Thursday, September 8, 2016

Interpretations Contest entry Molotov Cocktail

There's this contest that's run by YOMYOMF, which is an Asian media blog of sorts. The whole point of the contest was to make a short using only the lines "Don't do that. Of Course. I have my doubts. What is it?" We were initially hesitant to do the contest at all because a lot of the previous examples seemed very much like products of their limitations and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on a short that would just end up feeling like it only belongs in the contest. We dug up one of our old ideas that required no dialogue though and just added the four lines in. Ultimately, I feel like we made a short that stands apart from the contest and works on it's own.

I found out today that we didn't even make the top 15, which came as kind of a surprise because I really thought we had made something special considering the limitations. That being said, there could be a number of reasons why it wasn't chosen. There's some great camera work by Nate Elegino, who I worked with for the first time, and music by my longtime music collaborator Tyler Koontz and even though we made a decent version of the molotov cocktail explosion in the end, Tyler Kelley who did the explosion in my Hand Fart movie provided VFX to really take it to the next level. Jes Vu Produced and did all of the graphics and was awesome to work with too.

Lately I've been putting a lot of effort in contests and grants and haven't been coming up too successful just yet. Kind of wondering if I should switch strategies. Anyways, this is a great short that sprouted from the simple idea of me wanting to actually throw a molotov cocktail and wanting to create a music montage of sorts like in the beginning of the movie "Up". We actually tried to throw a real molotov cocktail in our desert AirBnb location and failed miserably. It is hilariously captured in the video below.
A video posted by Stanley Wong (@swong37) on

The next thing I'm working on is a short for the HBO visionaries contest that was recently announced. I have to make a 10-15 minute movie that has something to do with Asian Identity. I have a limited sense of Asian identity since I grew up in Louisiana and pretty much was just the only Asian. I do have an idea I'm working on that'll be inspired by the short below. For those of you that don't know, it's the short Vin Diesel made to get discovered. Steven Spielberg saw it and put him in Saving Private Ryan. Anyways, hopefully something can come of that. If not, at least I will have made another movie.