so I sent out the screeners for it today (I found out that submissions were open/coming to a close yesterday,) so more info on that once they reject my film in May. Sorry, I guess you'll have to wait until then to see it posted online.

And the 3rd

March 6, 2010

Matthew Chao
Ham, directed by Matthew Chao

Dear Matthew,

Thank you for allowing us to consider your film for this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. We were grateful to receive so many outstanding shorts and features and enjoyed the chance to see your film.

We regret to inform you that we are unable to include Ham in this year’s program. We hope though that you keep us in mind for your next project.

Please continue to check our website, www.tribecafilm.com/festival/, for news about this year’s event as well as for new information relating to the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.

Again, thank you for your interest. We wish you continued success with your film and in all your future endeavors.


Best wishes,

Programming Department
Tribeca Film Festival

April 21 - May 2, 2010



So that's it for festivals for me for this project I guess. I'll be posting it online at some point in time in the near future though, so if anyone's interested in it they can see it once I put it up.

Film Festival Results Pt. 2

Hi Matthew,



Thank you for submitting HAM to the 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. We greatly appreciated the opportunity to consider your film.



We regret that we are not able to include your film at the festival this year. We received about 1200 submissions and with just over 60 spots to fill, we had to make many difficult decisions. We apologize that we cannot offer any further details on our selection committee’s decision. With such a large number of entries, we do not have the resources available to provide individual feedback.



Again, thank you for submitting to Full Frame. We look forward to hearing from you in the future, and we wish you great success with your work.



Best regards,



The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival



2 festivals down, one more to hear from.

Old, Crusty and not in a Festival

On Saturday I turned 23, a rather terrifying fact considering that I was still unemployed and rather directionless, a state I hoped to be out of two months ago. I digress, however, because I was on set all last week helping my good friend Matthew Troy finally make his senior film Frequent Flyers, which, even though was mostly exteriors in the middle of January in the cold state of Connecticut, it was a rather painless shoot and quite fun actually. (We were kept warm with an unending supply of hand warmers and a heater we affectionately called "the jet engine.") I found myself once again doing sound, which is fine, but also got to scrub in and pretend to be a doctor as an extra for a scene or two. I made sure to get pictures so I could show my mom what I would look like if I followed through on my childhood ambition to become a doctor, though I suppose being one as background in a movie will be just about as close as I'll get to actually being one, but that's ok.

On another note, I got my first festival rejection on Friday. At least I think it's a rejection, here's what it says below:


Dear filmmaker,

Thank you for submitting your film for consideration in Documentary Fortnight 2010 at The Museum of Modern Art. While we receive too many submissions to critically comment upon each directly, we can only assure you that the work has been viewed and seriously considered by the Documentary Fortnight selection committee. Please understand that there are many things we need to consider when choosing a work, such as theme, available time slots, etc, and that this does not indicate a critique of the work. Once again we would like to thank you for your submission and to wish you well with this and future projects.

We appreciate your interest and support and hope that you will continue submitting films for our consideration.

With best regards,

The Documentary Fortnight team.


It essentially says no in every way except saying "no" but it's still kinda unclear but I'm still gonna assume that that's a rejection unless I hear otherwise.

It's entertaining because when I first read it I showed it to my friend Elliot, who was the Gaffer on Frequent Flyers, and it went a little something like this:


INT. LOG HOUSE. NIGHT

Matt sits on his cot looking at his iPod, Elliot, 22, sits next to him on his cot as Kelly, 22, gets under her covers on her cot, located on the other side of Matt.

Matt
(passing his iPod to Elliot)
Does this look like a rejection to you?

Kelly
Oh god,

Elliot
(in a fake high-pitched voice)
Dear Moira...

Matt
For a festival! Not a girl, a festival!

I think that's about all for now.

Off To Festivals We Go Pt. 2

I just submitted my previously mentioned documentary HAM to another festival called Full Frame. For those of you who don't know what Full Frame is, and are too lazy to click on the conveniently placed hyperlink to find out, Full Frame is a documentary festival held every year in Durham North Carolina. This is a very prestigious and well known (amongst the docu community) film festival and I can only hope I can make it in, as, I guess, is the case with the other film festivals I submit to.

On an entirely different note, some time last week, as mentioned in this past blog post, my friends at Hayden 5 Media finished that Doritos spot and it looks pretty good. Check it out:



So go Richard Gianotti and the rest of Hayden 5 Media. Congrats!

Off To Festivals We Go

I just sent my aforementioned short documentary Ham to Tribeca via fedex. More on that later I guess. Probably more later as well as the day continues, I have my footage from the Nyle documentary with me as I sit in Tisch so maybe I can get around to looking at that soon. I'm hopeful.

In other news, Halloween was interesting (I told everyone that I was going as an unemployed college graduate, which isn't really a costume since its true, as LeeLoo from the Fifth Element pointed out after Nyle's (who was dressed as Bishop from X-Men) performance at the Bowery Poetry Club. I had planned on elaborating if people didn't find my excuse for a costume (or lack there of) scary enough, it went somewhere along the lines of "we come in hordes, like zombies, but instead of eating your brains and flesh we go for your retirement savings," I never got around to saying that line but I wish I did. Additionally, I learned that 1.) taxis are hard to get on Halloween Night and 2.) Taxis don't take people that are passed out (we walked by someone on the street and tried to help, eventually we convinced her friends/cousin to let us just call 911 and left once the cops arrived to take care of them.

Quick Update

I haven't had much opportunity to update this week so I'm going to do that quickly and write a bit about what's going on now with me.

1.) Recently I've finished my Ham Radio documentary and screened with for Sam Pollard, who I always screen for because I trust him to tell me the complete truth, most importantly what he has issues with, and I really respect and appreciate that he does that for me. He told me what he has issues with but said at this point not to worry about it. I'll reserve his critiques until later because I don't want anyone to have a bias when seeing the film. I've filled out the online application for Tribeca Film Festival and will be sending DVD screeners soon. If you haven't checked out the trailer yet, it's here, go check it out.

2.) In early to mid September, in an effort to stay active I decided to practice my doc treatment writing and wrote a treatment on a documentary on Nyle Emerson. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned him before so I'm not going to go much into detail on him here.

Anyway, I showed the proposal to Sam Pollard and he said it sounded pretty good and to go do a preliminary shoot. Of course, upon hearing that I was like "yes! it's good, let's do a prelim. shoot!... wait, crap, how do I do that?"

Long story short I figured out how to do the preliminary shoot for very little money and that's what I'm doing now until Saturday night/Sunday morning. I'll be sure to give a further update on that as it happens, maybe I'll even post a clip or two up here.