A Return to Shaolin

I've been watching a lot of Bruce Lee and kung fu movies lately and it's really making me want to train again. I found this clip of my Shi De Cheng, my Shifu ("master/teacher" in Cantonese) from when I used to train Shaolin Kung Fu in Dengfeng, China, doing the form Xiao Hong Quan (Little Red Fist) and thought that I'd share it for nostalgic purposes.

Below that I also have a clip of my doing the same form after 6 weeks of training under shifu Shi De Cheng.





And another of shifu Shi De Cheng just being an absolute don with the rope dart:

Videos of My Shaolin Kung Fu in China

I know it's been like two-and-a-half years now, but I finally got around to posting up some of the Shaolin kung fu forms (AKA "tao lu") on YouTube.

The following are after only 6 weeks of training, so the technique is still a bit rough.
Enjoy.

Xiao Hong Quan ("Little Red Fist")


Lian Huan Quan ("Continuous Linking Fist")


Tong Bei Quan ("Through-the-Back Fist")


Yin Shou Gun ("One-Section Staff")



My training took place at the Shi De Cheng Wushu Center of Song Shan Shaolin Kung Fu, in the city of Dengfeng, Henan province, China, under the tutelage of former Shaolin Temple monk, Shifu (master/teacher) Shi De Cheng. I trained there for a total of 6 weeks before heading back to Thailand to continue my training in Muay Thai. The city of Dengfeng itself is only hours away from the original Shaolin Temple -- Shaolin Si -- positioned at the foot of the Song mountain range ("shan" translating as "mountain" in English).

And that's my quick lesson in Shaolin history for today.
Later!

VFS Final Accept to Online Film Fest

The day has finally come! My Vancouver Film School final, a 10-minute short film entitled Prometheus, has been officially selected from more than 2000 other submissions to be a part of the Babelgum Online Film Festival, which is being hosted by none other than the influential and prolific director and filmmaker, Spike Lee!

So of course, I encourage all of you to download the Babelgum TV program here, so that you can create an account, view my short film and if it's not asking too much, vote very graciously towards the film so that I might be able to win upwards to €20,000 as well as meet Spike Lee at a gala luncheon in Cannes, France! The other bonus is that for every advertisement that accompanies my film, I get a share of the profits. So help me out and watch my film as many times as possible so I can make a dime in the process. Trust me! I promise not to forget all the people that help me work my way towards fame and fortune! (*Fingers crossed*)

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I would like to preface, however with a few thoughts and explanations about my short film. For me, this was an attempt to "break all the rules" of cinema; an attempt to get across a concept that was possibly too complex for the short film format; but most importantly, it was an experiment to see how far I could push the envelope in questioning traditional cinema conventions and to try and employ the use of special effects and compositing to explore the problem of translating internal conflict onto the screen.

In retrospect, I would probably have gained more from doing a simpler film, but I'm all about the challenge, and now that I've experimented so vastly on this project, I'm ready to focus my talents on a more story-driven and more 'conventional' approach to film.

Thank you all for your support and please find the embedded site below.

Prometheus
**I'm not sure if this is working for anyone else, but if not you can use the following links:
-Prometheus on Babelgum
-Babelgum Online Film Festival
-Download Babelgum TV

Grimaldi's Asylum

I'll keep this short.

I went to this comedy show that my roommate (Marc-Anthony Massiah) is part of this Friday. Basically, long story short, it was awesome and hilarious, and well worth the price of admission. So everybody check it out at http://grimaldisasylum.com/ and go see it, it is a treat!

Scheduled to be playing for.... well... a long time.... with new shows, sketches and material weekly.

Info from the website:

The Show will be at the Tom Lee Theatre (929 Granville St)

• February 8 to April 5, 2008
• Four shows per week
• Friday and Saturday nights
• 7:00pm - 8:00pm, 9:00pm - 10:00pm shows
• $12 a show

Each week will have individual themes and no repeat performances

PEACE!

In Antigua

Okay, well we've been here for about a week. And I've got a mixture of cool stuff and really shitty stuff to report on. I'll try and keep it brief, because I don't really feel like torturing you all right now...

Shitty thing: Our Actor/Writer decided that he wanted to pull out of the film (after his flight ticket was already paid for, I might add) after Luke basically told him that he was actually going to do his job as director, and DIRECT the movie. Daniel seemed like he was a little to into the script that we wrote for us, and not willing to trust the role of the female lead to be directed by anyone other than himself. So no negotiation, no discussion, just an agrivated email, stating his resignation as actor.

Less Shitty Thing: Daniel let us keep the script so at least we have something to work with.

Good Thing: We got a casting agent in NY -- a connection of Luke's -- and she's looking for some actors for us.

Real Shitty Thing: I had my computer formated before I came here, to get it up and running properly, but some how, all my files didn't get backed up properly at the shop, and now I find myself missing 2GB worth of photos from the 8 months I spent in Thailand! So needless to say, I'm pretty pissed about that, and really the whole thing is kind of making me feel a little sick...

Good Thing: Shab, Luke and Bert (Shab's dad) had an interview on national Antiguan TV this morning to talk about and hype the film a bit. It went good, not much else to say.

Cool Thing: We went to Shab's old primary school and talked to the grade 4-6's about what we do, pursuing there dreams and all that good stuff that role models, such as ourselves, are supposed to do! :D We had a little film related exercise for them to do, and answered some questions. At the end of it, we each spent 20 or 30 minutes signing autographs for the kids -- which was hilarious, and just plain out of control! Half the kids even made us give our emails, so I'm fearing that I'm going to get hundreds of emails tomorrow; Natalie already got on from one of the kids, asking if him and his brother could be actors in our movie!

Okay, I going though, there's still lots of things to do in the morning. I need some sleep, and I'm feeling really shitty about the Thailand photos (and who knows what else, that I haven't noticed is missing yet). So I'm going to get some sleep.

PEACE!

PS. I'll try to get picture up online here ASAP!

In Hali

I'm just in Halifax right now, staying at one of my school friends/crew member's house (which is crazy!), and we're flying out tonight to Antigua. So Luke, Natalie, and I will be flying on Luke's dad's private company jet -- yeah, I know; rediculous, right? :) -- and meeting up with Shab and his family at 8:00 at night, Antigua time.

After I had a go at writing the script we gave it to another guy who has worked with one of my instructors at VFS on his feature that he just shot. So this guy, Daniel Lione, has given us a first draft of his version of the script, which we all like quite a bit. All we need now is to have a meeting to discuss some things and make a few minor changes and to clarify a few things. Daniel is also going to be our lead actor in it, so we'll be seeing him down in Antigua.

But yeah, I guess what's going to happen is that we're going to take the first couple days down there to check out pretty much the entire island and assess our location status, and shit like that; get everything worked out for our shooting schedule; check out all the equipment that Shab has down there and get everyone familiar with how to operate/manage it and stuff.

We've split up credits for the movie now and I am a combination of Assistant Director (keep production running smoothly, on time and under budget during shooting; work with the crew and dictate setup and stuff while the Director is working with the actors, or doing whatever), Unit Production Manager (line up all the stuff that the AD needs to know when production starts; arrange locations, actors, crew, schedule, budget, etc. in pre-production), Gaffer (in charge of setting up the lights, and telling other crew what to do with the lights to meet the requests of the Director and the Cinematographer) and Script Superviser (make sure that everyon scene has been shot as scheduled, keep people on time, log timecode and tape/reel numbers of shots for easy access in post-production/editing).

So needless to say, I've got a lot on my plate with movie, and a lot of stuff to do. so it's going to be pretty damn busy, but I'm still looking forward to the rush. :D

Oh yeah, and I'm officially a Director of a company!
We got some legal work worked out so that the company owns the movie and we all own equal shares in the company, so that we're protected against liability and other stuff, and so that one of us can't just turn into a major dong and try to get more reparation for the movie than the others. The company name right now is 3222324 Nova Scotia Ltd... We didn't have a name at the time of registration, so we just took the default company name. We're going to be renaming it Halivantigua Ltd. because the other name.... kinda blows! haha.

That all I have to talk about so far. I'll keep the blog updated while I'm in Antigua... Hopefully...
I'm out. Peace!
Mathew Joki Esq.

FINALLY!

FINALLY! Finished! Don't have to deal with VFS any more!

Now it's time for all the nitty gritty preproduction work on out Antigua movie. I'm in the process now of typing up a second draft of the script, based on the suggestions and comments of one of our instructors (Bruce Spangler - Our Film Mentor) and the other members of our group -- which I'm dissapointed to say, are still pending! >:(

I still have to get around to getting my final project into a viewable form on the internet though, so unfortunately, I dont' have that to show you guys just yet.

Oh and something else that's pretty damn interesting, and that I'm rather psyched about: I'm going to be attending this 2-Day Film School thing next weekend that seems pretty cool. It's got an impressive list of directors and other movie pros that have attended it in the past, so I made a point of getting in on the action.

Right now I'm just trying to cram as much knowledge and advise regarding movie making, storytelling, script writing, film history, camera work, special effects/After Effects and so on, before we head down to Antigua so that I can help make this that best film that I can be.

...and thus, catapult me into a level of stardom that Speilberg can only dream of! :P (LOL! as if...)

That's my rap for today though, I'll keep you informed and up to date from here on in (hopefully) and try to get some stuff together to show y'all so you don't just have to read this boring dribble.

Peace!
Mathew Joki Esq.

Holiday Recap

Now I understand that this post has been a long time coming, but I have an entirely legitimate reason for that:

I just moved into a new place with a few guys from VFS, right before we all left home for the school break. When we came back from break we realized that we didn’t have internet like they said we would, so we had to wait until a guy from Shaw could come in and set up the internet for us (today).

Please trust me though that I did mean to update this a good week ago, but was unable to due to said conflict.


That aside, I’d like to make a quick mention of the party I held for New Years. A friend of mine owns a DJ company, and my parents have a rather spacious basement, so I applied the negotiation skills I learned from the gracious Miss Clark at VFS. The result: a Hawaiian-theme New Years party with over $30K worth of sound and lighting equipment set up in my basement, with the only cost to myself being a few hours of cleanup in the morning. This was a practice run though. I hope to do it again next year, only this time charge $2-3 cover and use that money to hire a maid to clean up on the 2nd or 3rd, instead of doing it myself.

Here is a recap of the night done by Kyle Davenport in a special YouTube debut of “The Davenport Report,” enjoy:






Photos:





See you there next year! ;)

Just Not Good Enough

Well today they announced the winners for that Mobile Jamfest Film Festival and personally, I think it's a load of "hoo'ee" but I lost out on my finalist entry (Red Army) to some other entry. :(

Oh well, the world keeps spinning... even if i don't have an Xbox 360. :(

Aside from that, I've been back home (Loydminster AB) for the past little while and it's been a gong-show--whatever that means! ha--catching up with old friends that I haven't seen in a while. Fun Fun, but I'm out for now so,

Religiously Unspecific Holiday Greetings,
Mathew Joki ESQ.

Tainted

I went and saw Casino Royale the other day; probably one of my favorite Bond films to date! Daniel Craig does a bang-up job as the new JB. There’s a really sweet Parkour-style chase scene at the beginning (with none-other than Parkour co-founder Sebastien Foucan!) that got me pretty psyched for the rest of the film. As always, Bond is suave as a mother*%$#@& and just fun to watch.

I’m starting to suffer from the curse of knowledge though. I realized this more while I was watching the movie. Here I am, watching this crazy action film and I’m critiquing the technical aspects of the film! I’m looking at the composition of the frame, the use of contrast, silhouette, the cropping and carre, principle of thirds, use of perspective, et cetera, et cetera, and how it adds to the scene visually. Now instead of enjoying a movie what it is, I’m starting to enjoy it for what it’s composed of. I’m not quite sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing yet, only time will tell I guess.

I’ve also found myself complaining about the choice of font (Papyrus in particular) on advertisements and commercial buildings. The worst part about that being that I’m actually not all that fond of typography to say the least! :D

Networking Party

Yes, I realize that I'm busting these off rather rapid fire... but I just like to talk a lot! ;D On with it now:...

In term one of Foundation we have a class called Project Development & Presentation Design (http://www.vfs.com/faculty.php?id=1&staff_id=481). This class basically teaches you how to meet (“network” with) “people who are in a position to help you”, to sell (“pitch”) your ideas to people (the ‘higher-ups’) and to convince people to do what you want them to do – for as free as possible!

On our last class we had a mock-cocktail party/networking exercise where we all got together, dressed up for an early Halloween theme with snacks and beverages. The objective of the class was to practice our networking skills; to talk with as many people as we could, get to know something about them, exchange some contact info if we didn’t already have it, and most importantly, leave a lasting impression so that they remember you – in a positive way. A prize was provided by our instructor (the beautiful and talented Jessica Clark ;-) ), for the person who people remembered the most by the end of the party. Well, needless to say, I won by unanimous decision! (HUURRAAAYYYY! :D) The Prize? Something that no one should ever be by without… PENS! Mini-pens that you can easily hold in your pocket!

The networking party was so successful that I managed to get Jessica’s contact information, and some really good information and tips on a documentary project that I’ve got in mind (a blog entry for another day).

Here are a few pics that I just got from a fellow student:

Alijan, Marie (AKA: Glen), Chris K., Jaclyn, Jessica, Nathalie

Brett, Jaclyn, David, Daphne, Johnny, Alijan, Jae-Woo

David, Me, (Nathalie), Alex

Jaclyn, Brett, Me, (Daphne), Shab