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So yeah, another one of my episodes will be popping up next week (I think, still trying to get confirmation). After the mind-fuckery that was my last episode, this one's a bit more straight forward, although still not that linear. Interesting note: The other day the editor at Niche, James, commented on how every single one of my episodes starts at the end. I never realized this until he pointed it out, but it's true. And if I don't start at the end, I'll start at the beginning, then go to the end, then go to the middle, then the beginning, then the end again (blame Tarantino). I think the main reason I do this is because of the format and the knowledge of how fickle people watching TV can be. If I start with some kind of weird fucked up shit for five minutes, with no explanation, then go straight to what happened before in order to make the audience watch the whole show. I don't know if it works, but fingers crossed, eh? So yeah. 'Eye See Eye Believe' (or, as it's called in Malaysia, 'Mata Nampak Mata Percaya'). A straight up pontianak story (that's a Malaysian vampire for you Westerners), with a twist. The script was pretty tight and simple. A bit too simple, actually. For the first time I wrote too little, and had to shoot an extra scene after I edited it to fit the run-time (my original cut was 13 minutes long). This was also the first production where I got to use a bunch of really cool rigs for attaching cameras to cars... Unfortunately, the bad thing about the set up is that the cameras are rather obstructive. We had one camera at the front with a piece of card above it to stop any glare which already made it difficult for the actor to drive, then another on the left hand side which made it worse because if you drove too close to anything on the left you run the risk of destroying the camera. The ladder was actually used to do the spook floating scene. I needed a close up of the pontianak's feet rising and originally we thought we could just lift the actress up. No go. In the end, she sat down on the ladder and the two guys on either side lifted the ladder up and moved it forward, making it seem like she's floating. Nifty, eh? I could've sworn I'd win this bet, but I didn't. Blasted rain! So, yeah. Tune in next week on Astro Ria at 10.30pm Wednesday to check out this sordid little story. Please. Ah, the joys of being a writer. Technically, there's not much cost involved, is there? All you really need is a laptop, or a typewriter, hell, maybe even just a pen and a notepad. Not much cost at all. But then again, there's the need to spin ideas from one's head. There's the tough bit. Ideas have no cost, and yet are priceless. You have to pluck them from the air and hope their good enough. And sometimes you can't pluckin' pluck. Like me. I've got so many projects I have to write right now and the clock is steadily ticking. I have one definite telemovie to finish by next week (and may have another on my plate with a similar deadline), a pilot for a TV show, a corporate video and of course, my own little projects. Ah, the joys of plucking. The whole weekend I tried to write. And what did I do instead? Stared at the computer for a bit. Then re-arranged items on my desktop. Then I backed up some files and decided to defrag the computer. Since it's defraging, I decided to watch an episode of 'The Green Wing' on DVD. That turned to five episodes. Then I met up with a friend and had a drink, complaining about how I couldn't get 'in the mood' to write. And that's the thing, isn't it? If you're not in the mood, you just plain aren't. You can't force it. But I need to. Deadline's are looming, people, and due to my track-record of being able to conk out thirty pages a day people assume I shall shower them with the seeds of my deranged brain instantly. Bugger that. I suppose I shouldn't complain, considering I'm doing what I've always wanted to do in the first place: tell stories in different forms of media. I get to direct, write, compose, everything I always wanted to do. But, fuck me, it's tough to get in the mood these days. I feel like one of those housewives with a horny husband who's feeling up her left tit and she turns to him and says, "sorry, luv, I've got a headache". Ah, joy. My second episode for Dark City, entitled '4:20pm', airs next wednesday, 18th of July at 10:30pm on Astro Ria. It's a time travel episode, confusing as fuck to direct for both me, the cast and crew (on which I'll elaborate later) and the trailer looks like this: Like I said, it was confusing because it was a time travel episode. After the first two scripts I wrote based on synopsis' from Niche films (one of which, 'Cellphone', I directed) they asked for more stories, so I pulled out the old folder and looked for some old stories that I never got to shoot. One of them was this, '4:20pm', a short film I was originally supposed to shoot with the boys who later became known as Voxel. I figured, with all the horror and murder and rape and pillage of the other episodes, something a bit more 'Twilight Zone' would be cool. But, good God, it was confusing. Shooting a time travel story is annoying because on set you don't usually shoot scenes in sequence, and since we had two different sets we figured we'd shoot one set on day one and the other on day two, but trying to remember what time the clocks are meant to be showing and whether or not the mug of coffee is in shot or not or whether it was hot or cold or whether the character was from the future or the past was a twisting head fuck. I've tried to edit it as clearly as possible so that it won't go over the heads of those watching it, but it could still confuse people. The one shot I really like in this, though, is my little FX shot, where the future protagonist hides behind a wall as his past version walks past, all in the same shot (it's the last shot of the trailer). If anything, I'm just glad I got that shot. The episode showing this week, directed by Na'a Murad, is called 'Ghost Rider' (don't know what the Malay name is) and has no relation to the Nicholas Cage movie based on the Marvel comic book. It's about a rempit (motorbike racer) who is possesed by the spirit of a racer who died when he buys his bike. I'm acting in it as a mechanic (so no crap Chinese accent this time, just covered in a lot of grease). Hope those of you who've been watching are enjoying the show. Noonch. Here ye go. The trailer for the first few episodes of 'Dark City'. Enjoi. The shoot is for a TV series called 'Dark City', a kind of 'Twilight Zone' meets 'Tales from the Crypt' kinda thing. Originally I was brought on to write an episode. Then two. Then I was brought on to direct one. Then I wrote two more. And I directed three more. As you can imagine, life was very busy... At first, the thought of shooting with a crew was kinda daunting. I didn't know jack-shit about lighting and was kinda worried about my innability to speak fluent Malay, but it was good enough to communicate with the crew, who were all really cool, very profesional and incredibly talented. And I got to play with tracks! It was actually kinda weird 'cos all this time I thought working with a crew would seriously hinder me, but it's done nothing but make life easier. There's someone else to think about what order to shoot the scenes, someone else to think about whether there's enough light in the shot, someone else to grab the props and feed the cast and make sure everyone's on time. And I could still shoot in my own style. The only thing I wasn't used to was having the whole scene played from beginning to end because I've never had the luxury of two cameras. I was so used to shooting all of one actor's lines then shooting the rest of the other actor's lines for a conversation because of my own low-budget constraints. On the production company side, it's just incredible that a company in Malaysia would be daring enough to have the kind of subject matter we've been shooting (murder, cannibalism, ghosts, vampires, posession, double-crossing, time travel, rape). Hell, the first episode (directed by the executive producer, Keith Chong) had the main character, a serial killer, taking off her panties and wiping the blood of her victims with it (in the end the panty shot was cut out by the station for obvious TV censorship reasons). But yeah, enough of my rambling. Enjoy the rest of the weird comic-book photoshopped pics and be sure to tune in to this week's episode by Tony Pietra. My first episode, 'Cellphone', will be airing next week. Dark City, every Wednesday at 10.30pm on Astro Ria with a re-run on Thursday at 4.30am. So some of you may have been wondering where I've been for the past few weeks (of course, most of you probably couldn't give a toss but I won't hold that against you). But what have I been doing? This: Tony's episode is airing this week and it is frickin' KICK ASS. It's called 'Death Row', a spooky jail story with plenty of creepiness and violence, written by the ever-spooky Allan Koay featuring music by the ever talented 'Rabbit'. Till then, spread the word. Please. |
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The cool thing about these rigs is that you can just keep driving and shooting and the shots you get look so much more high-budgeted than it actually is.
Yes. That's right. You see that? That's my name on a slate. I've finally got my name actually on a slate for a shoot! With lights! And a monitor! And a crew!
The story, in a nutshell, is about a guy who finds a cellphone in the carpark of his office and decides to take it, only to be haunted by its previous owner. The show stars Bront Palare and Corine Adrienne and the two of them put in great performances.
