Ninja vs Penguin

Ninja November 7th, 2008

Thanks for your thoughtful (and concerned) emails! I’m still here. I’m still alive. ^____^ But a few things have been keeping me from posting:

+ being really busy with work (bleh, boring, but true)
+ taking an Anatomy night class at SVA (yay!)
+ being sick for quite some time & seeing a slew of specialists (early morning appointments, giving up vials of my precious blood for testing, getting poked & prodded = foul mood)
+ being overly sleep-deprived = being cranky, sarcastic, & a giant bore = I go into hiding mode because no one wants to be around me when I’m all miserable (I don’t even want to be around me)
+ trying to get some personal art work in (mostly unsuccessful)

My apologies, my dear readers. And HUGE thanks to Penguin for holding down the fort in my absence & putting up with (& still loving) me.

A quick update as to what I’ve been up to:

In October, I went to visit my dear friends, NC & Tim in LA. While there, I took in the sights, checked out Art Center, celebrated Stefan Bucher’s 35th birthday, & met Ophelia Chong. It was such a dream vacation. Blue skies, sunshowers, & some of the sweetest folks ever.

Oh, yah, & we stopped by LACMA, too.

In more recent news, the breathtaking Ms. Tanya Dakin (model/photographer/Suicide Girl) is allowing me the honor to paint her in the buff (as in she’s posing nude, not me sitting nude while painting). My college friend Tony was kind enough to set up our online introduction—a thousand thanks, Bing Chi Ling!

As always, thanks for checking in & stopping by our humble blog.

Cheers & have a lovely weekend,
Ninja ^______^

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Tags: LACMA, Los Angeles, Ophelia Chong, Stefan G. Bucher, Suicide Girls, Tanya Dakin, Thoughts, Tony Yang

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Penguin October 16th, 2008

I’ve been really stressed out since coming back from LA. Part of it was because I had an essay due on Tuesday. I started working on it but didn’t make much headway.

Class came and it still wasn’t done. But before that, I decided that I was going to hand it in late. Wednesday came and gone and although I made a little more progress, I don’t even have what can be called a first draft.

Right before I typed this, I played a little Tetris DS before sleeping. CPU lvl 5 thoroughly kicked my butt. And that’s when I realized what was really stressing me out. I was afraid to fail.

Not in the grade sense of the word, but fail myself. I set myself up to be amazing. I have to get the A. I have to try really hard. And in that, I lost sight of everything and stressed myself out. I had frozen in panic.

So instead of moving forward and just doing it, I ended up doing nothing.

This is the same lesson we sometimes have to learn as filmmakers or artists. We’re so caught up in needing our work to be perfect, in being amazing, that we set ourselves up to fail by not meeting those expectations. And we’ve been trained for 18+ years of our lives that it’s NOT okay to fail. When in reality, it is.

It’s okay to fail.

I look back at some of the stuff I put out and I know it’s not the best. But there was something authentic about it. Instead of just talking about doing something, I did it. And that’s a success.

Doing nothing is the failure.

Shoot that short film, write that book, draw what you enjoy, do something, anything! Because not doing anything would be a tragedy.

Now I can sleep.

-Penguin

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Tags: Motivation, Tetris, Thoughts

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Penguin September 23rd, 2008

This past Saturday, I went to the Gunks to do some outdoor climbing. The first route we did was a 5.8. This was the first time I toproped outside and was decidedly nervous.

The first part of the climb was pretty easy. But then I got to the overhang in the pic above. This was about 50ft up. I reached blindly over the edge and felt around for a good hold. I settled on a small crack, crimped, and threw my left hand up, grasping for whatever I could find. I then kicked my right foot up on the edge and pulled myself up. Afterwards, I just stood there on these tiny jibs, mentally and physically tired. My toes trembled with adrenaline. But I made it.

The rest of the climb wasn’t too difficult, but there were moments I wanted to say, “No, I can’t do it. It’s too scary, I’m too tired, it’s too high, my shoes are slipping off, I want to come down.” But I didn’t. I pushed and got to the top.

When I got back down, my ankles were still quivering from the adrenaline and the feeling was amazing.

So much of what you do is mental. Writing, getting your film made, finishing that painting, or just trying something knew. And when everything inside you is telling you, “You can’t do it”, you have to tell yourself, “No. I’m going to try.” And you may climb over the crag or you may fall, but what separates the winners from everyone else is going for it.

What do you need to go for? What steps do you need to take to make it happen?

-Penguin

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Tags: Climbing, Filmmaking, Gunks, Motivation, Thoughts, Toprope

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Ninja September 10th, 2008

Hallo & good afternoon!

I have a bunch of paintings that need to be finished come October—yikes. So the Ninja front will be relatively quiet.

Here’s a sneak peak at one of the paintings in progress.

Happy hump day,
Ninja ^____^

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Tags: Painting, Progress, Thoughts

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Penguin August 26th, 2008

A few weeks ago, I went back and rewatched a lot of the videos that I’ve made over the past year. Some of them induced smiles of fondness, while others incited cringes of awkwardness. I held on to what Ira Glass said about good taste:

In the last few weeks, this got me to thinking: Where does good taste come from? I watch Daniel on Project Runway and he’s always going on about how he has good taste. But when you look at the colors he picks, or the silhouettes that he makes, it’s not quite there.

I’ve come to the conclusion that good taste comes from experience and education.

As we grow up, we’re molded and shaped by everything we experience. As we integrate these things, we begin to compare them. We’ll compare food against other food. Music, movies, performances, friends, fashion, video games, books, etc. If we’ve only been exposed to mediocre things and we get used to them, they will be our standard. For many people, it’s just a matter of what’s popular because they don’t want to go against the grain. So good taste is internal.

But then we go to school or we like something enough, say movies, that we want to take the step from being consumers to producers. So we start researching and learning how to do it. Through this learning process, we can also be taught why something is good and get a new sense of appreciation.

Then we take that knowledge and evaluate our experiences through that lens and see things that we haven’t seen before. After learning about screenwriting, I go back and rewatch things and my eyes are opened. Like when I re-watched National Treasure, as ridiculous as it was, the story structure is there.

So how do you improve your taste? Experience and learn new things. Be a perpetual student. Study what others deem as “good” and try and figure out why they think it’s good. And just because popular opinion says it’s good, doesn’t make it so.

-Penguin

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Tags: Education, Experience, Good taste, Ira Glass, National Treasure, Project Runway, Thoughts

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Penguin August 6th, 2008

Last friday, I had a meeting to talk about all the issues that came up from the Kyrgyzstan trip. Obviously, there’s more at stake than the 1 or 2 films that I shot in the two weeks. The crucial issue is censorship, free speech, and control.

I totally understand that being Christians in a Muslim country is difficult and dangerous. I was not above omitting certain details in order to protect the identity of those involved and even the locations. Unfortunately, this was not enough for them and they still wanted total control over the final product.

So $5,400 and 18 days spent, I was unwilling to compromise my belief in free speech. If the only course of action for me is to turn over the tapes, then so be it. Additionally, I’ve turned over the camera because I will not work for an organization that does not value free speech.

Not much changes for me. I’ve been operating independently for the last 6 years; spending my own money and time. It’ll just be a little harder to recruit people to participate. And I will have no finances because I have no income.

At least I stood up for what I believed was right and I didn’t sell my convictions. That’s got to be worth something. Right?

-Penguin

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Tags: Compromise, Convictions, Free speech, Kyrgyzstan, Thoughts

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Penguin May 27th, 2008

Observation is, by nature, violating. As we build relationships, we build trust, and we become comfortable with people violating us. But with cameras, both photography and video, the violation is permanent because you have captured that moment.

For the most part, we’re okay with it. There are security cameras everywhere recording our every action. Our friends take pictures and videos of us. These are then put online for the world to see. Even some of our embarrassing or compromising shots, we’re okay about it. But what about those moments of distress and true vulnerability.

This past weekend, a kid I know got hurt doing an activity. I didn’t see it, nor was I that close to him when it happened. I was sitting off to the side when another kid told us that he was hurt. At first, I gave him his space. But when the ambulance came, I grabbed my camera and started filming.

Where is our responsibility as documenters of moments? Is it to the subject, our audience, or ourselves?

Subject - Our responsibility to the subject is to respect them. That means we need to be honest in the way we present them and what they are sharing. It’s so easy to manipulate people’s words or to present images that tell lies about the person.

Sometimes the subject will tell you to stop or turn off the camera. In those cases, I would definitely respect their wishes. What if they don’t know they’re the subject? Do you empathize and ask the question for them? The problem with this, is that we don’t know how they would respond. Each individual and culture is different and my answer may be different from the subject’s. An argument can be made for either side.

Audience - Our responsibility to the audience is to tell them the complete story, with all the grit and dirt that goes along with it. This doesn’t mean we should seek out grit and dirt if it isn’t there, but if we find it, we need to present it honestly and humbly.

Ourselves - Our responsibility to ourselves is to not compromise our values. We may be changed through the documenting process and from what we learn, but that’s not to say we are to change ourselves for the documentary.

Something about the ambulance that added drama to the story. Some people said what I did was terrible. Others commended what I was doing. But I don’t know where I stand. This was only 1 kid with a minor fracture. What if I’m confronted with something bigger? What will I do? Do I commit to the story and keep filming? Or do I draw the line and say that there are certain things I won’t film.

I don’t know.

-Penguin

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Tags: Documentaries, Questions, Thoughts

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Penguin May 22nd, 2008

Truth (with a capital T) is different from something that is true. The distinction comes from individual observation and experience. As every individual experiences things in different ways, the truth of the experience will be different for everyone. This is evident when you interview eye-witness accounts. Each person sees the event transpire in a slightly different way. Sometimes the “facts” are even messed up because our senses aren’t perfect. So how closely related is Truth with fact?

I think facts are a subset of Truth. Facts are verifiable in some way, Truth isn’t necessarily verifiable. When I used to take pictures as a “documentarist”, I was always interested in capturing the trueness of the scene. This was why I wouldn’t photoshop my pictures. But the camera itself runs a gamut of software filters over the image before compressing it, therefore, changing the image.

There is also the fundamental issue of just being there and observing that changes the whole scene. Similar to the observer problem in quantum mechanics, we have an observer problem when doing documentaries. Your presence and the camera’s presence completely changes the environment. But does it make it any less True?

Maybe the images that you see are filtered and processed by software. The documentary you create is edited and interpreted, but the story that you tell can still be True. This brings us back to the question of what is Truth?

Facts are verified knowledge. Verification comes from observation. The act of observation is done through interpretation and violation. But underneath the observer problem is the truth. Just because we foul it with our interpretation, doesn’t make it any less true. As we break from things that are measurable and observable, it will be increasingly difficult to get at the underlying truth.

Truth is independent of the observable. Like the “tree falling in the woods”, the fact that you know that a tree fell, it will create some sort of noise, regardless if there is an observer or not. Or you know that the sun will be somewhere over head even if you can’t see it because of the clouds doesn’t make the sun less real. But we know these things because we have observed them in the past. Through repeated observation, we have come to these truths.

Beyond the observable is the story. Every picture we take, every scene that we shoot, there’s some sort of story behind it. This story is the Truth. But how do we know if that story is true or not? We evaluate it against our past knowledge and experience for consistency. If this new story is compelling enough, we may incorporate it into our story. Or based on our evaluation, we may dismiss the new story as fake. So Truth is the story that resonates with our soul. We learn this story from knowledge of observable reality, personal experience, and cultural framing. As we gain new knowledge that challenges are experience or understanding, we’re forced to change our story to incorporate the knowledge.

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Tags: Culture, Thoughts, Truth

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Penguin May 20th, 2008

Last Friday, Ninja and I went to the Guggenheim to see Cai Guo-Qiang. Both Ninja and I were really inspired. As I was coming out of the show, I thought to myself, “This is art”. As I chewed on that statement, I thought about what attributes and qualities led me to say it with such confidence.

These were the qualities I identified.

Unique - There is nothing else quite like it. In this example, we have the use of gunpowder that makes it stand out. Granted, my knowledge of art is pretty limited, but as far as I know, no one else is making art with gunpowder. Now, the uniqueness doesn’t necessarily come from the medium. But there needs to be something uniquely intrinsic to the work.

Difficult - One of the common criticisms of abstract art is that kids can do it. The underlying criticism is that it’s easy and any one can do it. The difficulty can come from various sources. The technique required, the medium itself, the scale, or even just the resources needed.

Story - The work has an underlying concept or idea that it is either exploring or conveying. This isn’t necessarily a message, but it can be. But the art is telling some sort of story or metanarrative that can’t be conveyed in any other way. The story is what changes people and the story is where the power lies.

Extreme - Art lies in the extremes. Extremely big or tiny. Complex or simple. It is at these edges that most people don’t venture to or explore that art happens. The more mainstream or common something becomes, the less it is about art. You look at the street vendors in NYC trying to sell “art”. The majority of these are mass produced at a normal size. It’s so ubiquitous that it is no longer unique.

This may not be an exhaustive list, nor is it meant to be a definition. It’s just what I gleamed based on the exhibit. What do you think?

-Penguin

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Tags: Art, Cai Guo-Qiang, Theory, Thoughts

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