Eight Years
Date: (2003)
My roommate Eric made an observation back in Sophomore year that really stuck with me:
“What is with Asians and making videos?”
I simply shrugged off the comment — I might have offhand made some stupid remark about “Koreans and Kimchee”, I don’t know . . . the details are lost to history. But, the comment did stay with me as it did describe a good chunk of high school and my first year in college (and to a lesser extent, subsequent years as well, although I didn’t play nearly so much of an active role in their creation). [Did I mention that my high school was overwhelmingly Asian as covered by this CNN piece?]
I don’t know when it started precisely, but I do remember the first time I was really into videomaking was in Junior Year AP US History — when our “brilliant” teacher Mr. Ha designed an exercise in videomaking to illustrate some major concept in US History. My immature self, of course, recommended first that we do the Trail of Tears but instead of with Native American “Indians”, with Indians (as in from the Subcontinent in Asia) — that suggestion, I am grateful to say, was shot down immediately, and we (A. Eilbacher, A. Lee, A. Hsu, and myself) did a very inspired (but ultimately lame) explanation of the Baby Boom — ahh, I can still remember filming that great masterpiece…
Of course, the two groups that outdid us completely, and, at least for me, inspired a great deal more interest in video-shooting, were the videos that A. Phan, D. Blincoe, et al and R. Chang, W. Koai, A. Garvin, S. Wu, et al made. The former made a piece called “Foresto Gumpo” (I think) which dealt with immigrants … or I could be wrong here — as you have probably guessed, the videos were only tangentially related to the topic being covered — but there was a reasonable degree of bloodshed and offhand humor.
The latter made a video “Prohibition Must Die” which cast A. Garvin in the role of Al Capone (who like all evil villains has a furry cat to pet) and S. Wu as the Elliot Ness-style character who struggles to bring him down. Directed by W. Koai, it featured guns, guns, and more guns, ketchup blood, the most ridiculous but deadpanned Matrix “I’m Neo and I can dodge bullets” moves, and, if memory serves me correctly, an incredibly well placed Big 2 joke.
The following year was the Mock Convention (a model political convention whereby our Senior class attempts to represent the far-right, right, left, and far-left elements of a party) — which I’m certain I’ll post about at some point — which meant more videos — but this time about our candidates and their “issues” which just happened to include R. Chang (the conservative) and A. Garvin (the far left). Those involved with former videos were also involved in the other campaigns (far right and left) making a gun-filled, martial-arts enhanced, emotion-wracked, over-played classical music/action theme song video-fest, including a campaign shot where Garvin rejects my man-love for him in order to hug a tree (those darn hippies) and my personal favorite, the story of baby Garvin whereby I, one of the evil evil right-wing gods, attempts to corrupt his innocence and purity (including my favorite shot of me employing my awesome lightning powers on one of the agents of the left).
Later that year, came the Shakespeare projects. A. Lee and A. Agrawal (who had both been Garvin’s official video guys) and I had wanted to do something more than perform in front of the class. We came up with the idea to create a special effects-laden video allowing those of us who feared acting on stage to rest assured that it was all going to be edited, and allowing A. Lee, A. Agrawal, and myself to attempt to show off what we could do. Wanting to choose something which would enable us to more plausibly not be true to Shakespearan costume and to allow us to “creatively interpret” scenes which might have involved (or might not have) fighting, we chose Hamlet.
Assembling our motley crew of K. Teng, A. Phan, B. Hsu, M. Chan, T. Wu, and F. Chen and employing a legion of extras (J. Do, D. Yeh, B. Chen, A. Jiang, C. Ngyuen, A. Hong, and much much more), A. Lee and I (essentially the executive producers) took the script, chopped it down to size, and made a shooting schedule which we, for the most part, actually stuck to — making the project run a lot more smoothly than I had thought possible. We filmed in people’s homes, their backyards, a church (there is a scene where choir singers leak on — unintentional, but it kinda worked), an abandoned school (yes, seriously), and even a rented pool house to stage our final fight scene.
A. Agrawal was our special effects guy coming up with a myriad of ways to deploy bullet-trails (we modeled a glass tube in the shape of a bullet trail and overlaid that with the film), a ghost (yes, A. Agrawal was ACTUALLY translucent) by creating an “Orange-screen” from bright orange poster, and, my personal favorite effect, lightning.
This, mind you, happened over the span of weeks, taking up almost all of my free time — making me question whether or not it was worth it. This was especially true in the days before the video was due, when I essentially pullled my first all-nighter (and to date, one of four) to complete editing.
And, I have to say it was worth it. I missed out on doing some fun things, yes, but in the process of doing this, I did something that I am, to this day, still very proud of, still think of with very fond memories (I still have the DVD). I became much better friends with A. Lee and A. Agrawal through this. I got to know T. Wu, and, at least on a superficial level, the construction of shots, editing, special effects, and a little fight choreography. Is it the best piece of work I’ve done? No. It’s definitely very shoddy — but as any of my friends whom I’ve shown this to will attest to, its something I’m very proud of and, although its impractical, I kind of want to shoot another…
