entry by Victric

I stared at my computer screen for a good 30mins, wondering what should I write. Blogging is something very alien to me, and YES, I am not in touch with technology and trend, but somehow, in some strange ways, it does remind me of the class diary that we have to write during my primary school days.

Of course, I am very very very happy to be doing my residency with Objectifs. It gives me the opportunity to work on some experimental videos, which I felt I should engage in for a long time. I have this acute interest in experimental works. Works that is abstract but full of meaning. Works that touches you in many different levels. Works that awakens the subconscious.

I believe, there is a huge lack of experimental films in Singapore. There is not even a scene or platform for experimental works. Most of the time, whenever I watch a local short film, I cannot help but have this feeling that somehow I have seen this film somewhere before, worse still, from another local short film. It gives me the impression that there is this “Template” local filmmakers are using to recycle over and over again in their films. I rarely come across a local film that is adopting experimentalism.

We need to do experimental works, I strongly believe in that. We need to get experimental and be experimental. That is where and when the local film scene will grow. Many successful filmmakers started doing experimental works before they evolve into a narrative that echoes their own voice and signature style. And many good films derive their inspirations from experimental works as well. Local filmmakers, in my opinion, are just way too safe, not willing to take risks or explore untouched boundaries. And many young local filmmakers are simply too eager to make a name for themselves. I don’t know if that is good or bad, but I hope while focusing on certain narrative, they should not overlooked the need to be experimental.

I'd like to start a small movement for experimental works, if possible, with some help and support from different enthusiasts. I am no experimental filmmaker myself, but I am learning to be one. So, if you have any experimental film or video, and you like to share it with me, do send it to Objectifs, attention it to me. I’d like to take a look. Once I collected enough works, I may like to propose to Objectifs to do a experimental film screening or something.

I have just completed my first piece of experimental work, called “Requiem for a Somnambulist”. And hopefully, in the near future I can share it with you guys.

Let’s get alternative and think out of the box.


- Victric Thng

RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES IN MARCH

To register for workshops or screenings, please email info@objectifs.com.sg

1) Film Screening: Classic Cult Horror Special
The Spider Will Kill You/ Tourist Trap (1979) (Films by David Schmoeller)
Date: 1 March 2007, Thur
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Singapore Art Museum, Glass Museum, 71 Bras Basah Road
Admission is free by registration. To register, please email info@objectifs.com.sg or call 6339 3068.
Nominated for a Student Academy Award, “The Spider Will Kill You” (1974) was later made into the feature film “Tourist Trap”, which was made in 24 days and has since had a cult following and has devoted websites still talking about it.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director.

Tourist Trap Synopsis:
An eerie and deserted wax museum, Slauson’s Lost Oasis, is the site for spine-tingling terror where four unsuspecting young travelers are lured into a very deadly "Tourist Trap." Slauson is the reclusive and bizarre owner of the attraction, which is actually more like a macabre chamber of horrors. The grotesque and frightening mannequins in this sordid side-show are only the beginning of the murderous mayhem and nightmarish madness to come. Starring Chuck Connors and Jocelyn Jones.


2) Workshop: Staging for Camera
Date: 3 March 2007, Saturday
Time: 1.00-5.00pm
Venue: Objectifs
Instructor: David Schmoeller
This hands-on workshop teaches directing concepts and practical skills that will enhance a young director's craft. Topics include the psychology of camera placement (the psychology of the shot) / basic coverage versus stylized shooting / cheating for camera / matching problems & solutions / how to look at dailies & spot problems. The instructor will show the complete dailies of some of his movies and talk about both the completed and edited scenes to further explain the process of shooting, the shooting order, and then how it all cuts together.

3) Talk: Styling, Make-up and Wardrobe for Films
Date: 6 March 2007, Tuesday
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Objectifs
Instructor: Victric Thng
Admission is free by registration. To register, please email info@objectifs.com.sg or call 6339 3068.
Victric Thng invites guest speakers from the industry to share their expertise on styling, make-up and wardrobe for films and how the right approach can enhance the story. Samples of work will be shown by industry practitioners. Guests will bring samples of work they have done for other films.

4) Scriptwriting Workshop
Date: 10 March 2007, Saturday
1 session x 4 hr
Time: 1.00-5.00pm
Venue: Objectifs
Instructor: David Schmoeller
An intensive scriptwriting workshop where students will learn exercises and writing skills to help them move from the short film genre to feature film. The instructor will draw examples from indie films such as “Nepoleon Dynamite” which started out as the short film “Peluca”. The workshop will cover story structure, have writing exercises and provide reference scripts, and round off with the topics of copyright and festivals.

5) Film Screening: Puppetmaster (1989), Directed by David Schmoeller
Date: 13 March 2007, Tuesday
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Singapore Art Museum, Glass Museum, 71 Bras Basah Road
Admission is free by registration. To register, please email info@objectifs.com.sg or call 6339 3068.
Celebrated cult horror writer/director David Schmoeller’s “Puppetmaster” became a big hit on the video market after its modest but noticeable theatrical release.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director.

Synopsis:
A group of people are called to Bodega Bay Inn by their old friend Neil Gallagher, only to learn once they arrive that he is dead. All happen to be psychics who were befriended by Neil who was trying to find Ancient Egyptian techniques of imbuing objects with life. But then a handful of animated toys created by the legendary toymaker Andre Toulon, all with various lethal novelty attachments built into their bodies, slip out of Neil's coffin and start killing the guests. Starring Paul Le Matt


6) Film screening: The Grace Lee Project (2005) Directed by Grace Lee
Date: 21 March, Wed
1 session x 2 hr
Time: 7.30pm-9.30pm
Venue: Singapore Art Museum, Glass Hall, 71 Bras Basah Road
The screening is followed by a Q&A with the Director.
Admission is free by registration. To register, please email info@objectifs.com.sg or call 6339 3068.
Filmmaker Grace Lee won a Student Academy Award for her short film “Barrier Device” which starred Sandra Oh (of “Grey’s Anatomy” fame). In 2005, she made a feature documentary called “The Grace Lee Project” which went on to win the Rockerfeller Foundation Media Arts Grant, Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Digital Media and the Emerging Director Award at the Asian American International Film Festival. This will be the first time these two films are shown together in Singapore.

The Grace Lee Project Synopsis:
When award-winning Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee was growing up in Missouri, she was the only Grace Lee she knew. In New York and California, however, everyone she met seemed to know “another Grace Lee”. But why did they assume that all Grace Lees were reserved, dutiful, piano playing bookworms? The filmmaker plunges into a clever, highly unscientific investigation into all those Grace Lees who break the mold – from a fiery social activist to a rebel who tried to burn down her high school! With wit and charm, this film puts a hilarious spin on the eternal question “what’s in a name?”

Reviews:
“Funny and offbeat. Told with humour and insight.” – Los Angeles Times
“Delightful! A funny but complex meditation on identity, ethnicity and cultural expectations.” – Variety

7) Documentary Filmmaking Workshop
Date: 31 March, Saturday
1 session x 4 hr
Time: 1-5pm
Venue: Objectifs
Instructor: Grace Lee
This intensive workshop will explore in detail documentary filmmaking topics to enhance a
filmmaker's development in this growing genre of filmmaking.

Greetings from Los Angeles

Hello Objectifs community!

Happy Year of the Golden Pig! I'm really sorry to have missed this momentous occasion in Asia, but am looking forward to being in Singapore later this spring. Just thought I would say hello here and introduce myself as three weeks in Singapore already seems to be too short a stay...I hope I can hit the ground running as soon as I arrive. Coming from LA, I know I will already lose a day...

I'm Grace Lee and I will be the filmmaker in residence in late March and early April. I work in both fiction and documentary, and sometimes, like in the last film I made, the lines between fiction and reality are quite blurred. I have made several short films and am probably best known for a personal documentary I completed two years ago called THE GRACE LEE PROJECT which screened in many festivals, in several theaters in the US, and is currently screening on the Sundance channel. The film is a humorous look at an identity crisis (mine) and the worlds revolving around many different women who share my oh so common Asian American name: Grace Lee. The film looks at the stereotypes surrounding the name, and Asian Americans in general but as the movie has gotten a wider audience (it was most recently broadcast in S Korea), many people have told me that the concerns are almost universal. I know that there are several people in Singapore with this name, and while I'm at Objectifs, I hope to meet some of them. If anybody knows of a Grace Lee, please introduce me to them! Or at least let them know about www.gracelee.net

Most recently, I completed my first feature film AMERICAN ZOMBIE, which premiered in January at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and which will be going to the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas next. The film is about two filmmakers who team up to document a community of high-functioning zombies in Los Angeles, and their struggles to gain acceptance in the human community. It is a dark comedy and basically a deadpan (pun intended) look into life in 21st century America. Since it is also made by a documentary filmmaker named Grace Lee, I like to call it a personal horror film. You can read more about it and watch a trailer here. By the way, how popular is myspace in Singapore?

While at Objectifs, I will be working on another feature film script and hope to be inspired by the location and the people I meet. I also hope to do a small media project involving Grace Lees from Singapore, so like I said, if you know anyone who fits the bill, please introduce me! I will also run a documentary workshop while at Objectifs, and conduct a couple of seminars about contemporary Asian American feature filmmakers. A lot is going on in the Asian diasporic filmmaking community over here and I think there are some exciting trends happening on both sides of the Pacific.

I think that is it for now. Really glad to be part of this, and thanks to everyone at Objectifs for setting this up. In the mean time, if anyone wants to reach me, please do so at grace AT gracelee DOT net

See you soon,
Grace

from David Schmoeller

Objectifs Residency & Lab for Photography and Film

I’m very excited about my residency at Objectifs and look forward to meeting everyone involved. Even though our time-frames at the lab are staggered, I look forward to meeting filmmaker-in-residence Victric Thng and to see his program at the March 27th screening.

Even though filmmaker-in-residence Grace Lee and I will not be in Singapore at the same time, I hope to meet her in Los Angeles at some point, as I have family there and visit often. I would like to see if I can possibly screen the films of both filmmakers in Las Vegas as part of the UNLV Short Film Archive screening series that I program.

I saw Aaron Wilson’s residency project at the Objectifs Films screening at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and was much impressed. I also very much want to meet Royston Tan as I am a big fan of his work.

At the suggestion of Yuni Hadi and based on previous filmmaker-in-residence Aaron Wilson’s project (filmed in Australia and Singapore), for my artistic project at Objectifs, I wrote a short film script called WEDDING DAY that tells the story of three brides: one in Las Vegas, one in Paris and one in Singapore. Each bride is in her wedding dress when we first see them – and something unexpected (even calamitous) has happened to each.

I filmed the Paris segment while traveling through Paris on my way to the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival where I made a Media Rendez-vous presentation and collected new shorts packages for the archives. The Cinematheque Francaise in Paris had scheduled a TRIBUTE TO DAVID SCHMOELLER screening (PLEASE KILL MR. KINSKI, CRAWLSPACE and TOURIST TRAP) to coincide with my trip to Clermont so I decided to shoot this very ambitious section of WEDDING DAY during the day of the screening.

We managed to shoot scenes at the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame cathedral, a flower market, the sidewalk along the Seine river, in the metro, and at a cemetery – a very busy shoot). I will write a separate blog to describe this difficult but ultimately very successful shoot – and tell you about my amazing Parisian cast & crew!

The Singapore segment of WEDDING DAY will be shot during my Objectifs residency in March, 2007. The Las Vegas portion of the story will be shot in April-May, 2007 as part of the Master Directing class I teach for the Department of Film at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

At some point, I will try to make a link to the script available on-line as well as information on cast & crew in Paris (stills & dailies) – and the Singapore team when assembled.

Please feel free to participate in this blog – or email me at schmoeller@cox.net with questions, thoughts, anything at all.

I will be putting together my Singapore production team soon and I look forward to the staging and screenwriting classes I will teach at Objectifs and my two screenings at the Singapore Art Museum.

Until next time, I am filmmaker-in-residence

David Schmoeller