It was the usual "How did your shoot go?" mood in school the past few days. Sometimes I'd see my other friends scuttering around after school and in the FMS cage ripping out equipment to load in some rented van and a couple of us (namely, Kang Sheng and me) would sit around training our eye power and talk about the ideal group.
Yesterday Don and Justin asked me how my AFP2 shoot went and Sammy was there too. It was quite different this time. Normally we'd all look for some little fucker to pinpoint and release all our anger on or find a little fucker and make him look all holy and righteous. I told them my shoot went quite happily. Though of course problems happened but that's given.. it's only what we wanna do about the problem that matters.
I had some reservations about Earl as DOP before the shoot started mostly because he never spoke in class and drove his Phantom bike and had this long hairdo that reminded me of Triple H. But it was pleasing to see that he can do stuff on set. We had a few night-for-day scenes (or is it day-for-night?) which meant that we had to light a room like it was day when it's actually 3am in the morning. See that picture before this paragraph? that was shot at 10pm Thursday night.
As a gaffer i did what my job demands me. I made up a system of my own and that is to rest while they're shooting and start working while they are resting. For example on Saturday mid-noon after they all got back from the fight scene at Arab Street everyone was tired and some fell asleep with Janice our A.D. simply dragging and shouting frm her chair "Cannnn weee seeetttt uupppp....??!?!!?!" on and on and on again. Funny but Earl, Faried and I were moving around setting up light stands and going around with the light meter doing stuff.
I think one of the reasons why the shoot went so pleasingly was because the camera team had their own system, I had my own system, the producer had his own system and the two audio guys had their own system from charging batteries to logging to who to call when they need help.
On the first day of the shoot, when i came 2hrs early and the director came an hr late (hey was fun), i squatted under the block in Tampines preparing my things. I finished making up two reflectors for the guys cause i knew the school's reflector was only one and that itself was tearing apart already. I added more colouring to the blood i made because Sulaimi said the blood was too translucent and too glossy. I remember when i showed it to him and saw how it looked like in broad daylight i felt so dumb.
At the same time i prepared a little MP4 player device thing that i planned to somehow use so that we can record whatever the film camera recorded and play it back on the fly. I saw them used this thing during the shoot at the Supreme Court a few weeks ago with Uncle Jimmy.
Too bad we didnt have a video assist for our film camera.
Before the talents came i asked Sulaimi to test out his bruise (so that i could test out my blood) since he was doing make-up. We looked at Faried sleeping soundly in the house...
Lucky he was receptive. On one side Janice was playing the fool putting up pink rosy blushes on Faried and on the other side Sulaimi and I were figuring out how to use lipsticks and eye-shadows to simulate bruises.
Then I tried putting on my blood mix for the first time on a face.
It looked nice but i found that the blood would fragmentate after a while craeting some sort of abrasian effect. To be honest, i dont even know how blood is supposed to look like after a fight. So i followed Sulaimi's direction. Next time I'll bring some reference photos to guide me.
The graphic artist finally came together with the main character so we started making them up. Sulaimi had the artist design some funky tattoo on the right arm of the actor with a black marker.
For some reason i started thinking of Sly's tattoos. Then they put up a twinkle twinkle little star on the shoulder and i went.... ooo.... that's ugly. Why, Sly? Why?
Had a bit of rest while Sulaimi did his thing. I looked around thinking of what I should be doing now but i simply couldnt find anything to do; Earl had already set up his light - a 300w in the middle of the corridor and that was enough. I know of other groups who would still blow 2.5kW lights comeplete with other 1kW and 650W lights in that tiny corridor. After a while you realise that there are two schools of thought here in FSV and sometimes it causes friction within a group when it comes to the lighting style.
A funny thing happened on Friday the 13th. It was the usual protocol and procedure but when Sulaimi told us to go for a take, something somewhere will fail. The sound equipment will die, the camera will die, some guy will shout from outside the house, traffic will be too noisy.. at the end of the day nothing we shot was usable and we gave up and decided to move on to the next scene - the miscarriage scene.
The shoot time was 2am and miraculously everything started working again without a hitch.
The scene was in a small bathroom and instead of a bajillion lights squeezed into a small bathroom, Earl hit one 300W outside the toilet and all was swell.
Sulaimi wanted this scene to be really bloody and distrubing. So i prepared my blood while Sammy came and bought us a calf's liver. The smell was interesting.
So i got to work straight away... this is scene one out of two of my scene in this film.
I tried a mix of detergent and my special colouring first but it sucked and looked like paint. I was reluctant to use my primary mix of blood since it was quite a lot and i could sell an amount that much (about 500ml) for SGD200. But because i'm still an amateur and didnt wanna get all snotty and shit (cant go out half-cocked) i used it anyways.
Everyone around went, "WWAAHHHHHHHHHH eeeeeee!!!!!"
I had no idea how a miscarriage is supposed to be like. I used to think that the baby dies and then dissolves into the body or that doctor takes it out of her. So as i was punching and tearing apart the liver with my bare hands the female talent came in and shouted...
"OMG THAT IS SUCH A HUGE FETUS!"
I think you can consider that Sulaimi and I got a scolding from her to not research on miscarriage and she ordered me to tear up the liver into smaller and smaller pieces till it was just palm size. I looked at her and asked, "Really?"
"REALLY!!!"
ok fine girls shld noe.. i mean every girl would go through at least one bloody scene in their lives.
This keeps happening to me but girls like to order me around... no matter how weird the order is.
"Audi you must put some on my leg!"
I dripped a bit on her legs.
"NO NOT LIKE THAT! YOU HAVE TO REACH IN TO MY INNER THIGHS AND SMEAR THE BLOOD THERE!"
huh? haahaah what? eew.... in normal situations i would have felt really horny but cmon she's Malay!!!!!
But i did what i did and bent down to look up her legs. If only it was some girl i liked. woooo hooo..... oh hello Ting!
I guess the guys liked the blood effect quite a bit. Earl was having fun framing the shots up and Sammy was having fun taking pictures.
This was kinda nice.
Even the female talent had some fun. She spent two hours in the fucking bathroom, filled with the smell of animal liver and honey. She had blood all over her body and face. I got a bit disgusted when i got back to look at the updates and she smiled at me and said, "I like your blood! It's so sweet!"
Wah cb... nightmare.
After the shoot we had some fun posing around. i call this my "Iraq War" pose.
Is all good!
I scrolled through the pics in class yesterday and felt so proud of this picture that i asked Justin Longbeard to look at it.
For someone like him to say "WHOOAAA!!!" i guess the effect was pretty cool.
The next post i'll update more on what happened coupled with a few nifty photos of the fight scene and and accident that happened on set. Really spiffy.
Until then... I gotta go to Bugis to the telecine process of the film.
Oh and not forgetting...
My ginna Kwang Wei and our beloved Daryl Bryan Lim.
Yesterday Don and Justin asked me how my AFP2 shoot went and Sammy was there too. It was quite different this time. Normally we'd all look for some little fucker to pinpoint and release all our anger on or find a little fucker and make him look all holy and righteous. I told them my shoot went quite happily. Though of course problems happened but that's given.. it's only what we wanna do about the problem that matters.
I had some reservations about Earl as DOP before the shoot started mostly because he never spoke in class and drove his Phantom bike and had this long hairdo that reminded me of Triple H. But it was pleasing to see that he can do stuff on set. We had a few night-for-day scenes (or is it day-for-night?) which meant that we had to light a room like it was day when it's actually 3am in the morning. See that picture before this paragraph? that was shot at 10pm Thursday night.
As a gaffer i did what my job demands me. I made up a system of my own and that is to rest while they're shooting and start working while they are resting. For example on Saturday mid-noon after they all got back from the fight scene at Arab Street everyone was tired and some fell asleep with Janice our A.D. simply dragging and shouting frm her chair "Cannnn weee seeetttt uupppp....??!?!!?!" on and on and on again. Funny but Earl, Faried and I were moving around setting up light stands and going around with the light meter doing stuff.
I think one of the reasons why the shoot went so pleasingly was because the camera team had their own system, I had my own system, the producer had his own system and the two audio guys had their own system from charging batteries to logging to who to call when they need help.
On the first day of the shoot, when i came 2hrs early and the director came an hr late (hey was fun), i squatted under the block in Tampines preparing my things. I finished making up two reflectors for the guys cause i knew the school's reflector was only one and that itself was tearing apart already. I added more colouring to the blood i made because Sulaimi said the blood was too translucent and too glossy. I remember when i showed it to him and saw how it looked like in broad daylight i felt so dumb.
At the same time i prepared a little MP4 player device thing that i planned to somehow use so that we can record whatever the film camera recorded and play it back on the fly. I saw them used this thing during the shoot at the Supreme Court a few weeks ago with Uncle Jimmy.
Too bad we didnt have a video assist for our film camera.
Before the talents came i asked Sulaimi to test out his bruise (so that i could test out my blood) since he was doing make-up. We looked at Faried sleeping soundly in the house...
Lucky he was receptive. On one side Janice was playing the fool putting up pink rosy blushes on Faried and on the other side Sulaimi and I were figuring out how to use lipsticks and eye-shadows to simulate bruises.
Then I tried putting on my blood mix for the first time on a face.
It looked nice but i found that the blood would fragmentate after a while craeting some sort of abrasian effect. To be honest, i dont even know how blood is supposed to look like after a fight. So i followed Sulaimi's direction. Next time I'll bring some reference photos to guide me.
The graphic artist finally came together with the main character so we started making them up. Sulaimi had the artist design some funky tattoo on the right arm of the actor with a black marker.
For some reason i started thinking of Sly's tattoos. Then they put up a twinkle twinkle little star on the shoulder and i went.... ooo.... that's ugly. Why, Sly? Why?
Had a bit of rest while Sulaimi did his thing. I looked around thinking of what I should be doing now but i simply couldnt find anything to do; Earl had already set up his light - a 300w in the middle of the corridor and that was enough. I know of other groups who would still blow 2.5kW lights comeplete with other 1kW and 650W lights in that tiny corridor. After a while you realise that there are two schools of thought here in FSV and sometimes it causes friction within a group when it comes to the lighting style.
A funny thing happened on Friday the 13th. It was the usual protocol and procedure but when Sulaimi told us to go for a take, something somewhere will fail. The sound equipment will die, the camera will die, some guy will shout from outside the house, traffic will be too noisy.. at the end of the day nothing we shot was usable and we gave up and decided to move on to the next scene - the miscarriage scene.
The shoot time was 2am and miraculously everything started working again without a hitch.
The scene was in a small bathroom and instead of a bajillion lights squeezed into a small bathroom, Earl hit one 300W outside the toilet and all was swell.
Sulaimi wanted this scene to be really bloody and distrubing. So i prepared my blood while Sammy came and bought us a calf's liver. The smell was interesting.
So i got to work straight away... this is scene one out of two of my scene in this film.
I tried a mix of detergent and my special colouring first but it sucked and looked like paint. I was reluctant to use my primary mix of blood since it was quite a lot and i could sell an amount that much (about 500ml) for SGD200. But because i'm still an amateur and didnt wanna get all snotty and shit (cant go out half-cocked) i used it anyways.
Everyone around went, "WWAAHHHHHHHHHH eeeeeee!!!!!"
I had no idea how a miscarriage is supposed to be like. I used to think that the baby dies and then dissolves into the body or that doctor takes it out of her. So as i was punching and tearing apart the liver with my bare hands the female talent came in and shouted...
"OMG THAT IS SUCH A HUGE FETUS!"
I think you can consider that Sulaimi and I got a scolding from her to not research on miscarriage and she ordered me to tear up the liver into smaller and smaller pieces till it was just palm size. I looked at her and asked, "Really?"
"REALLY!!!"
ok fine girls shld noe.. i mean every girl would go through at least one bloody scene in their lives.
This keeps happening to me but girls like to order me around... no matter how weird the order is.
"Audi you must put some on my leg!"
I dripped a bit on her legs.
"NO NOT LIKE THAT! YOU HAVE TO REACH IN TO MY INNER THIGHS AND SMEAR THE BLOOD THERE!"
huh? haahaah what? eew.... in normal situations i would have felt really horny but cmon she's Malay!!!!!
But i did what i did and bent down to look up her legs. If only it was some girl i liked. woooo hooo..... oh hello Ting!
I guess the guys liked the blood effect quite a bit. Earl was having fun framing the shots up and Sammy was having fun taking pictures.
This was kinda nice.
Even the female talent had some fun. She spent two hours in the fucking bathroom, filled with the smell of animal liver and honey. She had blood all over her body and face. I got a bit disgusted when i got back to look at the updates and she smiled at me and said, "I like your blood! It's so sweet!"
Wah cb... nightmare.
After the shoot we had some fun posing around. i call this my "Iraq War" pose.
Is all good!
I scrolled through the pics in class yesterday and felt so proud of this picture that i asked Justin Longbeard to look at it.
For someone like him to say "WHOOAAA!!!" i guess the effect was pretty cool.
The next post i'll update more on what happened coupled with a few nifty photos of the fight scene and and accident that happened on set. Really spiffy.
Until then... I gotta go to Bugis to the telecine process of the film.
Oh and not forgetting...
My ginna Kwang Wei and our beloved Daryl Bryan Lim.
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