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On-line flyer of my upcoming gig at Paul's Place, 24th December, 3pm. Click around the flyer to check out the various bands, maps, etc.
Day 10 sucked the balls of Zeus.
This does not mean that the performances that I shot sucked. Far from it. Rauf's reshoots of the 'T-Fresh scene' (the obligatory ammusing hip-hop wannabe) were great, full of energy and hillarious. And Ahmad's scenes were faultless (apart from all the times he kept looking at the camera).
But that was only meant to be ten percent of what I wanted to shoot. I had a whole bunch of footage to shoot on that day and those two scenes would amount to about two minutes of screen time in the finished product.
I was supposed to shoot the first half of the 'chase sequence'.
My original intention was to shoot half of it on Day 10 and the rest on Day 11, intercutting the two because it would be too troublesome getting the whole cast in one place for two days. So I planned to shoot close-ups and reaction shots of the guys chasing me on Day 10 and me being chased on Day 11 at the carpark at Pusat Sains, which is usually dead empty on Sundays.
I guess it was my own blatant stupidity to not expect it to rain during monsoon season.
And rain it did. Huge streams of chubby rain as if horses grew wings and were flying in flocks above us, peeing simultaneously with much glee. Which is probably an apt description because to say I was quite pissed off on Day 10 would be a huge understatement.
Day 11, in comparison, rocked much of the skills of cat ('catskills', geddit?). We started off by shooting the scene where Ben & CK of Ben's Bitches fame as DVD pirates selling their wares until they get busted. Based on their insane live shows I knew I could trust them to ad-lib it through so I didn't bother scripting it and I got quite a number of hillarious lines, although there were a couple references to 'Sepet' which I'm not sure whether I'll keep in or not.
To shoot the scene, I asked the permission of the owner of a kedai runcit near my house who I've known since I was a kid. We set up a table and pulled out a bunch of DVD's from my collection. Some people thought we were actually selling them.
After that it drizzled for a bit but that soon subsided so we went to the carpark at pusat sains for the chase sequence.
The chase sequence basically involves me, Paul, a Proton Wira and a trusty skateboard. Chase chase chase, pop a few tricks, get hit by the car and run over it to escape, car crashes into trees.
Simple enough.
The skateboard is actually quite an invaluable tool when shooting on the DIY tip. Like this:
A car is also very helpful. You want to shoot someone running but don't want any shake? Drive the car next to the guy who's running and film him from the car. Done n' done.
The stunts, on the other hand, were a bit tricky.
I'm not sure if the shots will work in the edit. I took a whole bunch of shots at various angles, a bunch of takes, whole load of close ups... hopefully it all cuts together. For the bit where I run over the car, I didn't realize my own weight (yes, I am a bit on the tubby) and left a couple of huge dents on the roof of Ahmad's car. Saiful beat them back into shape.
Then I injured my wrist somewhere along the way climbing over which hurt like fuckery. Thankfully, it was Paul's turn to act as my stunt double.
We got a bunch of shots of Paul from the waist down skating and pulling some tricks: ollies, nollies, kickflips and shuvit tailgrabs. Should come out ok.
With these scenes in the can I have about 80% of the footage needed for the whole movie. Bearing in mind that only 80% of the movie is actual footage. The rest is animation and other such things. That's a whole other headache I'll figure out in pre-pro.
Later on... last night...
Couldn't sleep so I decided to stay up till 4.00am cutting the trailer.
And I'm happy.
I cut it to the tune of Triple 6 Poser's "Another Lie" and Soft Touch's "Listen 2 What U C" as well as the acoustic part of Y2k's "Lara" and it looks pretty damn cool. Just gotta fix up the sound and colours and I'll upload it.
And now I'm fucking tired. I used to write that a lot. Nyaargh. I reckon it's a wonderful sound-effect word, perfectly describing one's feelings at a moment of frustration.
I'm sat at a post-production house and the TV is stuck on channel V, which usually would be cool, except right now it's "America's Top Model". Catfights, bitching, anorexia, crying, airheadedness. And these women are 110% serious about this shit.
That, alone, would be worthy of 'Nyaargh-ness'.
Add to that the frustration of trying to edit this last minute video and your colleague has a 180 opposite opinion of how you think the thing should be edited (much to the annoyance of the editor who is slowly losing her mind).
Then add to that the intensely packed schedule I have for this week that almost spiralled out of control if I didn't cancel some of the things on my plate combined with my completely whacked out sleeping pattern.
Supreme Nyaargh-ness!
One of the things I didn't want to cancel but (ultimately had to) was the offer from Abang Rom of ROTTW magazine to shoot and cut a 30 second TVC for him for Rock the World this weekend. I was supposed to meet him tonight.
No chance of that.
The thought of quitting and going all out on the creative tip is constantly pounding on the doors of my head like narcs.
And, completely unrelated, this pic Albert took of me in Y2k at the last gig we played is quite cool.
The trailer is predominantly made up of the action sequences as opposed to letting the viewer in on what exactly the damn trailer is all about, featuring the music of Triple 6 Poser, Y2k and Soft Touch on the trailer. Opinions, comments, do let me know.
Click the pic or click this link. It's being hosted by yousendit.com so it'll only be up for seven days, starting now. Be gentle.
So over the weekend I was shooting: Tony's scene on Saturday (an incredibly quirky performance) and the girlfriend scene on Sunday (with newcomer Sarah) followed by make-up and night scenes after that.
I won't go too much into details because I'm sure most of you guys don't read the length production diary part (mostly due to my often dry recap of the events), so I'll keep it simple: on Saturday we had no DOP so my girlfriend took camera duties; in the scenes most serious moment, Tony could not help laughing for over seven takes because I looked 'funny'; Sarah was incredibly nervous (probably the most nervous person on set) but did her best; we only had an hour and a half to shoot the cafe scene so I did all my scenes in one tight close-up with no re-takes or coverage; the catering bill came up to over 260 bucks; during the night scene we ad-libbed a possible new ending involving a 'berhenti' sign and there's a good chance those bastard crows that shit all over Taman Tun will be making an appearance in the movie.
There. That's it in a nutshell.
During yesterday's production, over dinner (go to the new Mosin in Taman Tun next to Pizza Hut and order a Mumtaj naan. It rocks balls) I decided to ask (CENSORED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT AND SHALL BE REFERRED TO AS 'DEEP THROAT') about the process of getting a telemovie or TV show done. They were already in the industry so they should be packed with information. The knowledge I received from this discussion was not as positive as I hoped.
"You need to get 'hours' from the TV station," said Deep Throat.
"'Hours'?" I asked, "What do you mean by 'hours'?"
"'Hours'," replied Deep Throat, "as in the hours on TV. Let's say you want to make a telemovie. Telemovie's are an hour long, so you need an hour from the TV station."
"How do I get these 'hours'?"
(PART OF TRANSCRIPTION MISSING DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE WRITER'S A PUSSY. HE DOESN'T WANT TO GET INTO TROUBLE WITH WHAT WAS PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN HERE.)
"Or you could buy hours from another production company."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, sometimes production companies already have hours from a TV station, but they don't have enough budget to make anything, so you can buy off their hours and stick 'Produced in Association With...' in the credits."
"How much would it cost to buy the hours off another company?"
"About RM$7-10,000."
Hmmm...
"How difficult is it to get hours from the TV company?"
(MORE BITS TAKEN OUT FOR FEAR OF BEING ATTACKED BY PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY WITH POINTED STICKS.)
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