A light bulb!

So it's a full moon this weekend, which makes tonight the perfect night for bright ideas! As most of you know, I moved to LA to pursue a documentary film-making career. Before relocating, I had posted Myspace blogs on two of my ideas for a feature documentary. One of them, which we'll call Reprezent, is about Asian-American hip-hop culture. The other, Cover Girls, is about the portrayal of white female victims in violent crime news reporting. I also kept a second blog for Cover Girls. If you read the blog for Reprezent, you'll see that the list of folks I was interested in covering included the trio Far East Movement, three guys from LA who had nothing more than a mix tape out at the time I wrote that blog. You'll also see that they somehow found this webpage and were the first ones to comment on it. So from that, I ended up meeting their manager and even working at their office for a brief period. Eventually, I got my job at Intervention and they ended up adding a fourth member and releasing albums, the latest one of which includes iTune's current # 1 most downloaded track "Like a G6." They're the first Asian-American artists to top the iTunes charts.



My vision for the kind of film Reprezent or Cover Girls would be is huge, so I never thought they'd be projects I'd be able to get off the ground until I secure hundreds of thousands in funding. So lately, I've been focusing on smaller format projects such as videos for the web or short documentaries. I'm fortunate enough to be able to borrow the cameras at Intervention, and also to have a friend who is willing to shoot with his camera. I am working at a turtle's pace since I can only shoot and edit on my free time, but it's still manageable.

One of the projects I recently shot on a whim was the meetup of members of HalfKorean.com. My friend Mike told me about it since he and his girlfriend were gonna go. Mike is half-Vietnamese, Sue-Na is half-white, and they're both half-Korean. I once asked them if I could shoot them as part of a reality show on half-Korean dating. I think they said no, but that night, Mike was nice enough to suggest that I come to the meetup the next afternoon and film it. My schedule was open so I said, "Sure, why not!" And the rest is history! These guys were two of the people I ended up interviewing at the meetup.



On the left is Rakaa of the hip-hop crew Dilated Peoples, whose members also include Filipino turntablist DJ Babu. On the right is Carlos, one of the pioneering MC's of the Korean hip-hop group Uptown.





It has been almost a week since I filmed at this meetup, and it only occurred to me tonight that through my work that day, I technically shot my first two interviews for Reprezent. It's quite possible that I have enough resources and subjects in California that I can launch and complete a feature documentary without waiting for someone to fund me. I would still only be able to work on it during my free time since I'll have to keep a job. So it would take probably years to complete, but at least it wouldn't be entirely out of reach! I'm excited!