Noise Singapore held its Meet-Your-Mentor yesterday night at Earshot Café and I was there to attend.

Where is the Earshot Café? I asked the people around Old Parliament Lane (it’s beside the Old Supreme Court, near Funan) and they too didn’t know.

First step....

Second Step

Third Step... god this is lame.

I found in the Arts House. Nifty place. It’s a café that sells cds and books and all those artsy stuff from music to photography.

When I first started off I thought this whole Noise Singapore thing was just another small time event (I mean, duh…. There weren’t any posters around Ngee Ann promoting it). But then the day before I started seeing Noise Singapore banners on my MSN and Hotmail I got kinda pulled off.

And yeah... what a relatively bloody big event it was.

There were news reporters, photographers, magazine editors and the whole entire PR shebang smiling around the café and lobby and omg was I intimidated. Like… oops… I wanted some exposure but not this much!

I caught up with my classmate, Eric, as well. Owned - two FSV students. Muahah. He got chosen for the Photography section as well.

Then I also saw another ex-NVSS guy there. He entered the Music section. Just exchanged hi-s and byes; I didn’t know his name.

I found out each mentor were given two little children as well. Charlie wasn’t there yet so I was introduced to my uh… partner?

Looking at him will throw some people off. Lionel was buff, about a head shorter than me, but he had bleached hair with plucked, defined eyebrows that I think were darkened and flawless fair skin and perfect sideburns… the entire artist-works. To some that’s just faggot-ish

A quick chat with him (he’s so shy I felt so rude putting my leg up like that and munching on the free pizzas) took me further into this… abysmal awestruck-tinism.

Lionel’s a freelance photographer (don’t roll your eyes yet) who dropped out of Business School in Ngee Ann to pursue his dreams. He does make up, cooks, has talents/models, uses a professional thousand dollar camera, has a professional portfolio and was once a flower arranger as well. Obviously my asshole tightened so much you cant fit a hair through it (now you can roll your eyes)

When Charlie came by, larger then life man, I must say, he asked what kinda cameras we were using. I let Lionel go first and they started talking about really really pro things that I obviously don’t have and cant have cos my family’s haunted by the shadow of bankruptcy (it seems.). Then Charlie turned to me and asked what kinda camera I used to take my shots. I showed him my Kenny-cam and he wasn’t too pleased.
“Are you gonna use that to shoot pictures for your exhibition?”

Wait wait… firstly… no… if I can get a pro cam, fine. Secondly,… SIMI EXHIBITION?!?!?!!

And so the entire thing blew up upon me and I’m just stuck there in the red leather chair with furry pink cushions (eeww) asking God what did I bring myself into.

In a nutshell, they’re sending us off for the next seven weeks to Vietnam to carry out our projects, complete with an entire crew and expenses paid by sponsors. Diseases galore!

Nah just joking. What’s really happening is that for the next seven weeks, we’re to seperately produce some artsy photos that will then be put up in an exhibition for all to see. Lucky ones get called up by agencies or their mentors to join their company. Throughout the seven weeks, reporters from god-knows will be peeking into our progress. Likewise, updates will be published in mags and newspapers or whathaveyou. We even had to set up a new hotmail account just for this, and start a blog at MSN Spaces so that the general public can come in and see our progress. Last February I didn’t get into Singapore Idol…. I think this is some spiritual being’s way of realizing my past desires.

My MSN Spaces address is mein-bereich.myspace.com. I think. (yeah.. like duh, man)

Im not really complaining.. I think this is good exposure. Like.. holy shit waddafuk one day I’m just some low life masturbating kid with a pocket-cam who hangs around in AMK K-Pool and the next day I’m getting criticized by these megalomaniacal artists.

Charlie asked what we want to do. Lionel had his thing set. I never really thought about mine. Photo Journalism? Portrait? Cinema-style? I have no idea.

I told him I wanted to build sets and add in some cinematography hoobla into my projects “like how we learn in film school” and his whole face started cringing.

“you wanna what?”

A bit more talking and I realized that his vision is just like so – art. Art all the way. And you and I know how anal artsy things can go. It’s like.. everything in the picture must be, literally, touched by you. You have to arrange the objects, you have to build the objects, it’s al you you you you you in the picture. I asked if I could make a CG backdrop, detail and texture it etc etc and then use it as a composite for another real-life shot.

He basically denied me of that. He wanted me to touch my object and not rely on computers.

I like art… but not till such an anal standard. My teachers constantly remind us to find a balance between art and commercialism. In a way, I’m stasifying both my desires and my dad’s cos it’s like… film is art and business combined! Whatever.

Now I have to send Charlie and email within the next 12 hrs to state what I want. And I honestly don’t know what i want. It’s like a mix of photo-storytelling and film. I’m not even sure if that’s been done before. His mantra drilled into me was, “If you can do it, so can your neighbor, your friends, and the entire ten thousand wedding photographers in Singapore. So don’t do it.”

God help me I don’t know what that means if I took it literally.

Charlie is a respectable artist himself. He gave us a sneak preview of this photography technique he has been experimenting and it is NOTHING like any of you have seen before. Trust me.
Lionel, the news reporter sitting with us and I were just gawking at the portrait shots he took. Basically what he did was make his photos look like oil-paintings. I cant tell you much….. because he’s gonna get it PATENTED (that’s possible?) so copyright issues yada yada yada. Let’s just say he “paints with lights”.

We overshot out meeting quite a bit. Everyone else had gone and Charlie had to go back to a photo shoot.

I took a stroll along the unlit corridors of the old supreme court (I guess it’s open to public now. The courtyard was eerie.), just thinking.

This is one huge leap for me. Maybe too much for me to conceptualize but I’m willing to see where this leads me to. Am I happy with the Apprenticeship?

You bet.

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Okay I need to break something to you guys. I know my last few posts have been rather hard. I know. I’ll relate to you my pitiful sad story if you’re willing to listen.

The last week something fugly exploded between a special girl within us and me. It happened before many times and has always mended itself. But this time however another friend got pulled in and you know how triangles are the most powerful forces in the world. Use it the wrong way and you die. I’m not sure how it’s like on the “other side” but on Single-man’s Land here… things are looking bleak. If that wasn’t enough, I just received more news from another one of our special guys regarding certain attitudes within us. Being the emotional bastard I am… I got stirred up a little. The situation now is like untying wanton mee in a bowl of soup without breaking any noodles… in the dark. It’s frigging irony if the person you vent your anger to is the one angry with you. And your “substitute” doesn’t know how to react to you venting your anger.

Now... imagine discovering in your mail that you won the highest job in your company. It’s something you’ve always wanted. You smile, you call your friends, you hop around the house screaming with joy. But after a while you frown and sadly place the letter back in the mailbox and walk away. It kinda sucks. That’s the conflict between my private life and exterior life. I guess you girls got the brunt of my frustration in the end. Damn.