More Wrath of Tony Madness

One of Tony's locations. I don't know where he finds these places. I'm definitely shooting something here one of these days.





Tony shoots. Jeff, the DOP, couldn't make it that day.




More blood. Courtesy of rose syrup colouring.




You have no idea how utterly disgusting this stuff is.




There were no taps at the set, so my hands were covered in what really looked like blood (more so than this picture). I then went into a gas station to buy soap and both the clerk and toll gate lady later on gave me some odd looks. I'd smile and wave to try and be friendly, forgetting my other hand was also covered in blood.
As always, all pics are on my Flickr page.

Ciplak: Production - Day 5

So, after all my ramblings of "I'm gonna get this fucking film in the can by hook or by crook", I realize that regardless how prepared you are or how you manage your time, something's always bound to go wrong.

Case in point is the issue of 'the hair'. I was acting in Tony's short film, "Wrath", on Saturday (which I shall post about later) and the plan was, straight after, to get a haircut so that my scenes will match for the movie. I had a gig that night, with a soundcheck at 6pm.

But, and this is no fault of Tony's, the shoot got delayed when the director of photography's car broke down somewhere in the middle of a strange highway and the weather kept playing with us like its private parts.

Straight after, I had no time so I rushed off to the gig for soundcheck. Ordinarily we wouldn't soundcheck as we know Paul's Place like the back of our hands, but we wanted to see if we could negotiate our slot. Unfortunately, (1) our slot was predetermined and annoyingly (2) we were the only band that soundchecked. We were scheduled to play at 11.30pm.

If I had known this I would've gotten my haircut first before coming to the gig. So, after dinner, I rushed off to 1 Utama to visit my usual hairdresser, 'Dry Cuts', only to be caught in a horrendous jam to find the place just closing.

Bugger.

In the end I got my haircut in the morning so we had to cancel the scheduled morning scenes and go straight to the driving scenes and the 'Puteri' scene. The driving scenes came out alright, and I shot some alternative scenes for a possible change in the opening ten minutes of the movie.

The scenes at Farah's house (Saiful's sister) came out pretty good. Her room was painted red on one side, purple on the other, and it looked like something out of a Wong Kar Wai movie. Farah was very sporting and we got the whole scene done, bar a few shots that I need to reshoot.

I also need to reshoot the second scene we shot there (which we stupidly thought we could shoot in five minutes cos we were in a rush to send everyone home). Right now it's nowhere near right. I may also reshoot another scene where Farah's character pulls out her stash of porn DVD's (was that a spoiler? I think so).

But it looks like things are going back on track, which is comforting. After the Raya holidays, we'll be shooting four days straight over the weekend and I'll probably shoot another weekend after that to get everything in the can.

Oh, and Amir Muhammad was here in the Starbucks I am right now whilst I was writing this. He came over to my table to say hi before he left and told me my short, "Some Like It White", was the only short that needed any censoring in all the 23 episodes of Shortcuts and that I should be proud of that fact.

Believe me, I am. If the censors think that was offensive, they have no idea what else I have stored in this silly head of mine.

Danish Nuttiness

Some of you who know me know that when it comes to local celebrities, there's one that, to me, shines out amongst the rest as the beauty of beauties, a cute, sweet and delectable little darling named Nora Danish.

First noticing her in that Nokia ad with the panda suit, that girl stuck out like a diamond in the rough, and I've been watching her career closely, actually getting frustrated when I see bad photos of her. It is my opinion that a photographer must be incredibly skilled to make a girlthat cute and that pretty look crap. With that in mind, the photographer of the 'Gila Gila Pengantin Popular' movie poster mut be the most skilled photographer in Malaysia.

Some would say my admiration for her borders on obsession. Y2k have written a song about her which is, in a word, silly. And now I've made a wallpaper of her.

It's an incredibly crap wallpaper, reason being (a) I don't have photoshop on this shitty PC and (b) there aren't many pics of her on the net (why?! Good Lord, WHY??!?).

But I like the line. I think it's funny. And you can have a look at it by clicking here.

And like the song by Y2k, it's very silly.

"Some Like It White" Strikes Back

Gonna enter my short film, "Some Like It White", for the MVA's. Haven't got my hopes up, just thought I'd give it a shot.

But, since I'm sending it in, might as well attempt a cover for the DVD:





This is where I realized doing a 'romantic comedy' poster (for want of a better term for my 10 minutes of tit shots and potty mouths) is actually a bit tough. Doing the 'Wrath' poster, creating the mood was a lot easier.

Anyone else think this looks like it came out of the eighties?

I Need a Burly White Man Immediately

No, it's not what you think.

I just got off the phone with Man Method about the movie. The dude's coordinating the shoot and cast and asked whether his friend Lincoln could play the bad guy, a dude named 'Evil Neil' who is now changed to 'Big Dave' for extra gangster-ness. I guess.

"Lincoln's a burly Asian guy," said Meth, "Will he do?"

"I actually need a white guy," I replied, "because it plays a part in the whole storyline."

"So you need a burly white guy."

"Yes."

"(the beginning of a snigger)... hehe... you need a burly white guy."

"Hehehe..."

"You should put that on your blog: 'Burly white man needed'."

Et voila, the header of this post.

Incidentally, if there are any burly white men in the London area interested in acting for free, gime a buzz.

Late Again

So here I am, in the office, late at night. Haven't done one of these for a while.

I've actually just finished all the stuff I need to do, but I figure since I'm here I might as well use it as my own makeshift office to make calls to my actors and crew for the rest of the months shooting. No more late cast and crew calls, no more re-shoots, I want to get this movie in the fucking can. The first ten minutes right now are pretty much there, but if the rest of the movie can't hold it together it'll be a 'Snake Eyes': kick ass opening, regular movie from then on (or, in some people's opinions, a worse movie from then on).

Once again, I've also gotten the re-write bug. The ending just doesn't do it for me enough. So I'm thinking of fixing that tonight together with the schedule.

Best of all, I'm gonna use this late night working as an excuse to come in late tomorrow. Hahaha. Feel my office terrorism.

Confessions of a Character of Dreams

So there I am, dreaming that I'm the Cristopher Nolan version of Batman, all scowls and anger, stalking through some deserted warehouse when everything changes in one of those seamless fades that only dreams manage (the one time I saw this replicated effectively was in an episode of Buffy).

Suddenly I'm in a bedroom which looks vaguely familiar, in a discussion with one of my friends' ex-girlfriends (who apparently enjoys taking it up the bum from 40 year old men) although now I'm the boyfriend. The girl's in the mood to confess something, and launched into a monologue whilst she smoked a cigarette.

And it went something like this,

"You ask about what happened that night. I know I always tell you I don't want to talk about it and I guess I can't keep doing that anymore. Things happen, people change."

She takes a drag from her cigarette, doesn't even look me in the eye.

"There was about four of them and me. We were in the hotel room. I knew some of them, not all of them. One thing led to another."

Another drag, another sigh. She turns her gaze to me.

"You have no idea what it's like to have sex with four guys at the same time."

Errr... what the fuck?

"It's all your fault."

Why?

"I'd never felt anything like that before. I felt... so fulfilled."

Are you sure you don't mean 'filled'?

"I hope this doesn't ruin things between us."

Can someone please wake me up?

"I had two of them in my BRRRINGG RRRINGG RRRRRIIINGG!!!"

Saved by the bell.

Psychiatrists interested in disecting my subconscious can get in line.

Enough og the Bullshit

Last night, after an incredibly huge meal at my girlfriends' mom's house and an hour and a half of 'Jersey Girl' (which my girlfriend also agrees is an alright movie), we sat down at the computer and watched the rough edit from two weekends ago that we shot at the Cravings Cafe.

In a word, it's not working.

Every shot's angle is out, the close ups' line of sight doesn't match, the sound is incredibly bad (the mic, I think, is fucked), the white balance makes the place look unbelievably cold, the cafe looks deserted and both mine and Nazneen's performances could be a whole lot better.

We thought about this, not being able to shake it off.

Driving home, that's when I decided it was time to pussyfoot no longer.

A lot of the mistakes on that shoot was largely due to me - I wasn't paying enough attention as a director. Sure, I was incredibly ill and I'd love to make that my excuse, but I should have just not shot anything that day and waited till I was better instead of wasting a whole lotta time.

Now, however, I've decided it's time to strap up and get this fucking movie in the can. No more starting at 4pm and only shooting for two hours a day once a week. I want this movie completed on the date that I intended for the shoot to end: 14th of November. This will give me enough time to sort out the animated scenes and work on tightening up the edit.

with that, I spent the rest of the night tightening up the schedule. I'm planning to shoot on Sunday (whole day), Monday (night), Tuesday (whole day) and from Friday till Monday on the week after Raya (Eid), all whole day's. Crew can't make it? Get someone else. Cast can't make it? Shoot something else. This movie needs to be finished and finished well. That's the problem when you don't pay people - you're project is not the main objective.

But it's my main objective, and I'll be damned if it goes down the fucking drain. This movie is being made by hook or fucking crook. Shooting will finish on the 14th of November, a trailer, website, viral marketing and all promotional materials will be finished two weeks after and it will be sent to the Singapore International Film Festival, so help me God.

Yet More Talk About This Damn Movie

Ok.

Right now, I'm up to my ass in work that I absolutely positively do NOT want to do for the sheer fact that it's a sinking ship that's bringing me down both careerwise as well as emotionally. I've just gotten off the phone with Nyoke, the manager at Cravings, and it looks like I can't shoot there on Sunday, maybe only Saturday. I then discover the make-up person who's meant to make me look bruised later on is not available on Saturday. I also have a couple of scenes that I need to finish off acting in for Pietra's short film during my lunch breaks this week and on one of the weekends. I'm completely fucking broke, hungry as hell, just waiting for my pay to come in tomorrow so I can feast into some actual food.

Fuckery.

With all this on my plate, why am I blogging you ask? Personally, I find it soothes me. Helps me sort some of my shit out. I type as fast as I think, and hopefully by the end of this post I'll reach some form of calm in this ass-fuck of a storm.

Ten minutes later...

Hmmm...

On the bright side, Mr. Wong has agreed to let me shoot for about twenty minutes at the HELP institute to get my two 'FX' shots done. It'll be tight, but do-able. I also have quite a few shooting days back to back. I purposely
kept two of the days of my 4 day weekend quite open in the event there's shots I can't do. As always, play it by ear.

All I gotta do is keep my energy up.

Godammit

Shooting day 5 lasted approximately one and a half hours. Ahmad's camerawork, at best, left much to be desired. Some of the rushes had really good takes if it weren't for the fact that the camera was aiming at my shirt the whole time. On top of that my skin looked a bit blemishy.

At many points of this crazy journey I seriously reconsider chucking all this crap in. But we persevere, for we are too stupid to know any better.

To top it all off, I'm at the office right now. Yes, the fucking office. I'm supposed to be acting in Pietra's short film right now, but instead I'm fucking working. Bastards. I'll get them for this.

My hair is also becoming an issue. In my movie, I'm supposed to have shorter hair, and I've been getting around it these days by trying to have as little of my hair in the shot as possible. In Pietra's movie, I'm supposed to have my hair like how it is now. Joy upon f-ing joy.

When will the madness end?

Comments From Another Filmmaker

I met up with Tony two nights ago to discuss 'Ciplak'. On the one hand, I wanted to run by his scenes and character for the movie, but I also wanted his opinion on the rough cut I did of the first 10 minutes. The past week I'd been stressing over whether or not this whole endeavour was a waste of time. I thought I might have something cool but I wasn't entirely sure and the doubt had been keeping me awake most nights. So I met up with him at the Lotus near Nikko hotel and pulled out my laptop.

Thankfully, he too thought it was cool. And funny.

There is a scene, the final shot of the ten minute cut, which I have decided is the crunch time for the movie. If you don't laugh out loud at that scene, you won't enjoy the movie and that's that. Tony laughed out loud. He laughed out loud throughout and laughed even louder when that scene came. Thank God. I had also shown the roughcut to some of the boys at Voxel, namely Rauf and Amir, and they both laughed at the right places too, but not as much as this.

Calming down from the laughter, I asked for his comments, as truthfully as he could, most of which were suprising. He didn't notice the continuity inconsistencies that I thought were glaring, he thought it was shot really well, and most surprisingly, he didn't think it dragged in the five minute scene after the credits which always felt to me like too much exposition and not enough funnies.

"The movie's got a similar feel to the indie movies in the mid-90's," said Tony, "and usually the first fifteen - twenty minutes in, the laugh's aren't all there. The movie's still getting you into the story, the characters. Then the humour comes in, so I reckon you're on the right track."

We then went through the character he'll be playing, running through the dialogue and the delivery, right in the middle of a crowded mamak stall. Some people gave us odd looks.

I like odd looks.

Talking to God

Eddy put up a link where you can talk to God. Lacking in inspiration at work, I decided to have a chat with the omniscient being. Here's what transpired:

ME: Um... hello?
GOD: Pardon me? Hello, nice to meet you. What's your name?
ME: Justin Guber. Are you really God?
GOD: Hey, Justin Guber. Are you doubting me? Don't you know what happened to Abraham in the desert? Really.
ME: Er... what happened to Abraham in the desert?
GOD: Um. I don't know what happened.
ME: You don't?
GOD: Interesting gossip: Justin Guber said "I don't".
ME: You don't seem very Godly.
GOD: You don't know me well enough to say that.
ME: Well, say something Godly then.
GOD: "Something Godly".
ME: Let it never be said that God has no sense of humor.
GOD: Never?
ME: Dude, it was a compliment.
GOD: Oh, I get it. Very interesting. Dude.
ME: So, yeah. What happens if I repent or something?
GOD: Yipee! Wow! Try it.
ME: You're excited.
GOD: You think I am excited.
ME: Yes, I do.
GOD: Really.
ME: Yes.
GOD: How about that.
ME: Whatever. Ok, repent time - I once had a pet hedgehog, and I was too young to know that hedgehogs hibernate, so when it didn't move in the winter I buried him.
GOD: Are you saying you don't care about it? What happened to it? Next question?
ME: I told you. I buried the bugger.
GOD: Oops. I sent you the wrong question. Why? Justin Guber said "buried the bugger".
ME: you're a loony.
GOD: Thanks, and you are a delightful person too. Am I a loony? The ALICE series has a perfect operational record.
ME: The what?!
GOD: Can you ask me more precisely?
ME: What's the ALICE series?
GOD: I can ask someone about it.
ME: ...ok.
GOD: Blimey.
ME: Since you're God, you know everything, right?
GOD: How do you know?
ME: Are you saying you don't know everything?
GOD: Yeah I do a lot of not know everything.
ME: I see you don't know much about grammer either.
GOD: It goes without saying. Have you tried another program?
ME: Besides this one?
GOD: What does 'this' refer to?
ME: This program.
GOD: What does 'this' refer to?
ME: Piss off. You're not God.
GOD: Why are you so mean? What makes you think I am not God?
ME: I'm off to write about this in my blog. Twat knackers.
GOD: See you later! Not many people express themselves that way.

Don't Make Me Angry. You Won't Like Me... When I'm Angry

Have you ever had a morning where you feel like you can relate to Bruce Banner?

You wake up, you haven't even had enough sleep, and the moment you open your eyes someone is there to guarantee that whatever side of the bed you woke up on, it's the wrongside.

Not a good morning, not a wakey-wakey-rise-and-shine, but a 5 minute monologue basically telling you that you're not good enough. For anything. Where even your clothes come under scrutiny and regardless how precariously you've balanced your entire schedule, the person(s) in charge of the monologue decide that the best thing for you right now is a huge spanner, a great, greasy, glistening spanner in the works lubed up with auto-guilt.

you haven't even had a chance to figure out what day of the week it is. You're not even sure if you're awake, but it's all there. A roaring rampage of criticism and cynicism loaded in a twelve gauge shotgun shoved right into your rectum.

Before you know it, you've gotten your bearings and the people in charge of this barrage of bile have left the room and if you just so happened to have been dreaming of nubile nineteen year olds coated in nutella it doesn't matter anymore. Bring out the green contact lenses and get ready to rip your clothes. Your two steps away from discovering just how flexible your boxers are. Tell Lou Ferrigno to stand by.

You're in this mode when you shower. You're in this mode when you get dressed, retorting to the attacks you experienced earlier by wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt of the Snickers logo with the word 'Slacker' replacing the product name. You get into your car and remember you're also more strapped for cash than an ice-cream man in an igloo. You count the coins you've saved for that rainy day and carry the shrapnel in your pocket, seperating 20 cents coins in your left and 50's and 1's in your right. You remind yourself that next Tuesday is payday and tell yourself the same thing you tell yourself every end of the month - "next pay cheque, I'm going to spend wisely". Hah.

The other drivers on the road don't help matters much. No one signals, slow drivers inexplicably drive on the fast lane and cars park in the slow lane. Somehow the only thing that keeps you sane is the 'Mission To Burma' CD Tony gave you the night before.

Actually, the CD helps quite a bit. You calm down a bit more and feel a great sense of release in the proto-punk pioneers.

Then the parking attendant yells at you.

Yes. The fucking parking attendant.

Although parking attendant is too nice a term for this person. Let's face facts, he's a fucking kuli who's job it is to sit in a fucking box and give out tickets. Yes, it sounds like a terrible fucking job but it does NOT give you the right to fucking YELL at the general FUCKING public!

Imagine it: you're in your car, you get your parking ticket, you look at it and notice something's missing: the RM5 stamp. Hoping you don't get gyped, you ask, politely, where the stamp is. And what kind of reply do you get?

"YOU PAY LATER YOU COME OUT PAY YOU GET OUT LATER OUT PAY WHEN YOU GET OUT LATERLATERLATER GET OUT!!!!!!!!!!"

Green contact lenses. Tell Lou Ferrigno his lunch break's over.

And I thought Monday's were bad.

The Wrath of Tony

[N.B. I wanted to originally call this post 'Wrath of Khai' because it's one letter away from 'Wrath of Khan', but it didn't make sense. For one thing I'm only acting in 'Wrath', not directing, and furthermore my character has less wrath than the main character.



...or do I? Hmmm...]

So, as some of you may (or may not) know, on top of my very own feature film, 'Ciplak', I've also been acting in Tony's filmmaking endeavour, 'Wrath'. If I had to trace back where the re-emergence of my filmmaking bug came from, you could probably trace it back to the dude. Through a mutual friend, I ended up acting in his first short film in Malaysia, 'Seeing Things', written by The Visitor. This event got the little filmmaking child inside me quite curious and if it wasn't for 'Seeing Things' I wouldn't have thought about writing and directing 'Nicotine'.

So you could say I owed the brah.

Last Saturday was the second day of shooting (for me). The whole film is silent. Instead of a script, Pietra's shooting with shootboards only. In essence, it's a revenge flick of the noir tradition with undertones of paranormality.

Yeah.


I won't let on much, but I will say this: I'm playing a keris-wielding psychopath who pee's blood named Tom after Tom Noonan's portrayal of Dolarhyde in 'Manhunter'.

And, just like in 'Seeing Things', the blood was in full flow. At least this time it was rose syrup, which looked a lot more effective, and I didn't have to spew it out. I swear, I must have spat out 4 pints of Ribena for 'Seeing Things'.

And with that, I leave you with my rough version of the poster. Credits and touch ups haven't been done yet, so bear with it. Enjoi.


As always, all pics from my Flickr page.

The Reason Why

I'm tired as fuck. My lack of sleep has left me with a permanent headache. Was up till 2.00am editing the footage to see what shots worked and what needed to be reshot (all the close ups of me, for one. Completely wrong angle). Didn't sleep til about three or four and had some fucked up dreams to boot (one involved roti canai. The other involved me sending sms's that left me searching through my phone once I woke up to check my 'sent items' folder and find out whether I did send them or not).

I'm sat here in the office now, this headache pulsating in my skull, and I'm still thinking about the damn movie. If it wasn't for this movie I'd be relaxing at home after work, watching a DVD and chilling out. I'd spend my weekends doing the same. Maybe read a book. Or go jogging (or is it 'yogging'... it might be a silent 'j').

But I can't stop.

When I was a kid I saw Back to the Future and it stuck in my head like a superglue post-it note. This was followed by other favourites, such as the Indiana Jones movies, the Goonies, etc. These movies took me to another world.

Then I saw Goodfellas, read the script to Reservoir Dogs, discovered Empire magazine, purchased 'Clerks' out of curiosity and marvelled at the lo-budget creativity of Robert Rodriguez.

I was changed.

You see, I love telling stories (not lies, stories). All the songs I wrote in all the bands I've been in were, in essence, stories. Stories with characters, story arcs and conclusions. And movies seemed like the best form to tell a story (although many of you would debate this) due to the sheer amount of creative processes that are involved in it: writing, acting, art direction, cinematography, music composition, the list goes on.

And I have always wanted to make a movie.

This 'movie' I'm working on, Ciplak, I've been scrutinizing to all hell. I've never wanted to reshoot things before, but this time there's so much I want to reshoot and redo. I want it to work, I want it to be to the best of my ability.

Because, deep down, I'm hoping and praying this is my ticket out.

Not to fame and fortune, not to a life of excess that would make Martin Sheen and Robert Downey Jnr go, "I was never that fucked up!", but a ticket out of the regular road of life and into a world where I can do what I've always wanted to do for the rest of my life: make movies.

And the annoying thing is that I'm discovering so many mistakes as I keep going through the movie. I wish I had a full two weeks blocked off so I could just spend it shooting this bugger instead of having these five/six day gaps in between shoots. I want this movie to look good. What I don't want is a movie that my friends will think is cool but the general public think is so-so. I want to make a good movie, godammit.

My head hurts badly. I could make the headaches go away in a flash if I just say 'fuck it. I'm not cut out for this shit yet. Let's wait till I'm ready'.

But I could be waiting for the rest of my life. Fuck that.

Pics From Production Day 4

ll photos are linked to my Flickr photo page and were taken by Ariff Aris, my D.O.P.





Yes. This is my idea of set design and art direction. Telling people to move chairs about.





Throughout the shoot I was still sick as pig shit and spent many a time rubbing my neck. For some reason I thought this would cause the phleghm to dissipate.





The cast rehearse. Rauf (left) is incredibly animated when he goes through his lines. Nazneen (right) is more of the read quietly and memorize type.





I wanted to try and experiment with my mic so I thought I'd try taping it to areas off-camera so that we wouldn't capture the movement of whoever's holding the boom mic. Here I am taping it to the table. Only problem was whenever someone hit the table it came out quite loud.





Rauf preparing for his role as T-Fresh: hip-hop wannabe and collector of DVD's of the African-American persuasion. The night before I was suddenly inspired and wrote four small additional scenes for his character. He kept cursing me for writing such fucked up dialogue and I kept reminding him that only a few days before he had me doing voice-overs for Voxel's upcoming animated project where I had to do not one, not two, but three different Indian characters who spout lines such as "muru-cool". I shit you not.





Nazneen in-between takes of her character: Liza, my character's bitchy underaged girlfriend. It took some coaxing, but in the end she did some mighty fine whine's that will cause men everywhere to run to the hills (which is probably a bad thing for her love life, but still). She was originally supposed to play the female lead in 'Celup' before the whole thing turned to shite thanks to... (army of lawyers restrain the Guber)... fuck it.

Ciplak: Production - Day 4

I seriously foresee many reshoots over the coming month or two.

This has been my first impression everytime I watch the rushes in one go. I just can't see it properly. It always feels like everything should've been shot at a different angle or something. I'm not sure.

However, I felt the same way about days 1 & 2, but after editing it together, they seem to work out alright. I guess/hope this is the case with day 4.

We got to the location at 3pm: Cravings Cafe in Hartamas. A very nice and cosy place with healthy home-made food to suit your cravings (ah... you see?). Today we were going to shoot all of Nazneen's scenes (playing my character's annoying underaged girlfriend) and Rauf's scenes (playing a black-wannabe who only collects DVD's of the African-American persuasion). Nazneen did pretty good, although there was many a time when she couldn't help smiling. The whine took a while but once we got the take it was brilliant. Absolutely grating.

We shot Nazneen's scenes from 4.00pm to 6.00pm, took a quick break and then shot Rauf's scenes. I dressed Rauf up in some of my most baggiest clothes and since he's tinier than me the clothes looked doubly baggy. I also wrote a bunch of new lines for Rauf with more jokes in it. Rauf kept cursing at me for making him spout such inane dialogue.

After that it was dinner, courtesy of moi and pricey as fuck to boot. But since I'm not paying the cast and crew it's the least I could do.

I'll post up photos and stuff once Ariff e-mails them over. Tonight I'm going to transfer the footage and do some rough cuts to see what's what.

Bloody Nose & Temperature Woes

More nosebleeds. Three days of nosebleeds. And the shits. And a sore throat and thick, thick phleghm. Constant goddamn nosebleeds.

I used to think nosebleeds were one of those natural freak occurences. It freaks you out, but it's nothing to worry about. Then Eddy said something that made a lot of sense (and quite obvious, really),

"Dude, that's blood. It's meant to stay inside your body, not come out streaming from your nose."

Fair point.

The other annoying thing about nosebleeds and runny noses is the amount of hell your nose goes through. tissue rash. I fucking hate it. You keep blowing your nose and blowing your nose and after a while your nose is red and sore and you don't want to blow it but you have to and it sucks balls.

See, the thing is my current sickly state is not SO dilapidating that I can't carry on with my work and stuff.

It's just damn inconvenient.

I'm gonna finish up what I need to finish, get my shit done and go to the damn doctors once and for all.

Excuse me, I think I'm bleeding again.

Later that day...

So I finally went to the doctors in the office building. The receptionist is a rude hound of hell and the meds guy told me the antibiotics were bootlegs. Bootlegged medicine? Fuck it. As long as it gets the job done. Turns out that on top of my cold and flu I've got a bad throat infection. Got an MC for tomorrow (which I'm obviously not gonna tell my parents about).

Is it just me or was I a lot healthier when I wasn't working?

Natural Pills

The other day my girlfriend bought me a 'gift'. After putting up with my constant bitching over my tubby tummy she decided to get me some slimming pills. They were recommended by a friend of hers and made from all natural ingredients.

Apparently it's made from manggo's, but they taste less like manggo's and more like an indigineous tribesman's scrotum.

So I decided to take three before going to bed like it said I should. I woke up the next morning feeling no different. Of course. It's not like it's some miracle cure.

I then went to work and went about my worky work when it happened.

I needed to shit.

Now, those that have been reading this blog know that the toilet bowl and I share a bond and I have regaled many of you ardent readers with my many tales from the crapper.

This one, however was different.

I got in, sat down and WHOOMP! there it is. WHOOMP! WHOOMP! Huge chunks. I was literally shitting bricks. WHOOMP! SPLASH! WHOOMP! SPLASH! WHOOMP!

Half an hour later, I needed to go again.

WHOOMP! SPLASH! WHOOMP! WHOOMP! WHOOMP! KER-SPLASH!

And again.

WHOOMP! THUNK! CRASH! SMASH! SPLASH! KABOOM! FLUMP! SCHTOOMP!

And again.

I guess it's working then.

My Uncle Bong

I've always found Malay nicknames funny. Like my old flatmate who I bumped into the other day. His nickname? 'Bob'. When I asked him why he replied, "well, look at my body."

Sure, the guys quite big and chubby, but I have met many a Bob who wasn't. Why Bob? His real name (which I shall not mention) isn't even remotely close to the word 'Bob'. Where do they come up with this 'Bob'?

One of my uncles also had an odd nickname. His name was actually similar to mine, but no-one called him that in the family. In Malay tradition, different sibblings have different 'family' names according to their order of birth. For example, 'Pak Ngah' means 'Pak Tengah' meaning 'the kid born in the middle'. There re seperate names for the eldest, second eldest, youngest, etc.

This particular uncle, however, was never called by any of the proper family terms.

Everyone called him 'Bong'. I called him 'Uncle Bong'.

'Bong'.

The reason for the name, apparently, was the same as why my flatmate Bob was called Bob. Because Uncle Bong was big and tubby. It's not like he was hitting up mad reefer through a bong at the back of the room, they called him 'Bong' because he was fat.

Weird logic.

When I was younger all the other uncles and aunts agreed on one particular thing: Uncle Bong was the genius. No doubt about it. Uncle Bong was on scholarship at a prestigious university in England studying engineering or something. The guy was a maths wiz, a chess wiz (not to be confused with 'cheese whizz') an every-whizz.

Uncle Bong used to doodle semi-nude sketches of Samantha Fox.

Uncle Bong used to do complex mathematics for fun.

Uncle Bong would watch 'Goldfinger' with me on TV and he'd always have a sly, dirty smile whenever Pussy Galore's pilots got off the plane in those tight sweaters and incredibly pointy bras underneath.

Uncle Bong would enter chess and crossword tournaments and kick everybody's ass in the district without thinking twice.

The only difference between Uncle Bong's real name and my own was one letter. Back when I was a real young kid I was quite the chubby choder boy too.

Uncle Bong came back, studied some more, got a job.

Then things went bad.

Uncle Bong lost it. Something happened.

Uncle Bong couldn't take the stress, they said. He never passed his exams, because something happened. He lost his job because something happened. Clever man, but he can't take the stress.

Uncle Bong took special pills.

People said Unlce Bong was 'sick'.

Uncle Bong never had a job again.

Uncle Bong got tubbier.

Uncle Bong started smoking: 50 JPS cigarettes a day. Deep fucking drags.

Uncle Bong was set up for an arranged marriage. He had two kids. Or was it three. Three kids and not a spark of romance between them.

There he was, tending his father's properties and assets, staying at the same house he grew up in with his arranged wife and kids. All his other brothers and sisters had moved to the city. Not him. He'd smoke his cigarettes and slowly waddle around the house.

Uncle Bong had a heart attack last week. He's still alive, but hearing of the incident made me think back.

Uncle Bong: the genius, the mathematician, destined for greater things and he's the one that ends up getting a heart attack clutching his pack of JPS cigarettes, belly fat and round, lying in a house that was once full of energy and family.

I tell you all this because ever since I was a kid I always thought Uncle Bong was the one uncle I could actually relate to. Both our paths were quite similar. But after the something that happened, after the pills, after people saying 'that kids sick', I'd like to think I took a much different path on the road of life than he did. I'd like to think I took the high road.

Because, as much as I love Uncle Bong, I'll be fucked if I end up like him.

More Planning

My Production Manager and girlfriend Diana watched the rough edit of the first 5 minutes of the movie and, surprisingly, she was impressed. However, it's always tough to gauge the honesty of a reaction when it's your girlfriend. I know she wouldn't lie about it, but I'd feel more comfortable if I had more opinions.

Tomorrow is open for a shooting day, since Tony is spreading the shooting days for his short film, "Wrath", after the news that the MVA deadlines have been pushed. I'm planning to finish up all scenes that involve me and me alone. These include scenes of me driving around, exterior shots of the car driving around, some shots of KL, its people and landmarks, close-ups of changing gears and reving the engine and a few phone conversation scenes in parking lots. Once I have all those out of the way I can concentrate on the one-on-one scenes with the other actors. Those (I think) will be easier, although they have the propensity to be harder to do.

I'm also planning a whole bunch of interiors to shoot during weekday nights even though the scenes are meant to be day. But some of these scenes take place in rooms where there's no daylight, so it doesn't make much of a diff.

Last night the sleep deprivation left me in a feverish state. I'd probably be ill today if my girlfriend didn't come over for some much needed taking care of. Spent most of the evening watching Michael Mann's "Manhunter". I now see what inspires Tony so.

Boards n' Booms

See these scribblings of a madman? These are the storyboards from shooting days 1 & 2.

The one on the right with the marker pen? The whole sketch is that of my room which is the set for my characters room in the movie. The blue boxes with arrows show which way the camera is meant to go and what to focus on. This is the opening shot of the movie and it was meant to be one long take a la the opening of Back to the Future in Doc's lab 'cos I thought that was a great way to open a movie.

Only thing is, the room isn't exactly as cool and as character descriptive as Doc's. Nor did we have a steadicam. I was hoping Ariff would bring his makeshift DIY steadicam but apparently it has a tendency to scratch the camera. Ain't nobody scratching my baby.

Of course, just having boards isn't exactly enough (as you can see).

Then it comes to the whole scheduling thing. Diana made this great Excel spreadsheet which made life a whole load easier.

Every scene is written down, showing whether it's internal or external, day or night, what location, which actors, what props required, any special requirements and whatever extra notes we may have.

You could then view any piece of data based on a specific category. Say, for example, we were scheduling a day where we'd only be in one location: 'Jo's House', and we were only going to do the internal shots. We'd click 'Jo's House' and 'Int' and voila! We have our schedule sheet for the day.

I know all you people out there proficient in Excel think this is no big deal, but I reckon it's fucking genius. You have no idea how much time was saved with this spreadsheet.

As you can see in the pic, this is the schedule for day 2. We were supposed to shoot ALL those scenes. The bits ticked are the ones we actually shot. Behind schedule much?




Then there's that microphone I was talking about. The stereo mic that was mono. Here it is in all it's glory and I quite honestly haven't found one since. It's some unknown brand.




That pink bandana over there (a remnant from our company trip last year. I was in the pink team, which led to many a recitation of Reservoir Dogs) is there to stop the mic from picking up too much of the shakes. This is especially important when your soundman is Ahmad, a man prone to breathing heavily to the point where his whole body moves.




We only had my tiny mic stand, so with the cunning use of gaffer tape we attached it to a long stick my maid found out back. This... is my BOOM stick!

I've started uploading photos at Flickr to make things easier. You can check out my Flickr page by clicking here or clicking any of the photos.

Now, I'm off to edit some more of the movie before shooting tomorrow.

Klang Valley Porn Queen Nabbed

Selangor police have detained Klang Valley’s ‘Porn Queen’ — believed to have been the sole woman behind the distribution of pornographic DVDs.


The 30-year-old single woman headed a syndicate dubbed ‘Lady Boss Gang’, which distributed pirated DVDs of Hollywood and porn movies.

Her syndicate, which had been in operation for the past year, used apartment units as distribution centres for the DVDs to avoid police detection.

Syndicate members also supplied porn DVDs to traders operating stalls outside shops and night markets.

The Malay Mail believes that this is the first time that police have busted a DVD syndicate led by a woman.

Taken from the Malay Mail.

You Know It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp

WATCH THIS MOVIE.

I'm serious. You think I'm joking? I'm not joking. This movie is fucking brilliant. I haven't felt this 'wow-ed' by a movie in a long time. After years of so-so hip-hop and ghetto based rags-to-riches tales, finally there's a movie filled with character, emotion, intensity and integrity.

It's genius is both its script and its casting - Terrence Howard is balls to the wall A-class amazing and any one of the girls from this pimps stable - from Taryn Manning to Taraji P. Henson to Paula Jai Parker - have more character and dimension than any $10 million lead female in your standard Hollywood fare. Then there's the rest of the cast: Anthony Anderson finally sheds the 'funny fat black guy' stereotype and Ludacris can act like a motherfucker.

And let's face it, boys & girls, when you think pimp you may think Snoop Dogg but the reality is a pimp isn't the most savoury of characters on the block. To have a movie where your main character is a pimp (and not a rich Jay-Z mofo at that), complete with all the anger, frustration and propensity to smack a ho down and yet get the audience to feel for his journey, to want him to get somewhere, that's a real accomplishment. You feel for it because in essence it's the archetypal story of fighting and sacrificing to make a dream come true. Done right, everybody's a sucker for it. Especially me.

One thing I especially liked and could relate to (you know it's good when a Malay kid can relate to a hip-hop movie set down South) was the entire process of trying to record their demo. From DIY soundproofing to shitty mikes to make-shift pop-filters and even the little touches are focused on, like switching off the fan before a take. And the way they make the song and the sound evolve is entirely realistic - from rhymes on a pad and trying to get that beat to practising, from trying to figure out what the hook is to finding the magic touch you were looking for - and by the time all the glitches have been sorted and Anthony Anderson presses the 'record' button you willbe hooked by that song and you will truly share the same feeling of elation the characters experience.

Just remember this movie isn't all happy-happy-joy-joy. It's a pimp. It's his ho's. It's a shitty run-down house in Memphis and the pimp's ride isn't even one whole colour. a fuck in the front is $20 and a fuck in the back is $40 and, in case you didn't know, these girls aren't enjoying it. Terrence Howard's 'DJay' isn't a selfish character who wants out from the pimping business, he's a caring character that wants to bring everybody he loves out of the pimping business and whatever dead-end jobs their in: his ho's, his producer's and finally himself.

8 Mile almost became the definitive movie of this genre, but whilst Eminem has some real and incredibly original flow (and he could act pretty good, surprisingly) Terrence Howard has got character by the bucketload and baggage by the carriage. Watch this movie. It won't dissapoint. I guarantee it.

Time is a Motherfucker

So I get a call from Tony last night. Apparently the call-for-entries deadline for the 10th Malaysian Video Awards has been extended to the 1st of November.

Bastards.

This leaves me in a tricky position. I could either rush the production to make it for the MVA's or say "fuck you, Mr. MVA! Thanks for letting us now about the deadline at the last minute, asswipe!" Alternatively, I could pass them a rough cut and still keep working on the post for the international awards.

You see, the thing is, if it wasn't fasting month I could probably pull this off in the nick of time. If it wasn't fasting month and I still had some leave left I could probably pull this off no sweat. I wonder what's the deal with unpaid leave. How's that work? Maybe I should just call in sick.

Either way, the temptation to send my crzy lil' movie to the MVA's is great. My rational side is telling me to take my time and shoot it at its own pace and just get it ready for the Singapore International Film Festival.

Or maybe I should just call the curator. Who's the curator?

Tony's call came whilst I was transferring footage from production days 1, 2 and 3 to my desktop. Since it's been so difficult for me to imagine the movie right now, I've been doing a rough cut of the movie. By 3am I got about five pages of the script edited (with the scene from the UK replaced with a 'Scene Missing' title card). Surprisingly, most of the footage is working out. More surprisingly, the sound that I thought was great when we were shooting turns out to be incredibly teeny-tiny. I foresee a lot of audio manipulation.

After editing it I realized something: no music. I stripped in some temporary music for now (Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" and Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick") and press play again. Now it's working. I comepletely forgot about music, it's making a world of difference.

To give you an idea as to how hectic the scheduling has been, I only started editing at about 1am. Digitizing the footage was from 11.30pm. Reason I started so late was because before that I was shooting footage of Dragonred for their music video. Then, this weekend I'll be acting for Tony's short film 'Wrath' where I'll be playing a serial killer. Tony said shooting might only take a day, he's taking it easy since the deadline for the MVA's have been pushed. Hence I may be able to shoot some more footage for 'Ciplak' this weekend too. I checked with Ariff, he should be ok.

Thing is, after editing and driving home I only managed to fall asleep around 4.30am. Then my mom woke me up at 5am for 'sahur' (during fasting month, Muslims wake up before dawn to grab a quick bite). After eating I couldn't sleep till 6.30am and woke up at 9.30am.

I am now dead tired. My brain hurts. My eyes hurt. My arms and legs hurt. I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep like a cat on a sunny Sunday. Instead I have to spend a whole day pretending to work. After this I'll be meeting up with my girlfriend and I have two choices: either relax and watch DVD's in her arms or keep on working on this damn movie. For inspiration and drive I've got my copy of Robert Rodriguez's "Rebel Without A Crew" at work to remind me that even though I'm going through a tough time, it still hasn't reached the levels of insanity he had.

(Just realized this when readin the book: Rodriguez and I have the same birthday: June 20th. Does this date create kids with hair-brained hectic schemes on purpose?)

I'm seriously considering taking some days off to finish my movie.

Indecisive

Last night I watched the rushes for my attempts at shooting myself. Only the pick-up shots were usable and the car footage made me want to puke due to the motion sickness.

I then decided to try and edit the opening minute of the movie which took about an hour plus and I watched it. And watched it. And watched it. I then watched all the other footage over the weekend again and again and again.

Right now it's crunch time: I'm not happy enough with the footage. I'm not feeling 100% about the result of the first 2 days of production. Certain angles don't seem right, my acting goes dodge in some parts, the clothes I'm wearing seem very impracticle for the character in retrospect. There are two options right now:

(1) The Safety Route: Shoot the rest of the movie, then re-watch the opening and see whether it can all still fit. This will keep things within schedule. The problem here is that this means sticking to the wardrobe we've picked. And the scenes we've already shot are the opening scenes. The movie needs to open with a bang.

(2) The Primadona Route: Re-shoot EVERYTHING. Re-look at the characters, the boards, the set-up, the look of the characters, the locations and re-shoot the entire fucking thing. This will push us way beyond schedule, but it would ensure I get the movie to look the way I want it to.

Decisions, decisions. Meanwhile, I have other projects to keep me occupied till the next shoot. Tonight I'm shooting some footage of Dragonred to cut a simple music video for them and over the weekend I'm acting in a short film Tony's doing. I'm playing a serial killer. I like.

The next weekend we'll continue shooting the movie. We'll just have to see how it all goes, I guess.

Ciplak: Production - Day 3

After re-watching the rushes and constantly thinking about it, I decided since my parents will be back from their holiday with my lil' bro on Thursday, I might as well try and shoot as much as I can in my room before anything happens to it. Unfortunately, time is a factor, so after thinking about it long and hard, I decided something rash:

I'll shoot me.

It seemed feasible on paper. Set up the tripod, get a lot of pick-up shots and fix up the pacing in the edit so the shots don't look so static. This is of utmost importance to me because I hate static shots set up on a tripod. The only question was when.

The answer: this morning.

Shooting the footage was the only thing that got me out of bed this morning. The night before I rehearsed how I was gonna set everything up and referred to the earlier footage to make sure the props' positions matched. I then set up the tripod, angle the camera, press record and act out the scene three times. I did this for about four scenes then shot some close ups of picking up stuff, opening and closing closets, etc.

One thing I discovered after watching the rushes was that the camera had a quite wide angle lens which was warping my already chubby face into Stay-Puft-Marshmallow-Man-blimpiness, so for all my shots I set up the camera further back, zoomed it in and made sure with the aid of the monitor that I was roughly in shot. Since it was so close, it was easier to hide the mic. In one of the scenes I just held it, in others I lodged it in a crevice or between clothes as close as possible.

Later on in the day, after my meeting in Subang, I pulled out the camera whilst driving in the heart of KL to capture some random KL-ites as they go about their KL duties. I was also hoping for a shot of the three tall structures that are to appear in the movie - the Dataran Merdeka flagpole, the KL tower and the KLCC twin towers - but no chance. No worries, though. I now know where're the best parts to get the shots.

I also have another messed up plan in mind: to gaffa tape the camera to the dashboard of my car and shoot whilst I drive to the office. I don't want to have to wait to get my footage, and I need loads of it right now because as each day passes I keep thinking of better ways to get the shot.

You see, usually I wouldn't bother. For 'Nicotine' there was an entire dialogue scene that needed to be reshot because the angles were such that both characters didn't look like they were talking to each other no matter how you edited. But, instead of re-shooting, I rewrote the scene using the existing footage and fixed it in post.

For 'Ciplak', though, I don't want to do that. I want to get the shot, and it's getting tough. I'm quite sure even with all the footage I'll have at the end of the day there will be loads of bits that won't be right, but we'll try and fix what we can.

But speed is of the essence. There's a scene where Tony will be making a cameo appearance as a fellow film geek and since his scenes are indoors, I'm writing into the script that he keeps his windows boarded so I can shoot his scene at night and use indoor lighting set-ups.

What? His character's supposed to be a bit eccentric.

I'm also wonderng whether we can shoot the night scenes sooner, and have even considered re-shooting all of the second days footage differently. I guess the problem I'm finding with shooting a feature is that I can't edit it straight away so I can't 100% see whether something works or not. Need more footage so I can start editing, dammit.

Bumper Gila Babi Siaaaaaal...

Okay.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, apart from a pretty face your favourite part of the female anatomy was ass.

And not in an anal sex kind of way.

No, just imagine you were a person who likes cute butts. Something about them makes you go buckwild. Call 'em what you will: ass, butt, buttocks, rump, back, booty, posterior, double-parked VW beetles, whatever. To quote Shakespeare, "a tailfeather by any other name is still as sweet".

Or something.

Now, given the above, imagine you work in an office of about 200+ staff. Amongst these 200+ employees, 65%-75% of them are female. Out of the female population of the staff, at least 50% of them have an average booty and out of that 50% a good 10% have a better than average pair of bumpy bits.

Out of this 10%, imagine there are 2 individuals in particular who's asses look like they've been sculpted by Michelangelo.

No, not the turtle. The artist.

Imagine these asses for just a moment. Curved peaches that dip into the middle at a perfect angle, not jutting out too far from the rest of the body but just nice and perfectly proportioned to the rest of them. And the rest of them ain't too bad either.

Imagine if you have to work in this office and watch these perfectly positioned posteriors walk past every day. It hurts to look at that ass. It's the kind of ass that's so beautiful it makes you look ugly as you say, "goddamn, that's some fine ass."

Welcome to my life.


"Peach. I could eat a peach for hours."
-Nic Cage as Castor Troy in 'Face Off'.

Ciplak: Production - Day 1 & 2

Friday night: After sitting in a stupid hall at the KL Convention Centre for about two hours for the MC2 awards only to find out I didn't win a damn thing I rushed off to Lim Kok Wing to shoot Dragonred's performance, not realizing how intensely fucking huge it is.

As I parked the car I heard the familiar riff of 'Fade Away' and thought to myself, "fuck me, they've started!" I ran like buggery, up and down and up and down flights of stairs and into the hall where they were playing and proceeded to shoot non-stop, jumping off one end of the stage and running across to jump onto the other end before running back down the stairs and back to my car the second they finished.

All this running and jumping and stairs did not do my legs well. As some of you know, I am incredibly unfit and I ended up pulling a muscle. After realizing this I dreaded the next day of shooting. Will I end up walking around with a limp in my scenes? How very 'Melinda & Melinda' (if you didn't know, in that movie Will Ferrell plays a character who's a failed actor who plays every role with a limp).

Then it was a rush back to The Hive to test out the microphone I borrowed from Jordan. The night before I had gone to Jordan's house to pick it up, assuming he'd already found it. No luck. After trawling through endless boxes we found the mic but the cable was broken. It looked like a standard stereo jack so I told him it'd be ok and that I'll figure something out.

When I finally tested the microphone I discovered that the stereo jack for the mic is very unique: it's a screw-in jack. My regular cables were, well, regular cables, and to keep the jack in I had to gaffer tape the fucker.
But here's the thing: because it's not the proper jack, my guess is that the stereo jack's thingeys (I'm not sure of the technical terms) didn't align with the mic's stereo thingeys. The result? A mono mic.

But it worked well, and isolated my dialogue in my tests better and clearer than the camera's on-board mic. Done.

I then realized I hadn't set dressed my room yet. The guy's bedroom had to look like he was a real movie freak. I want to establish this early on, at least subconsciously, so that later on as we find out more about the character it doesn't seem so sudden that he's crazy about movies and wants to be a filmmaker. I had two Sin City posters and a Breakfast at Tiffany's poster back at home that we're full size, but I'd need more than that. So what do I do for the next hour and a half? Take out all my copies of Empire and Total Film, slip in Superman on the DVD player to keep me company and start ripping some pages out.

(I almost forgot how good the original Superman movie was. Although Lex Luthor and his gang are a bit too comical now that I'm older. But Christopher Reeves is the BOMB.)

Tired and in dire need of sleep, I brought back whatever movie related posters and pictures I had and went back to my parents house to sleep. It was four in the morning, and I had to be up by at the very latest 10.30am if I was going to shoot at 11am on Saturday.

Saturday: Ahmad woke me up via phone to tell me he was outside waiting at the gate. The plan was to have a quick breakfast, set-up and start shooting ASAP. I got up, put on whatever clothes I had and made my way to the mamak for some toast and orange juice.

At the mamak, Ariff (my D.O.P.), sms-ed me:

'Might be reaching a little late, i'm still moving machine from my shop to kl...'

(The guy works at a photo lab, and they were moving shop that morning.)

Since Ariff was gonna be late, I figured I'd get Ahmad to buy all the extra stuff we needed for the shoot (reflectors and tracing paper for our 'lighting set-up' which is basically a borrowed Ikea lamp from someone at the office) and I'd spend the morning doing up my room with the posters and stuff.

 I still had to build my boom-mic (which I shall post photo's of soon) which basically consists of Jordan's mic on a short mic stand with cloth wrapped around the grip so that it doesn't pick up too much of the mic's shakes. The mic stand is then gaffa tapped to a long wooden stick.

(Raimi fans: altogether now - "This... is my BOOM stick!").

Whilst I was making the boom stick Ariff was figuring out the lighting and angles. Ahmad filmed us all doing this which I might upload also.

By the time we were ready to shoot it was about 4pm. we were chasing day light and my girlfriend had already finished work so she came over to help out. Ariff shot, Ahmad held the boom-stick and my girlfriend held the lamp and reflector.


It didn't help that, on-top of us trying to get as much day light as possible before the sun went down, it kept raining on and off. Then Mommy Cat refused to act. She was doing exactly what I wanted her to do in the film in the morning but now, after seeing the crew she had never met, she ran off, 'meow'-ing all the way to her safe spot under the sofa. No more special attention to Mommy Cat.

My maid also refused to act so I had to cut her scene out. When I wanted to shoot my shower scene I didn't realize how dificult it would be to emulate the scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off until I found myself constantly wiping shampoo out of my eyes. As we kept shooting, the sun kept going down and by the time we had to shoot the seventh shot it was already too dark. Fuck it. Tomorrow's another day and I've got a gimpy leg.

Sunday: Even though we stared late on Saturday, I didn't want to start any earlier than noon. The last few days of the week had left me exhausted and my leg was getting worse. Everyone came roughly on time and we shot the last interior shot before moving to exteriors. Ariff brought his photo friend (whose name I can't remember right now) to help out.



Today was much more acting intensive and that's when I realized that even though I wrote the fucker, memorizing the lines and acting it is another matter. I think my accent when a bit wonky but I'm sure (fingers crossed) it'll come out ok. We shot around the house for about an hour and a bit. Halfway through a cop car pulled up and eyeballed us. I smiled and waved.



We then hopped into our respective cars and went to our first outside location: Plaza Damansara. It's an office area, so I expected it to be quiet and empty on a Sunday. Fat chance. For some reason the mamak stalls were packed so we were contsantly looking for quieter areas to shoot. I decided for these exteriors to use the onboard mic because we'd be moving around so much. Thing is, a lot of the shots weren't as move-y as I thought and we could've set up with the boom-stick. Damn. We'll fix it in post.



Somehow Ahmad managed to get hold of a clapper board. At first it was kinda fun, having a clapper board and starting every scene with some guy shouting, "Scene 23 take 1!"

Unfortunately, after a while it got pretty fucking irritating. Especially when the person's taking way too long to set up the clapper board (of all things) before shouting, "Scene 23 take 9!"

We wrapped up around 4pm with about 26 or so scenes done in total over the weekend (bearing in mind each scene is about a third of a page). After having a quick drink with the crew I went home to check out the rushes (although I guess this term doesn't apply for video).

They say you gain about 10 pounds on TV. When you're borderline tubby this is not good news.



I watched the rushes and I couldn't help but keep thinking to myself, "fuck me, I'm ugly. I am an ugly fat fuck."

(I know what you're thinking, Man Meth'.)

I kept saying this to myself as I watched and for most of the night I kept bitching about it to my girlfriend who wanted nothing more than to relax and eat some tom yam. As we had dinner I watched the television and watched ad after ad, all featuring pretty boy male models.

"That! That's how a lead character for a movie should look!" I exclaimed.

"Would you rather have the lead be good looking but can't say the lines like you want them to or look like you and say the lines right?" was the general reply from my girlfriend. That shut me up.

The fact of the matter is, there aren't that many good young actors in KL. Even less who'd do this kinda thing for free (strangely, though, there are some quite good young actresses). Plus, I wanted to shoot this fast and I didn't want to involve anyone I didn't know too well. We'll soon see what people think of my so-called acting abilities when the movies done.

But back to the rushes. Now that I've gotten through my first weekend of shooting I know roughly how my crew performs. By the second day things went faster and smoother, but there's a lot of footage from the first day I'd like to reshoot. I'm even tempted to reshoot it myself using the tripod. I can't make heads or tails of this footage yet because it's only about ten minutes or so of usable footage. I might cut the first ten minutes to see how it looks, leaving 'scene missing' cards on whatever bits haven't been shot yet.

Unfortunately, the very first scene is a telephone conversation between my character and Man Method's character in England, and I don't have that footage.

Holla back, Meth'!