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Friday night: After sitting in a stupid hall at the KL Convention Centre for about two hours for the MC2 awards only to find out I didn't win a damn thing I rushed off to Lim Kok Wing to shoot Dragonred's performance, not realizing how intensely fucking huge it is.
As I parked the car I heard the familiar riff of 'Fade Away' and thought to myself, "fuck me, they've started!" I ran like buggery, up and down and up and down flights of stairs and into the hall where they were playing and proceeded to shoot non-stop, jumping off one end of the stage and running across to jump onto the other end before running back down the stairs and back to my car the second they finished.
All this running and jumping and stairs did not do my legs well. As some of you know, I am incredibly unfit and I ended up pulling a muscle. After realizing this I dreaded the next day of shooting. Will I end up walking around with a limp in my scenes? How very 'Melinda & Melinda' (if you didn't know, in that movie Will Ferrell plays a character who's a failed actor who plays every role with a limp).
Then it was a rush back to The Hive to test out the microphone I borrowed from Jordan. The night before I had gone to Jordan's house to pick it up, assuming he'd already found it. No luck. After trawling through endless boxes we found the mic but the cable was broken. It looked like a standard stereo jack so I told him it'd be ok and that I'll figure something out.
When I finally tested the microphone I discovered that the stereo jack for the mic is very unique: it's a screw-in jack. My regular cables were, well, regular cables, and to keep the jack in I had to gaffer tape the fucker.
But here's the thing: because it's not the proper jack, my guess is that the stereo jack's thingeys (I'm not sure of the technical terms) didn't align with the mic's stereo thingeys. The result? A mono mic.
But it worked well, and isolated my dialogue in my tests better and clearer than the camera's on-board mic. Done.
I then realized I hadn't set dressed my room yet. The guy's bedroom had to look like he was a real movie freak. I want to establish this early on, at least subconsciously, so that later on as we find out more about the character it doesn't seem so sudden that he's crazy about movies and wants to be a filmmaker. I had two Sin City posters and a Breakfast at Tiffany's poster back at home that we're full size, but I'd need more than that. So what do I do for the next hour and a half? Take out all my copies of Empire and Total Film, slip in Superman on the DVD player to keep me company and start ripping some pages out.
(I almost forgot how good the original Superman movie was. Although Lex Luthor and his gang are a bit too comical now that I'm older. But Christopher Reeves is the BOMB.)
Tired and in dire need of sleep, I brought back whatever movie related posters and pictures I had and went back to my parents house to sleep. It was four in the morning, and I had to be up by at the very latest 10.30am if I was going to shoot at 11am on Saturday.
Saturday: Ahmad woke me up via phone to tell me he was outside waiting at the gate. The plan was to have a quick breakfast, set-up and start shooting ASAP. I got up, put on whatever clothes I had and made my way to the mamak for some toast and orange juice.
At the mamak, Ariff (my D.O.P.), sms-ed me:
'Might be reaching a little late, i'm still moving machine from my shop to kl...'
(The guy works at a photo lab, and they were moving shop that morning.)
Since Ariff was gonna be late, I figured I'd get Ahmad to buy all the extra stuff we needed for the shoot (reflectors and tracing paper for our 'lighting set-up' which is basically a borrowed Ikea lamp from someone at the office) and I'd spend the morning doing up my room with the posters and stuff.
Before shooting, my room looked like this:
Quite barren. I took these photos just after putting up the Tiffany's poster (please forgive me for the poor photo-stitching). After doing up the room it looked like this:
(That's just one side. I didn't have time to photo-stitch the rest.)
This actually took a lot longer than I expected, so in a way it was good that Ariff was late. I still had to build my boom-mic (which I shall post photo's of soon) which basically consists of Jordan's mic on a short mic stand with cloth wrapped around the grip so that it doesn't pick up too much of the mic's shakes. The mic stand is then gaffa tapped to a long wooden stick.
(Raimi fans: altogether now - "This... is my BOOM stick!").
Whilst I was making the boom stick Ariff was figuring out the lighting and angles. Ahmad filmed us all doing this which I might upload also.
By the time we were ready to shoot it was about 4pm. we were chasing day light and my girlfriend had already finished work so she came over to help out. Ariff shot, Ahmad held the boom-stick and my girlfriend held the lamp and reflector (as you can see from the photo below. My skeleton crew in action).
It didn't help that, on-top of us trying to get as much day light as possible before the sun went down, it kept raining on and off. Then Mommy Cat refused to act. She was doing exactly what I wanted her to do in the film in the morning but now, after seeing the crew she had never met, she ran off, 'meow'-ing all the way to her safe spot under the sofa. No more special attention to Mommy Cat.
My maid also refused to act so I had to cut her scene out. When I wanted to shoot my shower scene I didn't realize how dificult it would be to emulate the scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off until I found myself constantly wiping shampoo out of my eyes. As we kept shooting, the sun kept going down and by the time we had to shoot the seventh shot it was already too dark. Fuck it. Tomorrow's another day and I've got a gimpy leg.
Sunday: Even though we stared late on Saturday, I didn't want to start any earlier than noon. The last few days of the week had left me exhausted and my leg was getting worse. Everyone came roughly on time and we shot the last interior shot before moving to exteriors. Ariff brought his photo friend (whose name I can't remember right now) to help out.
Today was much more acting intensive and that's when I realized that even though I wrote the fucker, memorizing the lines and acting it is another matter. I think my accent when a bit wonky but I'm sure (fingers crossed) it'll come out ok. We shot around the house for about an hour and a bit. Halfway through a cop car pulled up and eyeballed us. I smiled and waved.
We then hopped into our respective cars and went to our first outside location: Plaza Damansara. It's an office area, so I expected it to be quiet and empty on a Sunday. Fat chance. For some reason the mamak stalls were packed so we were contsantly looking for quieter areas to shoot. I decided for these exteriors to use the onboard mic because we'd be moving around so much. Thing is, a lot of the shots weren't as move-y as I thought and we could've set up with the boom-stick. Damn. We'll fix it in post.
Somehow Ahmad managed to get hold of a clapper board. At first it was kinda fun, having a clapper board and starting every scene with some guy shouting, "Scene 23 take 1!"
Unfortunately, after a while it got pretty fucking irritating. Especially when the person's taking way too long to set up the clapper board (of all things) before shouting, "Scene 23 take 9!"
We wrapped up around 4pm with about 26 or so scenes done in total over the weekend (bearing in mind each scene is about a third of a page). After having a quick drink with the crew I went home to check out the rushes (although I guess this term doesn't apply for video).
They say you gain about 10 pounds on TV. When you're borderline tubby this is not good news.
I watched the rushes and I couldn't help but keep thinking to myself, "fuck me, I'm ugly. I am an ugly fat fuck."
(I know what you're thinking, Man Meth'.)
I kept saying this to myself as I watched and for most of the night I kept bitching about it to my girlfriend who wanted nothing more than to relax and eat some tom yam. As we had dinner I watched the television and watched ad after ad, all featuring pretty boy male models.
"That! That's how a lead character for a movie should look!" I exclaimed.
"Would you rather have the lead be good looking but can't say the lines like you want them to or look like you and say the lines right?" was the general reply from my girlfriend. That shut me up.
The fact of the matter is, there aren't that many good young actors in KL. Even less who'd do this kinda thing for free (strangely, though, there are some quite good young actresses). Plus, I wanted to shoot this fast and I didn't want to involve anyone I didn't know too well. We'll soon see what people think of my so-called acting abilities when the movies done.
But back to the rushes. Now that I've gotten through my first weekend of shooting I know roughly how my crew performs. By the second day things went faster and smoother, but there's a lot of footage from the first day I'd like to reshoot. I'm even tempted to reshoot it myself using the tripod. I can't make heads or tails of this footage yet because it's only about ten minutes or so of usable footage. I might cut the first ten minutes to see how it looks, leaving 'scene missing' cards on whatever bits haven't been shot yet.
Unfortunately, the very first scene is a telephone conversation between my character and Man Method's character in England, and I don't have that footage.
Holla back, Meth'! After re-watching the rushes and constantly thinking about it, I decided since my parents will be back from their holiday with my lil' bro on Thursday, I might as well try and shoot as much as I can in my room before anything happens to it. Unfortunately, time is a factor, so after thinking about it long and hard, I decided something rash:
I'll shoot me.
It seemed feasible on paper. Set up the tripod, get a lot of pick-up shots and fix up the pacing in the edit so the shots don't look so static. This is of utmost importance to me because I hate static shots set up on a tripod. The only question was when.
The answer: this morning.
Shooting the footage was the only thing that got me out of bed this morning. The night before I rehearsed how I was gonna set everything up and referred to the earlier footage to make sure the props' positions matched. I then set up the tripod, angle the camera, press record and act out the scene three times. I did this for about four scenes then shot some close ups of picking up stuff, opening and closing closets, etc.
One thing I discovered after watching the rushes was that the camera had a quite wide angle lens which was warping my already chubby face into Stay-Puft-Marshmallow-Man-blimpiness, so for all my shots I set up the camera further back, zoomed it in and made sure with the aid of the monitor that I was roughly in shot. Since it was so close, it was easier to hide the mic. In one of the scenes I just held it, in others I lodged it in a crevice or between clothes as close as possible.
Later on in the day, after my meeting in Subang, I pulled out the camera whilst driving in the heart of KL to capture some random KL-ites as they go about their KL duties. I was also hoping for a shot of the three tall structures that are to appear in the movie - the Dataran Merdeka flagpole, the KL tower and the KLCC twin towers - but no chance. No worries, though. I now know where're the best parts to get the shots.
I also have another messed up plan in mind: to gaffa tape the camera to the dashboard of my car and shoot whilst I drive to the office. I don't want to have to wait to get my footage, and I need loads of it right now because as each day passes I keep thinking of better ways to get the shot.
You see, usually I wouldn't bother. For 'Nicotine' there was an entire dialogue scene that needed to be reshot because the angles were such that both characters didn't look like they were talking to each other no matter how you edited. But, instead of re-shooting, I rewrote the scene using the existing footage and fixed it in post.
For 'Ciplak', though, I don't want to do that. I want to get the shot, and it's getting tough. I'm quite sure even with all the footage I'll have at the end of the day there will be loads of bits that won't be right, but we'll try and fix what we can.
But speed is of the essence. There's a scene where Tony will be making a cameo appearance as a fellow film geek and since his scenes are indoors, I'm writing into the script that he keeps his windows boarded so I can shoot his scene at night and use indoor lighting set-ups.
What? His character's supposed to be a bit eccentric.
I'm also wonderng whether we can shoot the night scenes sooner, and have even considered re-shooting all of the second days footage differently. I guess the problem I'm finding with shooting a feature is that I can't edit it straight away so I can't 100% see whether something works or not. Need more footage so I can start editing, dammit. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, apart from a pretty face your favourite part of the female anatomy was ass.
And not in an anal sex kind of way.
No, just imagine you were a person who likes cute butts. Something about them makes you go buckwild. Call 'em what you will: ass, butt, buttocks, rump, back, booty, posterior, double-parked VW beetles, whatever. To quote Shakespeare, "a tailfeather by any other name is still as sweet".
Or something.
Now, given the above, imagine you work in an office of about 200+ staff. Amongst these 200+ employees, 65%-75% of them are female. Out of the female population of the staff, at least 50% of them have an average booty and out of that 50% a good 10% have a better than average pair of bumpy bits.
Out of this 10%, imagine there are 2 individuals in particular who's asses look like they've been sculpted by Michelangelo.
No, not the turtle. The artist.
Imagine these asses for just a moment. Curved peaches that dip into the middle at a perfect angle, not jutting out too far from the rest of the body but just nice and perfectly proportioned to the rest of them. And the rest of them ain't too bad either.
Imagine if you have to work in this office and watch these perfectly positioned posteriors walk past every day. It hurts to look at that ass. It's the kind of ass that's so beautiful it makes you look ugly as you say, "goddamn, that's some fine ass."
Welcome to my life.
I'm serious. You think I'm joking? I'm not joking. This movie is fucking brilliant. I haven't felt this 'wow-ed' by a movie in a long time. After years of so-so hip-hop and ghetto based rags-to-riches tales, finally there's a movie filled with character, emotion, intensity and integrity.
It's genius is both its script and its casting - Terrence Howard is balls to the wall A-class amazing and any one of the girls from this pimps stable - from Taryn Manning to Taraji P. Henson to Paula Jai Parker - have more character and dimension than any $10 million lead female in your standard Hollywood fare. Then there's the rest of the cast: Anthony Anderson finally sheds the 'funny fat black guy' stereotype and Ludacris can act like a motherfucker.
And let's face it, boys & girls, when you think pimp you may think Snoop Dogg but the reality is a pimp isn't the most savoury of characters on the block. To have a movie where your main character is a pimp (and not a rich Jay-Z mofo at that), complete with all the anger, frustration and propensity to smack a ho down and yet get the audience to feel for his journey, to want him to get somewhere, that's a real accomplishment. You feel for it because in essence it's the archetypal story of fighting and sacrificing to make a dream come true. Done right, everybody's a sucker for it. Especially me.
Just remember this movie isn't all happy-happy-joy-joy. It's a pimp. It's his ho's. It's a shitty run-down house in Memphis and the pimp's ride isn't even one whole colour. a fuck in the front is $20 and a fuck in the back is $40 and, in case you didn't know, these girls aren't enjoying it. Terrence Howard's 'DJay' isn't a selfish character who wants out from the pimping business, he's a caring character that wants to bring everybody he loves out of the pimping business and whatever dead-end jobs their in: his ho's, his producer's and finally himself.
8 Mile almost became the definitive movie of this genre, but whilst Eminem has some real and incredibly original flow (and he could act pretty good, surprisingly) Terrence Howard has got character by the bucketload and baggage by the carriage. Watch this movie. It won't dissapoint. I guarantee it. So I get a call from Tony last night. Apparently the call-for-entries deadline for the 10th Malaysian Video Awards has been extended to the 1st of November.
Bastards.
This leaves me in a tricky position. I could either rush the production to make it for the MVA's or say "fuck you, Mr. MVA! Thanks for letting us now about the deadline at the last minute, asswipe!" Alternatively, I could pass them a rough cut and still keep working on the post for the international awards.
You see, the thing is, if it wasn't fasting month I could probably pull this off in the nick of time. If it wasn't fasting month and I still had some leave left I could probably pull this off no sweat. I wonder what's the deal with unpaid leave. How's that work? Maybe I should just call in sick.
Either way, the temptation to send my crzy lil' movie to the MVA's is great. My rational side is telling me to take my time and shoot it at its own pace and just get it ready for the Singapore International Film Festival.
Or maybe I should just call the curator. Who's the curator?
Tony's call came whilst I was transferring footage from production days 1, 2 and 3 to my desktop. Since it's been so difficult for me to imagine the movie right now, I've been doing a rough cut of the movie. By 3am I got about five pages of the script edited (with the scene from the UK replaced with a 'Scene Missing' title card). Surprisingly, most of the footage is working out. More surprisingly, the sound that I thought was great when we were shooting turns out to be incredibly teeny-tiny. I foresee a lot of audio manipulation.
After editing it I realized something: no music. I stripped in some temporary music for now (Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" and Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick") and press play again. Now it's working. I comepletely forgot about music, it's making a world of difference.
To give you an idea as to how hectic the scheduling has been, I only started editing at about 1am. Digitizing the footage was from 11.30pm. Reason I started so late was because before that I was shooting footage of Dragonred for their music video. Then, this weekend I'll be acting for Tony's short film 'Wrath' where I'll be playing a serial killer. Tony said shooting might only take a day, he's taking it easy since the deadline for the MVA's have been pushed. Hence I may be able to shoot some more footage for 'Ciplak' this weekend too. I checked with Ariff, he should be ok.
Thing is, after editing and driving home I only managed to fall asleep around 4.30am. Then my mom woke me up at 5am for 'sahur' (during fasting month, Muslims wake up before dawn to grab a quick bite). After eating I couldn't sleep till 6.30am and woke up at 9.30am.
I am now dead tired. My brain hurts. My eyes hurt. My arms and legs hurt. I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep like a cat on a sunny Sunday. Instead I have to spend a whole day pretending to work. After this I'll be meeting up with my girlfriend and I have two choices: either relax and watch DVD's in her arms or keep on working on this damn movie. For inspiration and drive I've got my copy of Robert Rodriguez's "Rebel Without A Crew" at work to remind me that even though I'm going through a tough time, it still hasn't reached the levels of insanity he had.
(Just realized this when readin the book: Rodriguez and I have the same birthday: June 20th. Does this date create kids with hair-brained hectic schemes on purpose?)
I'm seriously considering taking some days off to finish my movie.
The one on the right with the marker pen? The whole sketch is that of my room which is the set for my characters room in the movie. The blue boxes with arrows show which way the camera is meant to go and what to focus on. This is the opening shot of the movie and it was meant to be one long take a la the opening of Back to the Future in Doc's lab 'cos I thought that was a great way to open a movie.
Only thing is, the room isn't exactly as cool and as character descriptive as Doc's. Nor did we have a steadicam. I was hoping Ariff would bring his makeshift DIY steadicam but apparently it has a tendency to scratch the camera. Ain't nobody scratching my baby.
Of course, just having boards isn't exactly enough (as you can see).
Every scene is written down, showing whether it's internal or external, day or night, what location, which actors, what props required, any special requirements and whatever extra notes we may have.
You could then view any piece of data based on a specific category. Say, for example, we were scheduling a day where we'd only be in one location: 'Jo's House', and we were only going to do the internal shots. We'd click 'Jo's House' and 'Int' and voila! We have our schedule sheet for the day.
I know all you people out there proficient in Excel think this is no big deal, but I reckon it's fucking genius. You have no idea how much time was saved with this spreadsheet.
As you can see in the pic, this is the schedule for day 2. We were supposed to shoot ALL those scenes. The bits ticked are the ones we actually shot. Behind schedule much?
Then there's that microphone I was talking about. The stereo mic that was mono. Here it is in all it's glory and I quite honestly haven't found one since. It's some unknown brand.
That pink bandana over there (a remnant from our company trip last year. I was in the pink team, which led to many a recitation of Reservoir Dogs) is there to stop the mic from picking up too much of the shakes. This is especially important when your soundman is Ahmad, a man prone to breathing heavily to the point where his whole body moves.
We only had my tiny mic stand, so with the cunning use of gaffer tape we attached it to a long stick my maid found out back. This... is my BOOM stick!
I've started uploading photos at Flickr to make things easier. You can check out my Flickr page by clicking here or clicking any of the photos. Now, I'm off to edit some more of the movie before shooting tomorrow. |
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Okay.
WATCH THIS MOVIE.
One thing I especially liked and could relate to (you know it's good when a Malay kid can relate to a hip-hop movie set down South) was the entire process of trying to record their demo. From DIY soundproofing to shitty mikes to make-shift pop-filters and even the little touches are focused on, like switching off the fan before a take. And the way they make the song and the sound evolve is entirely realistic - from rhymes on a pad and trying to get that beat to practising, from trying to figure out what the hook is to finding the magic touch you were looking for - and by the time all the glitches have been sorted and Anthony Anderson presses the 'record' button you will be hooked by that song and you will truly share the same feeling of elation the characters experience.
