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• Angry Asian Shirt

  Tuesday, Oct 6, 2009 12:44PM / Standard Entry

  Get your limited edition Jerry Ma shirt now!!!
  
  Quick Kick Shirt.
  
  (I get nothing from it, trust me.  Jerry just owes me drinks for life.) 
  
  
  

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• when in rome...

  Monday, Aug 31, 2009 11:57AM / Standard Entry

  I've heard all the nightmare stories from people who have worked on productions in China - crew who don't understand the technical aspects of shooting a show/film, ridiculous hours (there is no union to regulate things like this), directors who direct projects into the ground, sound (invisible) men, the list of complaints goes on and on like an angry wife nitpicking about her no good lazy ass husband who does nothing but sit around the house farting all day while she rakes the leaves, washes dishes, folds the laundry, all while holding down her own full-time job.
  
  Today, I can say I've had the pleasure(?) of having experienced all of this in its full glory.
  
  I have undoubtedly been spoiled silly working on projects in the United States.  Now, even what were some of the worst projects I was ever associated with there seems like Emmy/Oscar caliber stuff in comparison to what I've been going through.  Ugh.
  
  Earlier this year, I got to work on a reality show here in Shanghai called Shanghai Rush that was produced and shot by a Western production company called Fly Films (awesome guys if you ever need a team to do something out here btw).  While the crew consisted of some local Chinese people, the entire ship was directed by an American with an NYU Tisch pedigree.  A few incompetent folks were hired for that shoot and when they proved to be too life-sucking in terms of clearly not knowing what they were doing, they were let go mid-shoot and quickly replaced.
  
  The operation overall wasn't too far from that of working on something in the States.  I've never done anything reality contest show related in the US, but one just had the feeling that, throughout the production, Fly Films "got it".  I would entrust them to pull together a commercial or TV show/video and have it run smoothly and end with a nice product.
  
  I'm in Shanghai again currently shooting something and this time, it's being done by an entirely local group.  I just went through 2 weeks of education on how it's done here without any Western influence.  You know what?  I'm actually kinda glad I went through it because now I can say I truly know what it's like and, more than anything, I have learned to appreciate that much more the people who I've worked with on projects out West.
  
  I'm kicking around the idea of how to incorporate my recent experiences into a story somehow.  It would be comedy, high comedy.  I don't mean to do this to make fun of these people or China in general - and I realize that if this post was read by someone in command and they took offense, maybe I'd never work in this town again - but I do this in order, honestly, to challenge and maybe awaken Chinese production people to raise their game a little (okay, a lot) in order so that they can get to a world-class level.
  
  As a nation, China is entirely too concerned about raising their game across all industries.  Finance, energy, food and beverage, cars, apparel, media & entertainment too.  The Olympics tore through here last year and the World Expo is before them next year.  They know the world's spotlight is directly on this place and they want to capitalize on it.  More foreigners than ever are living and working here today.  Mandarin is becoming the most popular language to learn.  I love it, I love it all.  I totally dig the vibe here and the sort of history in the making moment that people here are living in as this communist country becomes ever more capitalistic.  Sure, there are severe problems here that we will forever have to deal with and come to accept as Westerners living in this world, but insofar as doing business on a global scale, China definitely needs to beef themselves up.  I wouldn't expect China to sell itself out and do everything exactly as everyone else does.  They rightfully should maintain their own practices and methodologies, especially if it's already working, but when it comes to certain things, like producing world class entertainment projects, there is a minimum level of competency that one should have.
  
  Experienced in my last 2 weeks, in no particular order:
  
  - One lighting man, split between 2-3 projects, taking off during our's to work on another one, leaving us to our own defenses, before returning a few hours later to pick up.
  
  - One lighting man, not really understanding scrims or angles of lights, shining big spotlight directly on my face, creating a REALLY bright Brian and awesome shadows all over the place.
  
  - One cameraman walking away from the camera to another room as I delivered lines, leaving no one behind the camera.  I had to stifle myself from breaking out into laughter from the ridiculousness of it all.
  
  - One cameraman behind the camera shooting me with one eye in the lens (good) and one finger up his nose digging for gold (not good.)
  
  - One cameraman falling asleep literally every moment he wasn't shooting something.  He would lean up against the wall and doze off, sit on the sofa and snooze, get yelled at to start shooting, and wipe his mouth and press record angrily.  Same goes for lighting man whenever he wasn't actively engaged in something.
  
  - Different directors not really knowing what they wanted at all and just winging it.  Granted, this isn't a feature film or a tv series, but another hosting segment, but, still, having some semblance of order and vision is definitely encouraged.
  
  - The "set" we were on was a floor model unit at a luxury high rise building.  I guess nice they let us use it, but with it, so too did we have to endure random families coming traipsing in through our set with a sales agent showing them the unit.  Seriously?!?!  Don't even get me started on the drilling and hammering we had to endure from the floor above us by workers working on the still unfinished complex.  I couldn't exactly be irritated by them as they were just doing their job.  I say to the producer of the show, "Who picks such a place to shoot???"  Is this not common sense 101 that you secure locations that are favorable to you?  How much time (and ultimately, monay?) did we waste waiting for the families to finish looking or for the noise above us to pipe down?  1,000 hours, at least.
  
  - Directors/cameraman/anything that had a pulse in the room would answer their cell phones right during me delivering lines.  I'm not sure what that's all about, but I guess in a country where picking up your cell during a movie or a business meeting and just gabbing away is acceptable, I just have to eat it?
  
  Look, I realize I'm harping on the edge here of coming off as a prima donna, but trust me, these are basic production points that should not be happening, no matter what the project is.  And this says nothing to the fact that I had to wear a visible external microphone while delivering lines or the incessant scheduling changes (line producers and call sheets don't exist here) we had to just accept. 
  
  At least my days were relatively short.
  
  Look, I love this place.  It's definitely grown on me, and to a large degree, you have to learn to live with a layer of numbness around you in order to survive cause lots of things will frustrated you to no end.  I appreciate the opportunities and I realize these things happen not because the people don't mean well or aren't trying.  They just don't know any better, even when you tell them.  It's a process and I'm hoping as this industry evolves here, crews/producers/etc. will develop with the times and bring themselves up.  I think a great place to start would be by making sure everyone went to a production school boot camp if not film school itself.  I'm not sure many of these people working in this world ever had a formal hands-on training process.  There are people here who know how to do things on a world class level (both Westerners and some really savvy Chinese), use them as your resources.  If you want to be the best, you've got to learn from the best.
  
  I'm never going to expect things here to be exactly the same as back in the States, but I say this respectfully, because I think it would behoove us all if it were the case, the vast gap needs to be closed considerably.  Other nations will take you more seriously and your filmed/televised product may stand a better chance of being exported/accepted.  This is your goal, isn't it?  You keep saying so anyways.
  
  
  

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• as of late

  Wednesday, Jul 29, 2009 5:59AM / Standard Entry

  I'm back in NYC.  Home sweet home!  What a whirlwind the last week or so has been.  Last week, I was in Shanghai, Pucheon in Korea, and then New York in a 7 day span.  I'm kind of done with aeroplanes but I think for as long as I do what I'm doing, the travel is just something I'm going to have to accept.  Whenever Richard Branson perfects that space travel idea of his, I'm signing up.
  
  I just spent the past 6 weeks in Asia - primarily in Shanghai again - and the heat was gettin' completely unbearable.  But I had to be there to wrap up voiceover work for Shanghai Rush.  The season finished out and I'm hoping some of you got to watch!  Apparently, enough of Shanghai did that they would like to do a second season - though nothing's in stone.  Let's keep our fingers crossed, but no matter what happens, I'm thankful I had the opportunity.  I had tons of fun with it, learned lots about Shanghai and China in general, and made lots of great new friends.  On top of all that, it allowed me to immerse myself in the Asian film/tv industry where I met a lot of people and will hopefully get to work with some of them on future projects.
  
  During my stay, I got to attend the Shanghai International Film Festival which was great.  I'm developing a feature that was in the co-pitch program there.  Then, last week, I went over to Korea and participated in a film development lab in Pucheon as part of the PiFan Film Festival with a different feature I'm working on with my filmmaker friend Ted Chung.  If I haven't shared his work on this space before, do yourselves a favor and check out his short films.  He's got an uncanny ability to brilliantly tell a story that draws an audience into his characters.  After meeting him at East West Players in LA and knowing him for over 12 years, I'm really excited about working on his first feature with him.  It's a real honor.
  
  I'm developing yet another feature set in China and so between these producing responsibilities on 3 films and counting, SR, and another hosting gig that was offered to me by the same network that aired SR, it's keeping my plate full.
  
  I got home in time this past weekend to catch some stuff at the New York International Asian American Film Festival.  I was surprised at myself for experiencing no jet lag during the weekend.  But then Monday came and for some weird reason, delayed lag set in and the past couple of days, I've had some sleepless nights and zombie like afternoons - like right now as I write this.  Don't I sound as dry as a desert right now?
  
  I gotta return to SH for a couple of weeks in a few weeks so I'm bracing myself for the long flight again, but until then, I'm going to soak in my New York moments and what's left of the summer.  Compared to China, it feels like winter here!  I guess I live a hyphenated life as a Chinese-American and, accordingly, I'm living a hyphenated life between China-America.
  
  
  

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• situation shanghai

  Saturday, Jul 4, 2009 3:01PM / Standard Entry

  Hey, I just saw AlivenotDead posters all over the place on my walk to the b-ball gym today.  A partnership with .tom.com I think.  I'm still not sure what that's all about 'cause I can't read Chinese worth doo-doo.  But seeing all them thingys up was cool.  Terence and his funny face with 15 other guys all screaming, jumping, horsing around to something.  Good job Patrick and Stephen!  Your penetration into the mainland is on.
  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  Yesterday, on the day SmartShanghai ran a lil something fun on me: My Weekender, I got run into by a moped as I crossed the street to catch Transformers (not terrible, not great, just an extension of the 1st one).  He wasn't going at a super high speed, but I didn't even see him.  I was crossing one way and then I suddenly felt something big, heavy, and hard hit me in the leg.  I was stunned at first, but I felt fine.  He, however, had all his stuff he was carrying fall all over the street and he stumbled off his ride.  He yelped, we kinda looked at each other, I looked at my leg, shrugged, and got out of the middle of the road.  No harm, no foul.
  
  Guess the guy didn't like my weekend plans.
  
  Ah, Shanghai. I love you.
  
  
  

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• alive, not dead!

  Wednesday, Jun 24, 2009 12:07PM / Standard Entry

  I'm starting to see why the fellas named this site what it is.  I'm alive...not dead!  That's what I want to scream after realizing I haven't blogged something since early May??!  Is that right?  Can't be so?  What the hell have I been doing??
  
  It ain't that I don't love this site, but I think I just got blogged out this year.  Not that I was blogging a bunch to begin with, but I sorta keep another blog and since I've been in China, it's been damn near impossible getting onto it, so I've just let that go basically and as a result, think my blogskills have soured here too.  I guess that one's a little more personal and the AnD stop has always been what's going on with the career kinda thing.  I should just fuse it all together already.  Stupid me, me stupid.
  
  Anyway - since early May, it's been a whirlwind!  Shanghai Rush kicked off (it's still going on btw, we just aired episode 8 this past Sunday) I left China to go back to the States for a bit and stopped in Hawaii for a week, NYC for 3 weeks, and then came back here, which puts me about where I am at this moment - in Shanghai and ready to head to Taipei for the next few days.
  
  The travel has been killer and I should just tell people these days I live in an airplane, but I guess I shouldn't complain.  It's strictly business and for that I'm grateful.
  
  It's kinda funny - for SR, I have to lay down voiceover tracks each week as the production team is editing each episode week by week.  My narration over the episode is the last thing they put into the final cut before they send it off to ICS.  This means that for the 4 weeks I've been gone from SHG, I had to find places to do narration work.  Oh man, to think where some of them have been done as I watch an actual episode.  No one watching thinks about these kinds of things, but since it was me, I do!  I did episode 3 from an apartment in Honolulu, Hawaii.  Episode 5 was from my living room in NYC.  4 and 6 were from the MTV Studios in Times Square.  All this tells me is, basically, have voice, will travel.  With technology these days, anything is possible!
  
  Anyways, I came back to SHG in time for the Shanghai International Film Festival.  This was the first time I've ever attended it and what a year to pick for the first time!  As we all know, China is becoming the center of the universe.  Business, sports, film, food & beverage, anything and everything you can think of, people are flooding into here to build it.  Fortune 500 companies, the NBA (building 12 arenas around the country), Hollywood, all the western cuisine you can think of, have set up shop here.  You feel it walking about town, you hear it in all the English being spoken here, you see it happening every day by day.
  
  In the business of film and tv, it's no different.  The Festival has become truly international now with people from the world over descending about SHG to do their thing at the festival.  Danny Boyle, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, presided over the grand jury.  Other big stars were in town all week - people from Clive Owen to Halle Berry to Andie McDowell to Quincy Jones (picking up a lifetime achievement award and working with Tan Dun on something for the World Expo 2010) to Ewan McGregor to the regular Chinese stars like Zhang Ziyi and Karen Mok.  I had a nice chat with Chris Doyle too, but that dude's pretty much Chinese and always around Asia, so his presence wasn't surprising.  My favorite might have been getting to know Singaporean filmmaker Royston Tan.  Dude is fierce!
  
  My production company is co-producing a film that was accepted into the co-pitch program in the festival.  We're very excited as hotshot Belgian director Christophe Van Rompaey has come on board to lens the pic!  His first feature: Moscow, Belgium was a smash hit and everyone's going to be curious about his follow-up.  It was a full week of non-stop wheeling and dealing, networking, drinking, pitching, seminars, lectures, etc.  Exhausting.  I also hosted a student short films award ceremony one night that turned into an evening of "how to look cool when sweating your ass off while up on stage."  It was hella hot in there!!!  Met some nice peoples, including the executive director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, which is great as I just learned that another film we were behind will be going there in October -- so looks like it'll be Honolulu time for me yet again this fall!  I can never get enough of that place - and plus my best friends will just have had their first baby right around then!
  
  A few more episodes of recording for SR (our executive producer talked about us in The Hollywood Reporter! and remember, you can catch the series on Youku - though it loads crappy from the States), a visit from Mom, and then it looks like it's back Stateside for awhile...just in time for the Asian American Int'l Film Festival (a short I was in is playing in it.)  Man, they really miniaturized it this year!  Went from 10 days down to 3?  Is this a reflection of the economy of lack of fare?  Either way, I'm disturbed.  And either way, this is a good article my friend sent out that addresses the lay of the land today:  I Need Eggs!
  
  Oh, if you're in NYC - and I'm bummed I'm missing this - my friend Karin Chien (an amazing indie film producer) is presenting her Chinatown Film Project which is a collection of 10 shorts set in NYC Chinatown done by 10 amazing filmmakers on July 1.  (I was lucky enough to get to act in one of them directed by Miguel Arteta who did The Good Girl and more recently a film called Youth in Revolt with Michael Cera.)  This project is the first film exhibition that the newly designed MoCa is presenting.  Curious to see this new Maya Lin project!
  
  Alright, that's what's been up, more stuff on the horizon, but still waiting to see how it all shakes out.  Too much to think about....one day at a time...
  
  My thoughts are continually with Laura Ling and Euna Lee who are still in North Korea.  What a terrible situation....
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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