A few days ago, I was informed that my HBO program, “East of Main Street: Asians Aloud,” won an award at the 2010 NAMIC Excellence in Multicultural Marketing Awards (EMMA)! It’s always nice to hear when a lot of hard work gets recognition. Congrats to the entire team at HBO and all the wonderful freelancers that I got to bring on for this project. Let’s hope next year can build upon its success!

The viewership numbers and reviews also came in very strong for “East of Main Street” and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the numbers were through the roof and beat out much better known programming in the category (though I can’t name names of those programs here). Thanks to everyone who watched and passed word along to get this small program get noticed!

In other news, I’ve been busy doing lots of other fun projects that I can’t wait to share with the world! Right now I’m working with the creative forces at Ogilvy on a campaign for SAP, where we showcase the work SAP has done with great companies like Skullcandy, Pinkberry, Forbes and Discovery Channel. We have gotten some awesome footage and interviews and I’m really excited to see how the edit turns out. It’s my first time directing for this team at Ogilvy and it’s been a lot of fun! And shooting for Pinkberry has gotten our entire crew addicted to their frozen yogurt. It’s a funny sight to see a group of sweaty men with equipment lined up to get some more Pinkberry at the end of the shoot day.

Other than that, there are a few cool music videos on the horizon and many more projects that are still in their creative infancy. Looking forward to keeping busy and making good work with great friends throughout the rest of the year!

My HBO directorial debut, “East of Main Street: Asians Aloud,” is available now via HBO On Demand and Comcast for those of you who are not subscribers.

EAST OF MAIN STREET: ASIANS ALOUD is a collection of stories and perspectives from a diverse group of Asian Americans - recent immigrants, 1st & 2nd generation, East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian. From religion to politics, from cultural identity to ethnic identity, the documentary is an exploration into perspectives and lives of not only Asians who left their lives half a world away to come to the US, but also those who have always called America home.

Starting on May 3rd and continuing throughout the month, enjoy the premiere of East of Main Street: Asians Aloud along with the line-up of movies and short films featured HBO On Demand. You can find them all on the “Asian Heritage” tab in the “Movies” category.

For Comcast subscribers, you can watch it free if you go to Top Picks on Comcast On Demand and then in the folder Asian Entertainment under Specials.

I hope people out there enjoy it!

Lucky NYC called me up and asked me to shoot some 2nd unit cinematography on my Aaton Super16mm camera for a huge Nike campaign for the World Cup. It was a pleasure to work with Ryan, Jon and Derek over at Lucky again. The spot was directed by masterful director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores perros / 21 Grams / Babel / Much More…) so I was very grateful to take part and also very humbled to be shooting additional photography for master DP Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC.

I spent a few days the past couple of weeks shooting for “A&E Biography: Nicholas Cage.” It’s been a lot of fun. You should tune in when it airs!

I am in my hometown of San Francisco for a few days this week, but this time it will be for a big documentary project directed by RJ Glass tentatively titled “Biological Control.” It is a documentary I am shooting in Super16mm, once again on my Aaton XTRProd, and it documents an attempt at sustainable agriculture in the wine country of Napa Valley. We will be shooting a lot of bugs fighting each other later in the year, flying out for a few days of each month until the Fall.

Coming (hopefully) soon is the music video for Zap Mama and G-Love for the track “Drifitng” that I shot at the end of last year and co-directed with Mandy Ward. It was the first big project shot on my Super16mm camera package and I’m excited to see the edit!

I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to be a part of so many good projects this year and many more are in development or just around the corner. When I catch my breath I’m hoping to update my websites with more current and relevant content.

Thanks for stopping by!

I’m currently directing and shooting my first project for HBO, which I’m very excited about. That has taken most of my time, and it will be released in May. More details to come soon.

Besides that, I’ve found the time to shoot some fun commercials with some folks I’ve wanted to work with for a long time. Other projects are also coming up this year, and I’m excited about the possibilities. I waited all year for 2009 to turn around (it was supposed to be my year), but 2010 is looking good so far!

It was a long journey finishing this video for Peelander-Z, and it was a true labor of love. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my talented animator friends and also the help of my editor (Sam Goetz), my VFX lead (Garrett Ilardi) and film crew who all donated their time for the effort. I paid them in fried chicken and booze and it turned out very nicely. We shot the video in August in about 3 simple hours, but then rotoscoping the band out from the background took months to complete. I can’t believe it’s finally done, but I’m very happy with how it came out!

You can view the video by pressing play on the top of this posting, or you can share it on YouTube here and tell us what you think about it!

In other big news, I bought myself an Aaton Super16mm Camera Package! It’s pretty much the sweetest thing ever, and details on the package can be found here.

With that camera, I recently shot and co-directed a music video for Zap Mama and G-Love! I am very excited for it because it’s gonna look pretty sweet. Super16mm is my favorite format ever, and now that I have the camera, I’m hoping more people will tap me to work with that camera despite the whole HD craze (though I work with HD pretty much every day).

I am shooting an interesting documentary in Super16mm with my friend RJ Glass next year in my hometown of San Francisco, and I can’t wait to be there again to begin production.

2009 has been an interesting year, to say the least. It was a transitional year and I was hoping for lots of good things with Obama in office (such as health care, etc.) but despite those things still being in progress, I’m thankful for the fun projects that came my way and also the fun times that were had. It wasn’t so bad after all.

So that little music video I made this summer for The Metermaids is having some pretty awesome distribution that I thought I’d share with you.

Besides the really amazing premiere on MySpace music, which got over 14,500 views in a few days, it has since gone on to show on AOL Music and Clear Channel, among many other places. But the most interesting distribution I’ve seen by far is on this link, courtesy of Gizmodo.

If you scroll down the page and find the first video and scroll to 08:55, you will see the video for “Turn The Lights Out” which is bundled with every Droid phone from Verizon! That’s over a million phones at launch! The places they’re taking this small little video continues to amaze me and shows the future of smart and inventive distribution for independent music videos.

The Peelander-Z video is still in post production and things are looking great! We’re doing a lot of rotoscoping and color effects now with the help of my talented animator and designer friends who are lending a helping hand to the cause. I’m hoping it’ll be worth the wait, and so far it’s looking like it will be! I’m excited to share it with you when it’s complete. It wouldn’t be able to be done without them.

I’ve also been keeping busy by continuing to shoot the occasional commercial and also have been working with Emmy award winning director Lisa Russell on “Parliament of One,” which is a documentary about the United Nations. It’s been a lot of fun working on a doc such as this and I’m hoping to do more of the same in the future.

The Peelander-Z shoot for “So Many Mike” was a huge success! I want to say thank you to everyone that came and danced their asses off! It was a lot of fun. Even more fun than expected! Though it was the most ghetto shoot I’ve ever been on, with a tiny, tiny crew and lots of favors pulled, we luckily scheduled the shoot well enough that we ended shooting about an hour earlier than expected, so the band got to play an impromptu concert for the fans. It was awesome. And thanks go out to Brooklyn Vegan for promoting the event on their site. And the above photo was stolen from Oscar Matos’ posting on Peelander-Z’s Facebook fan page. I wish I’d brought a stills camera, but unfortunately I didn’t.

We have now begun post-production on the video, and we’re trying out some cool effects that I’m excited about, but since everyone is donating their time for the love of the project, it might take a little longer than usual to complete. Things are already looking great though, and the post team is super excited, which is actually quite rare for a project like this. Everyone loves Peelander-Z!

In other news, the music video for The Metermaids got a special online exclusive premiere deal at MySpace Music! Though the encode on the site looks terrible, in only a few days it racked up over 14,500 views on MySpace alone! That’s an impressive number for ANY music video premiere and it exceeded all of our hopes and expectations! Due to the success on MySpace Music, AOL now wants to feature it on their front page in the coming weeks.

You can see The Metermaids’ video in HD quality here.

The music video I shot for Twisted Sister recently played on MTV. At the very last minute, we had to switch out some shots due to gun imagery. That was a hassle, but I’m glad it got resolved and got some airplay.

To see the Twisted Sister video on YouTube in HD quality, click here!

On Saturday, August 29, I am shooting and directing a music video for Peelander-Z, which is one of my favorite bands ever. I’m super excited for it, but the success of the video depends upon you and everyone showing up! The audience is a BIG part of the video and if your name is Mike or John, you’ll actually be heavily featured in this!

The video is for the song “So Many Mike” which talks about how it’s strange that everyone in the world is named Mike or John. It’s a performance video with the band playing on the floor and interacting with their fans surrounding them in a circle pit, so the fans (aka you) will be seen rocking out, singing along, dancing, etc. and those named Mike and John will make big and important cameos!

We will be shooting at Death By Audio in Brooklyn (49 S 2nd St., Brooklyn, NY) but only rented the space for a few hours in the afternoon/early evening. Shooting begins promptly at 3 p.m. and we worked out a deal with them to open the bar for us with awesome drink specials so we can all get drunk and rowdy.

No matter what your name is, you should come and bring everyone you know. It’s gonna be a blast!

In other news, the music video for The Metermaids got a special online exclusive premiere deal at MySpace Music! Though the encode on the site looks terrible, in only a few days it racked up over 14,500 views on MySpace alone! That’s an impressive number for ANY music video premiere and it exceeded all of our hopes and expectations! Due to the success on MySpace Music, AOL now wants to feature it on their front page in the coming weeks.

You can see The Metermaids’ video in HD quality here.

The music video I shot for Twisted Sister recently played on MTV. At the very last minute, we had to switch out some shots due to gun imagery. That was a hassle, but I’m glad it got resolved and got some airplay.

To see the Twisted Sister video on YouTube in HD quality, click here!

Today is my birthday so I’m going to stop updating the site now. I look forward to the coming year and hope lots of interesting projects come my way, so if you have one, feel free to hit me up!

UPDATE: To see it on YouTube in HD quality, click here!

Also, the music video for The Metermaids is now complete. I’m awaiting info for the premiere.

The biggest compliment of the shoot was given by Dee at the end of the night where he told our entire crew that it was by far the smoothest music video shoot he’s ever been on. The guy has been in some legendary videos for sure, so it was a very awesome thing to hear from the man himself! And they were all such fucking amazing guys that it was a wonderful experience to remember. I am still recovering and very tired from the nonstop sprint to the finish line (since I co-produced this as well) and can’t wait to show everyone the final product!

Beginning this week, I’ll be shooting a TV show called “My Fair Wedding” for WE (Women’s Entertainment Network) and also doing some freelance commercial cinematography work in the coming weeks.

We just posted our first rough edit for my music video for THE METERMAIDS and I’m still in very early pre-production for the music video for PEELANDER-Z as well as the DVD for THE ERGS!. So much fun stuff to accomplish in a short period of time. I was under the impression that 2009 had just begun, but I guess it’s already halfway over.