Step into the high octane, mile-a-minute universe of this pseudo-Socratic neo-Samuria, on a quest for unquestioned perfection in the world of filmmaking!
It's been a REAAAAAAALLY long time since I graduated from the Foundation program and VFS, and I just FINALLY got my final project on to YouTube! No, I don't really have any excuses for why it took so long, but it has now been tweaked a little bit to make it look a little bit more crisp and it's officially on there!
So check it out, if you were unable to watch it on the Babelgum site that I know so many people had troubles viewing it on in the past.
Hope you enjoy it. (And even if you don't, I hope you rate it 5 stars just because! ;) )
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*)
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.
Boy, oh boy! Do I have some sort of treat for you guys!!!
Chad Costen, one of my instructors from VFS has just finished shooting his first feature film! Something that he's been working on for the last 3 or so years now.
The Coming is an epic science fiction film "about man's fear of himself." I was lucky enough to read the script when it was still in the preproduction stages of development, and I can tell you first hand that if the written word and the recently released trailer are any indication, this is going to be a solid film, through and through! independent
So without further a due, please enjoy the trailer for Chad Costen's The Coming!
LIFE: Well, I'm fully moved in with Mr. Marky-Marc, got my room all decked you with some super cool IKEA furniture, etc. I'm most likely getting a job doing some weekend valet work with Marc, so that's cool. Still waiting on people to get back to me and let me know what's what, still looking into schools.... I don't know, it's a bit shady at the moment. But livin' with Marc is cool though! *thumbs up!*
POST-PRODUCTION: As for post-production of Memoirs of the Blue... basically nothing's happening... Sorry if I disappointed you, but we still don't have the footage captured, communication and collaboration within the group is not really happening (for reasons that I won't discuss), we're having some issues with the budget, and we're still in legal limbo with an airline company which is a deciding factor as to whether or not we're going to be able to use a scene in the movie...
Yeah... it's kinda scary, you're right! How does somebody deal with the looming cloud of misfortune over head? Well I'm sure you've all heard of that saying, "Ignorance is bliss..."
FESTIVALS: I submitted my VFS Foundation final project to the Babelgum Online Film Festival yesterday. Submissions close February 15, and after that they should be viewable to the public. I'll keep everyone updated as per the developments in that field.
LINKS: There's a couple links that I should have added to my site a LONG time ago.
Zeros2Heroes The first is a Vancouver based online comic book networking group that allows aspiring comic writers to pitch, polish and perfect their abilities with the help of online opinions and comments. One of the people spear-heading this project, Jessica Clark, is a former instructor of mine and a veteran voice on the comment boards of this blog.
Video Copilot The second has been an absolutely indispensable source for tutorials and reference when it comes to working with Adobe After Effects. With After Effects, I can say that I taught myself how to walk, but this site is really responsible for teaching me how to run.
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The above mentioned links will herein be located in the side-panel "Links" section for all of your enjoyment and easy access.
As the title of this post may imply, I'm all finished shooting for my final project, Prometheus. Everything went swimmingly, my actors were amazing, and the footage looks pretty decent, thanks to Luke H-MacD for DPing and Shabier K. for the awesome camera to use. So now begins the long, hard road of post-production; editing, special FX/compositing, sound design, and all that other jazz that goes along with it.
This is basically taking up WAY too much of my time right now since I've got a shit-ton of work I need to get done, not to mention that I'm going to be working on my classmates' final projects over the next week as well.....
Last Sunday I went to see the promo screening of Chemical Evil (Directed by Lauro Chartrand), a movie pilot/trailer that I worked on a few months ago doing stunt and screen work for. I brought a good number of friends to see it and it was pretty awesome! I ended up getting more screen time than I thought I would. I had an awesome, slow-motion, flying knee (real Ong Bak/Tony Jaa style) that looked friggin' wicked, but they decided to cut following short fight sequence in which I brought this 220-lb, 6-foot-4 militant guard to his feet, fed him a knee to the ribs, then had him pick me up by the "throat," break my neck, and toss me into the water.
...probably better that I went out and a completely badassed note though! HAHA.
I got a copy on DVD, but I'm going to try and get permission to post it up on the web first.
Here's the Teaser Trailer for it though, just to give you a taste. (Remember, i'm the guy tossing the huge knee to the dude in the fountain! :D)
There's a new Mathew Joki Production up on YouTube, for your viewing enjoyment!
It's a 4-and-some minute piece, satirizing the fitness industry and the rediculous things they try to trick you into (based off of my own experiences).
I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing/makeing it:
Feature of Awesomeness the Third:
Turn 6 is just around the corner and the pre-production for my final (a 10-minute short film) is just about complete. At present I have 20 or so actors lined up for auditions and the only real obstacle that I have to overcome now is finding locations (I need a corporate-looking office and a psychologist's/therapist's office).
The title of my project is Prometheus, and the Synopsis is as follows:
All her life, Lena has been haunted by the ability to peer into the thoughts and memories of others. These memories drive her to the point of paranoia, where she becomes suspicious that her boyfriend is sleeping with one of her co-workers, MARCY. In an attempt to reveal the truth and avoid spoiling the relationship needlessly, she begins to dig deep into her subconscious, in order to harness the power that she possesses. In doing so, she instead becomes overwhelmed by what she finds, and with the help of her PSYCHOLOGIST, is forced to relinquish absolute knowledge in order to obtain blissful ignorance, instead.
I put a casting call up on craigslist, and got a pretty damn impressive response! I got 19 actors scheduled for auditions and several more pending, so I'm pretty damn psyched for that!
I can't wait to start production on it now. That's it for today though, keep it real!
Today we pitched our concepts for our final projects.
The logline for mine: "Discovering she has the ability to tap into the universal knowledge that is stored in her subconscious, a suspicious secretary becomes overwhelmed by the Pandora’s Box she opens up as a result of trying to harness her power, in order to uncover a scandalous secret."
This is going to be a short, 10-minute film, with a heavy element of overlayed graphical design somewhat similar to that in the movie Stranger Than Fiction.
An example:
Once I finish more of the rough designs in After Effects I'll post them up so you can see for youreselves what I have in mind.
The pitch went rather well, I thought. I'm really excited to get to the production stage with this project; it has a lot of what I ultimately wish to be encorparating into film in it, so I'm happy.
One point of great dissappointment with the pitch was that their where only 2 instructors critiquing on the concepts once it came time for the students who are streaming into Film to present their concepts (myself being one of them). But the part that is a real kick in the head is that throughout the entire day of presentations, there was not a SINGLE instructor doing a critique who was from a film background!
Imagine that! A "film school" and we don't even have a point of view from someone with film experience to give advise on the projects relating to film! I'm all but a little upset about that. Basically, as things stand with this school now, I definitely wouldn't recomend VFS to anyone. It seems to me that this place is concerned with profits first, image second, and the students third.
Bad news first: My computer decided to shit the bed, so I'm being forced to buy a new one (BOOOO-ERNS!).
But the silver lining woudl be that I get to upgrade from what I had, for less than what I paid for my previous laptop. It's been a week now of only being to get on a computer when one of my housemates vacates for a while and it's driving me nuts, I don't have jackshit to do with my days! :(
Good news: I'm fresh into my stream in the VFS Foundation Program, and I'm finally able to focus my studies on Film!! Hurray! Directing, Story Developement, and Cine & Location Sound seem to me like they're going to be my favorite classes this term. Sound Design would probably be interesting, but the instructor is far too tangential and I don't actually remeber learning anything from the first class we had with him... although I can tell you his life story and the history of Xerox, Apple Computers, Adobe, and the conspiracy of why the price of gass is so high... Pre-Production and Art Direction just sort of seem like they're going to be a bit of a bore -- Art Direction moreso as it seems to be a needless reitteration of a few previous classes from terms 1 and 2.
This term I'm going be preparing my final project for term 6, something I still have a lot of thought to put into...
Another developement is that I may have the opportunity with a few other classmates to shoot a short film down in the Carribean (Antigua) after schools done, with a bit of a budget aswell. But as far as I'm concerned, that's mostly still up in the air so i'm not investing too much of my expectation into it right now. I'll have more on the situation as it unfolds.
Finally, I've got v1.0 of my website up and running. There's still a few things that I need to add but the basic look and feel is there so you should be able to expect what it's going to look like when it's all finished. Check it out at http://student.vfs.com/~fd21mathew/. I've got pictures and videos posted up, with more to come soon!
In other news, two of my final video projects for this term have been fully completed and are up on the net--both on my website and one YouTube. Definitely check them out on YouTube though so I can get a little bit more coverage for them. Here are the two latest video works of mine:
And the last thing I'm going to note for this post: UFC 70 tonight! Free on Spike TV too! But for some crappy reason, we don't have Spike on our TV so me and Nic are going out to a bar to watch it. It'll be busy as all hell though what with the hockey game on as well.
What I'm looking forward to in this fight: Mirco Cro Cop going to work on Gonzaga; Arlovski destroying Werdrum (and in turn putting himself back into the much deserved heavyweight title contention); and a strong match-up between Bisping and Sinosic. UFC 70 Fightcard
Alright, so I got all my footage shot last week at the park for my Discovery Project. It's looking good so far, I'm psyched to get it finished and out to the seething throngs that comprise my web blog fan base; all three of you! The editing is mostly finished and I’m currently looking to get some help form the Sound Design wing to do the audio for my piece. I could probably do it myself, but that’s extra time that I don’t have and plus it would just sound shitty anyways! :P
Two others and myself are also getting ready to start shooting our final project for Lens Based 04. The lowdowndirty on the project we’re doing is this: it’s a trailer for a moving called “The Appraiser,” which is based on an Antique-Roadshow-esque appraiser who basically fights evil! Naturally, his arch nemesis is The Taxidermist… I’m going to be playing the part of The Appraiser. Needless to say, it’s going to the best thing that’s ever happened to cinema! :D
Oh yeah, and here’s a controversial discussion topic:
For me, term 3 in Foundation as hell. It wasn't that we had too much work to do, is more that the work we did have required minimal effort and most of it had little appeal for me to really put a lot of effort in. That was probably because a lot of the assignments that I was given, I had no real desire to include them in my portfolio afterwards (Trogdor Surprise, the model pavilion I made in 3D Design, and the Public Service Announcement we made -- which you will never see because it's SOOOO gawdawful -- are good examples of that).
The think that just sort of made the entire term lick $#!t was that it didn't seem like we really had much of a workload until about the last week when all the final projects are just dumped on your head. That last week I think that I slept maybe a grand total of 25 hours in 7 days...
This term, term 4, is looking up though!We've got a new teacher for our Lens Based Media Class (Chad Costen) and he's great; we have a class for Discover Project which basically lets us do or make what ever we want in order to 'discover' our passion; we get to make our own website in Flash (can't wait!); we're learning how to use Maya to do 3D modeling on the computer (not something that I'll necessarily need to use, but it's interesting to learn); we have a class about Non-Linear Editing (editing on a computer) and editing theory (which I find really interesting and relevant); and we get to develop our Life Drawing skills a little more (something I’m really keen on doing, because right now I suck).
So all in all it's looking to be a good term, let's hope it all stays on track with the weeks to come
This was a movie a thought was awesome before I came to VFS. Now—thanks to Trent, my ‘Storyboard’ teacher—I’ve realized (along with everyone else in the class) how much of a masterpiece this movie is! Not only is the composition of nearly every single shot done to perfection, but the underlying metaphors, analogies and allusions within the story itself, being blended together so harmoniously, astounds me to even attempt to comprehend the movie in its entirety; even in its conceptualization!
In an extremely small nutshell… Underneath the obvious storyline, you can see the transformation of the female protagonist as she rids herself from the using crutch of “masculine” power, in order to find power within her own “femininity.” Just the fact that this deeper story is told in a much deeper, philosophical, intellectual and unconventional way is further echoed by the non-linear movie structure and the drastically varying genres within the movie itself.
The moral of this story: ‘Storyboard’ class rules, Kill Bill is genius and it’s going to take a little bit of work if I wish to compete with the likes of Tarantino some day!
Remember that Mobile Jamfest thing I mentioned down there \/ ?
Well thanks to all the super-dooper people that voted for my movie, Red Army has been nominated as a finalist for the festival! That means that I'm one of the final 3 in my catagorie (Animation)!
-moving into a new place with 3 other guys from school. Already have our stuff there, start living there when we get back from the break -- psyched! -going home today for Xmas break -- gonna be a blast!
-had my term 2 life drawing exam yesterday -- improved a lot again this time; pic to follow
-finished my Sequential Media final group-project this weekend and showed it on monday. This is a short film we made, experimenting with a bunch of different filming techniques and frame composition rules. It was a lot of fun to make and hopefully I'll have it posted up on Youtube pretty soon here so I can show you what we did.
Here's my favorite drawing fo the 5 I did for my exam, the pose is rather reminiscent of my highlight pic from last test; I don't know why I can end up drawing the hardest poses best. I just wish I another 10 or 15 minutes so that I could properly finish her left hand and her head, then I think it would be a really nice drawing. Tell me what you think.
You know what’s really sweat about being colour blind? Well it definitely isn’t having to take “Colour Theory” classes in Foundation! ;) But you know what? It’s actually kind of fun, doing stuff that doesn’t really make any sense to me, but everyone else seems to think looks hilarious.
Take this painting I made of a rainbow for instance:
I’m joking, of course, I’m not THAT colour blind, this was just an exercise in depicting “value”, but it’s still sort of annoying…
That having been said, check out the dinosaur I painted:
It looks pretty decent to me… but how would I know? ;)
The other day I got my term 1 test for Life Drawing back and aside from the picture to the left, I could have sworn that I failed it! Well I got my marks and found out that, to my surprise, i actually did pretty good on it. Though Life Drawing is not necesarily my strong suite, I managed to pull off an 89% (HURRAY!) - one of my only marks below 90%.
The top picture is probably my best drawing to date, definitely a long way from my "Goro" picture! (Below)
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
My name is Mathew Joki. I recently graduated from VFS Foundation course and am in the post production stages of a feature film that I've been working on with some friends from school. I'm a world traveler, previously spending 10 months in Asia training martial arts. I'm currently working towards a career in film, so that I can be doing what I love for the rest of my life.
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