Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Delimerence and Future Feature Future Date

I recently went through a breakup that left me almost paralyzingly depressed. I was also coming off the heels of a long post production process with my short Godzilla Party. That one hadn’t done as well as I had hoped so I went into the pandemic feeling creatively bankrupt. I decided for my next movie I wanted to return to basics. I slowly started to craft a story in my head. It was understatement to say that the breakup was on my mind. It got me thinking about the other breakups I had gone through and the funny, but depressing stories that had come from it. I decided to mash them together to make a simple short that I could make within the confines of covid restrictions.I finally shot the movie on Halloween weekend of 2020 after months of rewrites and rehearsals. It was made with a crew of only two people running camera (Nate Elegino) and sound (Y.J. Gold) with me and Grace Su as actors. Liz Flores did the production design decorating my apartment with a understated but charming valentine decor. It was also my first time shooting with top of the line cinema lenses (Arri Master Primes!)Despite such a simple shoot I ran into a ton of problems. The outdoor scenes had a ton of noise because neighbors were having an outdoor party, sprinklers turned on just as we were ready to roll on a particular scene, and the camera stopped recording for a solid 2-3 hour chunk of one day. A majority of the movie is just me and Grace’s coverage at the table and we performed the whole thing as a single 10-15 minute take and only had enough time to do it twice each. I worked with an amazing editor (James Fitzpatrick), colorist (Taylor Mahoney), sound designer (Brielle Achterhof), and vfx person (Marco van den Bogaard) who added a ton of polish to the movie. It’s by far the best looking movie I’ve made.I’ve always been experimenting with genre and tone with my work. I wanted to explore the sadness that usually goes behind comedy. I think it got closest with this movie. I only had two public screenings of the movie. One where the crowd erupted in laughter and another where they were stunned in silence. I feel like I can't ask for anything more. It didn’t do very well in the festival circuit, but I’m extremely proud of this movie. I’m happy to release it online now for people to see. Feel free to check it out and share if you enjoyed it. Be also on the lookout for my new feature Future Date that I’ve been very busy with the last year or so. We’re also trying to do a crowdfunding campaign to help with post production if anyone is willing to help out on that. Will try to make updates as they come up.

 

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

"Backflip off of wall" Retrospective

 

Getting back to posting about some of my old videos again. This is the second video on my account. This was a random night being bored at the LSU dorms my freshman year. I don't know why, but while completely sober me and my friends decided to see if we could do a backflip off the wall. We did no research on how to do it properly. We just went outside and tried to see if we could do it. 
 
I think I was the only one who actually tried. My thinking was that I needed to try to run up the wall as much as possible and then spring off the wall to pull off the flip. This clearly did not work and I only found out later that what I did was almost the complete opposite of what you're supposed to do.
I didn't get hurt attempting any of these. I actually did it like 5-6 times, but this one was the funniest one. I cut before I get up and brush myself off, ready to go again. I remember my uncle saw the video and thought it was really stupid and asked me "Do you think that's what courage is?" I just looked at him plainly and said "Yes."
 
I never did try doing a backflip off the wall again. But I do think it took courage to just go outside and just try it for no reason. It's also very stupid too, but sometimes there's a bit of overlap.
 

 

Sunday, December 19, 2021

Campaign to save my account on the Youtube Partner Program!

 

I got a notice a few days ago that my Youtube channel would be taken off of the partner program became of a lack of views. I have 30 days to save it if I can bring numbers back up. I haven't been posting lately, but I do want to save my partner status. 
 
I decided to do a mini campaign to get some views on older content. Could make for some interesting reads for anyone that cares.
 



This is apparently my first upload. There were 350 students in my graduating class and as a Wong I was one of the last to be called at graduation. I remember I was so bored that I decided that I was going to do something stupid on stage to make things interesting. I bet the guy behind me $10 that I was going to do an action roll on stage before grabbing my diploma. He didn't think I had it in me. He didn't know the real me. I had no doubts at all even though I had never done "an action roll" before in my life. I walked up the stairs and was trying to figure out the distancing so I wouldn't break my neck or something. My name got called out and I did my dumb little roll and got up and shook my principal's hand. He said "I'm very disappointed in you, Stanley." and I just said thanks and went on my way, but not before realizing I dropped my hat and had to go back to get it. I waited right at the stairs though with my hand out and the guy behind me put a $10 bill in my hand and said "Shit.......". Shout outs to my dad for celebrating in a way I've never heard from him before too.

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Godzilla Party

It's been a very long time since I posted last. A lot has happened in the time since my last short to say the least. I won't get into it, but I did want to take some time to highlight the fact that I'm finally releasing my last short, Godzilla Party.

Three years ago I set out to make my biggest and most ambitious project to date. I wanted to make something that I hadn't seen before and to really push the narrative form. Figuring out the movie was a struggle to say the least, but after doing reshoots and some heavy editing after loads of feedback I finally got the movie to the state that it's currently in. It's a very strange movie, but I can say that I really went for it. I want to list and thank everyone who was involved in making this because it was a lot of people.

Godzilla Party
A couple heads to a party to scout out a "unicorn", believing it to be the key to saving their relationship. The girl hosting the party desperately waits for a guy to show up. Sitcom hilarity ensues, literally.



Executive Producers - Andrew Yeates, Miguel "Space Jam" Degala, and Sean O'Hare
Producers - Byron Q., Stanley Wong
Co-Producers - Jessica Blanc, Felicia Ho, Janna Stucky
Associate Producers - Vu Tra, Peter Su, Dahdeh Daycare, Patrick Dorsey
Directors - Stanley Wong & Travis Ashkenasy
Writers - Stanley Wong & Travis Ashkenasy, Felicia Ho, Claire Jia

Camille - Cynthia San Luis
Leo - Stanley Wong
Emma - Madeleine Hernandez
Nick - Dante Swain
Dan - Jayme Andrews
Frieda - Alexa Giuffre
Frank - Tiger Sheu
Chong - Travis Ashkenasy

1st AD - Phil Fox
2nd AD - Mico Ramos
Production Coordinator - Nathan Hewitt
Cinematographer - Nathaniel Elegino
Camera Operators - Lizzete Flores, Jack Winemiller
Rigging Gaffer - Harper Thomas
Production Designer - Emily Peters
Set Dresser - Harry Du Young
Hair/Makeup Artist - Nikki Orrett
Editor - Phil Fox, Stanley Wong
Sound Editor - Jonathan Lee
Colorist - Taylor Mahony
Sound Mixer - Nico Pierce
Sound Designer - Peter Fineberg
Key Grip - Vince Cruz
Visual Effects - Matt Awad
Casting Director - Crystal Lujan
PAs - Jimmy Chang, Gary Mei
Theme Song - Christopher Del Rosario & Calvin Chiang
Theme Song Singer - Bobby Halvorson
Poster & Shirt Designer - Andrew Tuazon

Saturday, June 1, 2019

New Short!

In 2017 I decided last second to be a part of the AT&T Create-A-Thon. Basically you have to make a short in under 40 hours or so. I had done a 48 hour film competition before and had won so I figured why not? It was a pretty grueling process, but we came out with a pretty good short and we won too!

Since then though, I was in no rush to really do it again. People had asked the next year if I was going to and I declined. This year I was asked again and mostly ignored it until the day of when I turned to my friend Phil Fox and said "Hey, that AT&T thing is happening against this weekend." Then he turned to me and said "DO YOU WANNA DO IT?!" and I thought to myself for a second. Wondered if I could put myself through the nights of little sleep and the stress of it all again and decided.... ok.

So we cobbled together a crew and started going for it. Felicia Ho, a friend from my writers group, agreed to be a writer/producer and Joe Gunawan offered to be the DP and provide his Arri Alexa as the camera. We struggled to get ideas together, but we settled on a concept and Felicia wrote a script in literally 30 minutes! From there we started trying to cast people, get crew, location scout, shot list and we eventually fell asleep around 5AM with an 8 AM call time.

The shoot itself was.... pretty taxing, but it was really fun! We spent nearly 6 hours in a bathroom, which was a little insane. I've also never had my pants down in front of so many people before. But the crew really pushed through. Felicia's friend Maria Musaelyan had never done sound before, but learned quickly and was just happy to be there. Ernie Prieto was the Gaffer/AC and was just amazing. Phil was holding it down as the Assistant Director, even when things seemed dire. Overall we managed to finish shooting within 13 hours though and the footage looked amazing.

The editing process is usually the worst part. Me and my friend Phil Fox usually switch off shifts. But because we were also on set all day, we're really running on fumes. Felicia and her friend Gloria Zhu stuck around through the entire editing process though, which helped a lot. There was a point where I had to make Felicia take over the editing and insert sound effects because I literally couldn't do anything anymore. She was the only one awake while the rest of us slept.

We did all the editing, sound mixing, color grading, graphics, etc and managed to turn the movie in with only 5 minutes left to spare on the deadline. We were really proud of our movie. William Lex Ham was an awesome addition as the game show host, Aaron Aoki was perfect as the "boss", and even Kevin Lee had an amazing cameo being the guy who holds a watermelon.

We showed up to the screening with really high hopes. We.... didn't win.... and the screening for our short messed up twice and they restarted each time, which was a real momentum killer. But that wasn't what was really important! We came out of it with a good short, but more importantly we had a good experience and made a lot of friends. Here's a picture of us celebrating our loss and if you're curious to check out the short it's at the link below that.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Buzzfeed Videos

Whoa, I didn't realized I haven't posted since last year. I guess a lot has happened, but also not a lot. Handful of vacations and mostly a lot of grinding. Career wise the biggest thing was I was supposed to be in the movie Captain Marvel, but I got cut out of it. I was going to make a post out of it, but there's not much to say about it.

I've started working at Buzzfeed again since January and one thing they do is cast within the workforce for the videos. You're allowed to leave work to do it so I've been doing as many of them as I can just because it's a good excuse to break up the work day. Anyways, here are a collection of them I've been in since I've worked there. There will probably be more of them in the future as well.


Monday, December 31, 2018

2018 Year in Review

I've been a little behind in updating this blog. I try to do it once a month, but sometimes there isn't anything to report. Also, I just get lazy and I'm really sure who even reads this. Seeing as how it's the last day of the year I felt like I should try to make a wrap up to summarize how things went. I'm also just copying what I just saw someone else do on their Facebook.

As far as highlights go, I would say the biggest thing that I did all year was producing, writing, directing, and acting in my short Godzilla Party. Budget and length wise it's the biggest thing I've ever done. It'll probably end up being a 15 minute movie, but it cost me about $13,000. I kickstarted $5,000 of it, but that still meant $8,000 of it came out of pocket. So far reception has been pretty good, but it is a pretty weird movie with a new concept so it'll take some time to really get right. I look forward to seeing how it'll do in the 2019 festival circuit.

Second to that I think would be getting 3rd place at the Slamdance Screenplay competition. This whole year was kind of dedicated to me trying to transition more into writing. I've been trying for a few years now to get into various diversity fellowship writing programs, but it was only recently that I decided that I should be focusing on screenwriting contests instead. This was our first one and we did really well so I look forward to seeing how I do in future contests and writing more. We got a lot of interest in the script itself and have sent it out, but haven't quite gotten any meetings just yet. It's definitely a different world getting literary meetings opposed to talent because they still have to read your long ass script first. Will have to followup with everyone in the new year.

As far as acting goes, I booked one small role in a very big movie and one commercial that I got cut out of. Both of which were in the first few months of the year. I thought that meant the year would only get better from that point, but it actually slowed down a lot from there. I actually had less auditions theatrically and commercially then I've had in my entire career. I was actually getting worried that my acting career was maybe on its last limb, but after reading some other posts it seems like everyone was having a really down year. Hopefully things this year will pick up after the Crazy Rich Asian craze. I haven't really experienced it yet, but I've had a lot of friends who have already done really well since then.

I took a voiceover class recently. I always wanted to get into this side of the industry, but got discouraged after an agent told me they couldn't take me on because of my Asian accent (FYI I don't have an Asian accent). It was the first class I had taken for maybe two years and it was great to be in  that environment again. I haven't dived any further into it, but hopefully next year I can get that to be one of the many potential career options.

I got kicked off of the Youtube parter program. I used to get 300k viewers a month and about $150-200 from my channel, but Youtube really went through some big changes and they kicked me out of the program because they claim that I'm reposting someone else's videos? I've gone back and forth with an automated system for months and they won't tell me what that means exactly. It's been really frustrating and has made me care even less about my Youtube channel than I already did. Hopefully I can sort that out because it seems like something that could be easily fixed, but I just haven't figured out the solution yet.

As far as making anything else outside of the bigger short, I think it was only my attempt at doing a Channel 101 short that didn't even make it in. There were a few other opportunities I had to make smaller things, but I think in general I've lost some motivation to do them. They're still fun, but ultimately I feel like I'm kind of growing out of doing the shorter/small scale videos for my Youtube. The paragraph above probably being a big reason. In general I need to just make more stuff though so we'll see what happens.

Regular work wise it's definitely been a tough year. I usually got by doing freelance post production work from editing, assistant editing, coloring, DIT, etc. I usually got most of my work through larger internet companies, but something changed for this year. Apparently a California law got enforced where a job that a full-time person could do can't be done by a freelancer. Even though this was meant to protect the worker, I actually don't want to work full-time because of the loose schedule required to get into acting. This resulted in me getting nearly zero post production jobs through my usual means. That along with getting less auditions in general has really gotten me to rethink my work situation. Something I really intend on figuring out for 2019.

I went to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time this year. It was a pretty eye opening experience. I actually didn't watch a single movie and I kind of wish that I did at least once a day. We actually just went to parties all day and night. Around seven every day. I should be going to more film festivals though. It helps to be around other filmmakers and to just get motivation. It was after going to SXSW for the first time that I came back and made my feature film Steve Chong Finds Out That Suicide Is A Bad Idea. Didn't get THAT motivated this time, but I am going again next month. Was hoping to have something to show there this time, but didn't happen. BUT, I did get a free pass to Slamdance because of the screenplay competition so that kind of counts? It's pretty much on the same street and at the same time.

I usually try to do a bigger international trip every year, but couldn't really afford it this year because of the short. I did go back to Louisiana this summer to hang out with my 10 year old nephew for a week. That was actually a really cool experience. I was basically a kid again for that week. I also did my standard EVO/Vegas trips and Comic-Con, but both of those were pretty standard fare. As a replacement to the international trip, we are doing a 3 day Mexico cruise with the same crew next month. Looking forward to doing that. It's been a while since I've done a cruise and never with a group of friends.

Haven't gotten around to watching all of the award movies just yet, but if I were to pick my favorites of the year I think I'd go with Hereditary. Hard to pick any others for sure just yet. I really enjoyed Into the Spiderverse, but I'll always have a bias toward Phil Lord/Chris Miller projects.

Anyways, I think that just about sums it up. Here's some pictures from the set of the short Godzilla Party just because.