We’re so proud and glad to finally share with everyone “Kung Fooled”, our newest comedy short starring FreddieW and some special surprise guests! Check it out!

Ok, surprise is over. Huge thanks to Ryan Higa, DeStorm, Nathan Moore and Brandon Laatsch for being a part of this really fun project. The idea first came from an observation we made about Asian stereotypes. Since we often end up touching on the topic while we’re speaking on tour, Wes made a funny point once. Yeah, Asians get stereotyped, but hey, at least the things we’re stereotyped for are “good” things! We’re viewed as being smart, being able to fight, musically gifted, and being able to dance. If you asked me, those are all great talents and qualities! Who wouldn’t wanna be perceived as smart AND dangerous! haha

From this, Philip wrote a script and a couple drafts later, we were ready to shoot.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Working with Freddie was a lot of fun and also made life easier for us. Because him and Brandon are producers/directors themselves, they knew what to do to make editing easier for us, by having awareness of what was being shot, frames and even keeping track of shots. We also like that while many would assume a “collab” with FreddieW means guns and explosions, we didn’t use any. The video didn’t have any VFX, the thing Freddie’s channel is best known for, and we liked that. Instead, we were able to show Freddie’s character at the forefront, and not secondary to the special effects. And we like Freddie’s character. (and ok, we lied, there were a few VFX shots… the flies were computer generated). Hopefully people aren’t disappointed that there were no bazookas or bombs.

BLOOPERS

This was also our first time working with DeStorm. He’s such a fun character. Definitely check out his channel. Nathan Moore played the first mugger. He’s a writer/director/actor himself with some really quality stuff on his channel. He works with Lana McKissack often, that’s how we met him. And the final guy who ran away at the end was Brandon Laatsch. He’s the 2nd half of the FreddieW channel in case you thought that Freddie was the only guy.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what movie Freddie and Wes were watching in the beginning. It’s called “Greenside” and it was a short film made by our friends Niko and Sam at CorridorDigital a few years ago. If you wanna see more cool fight scenes check it out below. The main guy, Eric, was the fight choreographer for “Agents of Secret Stuff”

Well we hope you enjoyed the videos. And we hope you learned a valuable lesson. Don’t judge a book by its cover! And if you do make a good cover for yourself because they might be judging you too!

Our 100th event is right around the corner!! Join us for this special event! Click HERE to buy your tickets! Get them soon, you don’t want to miss this night. Sure to be filled with fun, special guest appearances, and the premiere of two new shorts!

**UPDATE**
***EVENT IS SOLD OUT***

WONG FU PRODUCTIONS presents: FAST FORWARD
Saturday, April 30, 8:30p
Director’s Guild of America
Buy Tickets HERE

The road to 100.
Check out the list below. All 100 tour events we’ve ever done as Wong Fu Productions. Scroll through and see all the places we’ve been. Some of you might not have even known that we’ve been to your city before!

“A Moment with You” 2006 TOUR
1. UC San Diego – PREMIERE, San Diego, CA
2. Google Inc. – Mountain View, CA
3. Monta Vista High School – Cupertino, CA
4. UC Riverside – Riverside, CA
5. UCLA – Los Angeles, CA
6. Cal Poly Slo – San Luis Obispo, CA
7. Univ of Michigan – Ann Arbor, MI
8. Ohio State Univ – Columbus, OH
9. Penn State – University Park, PA
10. Johns Hopkins – Baltimore, MD
11. Rutgers University – New Brunswick, NJ
12. Northeastern – Boston, MA
13. Harvard – Cambridge, MA
14. MIT – Cambridge, MA
15. Cornell University – Ithaca, NY
16. New York University – NYC, NY

“A Moment with You” – CANADA TOUR
17. University of British Columbia – Vancouver, BC
18. University of Calgary -Calgary, AB
19. University of Alberta – Edmonton, AB
20. University of Toronto Scarborough – Toronto, ON
21. University of Toronto St. George – Toronto, ON
22. University of Waterloo – Waterloo, ON
23. University of Western Ontario – London, ON

“A Moment with You” 2007 TOUR
24. Alhambra High School – Alhambra, CA
25. Baylor University – Baylor, TX
26. Rice University – Houston, TX
27. University of Northern Texas – Denton, TX
28. University of Texas Austin – Austin, TX
29. Northwestern University – Evanston, IL
30. Georgia Tech – Atlanta, GA
31. Mills High School – Millbrae, CA
32. Mission San Jose High School – Fremont, CA
33. University of Colorado Boulder – Boulder, CO
34. University of Virginia – Charlottesville, VA
35. Dartmouth College – Hanover, NH
36. UC Davis – Davis, CA
37. Stanford University – Palo Alto, CA
38. UC Berkeley – Berkeley, CA

SPRING TOUR 2008
39. Northwestern – Evanston, IL
40. Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign – Urbana-Champaign, IL
41. Boston College – Boston, MA
42. SUNY Binghamton – Binghamton, NY
43. Univ Maryland College Park – College Park, MD
44. USC – Los Angeles, CA

AUTUMN 2008
45. Univ. of Florida – Gainesville, FL
46. Cornell – Ithaca, NY
47. Brooklyn Tech High School – NYC, NY
48. New York University – NYC, NY
49. UC Berekely – Berkeley, CA

SPRING 2009
50. Arcadia High School – Arcadia, CA
51. University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, MI
52. UC Davis – Davis, CA
53. Humboldt State – Humboldt, CA
54. Oregon State – Corvallis, OR
55. University of Washington – Seattle, WA
56. University of Oregon – Eugene, OR
57. University of the Pacific – Stockton, CA
58. University of Chicago – Chicago, IL

AUTUMN 2009
59. MIT – Cambridge, MA
60. Boston University – Boston, MA
61. SUNY Buffalo – Buffalo, NY
61. OCA – Washington, DC
63. University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, PA
64. James Madison University – Harrisonburg, VA
65. Rutgers University – New Brunswick, NJ
66. Yale Univ. – New Haven, CT
67. UT Austin – Austin, TX
68. Ball State – Muncie, IN
69. University of North Texas – Denton, TX

SPRING 2010
70. UC San Diego – San Diego, CA
71. Univ of Maryland College Park – College Park, MD
72. Swarthmore College – Swarthmore, PA
73. Wesleyan University – Middletown, CT
74. Brown Univ – Providence, RI
75. Columbia Univ – NYC, NY
76. Michigan State Univ – East Lansing, MI
77. Texas A&M – College Station, TX
78. University of Oklahoma – Norman, OK
79. UC Davis – Davis, CA
80. Fresno State University – Fresno, CA
81. UC Berkeley – Berkeley, CA
82. University of Washington – Seattle, WA

AUTUMN 2010
83. Northeastern University – Boston, MA
84. Brandeis University – Boston, MA
85. USC – Los Angeles, CA
86. Claremont McKenna College – Pomona, CA
87. Dartmouth College – Hanover, NH
88. Carnegie Melon – Pittsburgh, PA
89. Northwestern University – Evanston, IL
90. Virginia Tech – Blacksburg, VA
91. Emory University – Atlanta, GA
92. Georgia Tech – Atlanta, GA

SPRING 2011
93. Cal State Fullerton – Fullerton, CA
94. New York University – NYC, NY
95. Rochester University – Rocherster, NY
96. Princeton University- Princeton, NJ
97. Duke University – Durham, NC
98. University of Chicago – Chicago, IL
99. University of Massachusetts Amherst – Amherst, MA
100. Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival – LA, CA
101. UC Riverside

The main reason we took the trip out to frigid Utah was because Christine and Ted were interested to speak to Ryan and us about our project “Agents of Secret Stuff” and how digital media is changing the landscape of independent film. We could not agree more, and it’s so encouraging to hear from established industry members like them that they see it, they recognize it, and they believe in it.

For several years we felt like many people in the “mainstream” industry didn’t take online content creators like us seriously…and now, slowly, people are starting to come around. Christine and Ted were forerunners themselves when independent film was rising separate from the Hollywood machine. Producing with various, now famous, directors, simply because they saw the potential of doing things on their own.

Now, to have them tell us that what we are doing is the same…wow, that just floors us, and we can only hope to have as much of an impact in our futures as they have.

Check out the full interview/dialogue below. We were the only people out of the many the interviewed (including Kate Bosworth, Morgan Spurlock, and Terrence Howard) to get 2 segments. Either we talked way too long, or we got special treatment (I’ll believe the latter, haha)

Thank you Ted Hope, Christine Vachon for being so nice and encouraging. We definitely hope to return to Sundance again with feature of our own. Thanks George Strompolos and Digital Artists for setting it all up.

JANUARY

Started the year off with a short “Good Hygiene Gets Girls.” This was intended to be a series of other tutorials, but we just never had the time to make the others due to other projects getting priority. We will definitely be revisiting Rick. CLICK TO WATCH

What started off as just a way to give our viewers some weekly content, WFWeekends definitely became one of the things that Wong Fu was known for this past year. We never anticipated so many people to look forward to these weekly vlogs as much as they did. Season 1 went from Jan-May. Due to popular demand, a month later we brought it back for Season 2 which went from July-Nov. WFW will be back in 2011. CLICK TO WATCH

Biggie Spencer arrives! Our 3rd variation of our unofficial “mascot” came to our Nice Guy store. BUY

February

Yet another Wong Fu original series that was meant to have further installments. Just before Valentine’s Day we released 3 shorts to start the series. More are planned to come very soon. CLICK TO WATCH

We added to the One Days: HK series with “Lost to Luck”. Hopefully we’ll be able to add even more of these foreign shorts, and from different countries too! CLICK TO WATCH

March
Production and editing CRAZY. Shooting and editing “Funemployed”, “Dance to this Song” and “That Girl” music videos.

April

Our annual Spring tour was our biggest ever. With 15 events in a month’s span, it was the most we’ve ever done on one tour, but also incredibly memorable.

The first music video of the year came with AJ Rafael’s “When We Say (Juicebox)”. It was our first time working with AJ and also our first time utilizing some new equipment. CLICK TO WATCH

After a year since the trailer came out, “When Five Fell” was released to much anticipation. CLICK TO WATCH

May

Wong Fu Productions office is officially “open”. For the first time, the 3 of us “commute” to our very first office. The office has become a huge part of our videos and way we work.

About a year after our first mv with him, we release David Choi’s second music video “That Girl”. A huge production effort as we shot in various locations from a field in Bakersfield to Wes’ childhood home in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also, the first time we utilize visual effects in a video project. CLICK TO WATCH

The Awkward Animal family continues to grow with our 2nd awkward animal plush, the Awkward Rhino. BUY

June

We were commissioned by Justin Lin’s film initiative “Interpretations” to create a video as an example for people wanting to enter the contest. Shot in 1 afternoon, in Oklahoma, WHILE we were on our Spring Tour in April, at a restaurant called “Orient Express”, hence the title of the short. CLICK TO WATCH

Our very first web-series, “Funemployed” is released on June 22! Working with Kevin (KevJumba) to produce and write, we were actually very nervous about how people would react to the series. Thankfully the support and enthusiasm from the fans is more than we expected. 11 episodes are released over the next month and a half, two a week. We definitely hope to create more web-series in the future. CLICK TO WATCH

July

In preparation for the upcoming ISA concerts, we make another short to promote the Breakout Performer contest, a contest allowing fans to get the chance to perform on stage at ISA. Last year’s “Hitting on Cathy” was a huge hit, and this year we continued some jokes in “Picture Day” CLICK TO WATCH

Production for “Agents of Secret Stuff” takes place over 8 intense days.

August

“Dance To This Song” our 3rd music video of the year is released as a finale to “Funemployed”. It’s our first comedy song/video. Produced by David Choi and featuring many friends. CLICK TO WATCH

For the 3rd year, along with cofounders Far East Movement, we bring back the ISA concerts. For the first time we bring the concert series out of California and to New York City. With two concerts in two consecutive weekends, this could be the beginning of ISA tours. This years concerts bring back old friends, as well as new ones like AJ, Alyssa Bernal, Poreotix, and Jay Park. Ted Fu also proposes to his long time girlfriend in front of 1200 fans at the NY show, one of the most memorable moments of the year. CLICK TO WATCH

Working with the American Cancer Society again, “The Allergy” is released and also one of our most popular videos of the year, reaching 1 million views in a little over a week. CLICK TO WATCH

September

“Ted’s Best Man Friend” which was made for the ISA: LA concert is released. It’s the first time the 3 of us act together in a short in a very long time. CLICK TO WATCH

An intense production for Alyssa Bernal’s music video to single “Cali, Cali, Cali” takes place at the end of the month.

October

We had the honor of working with GE and Howcast to get our viewers to think green with our Ecomagination videos. WATCH

Our 4th music video of the year, but an incredibly significant one. Our video for Alyssa Bernal was the first time WFP worked with a major record label. Alyssa is signed to Interscope/Star Trak. It was an incredibly huge learning experience for us, but thankfully we delivered and also made some new friends in the process. WATCH

To much anticipation, WFP, NigaHiga and Jay Park work together on a short sketch, “Bromance”. CLICK TO WATCH

November

Our 5th music video for afterschoolspecials’ “Name” comes out and staplers are never looked at the same. CLICK TO WATCH

Autumn Tour

We set out on our annual Autumn Tour, speaking at 10 universities across the country. This is the first time we purposely take on a “shorter” schedule of schools due to an overload of other work to take care of. Tours may have to become shorter…

Agents of Secret Stuff! Our very special, very epic, “medium film” is released online. Working with the very talented #1 YouTube star, Ryan Higa (NigaHiga), we created this film completely on our own with no major companies, big budgets or crews. Shot over an intense 8 day schedule, and including cameos from various YouTube celebrities, the project premiered at a sold out special screening at the theater in LA. Online, the video reaches 4 million views in a week, unheard of for a 35 minute internet feature. CLICK TO WATCH

December

Our first time working with a major car company, Subaru lets us use one of their brand new cars for a short film, “Too Fast”. Also our first time working with the ever talented Randall Park. The video rises to 1 million views in under a week. CLICK TO WATCH

“What Does It Take” by #1 YouTube musician, DaveDays, is released online. Our 6th and final music video of the year is also one of our biggest productions, requiring wardrobe and set designers, as well as a very large cast. We were so excited to end the year on such a significant project and glad to meet and work with Dave. CLICK TO WATCH

Meeting and making new friends…
This past year was made even better because of all the amazing people we met. From the community opening up to us, and also people that we were fans of recognizing us, it was amazing getting to know, work with, and just hangout with some amazing individuals. Natalie Tran,  Ryan Higa, FreddieW, the FineBros, The Station (Shay Carl, KassemG, Ben, Lisa Nova), HiImRawn, Ellen Wong, Jay Park, Dave Days, Tay Zonday just to name a few, are all people that we met just this year. Without their support, it would’ve been a much quieter 12 months.

THANK YOU for helping us make 2010 an unforgettable year for Wong Fu Productions. The amazing growth we’ve had can only mean great things for 2011. We’ll see you there!

What was YOUR favorite moment(s) or project(s) from this past year? Leave it in the comments!

Director’s Notes:

• We had to come up with the idea while we were on our Autumn Tour.
• It was shot in two afternoons, last week, and edited in about a day. We had a very rushed timeline for this.
• Randall (Brandon) has been in various national commercials, “Dinner for Shmucks”, and the show “Community”
• Jae (Kelly) and Randall are married in real life. Though it didn’t happen in two dates.
• The original ending actually had the couple driving off, and one more joke, but we were told to edit it out because the client didn’t want us to imply that they were driving w/ a baby in the front seat.

Check out the behind the scenes clip and bloopers to see how everything else came together.

BLOOPERS

BEHIND THE SCENES

Just two weeks after the release of our last music video “Cali, Cali, Cali” for Interscope artist Alyssa Bernal, we’re right back into the indie scene with the release of our newest video, “Name” by the band afterschoolspecial. (one word, lowercase)

A good group of musicians headed by a friend and active community member Dan Matthews, afterschoolspecial is based in San Diego. They’ve grown a lot in their music over the last few years and we’re honored to be the ones to make their first music video off their first full length album, “It’s all in your head”.

Concept: The first decision we made with the band was that the video would not be a performance video. While we did want to show off the band, they wanted a video that had more of a story, rather than shots of them playing and singing. This is why the video has no band set up. This is also why we created the “office supply instruments”. We wanted to show what each member played, without cutting to a performance shot.

Female heroes and secret identities
The song’s topic is very clear. Dan raps about this mysterious, special girl who he knows so much about, yet strangely doesn’t even know her name. We knew that we wanted to make the video revolve around a very strong female lead, thinking that the song and video could be inspiring to young ladies who might watch it. In a broader sense, the song is also showing  that someone could know a lot about a girl on the surface, and still not know anything about who she really is. Often, girls have many layers of emotions and personalities, putting forth a strong face, when really, they are troubled inside. As a guy, I really respect many girls who have been through a lot personally, yet still hold it together on the outside. This is where the idea for a “secret identity” and “super heroine” came about, because we felt many girls have secret identities.

Why an office?
We wanted to bring the idea of a female superhero into everyday life. The initial idea had the video take place at a school, with Dan and the band members caught in detention. They would’ve be playing instruments made of school supplies, and Angela would’ve been saving them from an evil teacher. This would also relate to their name “afterschoolspecial”. But ultimately we decided that we wanted to make the video more “grown up”, so we thought, for someone older, what’s the equivalent of being stuck at school? Being stuck at work.

And so the story of Dan and his bandmate coworkers in the office was finalized. Angela is the mysterious girl that Dan knows little about, and just as they finally get to meet, the evil boss catches them and makes him and his friends all stay after. Just before they get separated, Dan gives Angela the drawing on the paper, which she later reveals as her symbol (like the bat signal for Batman). This is her cue to “transform” and go back to save the band. After an epic stapler war, and a helpful distraction from Paul Dateh, everyone escapes!

Production: The entire video was shot in one day at an office in San Diego. All the actors and extras were friends of the band. The great thing about the video was that it was all in one location, an indoor location. Everything was contained and we literally had this “set” to ourselves. This made shooting go much smoother and more comfortable (no need to worry about external interference)

The fight scene was done with Philip (the boss) and Angela pretending everything. At first we tried to see what it would look like if they really shot the staples. Sadly, the staples only went a few feet, and couldn’t even be seen on camera. So we removed all the staples from the staplers and decided that adding special effects later would look better anyway. The “enhanced” staple guns were done by our friend Eugene Gauran, the same friend who did the photo tornado in the “That Girl” music video. All the paper “explosions” were done just by throwing the paper on top of the actors, but props to Philip for having to really take a hit from the clip board and falling to the ground many takes!

Check out the pictures below to see how it all went down!

For more pics click HERE (link)

We know this video is different from recent music video projects, especially w/ the song genre, but we hope you enjoyed it. Gotta try new things sometimes ya kno?

Alyssa Bernal – Cali, Cali, Cali Official Music Video by Wong Fu Productions

And nowww for the juicy details. Check out the behind the scenes featurette below to get our commentary on how this project came together and the process of how it all went down in 1.5 weeks!

Behind the Scenes of Alyssa Bernal – Cali, Cali, Cali

Lots of really great production photos thanks to Garrick from Shinobi Studios.

Production Photos of Alyssa Bernal – Cali, Cali, Cali

Photos taken by www.shinobi-studios.com

Behind the Scenes by Interscope

And here’s a bonus. The label had their own videographer documenting the shoot and he made a really well produced, much shorter, bts clip with Alyssa as the narrator. Worth the watch =)

CONCEPT: When we were coming up with an idea for this short we started off by choosing what angle we wanted to take. Last time with “The Turn Off” we took the stance of, smoking is gross and unattractive. This time, we thought, let’s not take the negative route of pointing out how “bad” cigarettes are because once you get on the offense, people who smoke or support it get defensive, and automatically will not listen to what you have to say. Also, everyone already knows that smoking is bad for your body, there’s no point to further push this point. Everyone who smokes knows it’s bad and has already made the choice that the health effects are something they’re willing to sacrifice. So, we decided to go on the flip side…instead of pointing out how harmful or negative smoking is, let’s point out the BENEFITS of quitting. And so the story of “The Allergy” came about. Henry (Chris’ character) is a smoker, and you’ll notice that no one ever tells him NOT to smoke, not even Jill (his girlfriend). Everyone’s fine with it, she just has a “special” allergic reaction. This way, it’s totally up to Henry to decide what he wants to do. If he quits, he gets his super gorgeous gf…if he doesn’t quit, he get’s an annoying David Choi. The choice (eh eh) is easy.

Sad that yes, it takes a girl for him to quit, but we also asked around and most guys said that they’d quit for a girl. lol. Guys are such tools (for girls).

Check out the blooper reel. It was pretty hilarious having David step in everytime in Kelley’s clothes.

CAST: It was great to work with a cast of all friends. We all know and love David, and it was so great that he was down to play this part. I kept asking him, are you sure you’re ok with this, will this hurt your image or your branding. But c’mon, if you know David Choi…the guy wears coconut bras in his videos. haha

Cathy was also super cool to step in for the short role in the beginning as Phil’s friend. Cathy is definitely a natural actress. You’ve seen her already in “Hitting on Cathy” and most recently “Picture Day”. Wouldn’t you agree? Singing talent aside, her acting ability is very impressive. Plus she’s SUPER nice and fun. Easy choice to work with her.

Recognize Kelley? It’s so funny, we’ve known her for such a short period of time, but she’s already been in 3 recent projects. She had the small role of “shybabenicole143″ in Funemployed, she was featured in “Dance to this Song”, and now here. We’ll be honest. Yes the script called for a girl in a bikini, pool side, and we don’t have that many “model” friends. (We make videos, we’re couped up inside all day. Think we ever see the beach?) But we remembered that Kelley was a really fun, enthusiastic, and a professional model/dancer plus a friend of ours and David’s, so she was an easy choice. Working with friends is always the best.

And finally, by now you all recognize Chris. He’s been in quite a few WF projects. Initially Phil was going to play the main role like he did in “The Turn Off”, but he didn’t want to pretend to smoke again. Chris actually smokes. Yes, but trust us, we’re working hard to get him to stop. Since he actually smokes, it made the short a lot more believable. Phil just looks awkward holding a cigarette. By the way, that was actually Chris’ mom in the short, and his uncle played his dad.

For the past month, we’ve shared the series with you, and finally the product of 9 months of work is complete.

Before we released the first few episodes, we were really really concerned with how people would react to it. Would the audience enjoy this different style, would they keep up, would they get tired of it? All these questions ran through our heads, but to our delight, we were met with great response and support.

When we say “thank you” we truly truly mean it. We would not be making these videos if we didn’t have the fans and supporters to watch and share. This series existed only because of you. Thanks for following, commenting, sharing with friends, giving your enthusiasm and opinions. We couldn’t have asked for more.

And now the question that everyone’s asking. Season 2??? Unfortunately, no there won’t be a 2nd season (at least in the near future) Kev and us are extremely busy with various other projects, and we’re very satisfied to end Jason and Kyle’s story here. I know 11 eps seems short in the real world of television, but for a 3 person crew, it was a huge undertaking and the series was actually longer than what we originally intended (6 episodes). We’re glad that you are all craving more. Which is why I can say confidently that while “Funemployed” is over, this doesn’t mean that we won’t be making more web series in the future. The positive response and the things we learned making this project has definitely encouraged us to explore these types of projects more.

So a final “thank you” for getting us through our first web series ever and being the amazing supporters and fans you are! We hope we get to make videos for you all for a long time!

OUTTAKES

DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY

Not too long ago, WFP was asked to create a short film for a new project called Interpretations. Spearheaded by Justin Lin, this project/contest is an opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to showcase their work. If you don’t know who Justin Lin is..well. You should. He directed Better Luck Tomorrow and several Fast and Furious movies. He is probably the most successful Asian American director to rise up. Check out his website: http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com We look up to Justin and praise him for spotlighting Asian Americans in films whenever he has the chance. For this project, we were asked with several other prominent directors to make a short as an example for the contest. The rules were simple: 1) Make a 3-5 minute short 2) Use the provided 4 lines of dialogue 3) Be creative!

ORIENT EXPRESS
Wong Fu Productions x Interpretations Film

“It’s not something I’d do.”
“Well?”
“It’s not what I expected.”
“You sure?”

We gladly accepted the challenge. The hard part was finding a time to do it while we were on our Spring Tour. We wrote it one night in a hotel room in Oklahoma and shot it the next day. Even though it was difficult, it was also a fun project to take on in a place we’ve never been to. Kinda reminded us of our assignments when were still Visual Arts students in college. Enjoy!