PROJECT THREE!!!

WOW!

When I first came up to the first location we were to shoot….. it was only my crew and I. 4 ppl. The other one more pang seh us.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere were my casts, their girlfriends and even more came plus friends! Eric was there Kang Sheng was there Kai Xiang was there and we actually had a total of one, two, three, four, five… SIX cameras filming down our project three shoot!
After everything we all held hands and sang happy birthday …..

LOL wth so popular….??? Daniel was saying our group is the only one who has the most number of ppl involved, talents and supporters likewise. Seems like Aisya had it easy to get people to be our talents and Kai Xiang was more than willing to help me with the lighting (then I scared him off later)


Aisya holding up the slate. Zhonghui trying to show a confused Chia Xin how it looks like to smile like me.

But jia lat I think I did a lot of mistakes. Daniel was recording me loading the camera and while I was explaining and all that I realized I loosened up the film from the spool… means the negatives were being exposed!!!!

I kept quiet for a while (about… 15 minutes)… then broke it to them over lunch.
A long heavy pause. Knn die....
Then OMG we say Andrew! We disturbed his holy ritual of buying Japanese food from the stall (shinto-nippon-dojo-ari-desu. lmao) and he said sth like “it’s okay…. It’s a daylight spool so it should have blocked some light….”

…. Okay.... if you say so..


Surya.

I brought my Armani suit for Zhong Hui and Don….. size 42.. and it fts perfectly on all of them! Wootz sibeh damn lucky.
When they saw my suit they were like “whooaaaa!!! Armani seh!!!!!”

But actually no la its no that im rich or what… I buy from warehouse sale LMAO. They sold it at 75% discount that time...

Zhong Hui was looking at his reflection in the mirror.. obviously very happy and he said, “I nv wear suit before. This is my first time.”
Muahaha I feel so honoured HAHAHAH.

Problem was I had no idea when was the “right time”. All the while I was nervous and I had to turn everyone’s attention away to Aisya by telling them she was gonna brief them. Surya brought his pretty girlfriend over and so she was a guest on the shoot. So I took her as a benchmark on how far im pushing the people around with waiting. The moment she got agitated and fidgety I knew I was starting to pull it too long.


The blemishes on my face are as textured as the Bolex's camera body. Can i go kill myself?

Shooting through the Bolex was a pain. Kai Xiang read the Bolex manual and it said sth like only 1/5th of light coming in through the lens is shown in the viewfinder. So even though we were shooting under bright sunlight….. what I saw through the viewfinder were just shadows and blurry images of people moving about. It’s anally difficult to frame!!!! You cant even see the damn guides!
Then my sexy long eyelashes (that my sister is dying for) kept getting in the way lmao.


Wooo action seh the cameraman.......

We are guided of the exposure only by means of reading form the light meter. Like… 80 lux means what f-stop then must measure distance from subject to camera. I thought we could work with only one person behind the camera…. Eventually I had to have three or four for measuring, slate, lens dials….

During shooting my camera stopped rolling all of a sudden. It happened many times and its all because I never wound the spring to roll the camera. I think ppl see me wound the camera also scared I break the bloody thing. Damn doo lan.


Ke Song getting revenge on the Mofo Boss..... i mean Mafia Boss.

We had about Seventy five thousand dollars worth of equipment on our trolley and they probably weighed about a ton or something. We had to push it from one end of Ngee Ann (Sports Complex) back to the FMS block which is near the entrance of school… and up a hill…. And then to Blk 50. Ke song had trouble pushing it down the hill cause they all started dropping off and the cars coming form behind the hill cant possibly see him and they were all like zooming around. Scary stuff. But we lived. So there.

Just wished I had my Toyota Liteace!


The holy Bolex in the evil toilet.

Durng the break time before setting up again Ke Song was showing of his “Archer Fish” skill……. He gargled up a lot of snot and shot it up at the ceiling! SHIOK MAN. One day I will try. Maybe can attract girls!

Then it was setting up with Kai Xiang.
For the record… no ghosts appeared. Bu scary also la…. Only the smell of piss bothered us. I think the older you get… the smellier your piss is.
We had an adult tuition grp for the night and they were coming in pissing and stank the whole place.


Daniel pretending to do work.

I intended to have this grimy, florescent feel to the picture… like those Sadako toilet scene kinda stuff. But then we just didn’t have the equipment (had knowledge!!! A lot!!! Got kai xiang!!!) to hand the lights up on the ceiling. So.. ZZz…. My night toilet shot become afternoon toilet shot. HAHA cb.

But I think it’s actually quite nice.
I discussed with KX and we decided to put on a yellow-sepia filter infront of the lens and tada…. I think it turned out very nicely. KX understood what I wanted and he went all the way to touch all those burning hot redheads. I have a phobia of hot things being above my forehead so while he was up there i was on the flor clapping my hands going, "Jia you! Jia you!"


Fixing up the lights so the shadows fall right where i want them to.

We took about two sweaty smelly knnccb hours to set up. I’m just so shocked that the rest weren’t pissed off. Actually they were having fun talking outside lmao.

P.S. I was about to sleep right after writing this draft and then suddenly i smelt lots of piss and toilet smell in my sister's room where i sleep. I looked at the cat.... went outside.. still can smell... eventually found out it was all over my hands and hair and shirt. EEEWWW!!!!!!!!

Eventually it dragged on too much and Yvonne came in with her sleepy eyes going, “Can we shoot?”
Her first lines after 4 hrs of silence. Haahhaahaha.

At the same time I had to handle the cb Noise Singapore assignment. I just blew tht one away and finally admitted I cant possibly do two things at the same time. I’d just piss off my crew further. Rather not risk that. So I asked anyone near the camera to “take a snap for Noise Singapore!”
Daniel did a bit…. Not bad too.


When we started work, my shirt was white and it fit my body. By the time i got home, it was two sizes bigger and seven shades darker.

We ran into the problem of TOO LITTLE film. We actually cut out an entire scene (the first one). The afternoon set we already used up 110 feet of film.. leaving us 80 feet left… 10 feet for safety. Tha’ts like… 2 minute 45 secs of shooting at 24 frames per second. In other words…. …… too little film la u dumb or what?

KX’s grp actually shot only on one film roll, in only 2 hrs. Apparently his film and its location is too holy to be revealed so cannot ka jiau him to use it lmao.

Ke Song and Don were our talents. I LIKE……. LOL. Some of the most cooperative talents I’ve ever worked with.


Director Aisya and Producer Yvonne.....

There was this time I left the toilet (after dunno how long) to get sth and when I came back the whole place was smoky cos they were smoking Marlboro Red. I can see Yvonne’s face turning sour so I thought maybe they shouldn’t smoke….. but then I saw the trails in the spotlight and it created this whole dirty smoky ambience and I thought, “THIS IS IT!”

So I took a Marlboro Red and smoked a bit to add more ambience (btw It’s been 3 weeks since I smoked ok I QUIT ALREADY!!! cos I found out my girl friends really dun like) but after a while I almost knock out. -.-
Marlboro Red is too strong for me. By the second step I took to the camera I was already tripping on the flat tiles. Really buay tahan.


Mafia in the DarK

So.. that’s pretty much it. Fun project…… felt so much like NCC sai kang time and ooo yeah the teamwork was just smooth sailing…….. but dunno why the lan jiao Daniel always get headache at the wrong time. -.-

We had some problems after that regarding putting the equipments somewhere for the night and there was this long discussion of who shld stay over. It was already 1130pm. Eventually we left it all back at the FMS cage’s holding area, under the security camera. So if ppl wan to come kiap kiap they will be on cctv!

So here I am at home… trying hard to figure out how to bloody transfer RAW files frm KX’s camera. AWESOME CAMERA! Canon EOS 350D. Not bad. I will ask my sister to buy hee hee.


Zhonghui’s picture above was a cropped version of this. NOT BAD RITE?!?!?!?

But im still scared…… its like I feel I did sth wrong during the shoot. Maybe I nv exposed it properly? Maybe I nv load the film properly? Sianz.

I still wanna do more film productions… it’s fun! Sweaty sweaty fun! But wow if I run my own film production…… then it’ll be like what KX said, “You are so demanding. Next time I dun wanna work with you.”

Lol…. Moral of the story – …… …. Say, “Thank you to your crew all the time.”

Thank you…..


The Mafia in the Dark thing is a parody of a Dogme 95 semi-musical film called "Dancer in the Dark" starring Bjork. EVERYONE should watch it. It's really something. Have a search on google. It's not musical as in gay-music but it's like surreal/electronic kinda music. It's Bjork! duh!

P.s. Visit Kwang Wei’s blog for a little dose of wickedly silly humour. He has some of his shoot videos up as well.
P.P.S. All Behing the scenes photos above were taken by Kai Xiang’s magnificient Canon 350D. Awesome camera. All outdoor shots taken by him.

P.P.P.S. I NEED YOUR OPINIONS! These photos are possible submissions to the Noise Singapore thingy so I need your opinions on which I should send in and which I should delete/burn/throw away etc etc. Your opinion matters! Kam siah…..