Big Brother

Those of you who pay a little more attention may have noticed that my video links seemed to have changed on the side of my blog -- they have. I've linked them to the higher-res Vimeo versions instead of the youtube versions.

You may have also noticed that my film from senior year of college is finally up in it's entirety for anyone who cares to watch. You can also view it here:

Big Brother from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

Tom Mangravite

Tom Mangravite was an accomplished cinematographer, and while his credentials were not prominently displayed at the end of many Hollywood hits, he still had a very fruitful and none the less impressive career, having shot many classic and easily recognized commercials.

While all this is a relevant part of the laundry list of accomplishments that is this man's life, what I knew him as was a challenging, thorough teacher and a supportive and kind mentor. My Junior year of college I took Cinematography 1 with him, a class where he taught us much of the theory and science behind what goes on in a camera and then drilled that knowledge into us by recreating practical situations, his often taking on the role of cinematographer and ordering us as though we were working on a real set -- it was one of the most informative and valuable experiences I had in film school.

Often times, in class, he would take on the role of a hard ass, yelling at us for goofing off and constantly challenging. However, despite this gruff facade he donned during class, it was very clear his, as he put it, bark was much worse than his bite, often taking the time to provide assistance and support for students who sought it. His knowledge and passion will be greatly missed.

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.

Fall Cleaning

It was now over a year since he had officially graduated and he decided that it was a good time to clean out his old locker before someone decided to do it for him, so the night before he picked out the biggest bag he could acceptably fit on his back and set it out for the next day.

It was an interesting process, fitting 4 years of his life at NYU in a decently sized blue bag (next to his amazon order and a recent stop to Barnes and Nobel -- leather bound copies of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe and Sherlock Holmes from Barnes and Nobel -- his Amazon order... that was a secret). At the end of it all he walked about the city with a bag on his back that made him feel like he was in middle school again, and a strange sense of disconnection -- he now officially had nothing left within that school.

He supposed for the longest of times he had been clinging to his college days. They were, after all, great times. But it was a silly idea since clinging to glory days was an action reserved for people that played on sports teams, or for that matter, attended universities that had half competent sports teams. It was past time to move on, and so this was a good start to the end of that.

Misc. Update

A movie I wish was made instead of Twilight:



Additionally, I got my diploma in the mail today... whoop-di-doo.

Lastly, I also had a Mandarin Fail of sorts today, but... more on that some other time.

Apologizing

Here's the thing about apologizing; it's either a lot worse than you imagine or a lot better, it's never quite what you expect it to be.

Of course, when you plan out everything you're going to say in a long cinematic speech like I do, you rarely if ever get the opportunity to say what you have planned out. In the rare instances when you are actually given the chance to say everything you planned to you discover life isn't a movie and the poignant message you had all laid out in your mind is reduced to fragmented sentences and a jumble of words.

This time I was fortunate, the apology to Dean Antonio and Patty Pearson went better than I imagined, although it's difficult for it to have gone worse than I imagined when I was imagining everything from heated anger and screaming that prevented a word from escaping my mouth to physically being struck (to which I had a request planned where I asked that they give me fair warning before hand so I could remove my glasses first.) Eventually often troublesome but this time rather trusty logic prevailed as my mind reminded the rest of me that they were not the kind of people to do either of the above.

So I got my chance to say my long cinematic speech of how I was sorry and didn't mean to undermine them and the program and how I was sorry that I did and ultimately sorry for betraying their trust. Despite the opportunity, I decided on the train ride over to campus that I wouldn't give a long cinematic speech and would stick with KISS (keep it simple stupid), which was the right choice because even I couldn't mess it up then.

The worst part of the entire experience was the anticipation because no matter what I told myself beforehand, which I told myself countless legitimate things, going through the day must have been at least a bit of like what death row inmates feel like on their final day and walking through the hallway of the 9th floor to Patti's office certainly made me feel like I was a "dead man walking".

However, despite all the anticipation and worry, when I reached Patti's office I was, surprisingly enough, greeted with a smile and welcomed into her office and my short and sweet apology was accepted. While everything wasn't "fine" now that I apologized, it was better, and that's how it should be.

Welcome Week

The annual arrival of NYU's "Welcome Week" and this subsequent post about it means that I have reached an entirely new level of pathetic.

Welcome Week was something that was always somewhat of a sign of hope of a promising year for me through the past four years. Despite the fact that I barely participated in any of the activities it signaled a start of a another year at an institution I was in love with, a return of friends scattered across the world I hadn't seen all summer for another year and it was a signal for my return to Manhattan, a place that spelled freedom, home and direction all at once for me.

This year was going to be different because this year Welcome Week was not being held for me, meaning no new exciting year with professors and classes at the institution I had fell in love with, no return of friends scattered across the globe and no return to Manhattan, or for that matter, New York City. The real world, no matter how much I tried, could not be held off any longer. This year, like always, the start of Welcome Week signified the start of a new year, a year in which I was jobless, cut off from friends and directionless.

I had woken up this morning at 9AM with the full intention of getting onto the train and into the city to edit my film and maybe see some faces. However, upon waking at the scheduled time I just couldn't bring myself to get out of bed and go to a place that I no longer felt I belonged so I stayed in bed. At first I put up an admirable fight, telling myself that I would get up and take a later train in but I was doing nothing but lying to myself, I didn't have the will power to bring myself to my beloved estranged university.

The past week had been miserable, I had only managed to get myself up to go to Jury Duty (which I ended up sleeping during when I wasn't called into a courtroom, and even then I came awfully close) on Tuesday and then to my internship on Thursday (where I sat around and did nothing until the end of the day when I had to go and drop a package off uptown. Despite the fact that I had kept telling myself to write I ended up waking up well past 12PM each day, actually, more accurately, past 2PM each day and spending all my time beating "Star Wars Force Unleashed" for the third time and watching "How I Met Your Mother," which I had already watched. Additionally I'm sure there were moments of near yelling at the computer monitor as Ted did yet another stupid thing related to his love life. It wasn't pretty. As I said; pathetic.

For the past 3 months there has been a huge struggle for me to do just about anything. Despite all my big talks while I was in school about how you need to discipline yourself and work on your own projects no matter what you're doing I was unable to get myself to do anything all summer. I was unable to complete something even as simple as a page a day on my screenplay despite the fact that I had so much free time, I felt like a failure.

The worst part of it all was I knew I was making all the wrong moves, choosing the bad choices and taking that step that would ultimately lead me down that slippery slope. Eventually it got so bad that I couldn't even get myself out of bed. I think that's what giving up feels like; giving up is the worst feeling in the world. It's similar to the feeling of powerlessness you feel when events spiral beyond your control only its worse because at least then you know you've done all you could possibly have done but in this case you don't have anything because there's still more you can do; you're just not doing it.

I hope that is what giving up felt like because that would mean that I hit rock bottom and that the only place to go is up. However, whether its rock bottom or not isn't significant because ultimately it's up to me to fight my way back up otherwise the only place I'm going is where I've been for the past week.

Self reinvention but really rediscovery

I just got through watching seasons one and two of The Guild, which, if you have not seen yet, you should. (Thanks Joyce for giving me a good excuse to remain unproductive for another night.) The writer for this series is Felicia Day, who also stars in the series. I learned about this web series initially after watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog but I never watched it until tonight and it's brilliant.

One thing that makes this web series so amazing is that Felicia Day actually is a gamer; she's a WoW fiend as well as a professional level violinist.

Upon discovery of these facts tonight I was reminded of something my good friend Matt Troy once told me Freshmen year: "you make what you know,". While making what you know is something that can be stretched and reconfigured into different shapes, I think about what I've been doing.

Recently I've hit a dry spell. Excuses upon excuses pile up as I sit on scripts that have yet to be completed and projects that are yet to be completely edited. I wonder frequently if I'm any good at what I spent the past four years of my life studying and I've come to the conclusion that I'm pretty talentless.

I remember a conversation with my friend Ming Hu. We were discussing people with talent vs. people that work hard and categorizing different people we know into those respective areas, a very small number (one or two) fell into both categories. Ming and I both agreed that we are both people that are the product of hard work, which is difficult to fully come to terms with because there is an acceptance that people with talent will always seem to be a step ahead of you.

However, tonight I sat and thought about people with talent verses people I perceive to have talent and I believe that I have been able to distinguish those whom really have a lot of talent verses those who just stick to what they know and make that work, using their genius in their respective areas to give them the boost they need to bridge the gap that I seem unable to cross myself.

Felicia Day has created a wonderful series starting with a premise she knows very well and making it her own. There are multiple talents mingling together there that, when combined, makes an amazing and terribly entertaining product.

I wonder what I know. After flooding myself with craft and technique for four years at NYU I still have yet to discover a distinctive style, and I honestly don't want to. (I hate specializing because I hate the idea of having to say I don't do something or being told I can't do something.) However, art mimics life, not the other way around and while I hate to put it this way, but film making, in many rights, is an art, and in order for me to fully master it I need a life for it to emulate.

This is where my self reinvention takes place. I guess self reinvention is off, it's more of a self rediscovery. The life I abandoned four years ago is something that needs to be retrieved and reintegrated. Now I just need to figure out what I like doing and go do it.

Trailer

So I finished a first cut of my narrative today, as well as a trailer.

Here's a low res of the trailer:

Big Brother Trailer 1 from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

Running

When I got to NYU freshmen year, I had managed to keep a memento of my high school career with me pretty well. Running was a passion of mine and a stress reliever, a cathartic activity. I often wrote about this act or running along the West Side Highway at 3AM in my writing classes (see writing the essay). I believe I even had a script and, sophomore year I did a sight and sound film project about it, which I lost somewhere in the steinbeck lab. It was through this activity, this stress reliever, that I developed a sort of relationship with the city. I was introduced to different places at odd hours and rewarded with a view at the empty and naked streets of Manhattan and the beauty that comes from underneath the hustle and bustle a normal day brings.

I ran quite frequently freshmen year, during all seasons; fall, winter, spring, summer. A lot of it stemmed from my desire not to sleep and the lack of alternative activities I could do. It was a wonderful thing, when I think about it.

However, sophomore year I ran less, maybe managing to get out once or twice a month. I still loved running but it wasn't something that was immediately on my mind. I was often busy with other things and it was no longer a need that I felt. Plus, my roommate was a very light sleeper, which left me sleeping a little earlier (at least occasionally).

Junior year and senior year I didn't run at all. Well, that's not entirely true. There was a brief stint of me running in the Czech Republic on my summer study abroad in Prague, which was an amazing idea and one which I am glad I did. Additionally there were times I made my way to the gym and ran on a treadmill and hated myself for it. For some reason, maybe because Junior year I was rarely in my dorm and senior year I was always busy working on other things, I never got myself to go running again. I guess I could make up a million excuses as to why in particular I couldn't go running, but the bottom line is that I was too lazy, and even though I knew I would really enjoy the experience once I started, I couldn't get myself out of my seat to go and actually get started.

This brings me to today, or rather, tonight. I had promised myself, before I got back into the NYU dorms for the Tisch Summer High School Program, that I would do my night run at least one more time before I moved back home. This run would, in a way, represent a closer for me, the end of a particular chapter of my life, my goodbye to living freely in NYC. So tonight I changed into a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt I use for running or sleeping, rubber banded my I.D. to my phone and left my doors unlocked. As I laced on my running shoes I marvled at the lightness in their weight. They felt like nothing compared to the boots I had been wearing for the past two years.

As I set out I felt myself explode. The wind raced through my hair and my feet glided over the pavement; I was off.

From this experience I realized two things:

1.) I need to remember how to pace myself better.

2.) I'm out of shape.

I guess I also realized that I should make sure I'm well hydrated, but that doesn't count because I wasn't poorly hydrated.

This run has been good for me. I have rediscovered a part of New York that was lost to me and I have once again realized that I don't want to leave it. Tonight I didn't want to come back.

I hope to do more of these runs, even if I have to do them at home on the streets of Bloomfield. There's a peacefulness in running by yourself and I'm glad I rediscovered it. I feel as though this may have been the answer to my focus issues.

Lastly, along my run I was able to visit my favorite spot in NYC: (actually, one that I discovered on my earlier runs freshmen year) South Cove. I took some shitty photos on my phone and will post them if I can figure out how to get them onto a computer. Maybe I'll go there with a real camera next time (or at least a slightly less fake one).

A return to New York and a return to the basics

Monday night I packed up my things and made the move from my home in New Jersey back to NYU to stay in Weinstein for a month while I look after high school kids, which I've done for the past 3 years.

The students arrive on Sunday, and it looks like we have some "V.I.P.'s" this year in the film program, which should make it... if nothing else, interesting. Aside from this, this past week a few interesting things occurred, although not too many.

Tuesday I was coming back from PBS and was around Washington Square South when a student I had passed by dropped her ID and kept on walking without noticing. Seeing this I went to pick it up and give it to her, so to get her attention I tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. Upon turning around, the first words out of her mouth were "Oh my God," but not in a good way. It sounded more like a homeless man just went up to her with his pants down and asked her if she wanted to join him in his box for a few minutes.

Then, of course, she processes the words that were coming out of my mouth ("You dropped this,") and says "Oh my God," but this time in a good "oh what a cute baby you have there," kind of way and says thank you and we go our separate ways. I wonder though, do I give off a creepy aura or am I extremely hard on the eyes? Because I feel like that initial "Oh my God," was quite unnecessary.


On an entirely different note, since I feel as though this blog should talk about film or creative stuff that I'm working on or helping on or what have you, as opposed to my daily random life, I feel as though I need to post something film related here, which is hard because I haven't done much film related as of late. Despite that, I started to think about some questions about stories and story structure. It seems like, and it just might be because I'm too close to the material, that whenever I look at the projects I do I feel like something is missing. I started to wonder, "What makes a good story?" Here are some of the things I've come up with:

1.) A clear protagonist.
2.) A goal the protagonist needs or wants to achieve.
3.) An obstacle preventing the protagonist from achieving their want or need.
4.) Achieving or failing to achieve their want or need.
5.) A clear world and rules of said world that our characters live in.

So basically I've listed the main points that have been drilled into me in film school and STILL I feel like the projects I've done so far are missing something (aside from my personal take on whatever, because its not that) so I think I need to take some time and figure out just what a good story is so that I can try my hand at making one. I guess I'll try to post my findings if I come across any.