Contemporary Vietnamese Film-making

I have just read an article about the Vietnamese film making in Vietnam Cultural Profile then suddenly wondered, yeah, why not write something about Vietnamese film rather than keep finding information about foreign ones. The site above has 6 parts for the Film section:

_ Early film-making
_ Film-making in the north 1945-1975
_ Film-making in the south 1945-1975
_ Film-making after the Reunification
_Contemporary Vietnamese film-making
_ Current Issues

For so long, I've really wanted to summarize the contemporary period's Vietnamese film so that I can easily find the information again when i need because I just heard, saw and read about Vietnam films at sudden times on TV and newspapers. I want to rearrange, put them in timeline, so i can understand the steps in clearer order.

The Vietnamese film making field was really in a hard time when it's a fresh step to the market economy (1986) and there's a dominance of importing films from Asia, Europe and USA. The popularity didn't depend on the film content much, there was real hard time competing with foreign sources, profits and the market. "Many leading film's actors and actress turned their talents to other more lucrative work, such as television" while there were still film makers that kept their dreams and began to cooperate with their oversea counterparts to produce great films in that time. The government, at the same time, also opened up the regulations for film production, distribution and exhibition. It's a light for developing film making in Vietnam.


Vietnamese film in this period also began to get the attection from foreign viewers in western Europe and neighbor Asia-Pacific countries.

Before the viewers' thoughts of changing, Vietnamese feature film directors were beginning to explore new themes and styles:

Trần Văn Thủy
Hà Nội trong mắt ai? (‘Hà Nội Through Whose Eyes’, 1983)
Chuyện tử tế (‘Story of Good Behaviour’, 1987)

Trần Anh Trà
Người công giáo huyện Thống Nhất (‘A Catholic in Thống Nhất District’, 1985).

By the early 1990s Vietnamese cinema was appearing regularly on the film festival and art-house circuit in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Films achieving international acclaim (include Tran Van Thuy's)

Trần Vũ, Anh và em (‘Siblings’, 1986)

Ðặng Nhật Minh’s Cô gái trên sông (‘Girl on the River’, 1987)
Nguyển Khắc Lợi’s Tướng về hưu (‘The Retired General’, 1988),

_ Younger directors, notably
Việt Linh
Gánh xiếc rong (‘The Itinerant Circus’, 1989)
Dấu ấn của quỷ (‘The Evil Sign’, 1992)
Lê Dân
Xương rồng đen (‘Black Cactus’, 1991)
Lưu Trọng Ninh
Canh bạc (‘Gambling’, 1991)
Hãy tha thứ cho em (‘Please Forgive Me’, 1992)
Lê Hoàng
Lương tâm bé bỏng (‘Little Conscience’, 1992)
Lê Xuân Hoàng
Vị đắng tình yêu (‘Bitter Love’, 1992)
Vương Ðức
Cỏ lau (‘The Reed’, 1993).

_ Contemporary social themes was explored:
Nguyễn Thanh Vân’s Cây bạch đàn vô danh (‘The Unknown Eucalyptus Tree’, 1994)
Vũ Xuân Hùng’s Giải hạn (‘Misfortune’s End’, 1996)
Lê Hoàng’s Ai xuôi Vạn Lý (‘Journey Downstream to Vạn Ly’, 1996)
Ðoàn Minh Tuấn’s Hoa của trời (‘Flower of God’, 1996)
Lưu Trọng Ninh
Ngã ba Ðồng Lộc (‘Ðồng Lộc Junction’, 1997)
Bến không chồng ('Wharf of Widows', 1998)
Vương Ðức’s Những người thợ xẻ (‘The Woodcutters’, 1998)

_ In recent years :

Vietnamese cinema has attained numerous successes at international film festivals, both in Asia and beyond.

Trần Văn Thủy's moving documentary Tiếng vĩ cầm ở Mỹ Lai ('The Sound of the Violin at Mỹ Lai', 1999) won Best Short Film prize at the 43rd Asia Pacific Film Festival in Thailand (1999),

Nguyễn Thanh Vân (son of veteran director Hải Ninh): Đời cát ('Sandy Life')
Việt Nam hosted the 44th Festival in Hà Nội in December 2000
It was already the recipient of a special prize from the International Amiens Film Festival, won Best Picture Award for its director

Bùi Thạc Chuyên's Cuốc xe đêm ('Night Cyclo Trip', 2000) won third prize in the Short Film category at the Cannes Film Festival 2000, Europe

Việt Linh
Mê Thảo thời vang bóng (‘Glorious Time in Mê Thảo Hamlet’, 2002)
Won the golden Rosa Camuna Award at the 2003 Bergamo Film Meeting in Italy and was also entered in competition at the 2003 Namur International Film Festival in France.

_ Screening in European art-house cinemas.
Việt Linh
Chung cư (‘Communal Living Quarters, 1999)
Ðặng Nhật Minh
Mùa ổi (‘Guava Season’, 2001)
Vương Đức
Của rơi (‘A Dropped Gift’)

_ One of the most successful local films of recent years:

Phi Tiến Sơn
Lưới trời (‘Heaven’s Net’) "a film about corruption which closely mirrors the recent trial of Năm Cam’s criminal gang in Hồ Chí Minh City

Lê Hoàng
Gái nhảy (‘Bar Girls’, 2002) "which dealt with the tough reality of HIV/AIDS and the seedy underbelly of Hồ Chí Minh City’s nightlife, breaking all box office records and taking nearly 15 billion VNĐ (cUS$1 million) on its release in February 2003"
Lọ lem hè phố (‘Street Cinderella’)

The opening attitude in film-making, as a result, needs cooperation to exchange, expand experiences and also the capital for Vietnamese film industry. For that it came many films that was made by overseas Vietnamese.

Trần Anh Hùng (France), with first feature Mùi đu đủ xanh ('The Scent of Green Papaya', 1993)
Won the Camera d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival,
Xích lô ('Cyclo', 1995)
Mùa hè chiều thẳng đứng ('Vertical Rays of Summer', 2000)



Tony Bùi (USA)
Ba mùa ('Three Seasons', 1998) won three prizes at the Sundance International Film Festival in 1998 and became Việt Nam's first-ever Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film at the 2000 Academy Awards
(Tran Anh Hung's 'Vertical Rays of Summer' was also submitted for the 2001 Academy Awards)

_ More recent international co-productions :

Nguyễn Phan Quang Bình and Jonathan Foo (Việt Nam and Singapore)
Việt Nam War film, Vũ khúc con cò (‘Song of the Stork’, 2002)

Nguyễn Khắc Lợi and Yuan Shiji (the Việt Nam Writers’ Association Film Studio and the Zhoujiang Film Studio in China’s Guangdong Province)
The documentary drama Nguyễn Ái Quốc ở Hồng Công (2003)
"which tells the story of Hồ Chí Minh’s life in Hong Kong during the 1930s"

Oversea Vietnamese Director Nguyễn Võ Nghiêm Minh, winner at the 2004 Chicago Film Festival.
Mùa len trâu (‘Buffalo Boy’, 2003), a collaboration between Giải Phóng Film Studio, France’s 3B Productions and Belgium’s NOVAK

"Philip Noyce’s remake of The Quiet American on the streets of Hồ Chí Minh City, Hội An, Ninh Bình and Hà Nội in 2001 marked the beginning of a serious attempt by the government to promote Việt Nam as an attractive location for foreign filmmakers"

_ Updated from other sources:
Áo Lụa Hà Đông (Lưu Huỳnh) won Audience Award Pusan Film Festival 2006 [link]

Dòng Máu Anh Hùng "The Rebel" (April 2007)
Buena Park's Charlie Nguyen, won the grand jury prize (narrative feature) at the recently concluded Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival [link]

Logo

I agreed to help my friend in his final assignment lately. He needs a logo for the virtual pizza company and asked me to create one.

I thought it a chance to use what i have learned to create a logo. Actually i need more time to create a real logo but the time here isn't much so i did it to practice my skill and apply gestalt theory.

I did searching and found out most of the pizza's logos are pictures of a pizza that was simply illustrated.My friend, by the way, want me to do that also, including a pizza image in the logo. I tried that but the result is it looked like a poster rather than a logo.

Then, since I love typography and love to play with them, i changed my path to create the logo using fonts. I found fonts that are sans serif and round - it should look like kind of sauce or ingredients in pizza. So found one that pleased me to do the logo.

Think of the rule in gestalt, I'm quite interested in the closure that our eyes can close the image without a line to connect. From this, I made an arrangement of the font "PP" (the name of the pizza company "Paddy Pizza")to look like 2 pieces of pizza - the dots are gathered to create lines that form a triangle (a pizza piece)

Please give me your comments on this so I can improve it and update a latter one in this entry. Thank you!

How to play Jew's harp (khomus)

Making sounds sometimes need tools to do. I found out this tool that quite helpful in the sound producing for film and also music. I don't know if it has in Vietnam but the sound it produces is really impressive and modern.

The video below is a short clip that describe the tool Jew Harp and way to make it work.

Tricks in Making Sound

We got a last class with nice effects about the sound in film. I’m interested in the sound in film and appreciate what it will help us in our work. A film with clear sound can make your heart feel more than the silent one. I have searched on the Net and found out some tricks that may help you with your project if you intend to record sound yourself.

Below are just 2 popular sounds that you may encounter and here you know some ways expert did to make them. You may come up with new ways to do better but first take a look at how they do to have experience.

Body and face hits

Rolled up newspapers being hit with a (soft wooden) stick are meant to be good for body and face hits.
Paul Arnold
Gordon Hall

Hitting real meat, use a baseball bat to hit leather jacket wrapped around baseball gloves, add breaking of chicken bones.
Ben Burtt

A regular old bull whip crack is good for those over-the-top Street Fighter type punches. Don Diekneite

I've used the newspaper rolled up approach in the past and it's hard to get a satisfying sound out of it. One of my favorites is wet mud, jump up and down, hit it with a bat, add some foliage for extra texture. Rotten fruit is always good for flesh squishes. The other day I was blending some carrots with a hand blender which created a wonderful consistency, simply pulling out the blender made some lovely squish noises.
Paul Weir

Heartbeat

In my sound effects research of the old radio days, I understand that to create heartbeats, they placed the arm of a record player on a towel or other kind of soft fabric - with the needle actually touching the cloth. Light taps on the fabric translated as low-end thumps when amplified through the record player. The "heartbeats" could then be performed as needed. I don't know how "good" they sounded, but it's certainly one method.
Steve Lee

A buddy of mine created a very nice heartbeat using a large plastic trash can. The plastic popping in and out was very controllable and created two distinct in/out "pumping" sounds.
Bob Kessler

Take a piece of fabric and hold it with a loose grip. Then quickly stretch the fabric for a pounding, heartlike sound.
David Filskov

Bare your chest (!), position a microphone pointing at your shoulder region and then make a quick inward pull with your arms and hands and stop abruptly. Keeps you warm as well :)

David Filskov

Any kind of thump run through a lowpass filter sequenced in a reasonably rhythmic sequence will give you the effect. It might be fun to throw in some "flushing blood" kind of liquid.
Jamey Scott

Anyone try contact mics on a pulse point? This might work well if you also employ a BP cuff (don't try it on the one in your neck :)

David Steinwedel

I double the heartbeat with a kick drum. Filter anything below 60Hz, add an insane amount of mid frequency.
Jerome Boiteau

Epic Sound

Flash Tutorial

While surfing net to find flash tutorials, i came across this nice animation that is easy to follow. There are cartoon characters that show you the basic things in Flash. Very helpful. And you can find yourself there when watching this tutorial story :)
Hope you like it.

Follow this link

Multimedia Application

Found this video really interesting and I love this kind of application too. It reminds me of the performance of San Khau Nhap "Nhìn". This also use multimedia to lead the viewers to the story they want us to see. Think i will try this kind someday :) but first it needs a clear organization and story. Let's take a look.

Hands Collection for HIV Poster

A social welfare poster is my latest assignment I've done. The HIV is my choice but how can I relate this sensitive topic to what people visually understand about HIV. And also understand what I will put in my poster.

There are many posters in my city that just contains words - and it ends up with the problem is not anyone can read and therefore we lost a certain number of viewers. Our purpose less or more has limitation.

My poster has images and also text on it. I tried to put the concept on the image and also want a relationship between the text and the image part.

The hand, is where you and the world touch each other. Everybody that have normal physical body got hands and fingers. And the only differences that we will notice is the appearance of them. It can be the skin colors, the shape of the fingers, the size, the decoration, the smoothness ... And your hand is no doubt physically the same as an HIV one. Why you cannot recognize them in public (when they're still strong) is that they're just like you. You just have a restriction yourself and began to feel scared when you see them in the hospital or somewhere for HIV patients.

So why just judge them like other people besides you?