Online Short Film Contests and Finding a Great New Production Partner

Starting off this blog by saying that 2012 has been looking like tremendous year for me so far.  While it kind of started slow with a whole bunch of projects and jobs falling through, things started turning around after taking a chance working with a new director and meeting a new creative partner in the process.

School of Seven Bells - The Night - Directed by Zac Moss

I had been cast in Zac Moss' contest entry for  the School of Seven Bells "The Night" music video contest alongside Angie Palmer, an actress who recently returned to Hong Kong after spending several years in the U.S. and that I had met at a 48 Hour Film Project meet up a week or so before.

We seemed to hit it off well as an on-screen couple/adversaries (just watch the video from the link above to see what I mean) so we decided to work together again.

After meeting up to decide on what kind of project we should work on next, we came to the conclusion that we both needed to work on an actual love story with a happy ending, since neither of us had done that before.  I myself had a few "chasing after the girl who ends up killing me in the end" roles already, one being with Angie herself.  hehe

Coincidentally, around that time, we heard about an online short film contest held by One2Free that asked filmmakers to finish a love story.  So we decided to go for it.

So we pulled together a team of four, with Angie and I coming up with the story and starring in the film, me directing, Jona Lam as Cinematographer and Jae Leung as our third cast-member and we shot our film in Tsim Sha Tsui and Central across one day.

And here is "Fast Love" the film we submitted into the contest.

The end result.... a winner!  We won the grand prize for the contest, the first time I've won for anything I've directed.  You can see mine and Angie's excitement at the award ceremony in Mongkok.

Here's a pic of me on the big screen in the One2Free store during the awards ceremony screening.

And so a wonderful friendship and production partnership is born!  Keep an eye out for more cool stuff from Angie and I as we come up with new films and music videos to produce and showcase.  :)

Reposted from joefiorello.blogspot.hk