Sdaff Youth Day Study Guide

Youth Day

October 14. 2008 Hazard Center UltraStar Cinemas

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YOUTH DAY PROGRAM OBJECTIVES 1.To enhance student interest and knowledge about the media arts 2.To encourage students to use critical thinking, creative writing and language skills 3.To engage students in an exploration of film as a medium of communication. 4.To help students become more visually literate.

AGENDA 9AM                Introduction 9:10                 Reel Voices program (50 minutes) 10:10              Q&A and Discussion 10:20               10 minute  break 10:30               Screening of PING PONG PLAYA by Jessica Yu (90 minutes) 12:05               Discussion 12:20               Lunch Don’t forget to visit booths of Platt College, American Civil Liberties Union, and Best Buy

Lunch generously provided by Platt College, School of Design www.platt.edu 1

Reel Voices TRT: 50 min. A collection of engaging stories, created and directed by local high school students as part of the a summer digital storytelling internship at the San Diego Asian Film Foundation.

Dick, Dick & Jane: The Modern American Family

The Beholder: Beauty Through the Eyes of April Mitchell. 

The Almost Lost Generation 

Director: Mari Jacobson | 5 min. |Video | 2008 A look into the role of a same-sex couple within a family dynamic.

Director: Elle Lipson | 7 min . | Video| 2008 An artistic teen with a genetic skin condition, deals with how her appearance affects her selfimage, her art, and her outlook on beauty.

A Brighter Future

Napua Ilima ‘O Kehaulani

Free Matt Wong

Director: Al Pappas | 5 min. | Video | 2008 A priest champions the struggle to bring free education to the poorest of the poor in Tijuana”    

Director: Ryan Medel |7min. | Video | 2008 The struggles that new and old wahine competitors undergo to preserve the Hawaiian tradition of hula dancing.

Director: Joska Charles | 9 min. | Video 2008 Victims of Sudan’s genocidal war share their harrowing experience and efforts to keep their culture alive towards the younger generation.

Out of Bounds

Director: Harrison Tong | 9 min. | Video | 2008 You see so many Asian teens in leagues across America, so why is it that in the NBA only Yao Ming comes to mind?

Director: Akio Mitsunaga | 9 min. | Video | 2008  How conducive is the modern public school enviornment to student creativity?  In 2007, Matt Wong dared to experiment and learned not to mess with bureaucracy.

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REEL VOICES STUDY GUIDE & QUESTIONS General Questions: 1) How does each film deal with the topic of identity? 2) Share examples of how music and text enhance each film. 3) What are some of the biggest challenges in doing a documentary? 4) How was the story told better in documentary format, rather than narrative format? 5) What was your view of documentary filmmaking before Reel Voices? Has your perspective changed after watching the program? 6) What makes this medium so powerful? WRITE NOTES BELOW Dick Dick and Jane

The Beholder: Beauty Through The Eyes

A Brighter Future

Almost Lost Generation

Napua Lima

Out of Bounds

Free Matt Wong

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USA | 96 min. | Video | English & Chinese w/ English subtitles | 2007 DIRECTOR: Jessica Yu PRODUCERS: Anne Clements, Joan Huang WRITERS: Jessica Yu, Jimmy Tsai CAST: Jimmy Tsai, Smith Cho, Roger Fan, Andrew Vo

PING PONG PLAYA Christopher “C-Dub” Wang (Jimmy Tsai) dreams of becoming a professional basketball player. Unfortunately, he also constantly blames his inability to make the NBA on his genetics, struggles to hold down a low-paying job at the mall and spends most of his free time playing video games and daydreaming of easy money. In short, C-Dub is every Asian American parent’s worst nightmare. Thankfully for the Wang family, C-Dub’s older brother Michael (Roger Fan) is a doctor and national ping pong champion, who generates business for his family’s ping pong school and store. When Michael and Mrs. Wang are both hurt in a car accident,C-Dub is forced to step up and take over teaching duties at the ping pong school. The stakes are taken even higher when C-Dub must shake off his reputation as a chronic underachiever and defend his family’s honor by replacing his brother in the national ping pong tournament. Sharply directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu (“In the Realms of the Unreal”), making her narrative feature directing debut, PING PONG PLAYA is the rare sports comedy that will have you rolling with laughter, while effectively tackling important Asian American identity issues. PRODUCTION NOTES The origins for the original idea for PING PONG PLAYA essentially came from three different sources: 1) the character, Christopher “C-dub” Wang, as conceived by Jimmy Tsai in a series of web commercials; 2) the idea of a ping pong comedy by producer Joan Huang; and 3) director Jessica Yu’s idea to merge the two together. From this kernel of a concept, development on the script began in late 2005 with Jessica and Jimmy writing together. Approximately one year later and with the addition of producer Anne Clements, PING PONG PLAYA began rounding into shape for production. Several months before pre-production was slated to begin, the production team sought out both training for its actors and consultation on the world of table tennis via a renowned husband-and-wife coaching team with experience in both the worlds of cinema as well as international table tennis competition. The production team then focused on finding the other key actors to round out the cast. The search for the child actors, especially, proved to be a challenging one, as casting notices were put out in the usual places as well as in open calls and emails targeted towards local area schools and children. Though the first few weeks proved fruitful in finding and narrowing down choices for many of the adult leads, the same process unfortunately proved less fruitful in producing stellar candidates in the key roles of the three main child leads. It was only with just under three weeks left before cameras began rolling that, in a fortuitous coincidence, the production came across undeniable choices for all three child leads. After the final roles in the cast were filled out in the final week leading up to production, principal photography on PING PONG PLAYA officially commenced in March of 2007, shooting in various locations in and around Los Angeles, California. A complete store front (both interiors and exteriors) for Ping Pong Palace, the Wang family store, was erected in Altadena; a local high school gymnasium in Norwalk stood in for the East Hills tournament location; and the production even participated in an actual parade in the city of Monterey Park to stage the final scene in the movie. With filming completed in early May, post production immediately commenced, predominantly at facilities in Burbank, California. But the production also went truly international with over seventy CGI ping pong shots being created at Bulky Studios in Taipei, Taiwan.

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ABOUT FILMMAKER JESSICA YU Jessica Yu is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for BREATHING LESSONS:THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARK O’BRIEN, an intimate portrait of a writer who lived for four decades paralyzed by polio and confined to an iron lung. She has directed multiple documentaries, dramas, and television shows, including ER. She went to Yale University, where she became a NCAA All American in fencing and competed on the US National team. She fell into the film industry after college, when searching for a job that would help pay for her fencing competitions!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR PING PONG PLAYA 1) Talk about the multi-cultural casting of this film - how did it make the film work?

2) The main character, C-Dub, is full of contradictions. Can you state any?

3) What kind of stereotypes did C-Dub’s character try to confront humorously?

4) There are very few Asian American women filmmakers in the industry. Did you see this movie as a film made by a woman?

5) How did the music in the film enhance the experience?

6) Did you feel connected with any characters of the film?

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