The two of us have really hit our stride and she’s a dream to work with. I had the pleasure of working with her on the edit too.
Once we finished the rough cut, I replaced the proxy assets with the HD ones and rendered it out. Ninja and I spent the last half hour watching the 2 minute video over and over. It’s that good. I can’t to share it with everyone.
There’s still some fine tuning I need to do, but I know it works. Then it’s on to color correction. Yay!
The two main points that I took away was the anecdote as a form of storytelling and having good taste.
The Anecdote. When you listen to good story tellers share their stories in the form of anecdotes, there’s progression to the story. I did this, and then this happened, and then… etc. There’s a momentum to the story that draws you in and creates tension. But what separates the good stories from the bad is that it takes you some where. There is a sense of revelation at the end of the journey. Most stories lack this crucial element. Likewise, revelation w/o the journey of the anecdote is not nearly as powerful.
Good Taste. For 8 years, Glass struggled with producing material that he liked, but just didn’t feel was good enough. He was struck by this dissonance between what he had created and what his own evaluation of his material. I know when I look back at Love Angle there are plenty of things that I would change or have done differently. Even though it holds a special place in my heart, I know it’s nowhere close to where I want it to be.
Part of it has to do with my lack of experience and skill. But there is a part where I’m not sure what I could do to make it better. So I really take Glass’s insight to heart. To persevere through and keep working on my body of work and knowing that it may be a long journey.
Cupid’s Chokehold [Music Video] from NinjaVsPenguin.Sometimes we think we’ve found the one, but it doesn’t end up that way. Then we try to build love for ourselves, and it breaks.Original Music: “Cupid’s Chokehold” by Gym Class Heroes
Credits
Written and Directed by Wey Wang
Awesomette: Sean Pham
Girl: Betsy Chao
Bandmate: Bo Wang
Cinematography: Nancy Chan
Additional Camera: Wey Wang
Edited by: Jimmy Lu & Wey Wang
Storyboards by: Stephanie Jou & Wey Wang
Props by: Bo Wang, Abel Zhu, & Emily Wong
Production Assistants: Jesse Zhu, Joanne Horng, Stephen Ding, and Sean Pham
Thanks to: Gene & Rosita Hsu and Nancy Chiang
Very Special Thanks to: God
Shot with Canon HV20
Edited on Premiere Pro CS3 (PC)
Encoded with H.264
Everyone is seeking connections with others. They may find it in significant others, friends, acquaintances, or family. But sometimes these connections fail; either on purpose, by accident, or through neglect.
What if you could connect with God?
Boba Nite 4: Connections is a night of music, dance, and movies. Come enjoy live performances while enjoying free boba tea and other refreshments. Find out how you can connect with God.
The show starts on Saturday, April 26, 2008 @ 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm.
This past weekend, I finished some final edits with Cupid’s Chokehold. Very many thanks to Jimmy for his initial rough cut. There were a lot of good ideas that I kept moving towards the final cut.
When I first started this project, there was this fear that we wouldn’t have enough footage. We ended up having too much footage. Which is a very good thing. But it forced me to cut some minor scenes.
Now it’s time to do some color correcting. Which I know nothing about.
That’s a sample of the storyboards we used for Cupid’s Chokehold.
As you can see, most of them are poorly drawn stick figures. The important things that you want to convey the angle, shot size, and any sort of movement that will be happening.
Wrapped our third day of shooting today and we’re on good track to finishing the video.
Nancy was nice enough to open her house to let us shoot there. Since we had gone over last week, I was committed to making sure the place was clean and back to the way it was before we got there. We were running a little late as it was, so we missed a lot of shots.
At the time, it seemed like the best decision. Grab the master shot and that’s it. Now, that I’ve had time to think about it, I regret that decision. The additional coverage that we needed to get were minor and probably would’ve taken an additional 15 minutes. I was so focused on just finishing, that I compromised my vision for the video.
Does this decision ruin the video? No. Is it as good as it could’ve been? Probably not. Now, I have to make a second decision. Do I go back to Nancy’s place next week and shoot all that coverage that I missed? Or do I move on. We have a really tight schedule coming up, so I’m afraid that we may run over.
With that said, I think I’m going to go back. Otherwise, this is going to eat me up inside.
It was a big day for Cupid’s Chokehold. We built our robot suit, which took much longer than I had initially anticipated. But the suit looks great. Thanks so much for Ninja for all her hard work on it and her great ideas.
This was the second day I got to use the tripod and it was definitely interesting. Not being used to having sticks and just not being familiar with sticks was a challenge. How far do I spread the sticks? How high should the elevator be? And finding enough room to spread the sticks for a stable shooting platform.
This was also the first time that I got to work with our new DP, Nancy Chan, who recently got married. It’s going to take us a few sessions to get a feel for each other and the way we work. It’s tough, because she went to school studying film. Part of me feels a little intimidated to give her direction.
One of the biggest limiting factors is that we can only shoot on Sundays, from 2:30 – 4. After having a short meeting to talk about what we’re going to shoot, followed by any driving that we have to do, makes it very difficult to get much done.
Yesterday, I started shooting my new project: a music video for “Cupid’s Chokehold” by Gym Class Heroes. I had spent most of the week (off and on) storyboarding the shots. This is a little different than storyboarding a short because there are certain beats with the music that you want to try and align. Since I have so little experience, it’s hard to say how long I want to linger on each shot.
Drawing out the storyboards helped me realize the non-linear structure to the story. It seemed apropos that I watched an interview with Quentin Tarantino after he did Pulp Fiction. The sound is a little out of sync, but there’s a wealth of information there.
One of the main take-aways that relates to this project is the idea of confusion. Tarantino’s right that if you watch Pulp, like really watch it, it’s not confusing at all. Even though it has a non-linear structure, the way that it’s put together makes sense and is probably the best way to tell the story. In a similar manner, I feel the same way about “Cupid’s Chokehold”.
I showed the storyboards to Ninja and she agreed. There were points where it jumped a bit, but if I told the story straight, it would’ve been boring.
