film – Page 5 – Shuling Yong

Living life the conscious way…

It’s been exactly a month since graduation and life’s still a whirlwind of events happening each day. After a nice 10-day trip to visit relatives and tour NY & Canada, it was straight back to Chi-town to start on my internship with Conscious Planet Media.

So much has been packed into the last two weeks that i’ve been on the job. Had the chance to film everything from high school students doing green collar work, to the Chicago Mayor Daley at the unveiling of the nation’s first organic rooftop garden, to adventures at the Green City Market in Lincoln Park! Also just finished editing Conscious Living TV’s latest episode on green luxury travel, which was fun, although i have to admit that it’s hard to watch footage of other people getting massages in a spa; It makes my back suddenly crave for one too!

It’s been an awesome opportunity to meet people involved in the green community as well. I realize it truly takes a network of people, from the educators to the policy-makers to the business owners and media, fighting for the same cause to make a big impact. I’m definitely picking up healthier eating habits and various little things i can do to live consciously. I love getting to put my media production skills to meaningful use! Go green! :)

July 18, 2009July 29, 2009 by yongshuling Categories: Conscious Living TVTags: chicago, Conscious Living TV, Conscious Planet Media, documentary, earth, eco, environment, fairmont, film, green, mayor daley, organic, uncommon ground Leave a comment

Marshall’s Memories… the making of

For our final RTVF 380 project, Marshall, Jory, Jane and I had initialy conceptualized a piece about the state of communication in today’s world, where it can be superficial and distilled, stripped of the richness of personal connection in electronic media. Marshall's Memories Shoot People can be so close (in proximity) and yet so far away (on an emotional level). We wanted to tell it through the story of a lonely guy finds himself engaged in communication on a far deeper level through letters in a bottle.

We just learned to shoot with the Arriflex BL-16, a pretty cool, but kinda awkwardly-shaped and heavy 16mm film camera.The first major hurdle to using this camera, was learning to load film into the magazine in complete darkness. It’s difficult enough threading the film through the little nooks and crannies of the equipment when you can see it during practice! Doing it completely blind in a changing bag to avoid accidental light exposure was definitely a challenge.

Marshall's Memories Shoot 3 We shot this in 16 hours. Got ourselves out of bed at 4am so we could have a beautiful sunrise backdrop on north beach. Mother nature didn’t seem to like our idea and decided to make it a cloudy day. Since we had no car and no dolly, our trusty dorm shopping cart served as both equipment transport and as a moving seat for me as i held the camera.

We waited for the evening magic hour to shoot our last scene so we’d have sunlight shining through the multi-colored glass bottles that lined the Marshall's Memories Shoot2 windowsill to cast pretty colors onto the table.

We also experimented shooting a long take at 12fps so it’d have a sped-up effect after film processing. It turned out pretty well, considering we were racing against time to get the shot before daylight went away.

Overall, a great experience!