Fucking dogs… they make you look good. Anyways, if you find white boxes in any posts, those are videos. Just hit the refresh button on ur browser. Until i find a better way to place videos in posts, hit it bloody hard.

Yesterday we had our Cam and Lighting Ass 2 shoot.

As I said before, in this project we had to pick a scene out of any movie (in the library, but that’s redundant cos the library has EVERYTHING) and try to replicate the lighting.

We actually thought of taking a Film Noir genre since low ley lighting is pretty much easier to do. But then they were all in VHS and no no no no no NO! we modern ppl no touch VHS no more! So yeah we chose Godfather Part 2.

The scene, basically, has three guys following Don Carleone into a room, he sitting on a couch and some bald guy asking for help.

Pre-production started the week before.

My group mates were the unlikely superheroic bunch consisting of Dan the Lame Gan Chiong King, Aisya the uh… something… Yvonne and Mei Fang, the girl who looks 19 but is actually 25. (yeah I got shocked when I found out. Now, if anyone asks me how old they are, im just gonna say 45.)

Our roles were given out.

Look at me! I’m a dope!

And a little rough sketch I drew because Dan was making a fool out of himself.

Our scene consisted plenty of overhead tungsten lighting with a bit of blue hue to it. We had to light the inside in an intensity that almost matches the daylight outside. Should be easy we thought; but semi-blue gels infornt of our lights and pray that there’ll be an overcast on our shooting day.

Yesterday morning we gathered to in school before the shoot. Dan had already moved the equipment from the Cage to the hotel so all we needed to do was bring that mother effer out.

Met Kwang Wei and Charlene. They had their shoot over the weekend…. And wow… they be super damn tired.

They picked a Hong Kong movie.

And here’s Kwang Wei, looking through the camera…… hoping to cover his face from the my camera. Don’t lie, Kwang Wei. I know. Your lens cap is still on!

And this is our lovely Jolin Fanclub PR, Charlene! Who just woke up…

… and looks amazingly similar to Garfield.

..or any cats for that matter. Eerybody say “hi” to Donald!

Dan and Aisya making sweet love with me spectating. That’s the Cage behind us. The 50 million dollar worth of FSV shit wont be anything without this place.

Our shoot needed a place with double sliding doors with a couch infront of it. After days of searching… we settled for a house in Burgundy Crescent.

Nice place.

Damn all you bloody rich surface dwellers! Damn you!

Setting up was cool. We hadn’t seen the place before so we sat down and bla bla blah-ed our way to lighting the scene. And then we realized we were missing an ENTIRE set of lighting kit. Damn you! Damn you, new Cage people!

Lighting was a chee bai pain in the ka cheng. We couldn’t get a direct overhead on the set, we had not enough lights, we didn’t have the correct lenses and the space was anally smaller than the one in Godfather 2.

But we made do with all we had.

It’s been like… what? 3, 4 , 5 months since I shot video? Thanks to Canon and their defective tape compartments and ass whoopingly high repair cost, my XM2 camera has been a layer of dust and that pretty soon’s gonna give birth to their children. So holding the school’s Sony PD-170 was both comforting and painful. Finally I could release my urge to hold something so magnificent and uh.. benevolent… but at the same time the camera was bloody much heavier than my XM2. What the hell did they made it from? Cast iron?!

Oh yeah… as the cameraman.. I own the camera. Muahahahahaha!!!!! Go away all you low life directors! The camera, I touch! Mauahahahha!!!!! Oh shit it broke.

Aisya took this photo. Oh no! you saw me with glasses!

Our four cast members were friends….knew each other.. and from church. So duh of course there’ll be all the brotherly love hoo ba habba stuff that my group of friends here lack of.

But love keeps me together with them so who give a fuck. Hee hee.

It’s nice to note that two of them are scriptwriters and another is majoring in Photography in NTU’s Art and Design sector so wootz… the entire set was a gathering of air-headed artists! Aunties on the street call ppl like us,”Siao” and giggle at us for our “no future” passions. But its ok…

Anyways… the shoot went fine. I told the producer, Yvonne, last week to cut the shooting time to only six hours so that we don’t lose much enthusiasm. It kinda worked. Most of us were on task and managed to shoot all the shots, have lunch, have ANOTHER round of lunch, and pack up within the six hours.

Lunch was an eye opener.

Wow im drinking beer! MUIS can come sue me for all I care. (that’s Pepsi Gold, btw).

And WTF HAPPENED TO MY FAVOURITE SNACK OF ALL TIME?!?!

WHY SO SMALL?!?! DAMN YOU COMMERCIALISM!

I played around a bit on the set. I love playing… it makes me learn.

This is Dan, crying over the recent news that Macs will NOT be considered as religion. The reason was because the name will clash with Macinism, the religious devouring of anything from Mac Donalds, including hard plastic chairs, popular in Fat Man’s Land.

Ok shit now he’s crying.

Forgive the lameness.

The Sleeping Producer and Confident Assistant Cameraman, Von and Mei Fang.

Pretty soon the shoot was over. I must admit that I’m probably gonna spoil the entire project because of my camera work and lack of attention to detail. There was something on the PD170 or PD 150 by Sony that I didn’t like. I don’t know if it’s the color or something or maybe it’s just about getting used to. Sitting down here on my mattress looking at the rushes on Hai Ting’s cam… I realized I should’ve did some color tweaking in-cam. Damn… Damn you Audi!

The last shot of the day. Probably the nicest.

And as on all other film productions… people go crazy with the lightings and start to take group shots.

Three of our cast members. The other guy changed too quickly.

Yeah so we got into the fun as well. This pic was taken by on the cast members… and he was using a godly HUGE wide angle lens, close to us, so you’ll notice some distortions on Dan…. and my ass.

While waiting for the two taxis to pick us up… I hung around their car porch for some photo-taking action. Cost honestly I think my camerawork sucked. These few shots are meant to bolster my silent ego collapse.

The mom makes good cactus!

Only in Landed Properties.

Cactus ownz.

So that pretty much wraps up Cam Ass 2. Personally, I feel that I blew this project to bits because of the camera work ( I’m supposed to be one of the best cameraman!!) but the others think it was nice so maybe I’m just being like…. One of those kids who cry when they get a B.

Our next assignment (yes they do pop up like cauliflower. Jesus!) will have us doing another shoot…. Which is to tell a story only through visual means (no sound).

And we’re gonna use the film camera! A Bolex 16mm film camera. Now that’s something Mass Commers will NEVER touch. This is why we have “FILM” in our course’s name. FILM FILM FILM FILM FILM …. And SOUND SOUND SOUND SOUND… and meh.. video…

That Ang Moh is Andrew. Finally you guys get to see him. He’s a graduate from Florida State University and has worked on set with Britney Spears and met Tom Cruise and stuff like that. He’s married to a Singaporean (I think they studied in the same sch) who’s directing some films as well and has a child with a name he cant pronounce. He was one of those pioneers who started the Media Works Channel in Singapore.

Come Ass 3, this is where we all find out why working with film is thoroughly mind-blowing.

Another sneak preview of my CG model. I’ve actually already done up to the legs.

Till then.

Had a bit of fun animating it. It’s saying “COME ON!”

P.S Hyde called me the other day. The first thing he said was,"Do you know who I am?". My god that sent shivers down my spine, my ass and back up again.