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.

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.

Death of a Legend

The world has lost another legend. Even more so than the king of pop, Walter Cronkite has defined for us Americans a large part of our culture.

I remember when I was in high school I was somewhat interested in Journalism. I'm not going to go into a long story about how Walter Cronkite was an inspiration for me and my interest in that specific area, because that would be a lie, but as I saw the article about his death, I was rather saddened by the news, yes, even more so than the death of Michael Jackson.

I remember the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year at NYU. The first summer session I was taking Sight and Sound Documentary with Barbara Malmet. This was her first teaching the class and I was working on the previously mentioned "Boheimobot" while taking this class. However, that's irrelevant. This class is significant because for my final project I decided to do a documentary on Ham Radio, a project that I still need to do titles for so I can submit to festivals.

At any rate, one interview I had was with a friend of a friend Steve Mendelson. Steve, in attition to being very articulate, is a Ham Radio entusiast, works for ABC and in his free time is the frequency coordinator for the NY Jets. I recall during my interview of him he pointed out to me many names of famous people who were also Ham Radio enthusiasts, Walter Cronkite being one of them.

I think about all this because I've come to realize that through Ham Radio I've become part of a society hidden from most of the general public's view, a society shared by Walter Cronkite himself, and I feel sad because I've never even gotten to broadcast a single sound because I don't have the equipment. I wish I had the chance to talk to him over the radio waves, but I guess I'll never be able to.

So here's to you KB2GSD, you will be missed.

Best 73's

KC2SCG out.