1st Runner up and Best Actress!
This is delayed news, cause I’ve been swamped, but I made a last minute trip out to NY to see the screening of the top 10 films of this year’s 72 Hour Film Shootout.
Out of the 63 or so teams that entered the contest, my group - Team HeadOn (“Elizabeth Ong Is Missing”) - was nominated for:
Best Director (me!)
Best Cinematography
Best Story
Most Original.
Our very own Vivian Bang won the award for Best Actress.
And overall our film place 1st Runner Up in the competition.
Other notes of interest:
-I actually know the folks who won Grand Prize (Team 100% - “You’ve Got Male”) and I know of the guys that placed 2nd Runner Up (Team Foreign Image - “Secret Chinese Secret”). Viet Nguyen, Team Foreign Image’s director had a short film in the last VC Filmfest called “The Dumb Asian” which was stupidly hilarious, and they stayed true to form with “Secret Chinese Secret”.
-All Top 3 teams are west coast teams (in a NY based competition.)
-In fact, I can personally identify that at least 6 of the top 15 teams this year (including the top 3) were west coast teams. Pretty strong showing for the left.
-Also, it turns out that each of the 10 Ten teams for this year’s competition is a first time participant.
-I had taken a red eye to get to NY the night before, and hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. I also had gotten lost in Central Park earlier that day and ended up walking about 10 miles total (remember, on no sleep). During my time on stage (accepting awards and doing the Q and A), I began sweating and shaking from exhaustion. Seriously, I was sweating A LOT. Like Chris Farley level sweating.
This actually isn’t a note of interest. This is more of a note of frustration. That was seriously embarrassing as hell.
Big thanks to Tana Sarntinoranont, David Hou, Tony Chen and all the other organizers of this year’s shootout. It was very fun and very educational.
Friday, July 27, 2007