My Eating Team Has A Paddling Problem
a documentary by WHE Productions
about the dragon boat team Hot Sake
If the embedded trailer does not play correctly,
you can also download the trailer here (QuickTime MPEG4 video, 17.3MB).
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here
(lower quality)
Mar 2008: "My Eating Team..." won the Most Honorable Mention award at the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival!!!
Feb 2008: "My Eating Team..." is now available as a Special Edition DVD! Send email if you would like to order. Sales from the DVD will support Zheng's future filmmaking as well as Hot Sake's team operation.
Oct 2007: "My Eating Team..." was screened at the Tacoma Film Festival on Sat Oct 6! The movie was among the seven "Top Picks" of the festival by Exit133.
| a film by | Zheng Wang | filming locations | Seattle, WA Vancouver, BC Victoria, BC Kelowna, BC |
| running time | public version: 88
minutes extended version: 96 minutes |
||
| special thanks to | Albert Ting Charlene Wee Ernie Wong Eric Broberg Dena Singleton Aaron Draganov Stacey Law Les Hopper Eric Chastain |
featuring music by |
Paul Elliott Lawrence Lam Michael Conway Seattle Kokon Taiko Charles Heinemann Nathan Bigman Jeff Pearce |
Synopsis
Dragon boating is a fast-growing team sport all around the world, even though you may have never heard of it. Why is dragon boating so addictive? And specifically, what made this particular Seattle team, Hot Sake, thrive over five years and become an extended family for everyone who is willing to join in? This documentary tells the story of Hot Sake through the eyes of Zheng Wang, a Seattle “transplant” who is far away from his homeland of China. Once boggled down with the so-called Quarter-Life Crisis, Zheng has found his home away from home in Hot Sake. Featuring an array of colorful personalities, this is a story about friendship, community, fun, camaraderie, as well as fast bonds formed through food sharing, car sharing, and bed sharing.
Technical Notes
Filmed on mini-DV and edited using Final Cut Pro on a Mac G4. There were over 30 hours of raw footage.
Music Notes
Music is a critical element of any film production. For this documentary, Zheng knew from the beginning that he wanted two types of music: Taiko, the traditional Japanese drumming frequently featured at dragon boat festivals; and minimalistic, intimate songs and scores to fit a variety of moods. For the former, he received generous support from the Seattle Kokon Taiko group, where he had taken Taiko classes before. For the latter, he was delighted and relieved when he found many talented musicians through an email group at Microsoft. (Yes, engineers can be artists too!) Paul Elliott, Lawrence Lam and Michael Conway created new music specifically for the film, while Charles Heinemann and Nathan Bigman revised their existing work on request. There is also an intriguing story around Jeff Pearce: Soon after he lent his music to the film, at which point he knew nothing about dragon boating, he met another dragon boater through a totally separate channel and became a dragon boater himself! Jeff is now a proud member of Hot Sake.
The communication between Zheng and the musicians were all done by email, without them ever meeting face-to-face. He was happy to finally meet many of them at the private premiere screening of the film!