EDTECH 537: Guest Post - First Blood by Matthew Abaya

Director Matthew Abaya (centered) with the hunters. Photo by Ralph Briones

For my first guest blog, I thought it would be great to invite someone from the industry. The first person that I thought of was my good friend and fellow filmmaker, Matthew Abaya. I’ve know Matt since 2000 when we met during my screening of my documentary, “Tagumpay” at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival. Soon after that, we both were selected to screen our short films together at the Visual Communications Asian American Film Festival in Los Angeles.

First Blood

by Matthew Abaya

First off, it’s a pleasure to be asked to participate in this blog. I officially began making movies when I was eight with super8 cameras that my dad and uncle owned. I kept shooting in this format well into my college years because I didn’t like the way that video technology looked like at the time. I always told my friends it reminded me of soap operas and lacked cinematic qualities. I share the sentiment of Direktor Briones that this generation is blessed to have technology that can help them make stories very easily. It is however a challenge to make more artful and concise decisions when shooting because you can just point and shoot forever without worry. When I shot super8, it costed a little kid $20-$30 for ever 3 minutes shot film and it took a week of waiting to see if the developed footage was any good. That meant there was no comic book or video game money that week. This made me a meticulous planner when I rolled the camera. I made a lot of mistakes. Sometimes the shots would be underexposed or overexposed. Some shots would be out of focus or I just didn’t like what I shot. I met lot of novice filmmakers who gave up easily, but I kept going because telling stories was my dream. About 10 years ago, I shot a short horror film called “Bampinay” (Vampire Filipina) which was shot on a mix of super8 and highly doctored digital video. It was pretty awesome looking for the time, but I needed more to make a feature. Eventually digital video technology was able to become more cinematic and I quickly adapted making the feature version of “Bampinay” titled “Vampariah”. It took 4 years to finish shooting on a Panasonic AF100. Technology keep getting better and less expensive. I would not have stood a chance at making a feature film without this significant jump in cinema.Visual effects of got me into making movies in the first place. As a kid, I was wowed by Star Wars and terrified by Alien(s). When I started shooting on digital media, adding visual effects was a lot easier. I recall taking an annoying optical printer class back at the old Film Arts Foundation. That was extremely complicated and didn’t produce high end results for fx. If you have access to compositing programs like After Effects or free 3D animation software like Blender 3D, you have something way better than anything I had growing up. Time, patience and working with great people made this film possible. I am now gearing up for my second feature film “Die After Now” and taking everything I learned from that first experience and improving upon it.

If you’re going to start making a feature film here are some tips:

1. Do not start by making a feature film. Make a short film first or a bunch of short films. Learn your craft and learn your voice. You will make mistakes but it’s best you make mistakes on a much shorter project. You also get a chance to meet some awesome people along the way but it will also build your team when you get to a much bigger project.
2. I know I spent a lot of time talking about the technology but it’s really all about the story. Make sure you have a story worth telling. I worked with great writing partners that helped me read my screenplays. When you finish the screenplay, do rewrites. I repeat, do rewrites. A screenplay is really made in the rewrites and not the first draft. If you feel stuck, just write and read what you wrote later. There is no consequence for sucking in the first stages of screenplay writing. If you rewrite, no one will ever know how badly the first version sucked. A lot of times you’ll surprise yourself of how good the writing was in the first place. Make it happen!
3. Build an awesome team. Filmmaking is not the job of one person. It’s a symphony of talented people. It will feel more like going to war than making music but if you work well with your people, you too can make awesome. I didn’t have a budget to pay people when we did the feature. Yes, we were ultra low budget. When you start making films, I recommend you get on to other people’s film shoots and help out. Maybe you’d like to learn a little more about sound or lighting. This can be very much like your film school. It is not uncommon for people to work for free when they first start. If you become in demand that’s when others will notice. Bigger productions will come. If they want somebody good and reliable they might hire you to work. You also get the ability to network with the cast and crew. You can build your team along the way. I don’t recommend doing this all the time but if you are new and you want to learn, this is helpful. You will usually get a good meal out of it, so always feed the crew well. At the films end of production, some of my crew ended up making films of their own that were pretty darn good.j
4. Plan ahead. I can’t stress this point enough. Make sure when that camera roll it is exactly what you want to see. I am meticulous with him drawing story boards, but a simple shot list and script will do. Make sure you have adequate coverage so that your editor can piece a story together and make a good flow. If you plan to do some one-shot wonders at least have some coverage to fix it in edits if something didn’t work out.
5. I would admit that my biggest mistake when making my first feature film was getting too ambitious. I had 1 million locations and 1 million different visual effects and that stretched out production time and post production. Try to keep things simple when shooting location. The more times you have to move your production shoot, The more it’s going to cost you. It’s a low budget film production like mine, it will cost you in time over money. I was lucky to finish but it definitely took longer because of it.
6. I need to have a number six. Take care of number one! Filmmaking is an arduous process. You will get very fatigued and burnt out along the way. Be sure that you are taking care of yourself before you can take care of anything else. This is a rule I sometimes forget but I always remind my team to do that when life outside film happens.

Good luck on your film journey!

Vampariah is currently on Amazon Prime, on demand and DVD. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075RTF129?tag=moviefone-20

Follow my film journey on:
Twitter: @hazmadt
Instagram: @idontcareproductions
Facebook: @matthewabayafilmmaker