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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. 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. 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. 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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.
