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• From Daniel's Blog
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  Monday, Dec 3, 2007 6:15PM / Standard Entry / daniel's film / Members only
  7 comments

  [ Taken from Daniel's Blog ]
  
  Why a chicken?
  
  I’m not sure really. I’ve had a strange fascination with chickens since college. Their existence often baffles me. Why are they on this planet? Do they exist only to be eaten? Being the lowest mammal in the food chain, I often feel sorry for them, because chickens are the weakest animals on the planet with no dangerous form of attack and absolutely no way to defend themselves. They can’t even fly away because their wings are so out of proportion with their bodies. So in a way this short film is turning the tables around for once. A chickens’ fantasy if you will. A chicken rights film. A chicken kicking my ass.
  
  I decided the only person that would get my oddball sense of humor and pull this film off was my good old buddy Jason Tobin. He played David’s assistant in The Heavenly Kings and pulled off the performance of a lifetime as Virgil in Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow. Jason has aspirations of directing and this was the perfect way to get his feet wet. Having done an awesome job on the music videos for Hardpack and Audiotraffic, I felt it was time to take Jason to the next level.
  
  We decided that we wanted to experiment with film this time instead of the regular boring old video. We chose the 8mm format because we just love that grainy 70’s home movie look. The texture you get out of 8mm film simply cannot be reproduced in video. We hired Jam Yau as our dp because of his special 8mm film knowledge. We set up a bunch of different types of rigs, including a mini stedi-cam to make the shots as dynamic as possible. Thanks to Jam we were able to make the most of shooting in 8mm. I definitely want to use this medium again in the future.
  
  We pulled off the entire thing in one long 14 hour shoot.  Most of the scenes were shot on location in DEF boxing gym, where I work out from time to time. It was quite complex because we had to many setups and lighting conditions. Not to mention the actual fight had supporting actors and a whole bunch of extras that had no idea what the hell we were doing. Much props to Kim Chan for wearing the chicken outfit a dealing with the no air con conditions. We shot till morning then hit the streets to do all the outdoor running scenes. It was tough doing winds sprints after having been up all night and dealing with the summer heat but in the end we pulled it off.
  
  Jason handled the post-production entirely himself and even hired Don Cruz, guitar superstar from Audiotraffic, to score the film. In the end, the film exceeded my expectations and really kicked ass. I think chickens around the world will be thanking us for the work we’ve done for them for generations to come!
  
  Click here to watch the video.