Ham Hits 1000

Not really a major thing, especially considering that 1000 views is not very much in a world where 56,000,000 is not uncommon, but at the same time, 1000 views of a video you created (and not pirated) is not an easy feat all the same and marks a noteworthy milestone.

So, with that said, my documentary Ham, which I did in college and then uploaded just over a year ago, has hit 1000 views! Thank you all for watching!



If you haven't seen it yet, you can view it here:

Ham from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

On September 11th 2001, towers one and two of Manhattan's World Trade Center came crashing down, taking communications for the city of New York with them. This is a story about what happened next.

or in the little play window on the right of this page.

Ham

The short doc I started in college and finished in Oct. 09. I finally got around to posting it online like I promised so long ago.

Ham from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

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

Silver Docs Pt. 2

A phone call and another week later, still no word regarding my submission to Silver Docs. I was told to expect notification by the end of last week and now its the end of this week and I still have yet to hear anything, which is pretty ridiculous. I sent an e-mail and will call tomorrow if I still get no word.

Yes, I realize this means I didn't get in, but all the same, this is a festival I paid good money to submit to. The least they can do is let me know if I was accepted 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?

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.

Ham Trailer!!

I finally finished my Ham Radio documentary and cut a trailer today. Here it is.

Ham Trailer from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

Personally I think it can be about 5 seconds shorter but I can't figure out where I should take stuff out.

Ramblings 2

I saw Confidence Man again, this time I actually got to see Nick's scenes, which were rather good and quite enjoyable. I want to go see it again but it might be overkill if I go again in such a short time so maybe in a week I'll try to go again and see another show.


On another note, today was Joyeux Noel's last day at PBS. She was the associate producer of Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, which will be premiering in October, so congrats to her for finally getting off the project!

This, of course, meant that I went into PBS today, a day that I usually don't go in, but it was a good decision to do so.

Part of me worries that if I continue too far along this path that I'll get stuck in documentary film making, which, although it is something I want to do, it's not what I solely want to do. However, even saying that I immediately remember something a professor of mine, Sharon Bedal (head of programming for the Tribeca Film Festival I believe) told the class and it goes somewhere the lines of this: "No one really keeps you from doing what you want to do, only you keep yourself from doing what you want to do,". So that's that and I shouldn't worry about it and just stop procrastination on developing my 150 ideas and just develop them. (Essentially I should just stop bitching and do the damn work)


Lastly, on my way home, while waiting for my train to begin boarding in Hoboken, I wandered around the train station and noticed, from across the water, the two pillars of light that stand now where the twin towers used to stand. I then came to the realization that 9/11 was 9 years ago and thought of my high school kids, who spoke about Hurricane Katrina with limited knowledge (which confused us until we realized it was 5 years ago and they were 12/13 at the time of the hurricane). I realized that these kids were 7/8 years old the day the towers fell, and that kind of scares me. 9/ll babies will be turning 9 in 6 days (happy birthday?) and 9 years after the fall of the towers, ground zero is STILL just a giant whole in the ground. Am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong with that?

Speaking of 9/11, I need to go finish titles and etc on my Doc. I guess I'll be working on that Tuesday evening.