Long time no post! I have a treat for those who actually read my posts. A few months ago I was approached by a few friends about the National Film Challenge. It is an annual event sponsored by those that brought us the 48 hour film project, as well as the KDHX Community Media. The idea behind this challenge was to give filmmakers one weekend to put together a short film. When Michael and Sunny from Down the Block Films, of which I am proudly a part of, told me that they wanted to take part, I gladly joined them as head editor for the project.

As soon as Sunny signed up for the challenge we began our recruitment phase to gather team members from our friends and colleagues. We called forth our former classmates in the film majors at UCSD, assistance from those who studied film at community colleges, and even those from our college fellowships.

Once we had picked out our team and assigned the major roles (director, editor, producer, actors…) we began to prepare ourselves for our film. We began to watch movies to get story ideas, examine shots, study edits, and of course, to enjoy a decent movie.

The difficulty with this project is the fact that we don’t find out until the challenge begins what are genre will be. This means the screenplay is created on spot, the shots are planned out, everything is shot, cut, edited, and finalized within this one weekend.

My task of editing left the last half of the film to me. What I love about being an editor is the amount of control I receive in affecting the story. Through the use of color, tempo, and sound, I have the ability to affect how the viewers will perceive the film.

Hopefully I did a good enough job, though sadly enough we did not make it to the top 15. And now without further ado, our short film, Measure of a Man.

Tonight was the night I took a step forward, backwards. It began with a simple phonecall, one that sent me through time and space back to when I was a child. I never realized our ghetto beginnings, hanging out in the locker room after swim practice next to the orange rusty lockers. The way we were influenced, the way we were immature, the way we acted, it was a miracle how we’ve turned out 13 years later. College graduates, married, jobless, buying homes, finding jobs, this is not how we remembered ourselves. Talk of old times, old friends, old faces. The time a bra was stolen, the time when someone almost had a concussion, the time where any number of fights threatened to break out. These events shaped us to be who we are now; yet, the new children, the new era, they didn’t have the wise, older teammates that we had. Lost direction, no guidance, what will become of them? When will we return to take up what has been lost? As I journeyed back through time I discovered long lost memories and found new ones. Digging up the ghosts of past I saw familiar and unfamiliar faces, distant, yet we have both been shaped by a simple connection ages ago.

DCD. Daly City Dolphins. A small team we were. We never had aspirations of being a large and fast team like those around us. We were a family. And when we tore through the competition at championships we never thought we’d see, people looked at us. Recognized us. How can a team of misfits, out of shape short little asians, ever hope to beat a team who has 2 pools the size of our own? How? Nobody knows. But we take home the gold. My journey here complete I continued forward, always facing forward even when hurtling backwards through time.